Silence that Sizzles (5 page)

Kyle stiffened and didn’t move. It was as if he had turned into a statue. His casual demeanor was gone. “I told you there are things about me that you won’t find in your files, Ms. Malone. Why don’t you worry about eating, and you let me worry about my diagnosis?” The plate rattled in front of her as he slid it across the counter.

The omelet sitting nestled on the plate would surely rival any omelet she ordered in any restaurant in any part of the world. Kelly knew she’d crossed a boundary with Kyle, but it was something that she wanted to talk about with him. Of all of the patients she had seen over the years, Kyle’s case was the one that seemed to haunt her. She felt strongly that he had been misdiagnosed since the beginning. Of course, that could only point to the fact that something else dramatic had happened to him before he joined the Army. She thought that perhaps this was the reason that he, Eric, and Tony were so tightly bonded even now, so many years later. She wanted to know everything about him. She knew that she could help him. He had demons and a cross that perhaps he no longer had to bear alone. But he was a proud man. She had to respect that. So she backed off.

Kelly lifted her fork and slowly cut off a corner of the omelet. As she put it into her mouth, it seemed like it melted on her tongue. She couldn’t keep the moan of pleasure from erupting from her lips. Kyle’s look changed to one of slight amusement. He moved around to her side of the island. It was if he wasn’t so much as he was looking at her as he was stalking her. That shiver ran down her spine again. Kelly felt like she was on an adventure, and she never wanted to go back. This was something new and exciting in her orderly and tidy life. She wished that there didn’t have to be the element of danger as well, but at the same time, it had brought her back into contact with the man who set her soul on fire. She didn’t want to take anything away from that.

Kelly enjoyed eating the rest of her omelet. Kyle had turned away eventually and started to clean up the dishes. She protested, saying that she should be the one to do that, but he insisted considering she was his guest.

After eating, Kelly was full, and she could feel the drowsiness starting to come over her limbs. It was late, and she had been on edge for days. Now she was somewhere where she could finally relax. She just wasn’t sure about the sleeping arrangements.

As if he had read her mind, Kyle said, “I’ll sleep on one of the couches. You can have the bed.”

“Are you telling me in this vast expanse of space you don’t have a guest room?” Kelly didn’t want to toss him out of his own bed. It just seemed wrong, especially the way that she had barged into his life.

“The staircase goes up to a loft, as I’m sure you can see. That’s the only room that is somewhat closed off in the entire space. I just wanted as much space as possible here to be open.”

Kelly thought about what it must feel like to be a shifter. Someone who had an animalistic nature, but was confined to stay in a man’s body and have to navigate a human world. Suddenly she understood why he had renovated the space to be completely open. She looked up at the skylights above them. Through them, she could see the expansiveness of the sky above without seeing buildings around them. She could almost feel for a moment like she was in the outdoors. It made perfect sense. He would want his home to be as open as possible, so it felt like he was outside instead of inside. That way he could let his animal roam free without having to worry about the danger of being around other people.

Kelly was about to argue with him about the bed when a heavy yawn cracked her jaws. She was exhausted. She knew she had barely slept in days. Ever since everything happened with Oak Tree, she hadn’t felt safe. But now it seemed as if her body was finally catching up with her mind. She knew she needed to rest, even though she still had a million questions.

She saw that Kyle watched her closely. That didn’t really surprise her, because Kyle watched everything carefully. He motioned for her to follow him up the staircase. There was something about the idea of sleeping in Kyle’s bed that excited her. She wished that he was going to sleep with her. She admired his backside as they climbed the stairs. She wasn’t so exhausted that she couldn’t appreciate the sight of a good-looking man’s tight ass.

What was wrong with her?
She was acting like a giddy teenager with her first crush. It wasn’t like Kelly at all to go all googly eyes over a man. But then again this wasn’t just any man. This was a man who had haunted her dreams for the last several years. There was something about Kyle Frost that drew her to him, and she couldn’t explain it.

When they reached the top of the stairs, Kyle pointed at a door off to the side. “There’s the bathroom. I can get you some more blankets if you think you’ll be cold here. I know it’s a bit drafty.”

Kelly looked around the room. It was as sparsely furnished as the main level. But the soft beige color on the walls spoke to a warmth and a kind of comfort that she craved. She eyed the bed cautiously. It was king-size and more than enough room for her. That’s when she realized that, of course, she didn’t have any pajamas or anything to change into to sleep. As if reading her mind yet again, Kyle walked over to a low slung dresser and pulled a T-shirt out of the bottom drawer. He handed it to her awkwardly. “We’ll make sure to pick-up your things in the morning. Hopefully, this’ll work for tonight.”

Then it was as if he couldn’t handle the awkwardness any longer. Kyle gave her another nod and hurried down the stairs leaving her alone in the room. Kelly looked at the T-shirt in her hands. She carefully brought it to her nose and took a deep whiff of the fabric. It smelled just like how she remembered him. She looked over her shoulder at the stairs, but she knew that Kyle would always be a complete gentleman. There was no way that he would invade on her privacy. It did make her feel better to know that at least he was downstairs and only a call away. Kelly went into the bathroom and carefully changed into Kyle’s T-shirt. It hung all the way to her knees and was a reminder her of how large a presence he was even when he tried not to be.

Kelly came out of the bathroom hoping in a way to see Kyle waiting for her, but he wasn’t. She climbed into the bed wondering when sleep would overtake her. She didn’t even realize how quickly it would be when she drifted into unconsciousness.

Kyle rolled back and forth on the couch listening to the sounds of the even breathing from the loft above his head. His keen ears could hear every shift and every breath that Kelly took in her sleep. He knew the moment that she slipped into unconsciousness. Too bad the same eluded him.

He was acutely aware of the woman above him. There was nothing that he wanted to do more than to go upstairs and pull her into his arms. But, of course, he couldn’t do that. She trusted him to protect her. She wasn’t asking him to ravage her. No matter if he wanted to or not.

He couldn’t help but think about what a strange turn his life had taken that evening. That was when he remembered how it all started, with the strange text message that he had received just before Kelly appeared. He pulled out his phone and looked at it again. The strange message was there taunting him.

I know what you did.

Kyle felt a rush of anger at the same time as a sense of outrage. Hadn’t he done enough to atone for that sin? When would he ever be able to move forward in his life again? These were memories and trauma that he thought he had finally let go of. He had served his penance for what he had done and the part he had played. It was that secret that bound him to Eric and Tony as surely as if they were blood. Of course, they were as close as three men could be without being related.

It was within these dark thoughts that Kyle finally drifted off to sleep. His dreams were steeped in anxiety and fear. There were flashes of red, and the face that he had seen in the club visited him once again. This time, the face’s mouth opened revealing razor sharp teeth. He felt the pain as they ripped into his flesh. He couldn’t scream, and he couldn’t get away. He was trapped in his own personal hell for an eternity.

He awoke in a cold sweat and found Kelly leaning over him. Her long hair caressed his cheeks, and her hands were on his chest. She was shaking him, trying to wake him. Her voice finally penetrated his ears. “Kyle, can you hear me?”

He sprang into a sitting position causing her to draw back. He knew he had startled her, but, for a moment, he was completely disoriented and didn’t know where he was. Was he back in the desert again? That hellhole on earth?

His breath slowly returned to normal as everything started to come back to him. He was on the couch in his townhouse. He was safe. There wasn’t anyone chasing him; at least, not here. Kelly stared at him with frightful eyes. But as he calmed, her expression turned thoughtful. He knew that look. It was the face of a researcher looking at her subject.

“So, you’re still having nightmares.”

It wasn’t a question. Kyle had suffered from nightmares for years. He rarely remembered them. There were just images and sensations of intense emotions that refused to fit together in any kind of cohesive story. They stalked his subconscious nightly and made it difficult for him to sleep.

She held up a small bottle of pills and shook it at him. “I didn’t mean to pry, but I saw these sitting on the edge of the sink in the bathroom. You must not have taken one tonight, though?”

Kyle had a prescription for sleeping pills for a reason. Ever since he started taking them, he had been able to escape the darkness of his dreams. The upset of having Kelly in his life and in his house had made him forget to take the pill before he went to sleep. He shouldn’t have been surprised that he had practically welcomed the dark embrace of his nightmare yet again under those circumstances.

He ran a hand through his hair and down the back of his neck. “I thought that I didn’t need them anymore.” It was close to the truth. He found that he didn’t need to take the pills on the nights when he drank heavily. One way or another, he went to bed in a way that enabled him to escape his dreams.

Now that he was fully awake and calm, Kyle became acutely aware of Kelly in his personal space. She was wearing his T-shirt, and there was a part of him that felt a small thrill at that. If she was wearing his clothes, then it was just a step closer to having her feel like she belonged to him the way that he belonged to her. A wave of possessiveness rolled through him. He wanted to claim her. He wanted her to be his forever. Immediately, that brought him to his feet. He wasn’t used to dealing with these types of intense emotions. Everything about his careful, tidy, orderly life had been turned on its ear thanks to Kelly Malone.

He needed to do something quickly. Otherwise, he didn’t think that he would be able to control the animalistic desire to pull her into his arms and take her. He brushed her hands away gently as she got to her feet and moved to examine him further. He saw the anxious look on her face that told him she was worried about him.

“Kyle, what is it? You can talk to me.” The words were spoken so softly that he barely heard them. But, of course, with his sensitive bear hearing he could. He wasn’t sure he could trust her, and that made the situation dangerous.

His bear wanted to expose every part of himself to her, but Kyle knew what would happen if he did that. She was human. She didn’t feel the same call to be a mate and to be with someone like shifters did. She had a choice in the matter that he did not. It would be completely unfair of him to try and draw her into his world, especially knowing that when she saw the deepest, darkest, most depraved parts of him, she would probably turn on her heel and run. He didn’t think he could stand it if that happened.

“I just need a few moments to get control.” Now that was something that she could not argue with. They both knew that there was an animal side of him. If he couldn’t keep his bear under control, it could be disastrous for both of them.

He thought for sure this would be enough to get her to leave him alone, but she didn’t even take a step backward. Instead, she stood completely still and watched him carefully. He didn’t know what to make of her. What was it about him that made her so curious? Was it the fact that she was still studying him even now?

He knew that he had been in some type of special program, and Kelly had been in charge of keeping tabs on him. He had seen his file on the one occasion that she had left it sitting on the corner of the table when she left him alone for a few moments in the tent they used for examinations. There was a lot of scrawling code that he couldn’t understand inside, but Kyle wasn’t dumb. His father had practically admitted it to him when he enlisted that there were different programs that the government was undertaking to create the perfect soldier. Kyle foolishly had gone along with all of it in the vain hope that if he was the perfect soldier, perhaps he would finally gain his father’s respect and approval.

When Kelly had told him of what she’d found at Oak Tree, he hadn’t been surprised. He wondered if his father knew about the secret project. If he did, Kyle didn’t think he’d ever be able to speak to his father again.

Kyle and his father had never seen eye to eye. The General always said snidely that his eldest son was soft. He had wished for a better son and doted on Kyle’s younger brothers, who had been healthy and strong from birth. Kyle had been sickly and weak. The fact that all of that fell away after his first phase hadn’t mattered. The General barely acknowledged him at all after that. The perception that he was never good enough had always remained with him.

His thoughts were so jumbled and confusing that he barely even noticed when Kelly started to inch toward him. “Stop.” The word was strained. He needed her to stop. He needed her to leave him alone. There was only so much that one man could take before he would break.

Kelly stopped but only for a moment. Then she began her slow movement toward him again with her hand out in front of her. It crossed the space between them, and he found that he couldn’t stop it. He didn’t want to stop it. He craved her touch like he craved the air that he breathed. Her hand finally settled on the hard plane of his chest. He felt his heart beat begin to speed up under the palm of her hand. She looked up at him. The look of sweet innocence and wonder that he saw there took his breath away.

“It’s okay, Kyle. You can be yourself, your whole self with me. I know that you would never do anything to hurt me.”

Her words shook him to his core. Of course, he would never do anything to hurt her. At least, not intentionally. She was everything to him. Didn’t she know that? The fact that she might know, that she might have read how he felt about her in the simplest of his actions and movements as benign as he had tried to make them, was shattering to him. He felt exposed and raw in front of her.

His hand came up and covered hers. He watched the hitch of her breath in her chest as it rose and fell. He could hear her pulse and the quickening of her breath. She was not unaffected by him either, and that was the thing that drove him to what he did next.

He slowly reached out and placed his hand on the same spot where she touched him on her chest. He stared deeply into her eyes, looking to see if there was any negative reaction to his touch. He wondered if she was going to ask him to stop. But she didn’t. Instead, she licked her lips, and it was if she was offering them to him.

That was all it took. It was the sign that Kyle had been waiting for. He drew her close to him and pressed her body up against his. There was a moment of glorious feeling as he felt her softness against his hard planes all over his body. His hands moved to grip her waist. He didn’t want to do anything that would surprise her or cause her to bolt. This moment was something that he had dreamed about for years. Now that it was upon him, he had to take things slow.

As long as she didn’t run, he could indulge in his deepest, most desirable fantasies. Kelly did not move. It was as if she could read the angst and the struggle going on inside of him. That was when she reached up and gently placed her hand against the side of his cheek. She looked at him with such a gaze of desire and longing that he couldn’t stand it any longer. His head lowered, and his lips touched hers for the first time. Then it was as if an explosion happened in his mind. He let loose with an abandon that he could not remember ever having felt in his entire life. And the best part was, Kelly met each one of his movements with one of her own. She was in the moment with him. She was there.

It was like a dream come true. There was a part of Kyle that wanted to take things slow; he wanted it to be perfect and right. But the other part of him, his bear, wanted to have her right this minute. He had been denied what he had wanted for so long and now it was here in front of him, and he had his arms around her, he just couldn’t stop. His lips ravaged hers with an urgency that he was trying to tell her with his lips and his hands how badly he desired her. When her fingertips dug into the hair at the nape of his neck to draw him closer, he gladly obliged with a throaty, pleased growl.

He skimmed the T-shirt up over her hips and felt the wisp of her underwear barring him from reaching the place he needed to touch. Kyle knew then that things were just not going to be as slow as he wanted them to be. He needed her, and he needed her now. There would be time for the worship she deserved later.

He didn’t think. He simply tore the fabric of her underwear, and he felt her moan in satisfaction underneath his lips. It drove him into a frenzy that he couldn’t deny. This was the woman that he had been dreaming about for so long. This was the woman who set his mind and body on fire. He pressed his hips against hers and ground himself against her sensitive apex between her thighs and enjoyed her soft yelps and moans.

Then, she surprised him. She pushed him hard against his chest. He fell backward more out of shock than anything. His butt made contact with the couch cushion. Kelly didn’t give him time to think. She straddled him and looked deeply into his eyes as she took his face into her hands and kissed him deeply. He yanked the offending T-shirt up over her head, and his gaze took in her perfect breasts. He wanted to drown himself between them but settled for lavishing each one in turn with attention from his lips and tongue.

Kelly moved above him alternating between gripping his arms and his shoulders. It was as if she wanted to feel every part of his body in her exploration, and he gladly let her. Then she rocked back to settle against the backs of his thighs. As she leaned forward, her hair fell across his face, and she touched his lips and his cheeks as if she was looking at him for the first time. The wonder in her face drove him wild. He couldn’t handle it anymore. He had to have her.

As if she could read his thoughts, she went up on her knees, and then her hips came down to join them together just as his hands dug into the soft skin of her hips. In that instant, they were one. He and his bear felt like howling in delight and joy. This was what he had wanted. This is what he needed. Kelly ground hard against him rocking her hips to meet his every thrust. He had been so worried about hurting her, but she seemed to take everything he was giving her and wanted more. Their joining was primal and completely overwhelming.

He watched in rapture as she threw her head back and rode him hard. As her back arched, her breasts thrust out at him again. As he sucked and kneaded them, he heard her moaning grow louder. She crushed up against him and moaned in his ear as her muscles tightened around him drawing him into a climax with her. He was in blissful heaven as he felt the wave of pleasure rush over him. When Kelly went limp in his arms, he wrapped his arms around her to squeeze her tightly to him.

“I think, for research purposes, of course, that we should do that again. Soon,” Kelly murmured in a breathless whisper.

Kyle did nothing but begin to kiss her softly on her forehead, but he could feel himself getting hard again. This time, he was going to take things slow. He was going to kiss every inch of her body, and then he was going to make her whimper in the throes of pleasure. Again, again, and again.