Because of Kian (21 page)

• Blank Page ~ Christina Aguilera
  
• Make You Feel My Love ~ Adele
  
• Open Your Eyes ~ Snow Patrol
  

Brynn

I could feel the warmth of
a hand holding mine. It was large, strong, and firm. My eyes slowly drifted open to see him.

Kian.

I’d missed him so much.

He sat
in a recliner that someone had pushed right up against the side of my bed. At first glance, he appeared to be sleeping. But looking at him closer, there was an intense concern radiating off his body. Not even the slightest bit of relaxation. His jaw was clenched and his brow knitted. My fingers lightly caressed his, and his eyes sprang open to meet mine.

“Oh my
God,” he whispered with a shaky breath. His eyes closed tightly again and he clenched his jaw. Fiercely, he took a deep breath before looking at me again, taking me in. “I wasn’t sure if I’d ever see your pretty eyes again.”

He looked like hell.
He hadn’t shaved in a few days, and the coarse stubble shaded his jaw. His hair was mussed and his eyes were bloodshot.

But he was
everything to me.

Then I realized he
wore a hospital gown.
Shit, so did I. What the fuck happened?

My throat felt scratchy
and my breath shaky as I looked around the room with wide eyes, trying to remember how we’d ended up here.

“What happened?” I hoarsely whispered.

“Evan, he shot you.” Kian’s expression grew dark as his fingers traced the contours of my cheek. In a voice thick with regret, he quietly murmured, “I tried to protect you. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry you were hurt.”

“
Why are you in a hospital gown? Are you okay?”

“
A bullet grazed me before it hit you.”

“Oh my
God. Kian…” My eyes filled with tears. He’d been hurt. He could have been killed.

Because of me
.

“I’m fine, baby,” he reassured me. “It’s a scratch. I thought I’d lost you though. It was so close.”

“You were hurt because of me,” I quietly whispered as the tears began to spill down my cheeks. The tears he’d taught me to release. “I tried to let you go.”

“Brynn, this was nothing compared to losing you. I need you with me. I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. I’m grouchy with the kids at class. I spend my days waiting for a glimpse of you, hoping you’re happy but also hoping that you’re as miserable without me as I am without you.”

“I don’t want you to hurt because of me.”

“Then come home to me. I need you with me.
Because not having you is killing me.” His lips pressed against my forehead, against my tightly shut eyes. They trailed down my cheeks, wet from the onslaught of tears. “I need you, Brynn. You lit something in me that burns. And it’s torture without you.”

My fingers
tightened in the blankets, fisting and tangling in an attempt to keep from touching him, from trying to soothe the bitter pain I saw in his eyes. I knew if I touched him now, I’d never want to stop. It would kill me to pull away.

“Kian, I’m not good for you.”

“Don’t say that, Brynn. You’re fucking perfect for me. You were made for me. Every bit of you.” He smiled wryly. “I even love your special brand of crazy. I love how you think and react. I love how you respond to me. And I really love how you fight me because it gives me the excuse to go all alpha and fuck you silly.”

My body
hitched with a pained laugh, then began to shake with sobs. It hurt like a fucking son of a bitch, right around my heart. But it wasn’t the physical pain. It was the fragile cracking of my walls, realizing that I couldn’t fight it anymore. My strength, my desperate resolve to keep him at arm’s length, was failing. I’d tried to leave to protect him, to keep him noble and strong. But, in spite of everything I’d done to drive him away, he was here. He wanted me.

He loved me.
And, as much as I tried to deny it, I needed that. I needed him.

My fingers slowly released the blanket and my hands crept up over his shoulders, my arms wrapping tightly around him and pressing myself close.

“Stay with me, Brynn. I don’t want anyone but you. And I don’t want
you
to be anyone but you. I want all of it. Come home… come home with me.”

I could only nod slightly, my face pressed tightly against his neck. Breathing in his air and fortifying myself with his strength.

His arms tightened around me, cradling my head in one of his large hands. “I won’t let you go again. No matter how hard you push me. No matter how hard you try to pull away. You’ll never convince me that I’m better off without you. Because I’m shit without you.” He pressed a hard kiss to my temple. “I’ll fight for you, even if it means fighting
you
for you.”

He pulled back
to look down at me, cupping my face in his hands and brushing away the tears sweetly with his thumbs.

“I love you,” I whispered. “
I’ll try to be good, but I can’t promise I’ll make it easy on you.”

“I think I can take you
,” he smiled.

Those words from so long ago, from the floor of the gym when all this had really started, were such a culmination of the path we’d
traveled to get here.

F
or the first time in a long time, I wasn’t afraid of being myself.

And
I wasn’t scared of loving him.

Three
days later, I desperately begged to get out of the hospital. I wanted away from the machines and the hard-as-fuck hospital mattress.

I wanted to go home.

With Kian.

They
discharged him the day I woke up. The nurse who checked my vitals every morning said they’d have discharged him a lot sooner, but that he was almost catatonic while I was still out. He’d simply sat by my bed, holding my hand, murmuring that he loved me and he needed me. They’d actually worried about his sanity, even to the point of considering a psych consult to determine if he’d cracked.

She also told me that, when I’d woken up, it seemed like he had, too.
Like we were two halves of a whole.

I
kinda felt like we were, too.

He’d taken a bullet for me, after all
.

True to form, p
art of me still felt guilty about that.

But
part of me thought it was
really
hot.

“Well, I think you’re going to live,” Dr. Foster smiled over her glasses at me. “Just try not to exert yourself too much.
And, if you are doing anything even slightly active, you should wear your sling and keep your arm immobile.”

Kian chuckled, drawing my attention. With a
wicked smile he murmured, “I’ll make sure she keeps that arm immobile.” His tone was teasing, but the light in his eyes was full of the promise of a deep violet rope.

I had to get the fuck out of this hospital.
Right. The. Fuck. Away. Because when Kian looked at me like that, I desperately wanted to wrap myself up inside him, to meld my body with his and feel his life pulsing inside me. It was everything I could do not to shove the good doctor out of the room and fuck him silly.

Dr. Foster
didn’t appear to hear his comment, in spite of the warm flush that flared through my cheeks. Either that or she chose to ignore him. She continued to peruse my charts, giving me a few last instructions. Then she signed off on the discharge papers and called the nurse in to process my release.

Sage had
arrived a short time ago with a bag of clothes she’d packed for me. My apartment was a crime scene, so I wasn’t able to go home yet.

Not that I wanted to.

Kian had asked – well, ordered, really – that I go home with him.

Often, his orders were counterproductive where I was concerned. The
y tended to set me off, rile me up. But I didn’t even have it in me to pretend to defy him. Because I wanted nothing more than to be with him.

Mattie sat on my lap as they wheeled me through the doors
into the cool autumn breeze outside. A gust of wind stole our breath for a moment, and Mattie began to flap her soft little arms.

“Look, mommy!” she grinned up at
Sage. “I’m just like Fluttershy!”

Kian looked down at me in question
.

“Pony?”

Sage and I both nodded and laughed.

“Pony,” we giggled in unison.

The thing was, I totally got how Mattie felt. My soul had been released. The ache and loneliness had finally faded away, and I had the incredible urge to spread my own wings and fly.

• Amazing ~ Aerosmith
  
• Feel Again ~
  OneRepublic
  

Brynn

Within a week of being home at Kian’s, I almost wanted to go back to the hospital. He was handling me with kid gloves, making sure I was comfortable, that there wasn’t any pain.

Silly guy.
I was dying for a little pain.

As we sat on the couch watching football, he was incredibly restless. Wound up.
Asking me if I needed something to drink. Asking me if I needed a blanket. Was I sure I didn’t? Because it was a little chilly. He wondered if he should turn up the heat.

I wanted to scream bloody murder
.

Finally, I
started to stand.

“Wait,” he said. “Where are you going? What do you need? You take it easy, and I’ll get it for you.”

“I need to go to the bathroom, Kian,” I sighed as I walked down the hallway towards the master suite. “I think I can handle that myself.”

As I came out of the bathroom, my gaze caught the dresser.
The tall dresser along the far wall. The one with
that
drawer.

I loved when Kian went for this drawer.
And it had been so long. Since before I freaked. Before Evan and the hospital. We’d been intimate since we’d been home, and it was intense and sweet. But, God, so vanilla. I was craving more.

I opened
the drawer and looked inside. A few key items caught my eye right away.

My Doc Johnson.

And a couple lovely, neatly coiled lengths of a deep purple rope.

Lifting
one coil, I skimmed my fingers along the braided stiff cord. We’d only used it a few times since that amazing, intense night that he first brought me here. But a shiver of longing coursed through me as remembered the way it teased my skin, how it bit into all those little pressure points, those erogenous zones that I never even really knew existed. I closed my eyes and I could almost feel it, that blissful trance he could take me to.

A slight sound at the doorway caused me to turn my head to see Kian standing there. I could read the conflict in his eyes.
His hunger.

Turning
fully towards him, I slowly offered him the rope.

“You sure you
’re ready for that?”

All those simple little bodily functions to keep me alive suddenly became an exercise in concentration. Every heartbeat rattled against my chest. My breathing
became labored, and my tongue instinctively wet my lips. I nodded slowly.

He stepped closer to me and slipped the
deep purple coil from my hand. “Take your clothes off, Brynn,” he said with a thick voice as he stepped back and sat on the bed, watching me closely.

My fingertips rose to the buttons on the shirt I was wearing, a thick flannel shirt of his that I’d
put on to curl up on the couch. Kian was about three times my body mass, and the shirt nearly reached my knees. Under it, I only wore some tiny lace panties and a pair of thick wool socks that bunched around my ankles.

While he
’d approved of the whole no-jeans thing, he also insisted on the socks to ensure I’d be warm enough.

As
I reached the last button, the cooler air of the room around me teased the newly bared skin of my breastbone, down my stomach. I parted the shirt and slowly lowered it from my shoulders. My bandage came into view, and Kian’s face darkened slightly. He stood and stepped towards me, standing there in only some tiny lace panties and slouchy wool socks, and his fingertips gently skimmed over the dressed wound. His eyebrows furrowed, and his breathing hitched ever so slightly.

I
stepped forward and undid the buttons on his shirt as well, working it down over his shoulders until he was bare-chested. Sliding my arms up over his shoulders, I pulled myself up against him gently, aligning our bandages. My fingertips cradled his face, nudging slightly for him to look at me.

“I love you
. You saved me,” I whispered as I pressed my lips to his for a sweet, gentle kiss. “And I don’t mean this shit with Evan. I mean…
me
. You saved me from myself. From my fear. My loneliness.” I kissed him again and smiled against his lips. “Now tie me up and fuck me.”

With a deep chuckle rumbling through his chest, he
tossed the rope to the bed, then lifted me slightly to set me beside it.

“And Kian?”
I breathed. “Make it hurt.”

“Okay, baby, but doctor’s orders.
I need to immobilize that arm.” He cradled my face in his hands for a hard kiss. “Kneel,” he murmured against my lips.

I
complied, then held my arms out in front of me, and he guided my motions to bend them, lining my forearms up so my right hand held my left elbow and vice versa. Slowly, he uncoiled the rope, intently looking down at me. “You’ve gotta tell me if it hurts too much, though, okay? What’s your word, Brynn?”

“Hyper,” I whispered.

One more firm touch of his lips, and he began to wind the rope around my arms, twisting them into an entangled criss-cross pattern, then looping the rough purple cord around my waist to secure my forearms just below my breasts.

“Turn around,” he quietly commanded, nudging my shoulders. His large hands steadied me as I complied, turning to kneel away from him, giving him access to my back. I looked down at the dark cord that held my arms steady and tight against my torso
.

“Why do you use purple?” My voice was quiet, barely audib
le as I stood still and breathless watching our reflection in the mirror. “I was reading something online about this, and it’s generally a natural color.”

“When you were sick,” he said softly as he
tenuously worked behind me, “and I came to check on you. Your apartment was so… bland. It was like you didn’t even live there. But then, I took you into your room, and everything was so purple.”

“I didn’t want to decorate much,” I explained
breathlessly. The warm sensation of the binding was beginning to course through my veins, causing me to feel ever so lightheaded. I could feel him weaving the rope against my spine, creating a woven pattern that pressed rough twists against the magic little places that felt so amazing. “Didn’t want more stuff than I could fit in my car. In case I needed to get out quick.”

Kian
tensed and paused for a moment before he lightly kissed my shoulder, following it with a sharp, fast bite. A small moan escaped my lips, and my head fell back. His voice was gruff and sexy as he murmured in my ear. “After I saw your bedroom, everything purple reminded me of you. I immediately went out and bought the purple rope. I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to use it on you. Didn’t know if you’d be into it. But I hoped…”

With a small nip at my earlobe that
jolted straight to my sex, he lifted me to lay me down on the bed below him. He threaded the rope down along the cleft of my ass, crossing and twisting it up just above my clit, and the pressure drew a ragged moan from my lungs. Kian’s hands wound the rough cording around my thighs and calves, spreading my legs wide and tightening the ropes to draw my ankles up tight against my ass. After a heady sweep of his tongue up my throbbing sex, he stood straight above me to gaze hotly down at my bound form. Totally confined. Waiting blissfully for his possession. My eyelids felt heavy, and my entire body floated with a combination of need and serenity.

He stepped back to the dresser to grab another length of rope, looping it up through a link at the top
rail of the heavy bedframe. Watching me closely, he strung it through small loops of my binding at my shoulders, up through another link of the frame.

“Tell me if this pulls at your wound, baby,
okay?”

I nodded, to breathless to even talk, and he began to steadily pull at the
thick braided cord. I felt my body begin to rise. All the twists of coarse rope pressed headily along my spine, biting at my inner thighs. My breath caught and shuddered. He tied the rope to a thick iron cleat on the heavy bedpost.

“You okay, baby?”

I nodded.

“Tell me your safe word, Brynn.”

“I don’t want you to stop.” My voice rushed out, frantic and needy.

“I’m just making sure you’re still with me. Say it.”

“Hyper,” I whispered. “Please… don’t stop, Kian.”

“Okay, baby.” I could hear the faint smile in his voice, mixed with a heated passion.
“Since you begged so nicely.” Looping a length of rope through a twist at my ankle, he wove it into the first that held me, the stringing it through another hook and pulling. One of my knees began to rise, tightening the intertwined strands over my sex as it pulled my thighs further apart. He deftly knotted the lengths of rope that held me, securing them along with the first rope.

My body felt completely weightless.
Surreal. My mind was in a haze, and my head fell back as I welcomed the trance this suspension had lifted me into. I faintly heard the sounds of him shucking his jeans, and then felt the heat of his hands on my thighs. Up over my breasts. Carefully caressing my bandage.

“This okay?” he asked softly.

“Yes,” I breathed out.

Kian’s hands slid down to my hips and his body brushed along my inner thighs. Slowly, I f
elt the heat of his hard length fill me, slick and smooth. He began slowly, gently. Swinging me lightly in the ropes. Every movement shot thrills of ecstasy through me from the twists of rope and the heat of his cock inside me.

“Fuck, Brynn,” he ground out. “I missed
this. You feel so good. I love when you trance.”

The thrusts grew stronger and faster,
building the pressure inside me. One of his hands left its place at my hip, and the thumb pressed hard circles around my clit before he pinched at the sensitive bud. A desperate cry wrenched from my lips, and my body began to tremble. I was so close, reveling in the sensation of his cock filling and stretching me as he smoothly guided my body to swing against him. Another pinch, and I exploded around him with a scream, trembling and sobbing. A few more strokes, drawing out my orgasm, and then he shot off inside me, a silky wet wash that spilled through my body.

Kian
lowered me to the bed and released my binding. Something about the release of my bonds always brought tears to my eyes. It was so freeing and painful all at the same time. He held me tightly, pressing soft kisses to my tearstained cheeks. “Made for me…” he whispered. “My Brynn.”

After tucking me into the softness of his flannel sheets, he left me momentarily to
shut off the television and turn off the lights. The hallway light spilled dimly into the room.

Lethargically, I lifted a hand to brush
a strand of hair back from my face. In the shadows and faint light, I noted the marks from the rope down my arm. Indentations in my skin from the sweet pressure. I traced along one line with the fingertip of my other hand, then pulled back the soft flannel sheets to view the rest of my body. A criss-cross pattern spread down my abdomen with deeper marks where the ropes had been twisted. Along my hips, perfectly spaced across my thighs.

My mind flitted back to the sensation of the ropes along my back, and I rose to
stand before the full-length mirror on the closet door. Twisting slightly, I could see them over my shoulder. An intricate pattern that decorated my back, over the curve of my ass, and down my thighs.

“Brynn?”
Kian stood in the doorway, softly and carefully watching me.

Looking at his reflection in the mirror, I couldn’t trust my voice to speak.
A swell of emotion grew inside me, and every bit of my brain was concentrating on breathing, on my heartbeat. A small tremor escaped and rippled through my body, releasing in a shuddery breath.

Kian crossed the room to
stand behind me, his piercing eyes conveying concern at my trembling silence. “You okay, baby?” he asked as his warm hands rested at my hips.

I leaned back against his solid strength, resting my head against him as my fingertips traced the lines across my abdomen
and over my breasts. Kian watched closely as they trailed over my skin, his body taught and wary.