Read Effortless for Free Online

thoughts
tumbled over to the memory he was referring to and I bit my lip. It
was a long time ago that he’d taken a knife wound while trying to
defend my honor. It was one of the most amazing and horrible things
that anyone had ever done for me. Amazing that he’d stood up for
me, and horrible that he’d been hurt. My fingers traveled down his
ribs, touching the mattress as I curled them around his body. I
leaned over and kissed the edge of the scar where I felt the
roughness cutting into that once smooth skin. He sucked in a
breath, his stomach clenching as my lips moved over the old
wound.
     
    I smiled and kissed across his back as I thought of one other
major wound he’d gotten because of me. True, this one didn’t have
an external scar, the fracture having been reset without surgery,
but I knew it was damaged, under the surface. My hands ran up his
arms, squeezing the left one, where he’d broken it while getting
into a fight with Denny so many months ago.
     
    I leaned forward and kissed that arm and his eyes softened as he
watched me. I knew he understood my gesture. “I adore you for all
your scars,” I whispered as I leaned over and gave him a soft kiss
on the lips.
     
    His hand came up to grip my head, keeping me trapped in the
loving softness of his kiss. He deepened it and the fire of
anticipation coursed through me when his tongue brushed over mine.
My breath sped up and I leaned into the kiss for a moment before I
stopped myself.
     
    Skillfully, I pulled away from his hand trapping me to his
mouth. With a playful scowl I smacked his shoulder. “You stop that.
I’m not done with my inspection.”
     
    He sighed and rolled his eyes. “Well, can you hurry up? So I can
make love to you and not this awful mattress?” He pressed his hips
against the bed beneath him for emphasis and I laughed. Laughing
himself he muttered, “We could switch positions when you’re
done?”
     
    Ignoring that, I sat back on my seat at the base of his spine
and turned all of my attention to his glorious back. He seemed
fine, definitely no thin trails of puckered flesh from me tearing
into him. I leaned forward to kiss his skin and then I noticed it.
I paused as I looked more closely. It was faint, so faint you
wouldn’t notice unless you were literally an inch from his skin,
like I currently was, but it was there. Thin, white streaks down
his back, right where I’d raked him. I smiled inwardly that a part
of our crazy, intense night was still with him, maybe forever. As
much as I hated that I’d caused him pain, I was a little happy that
a reminder would be with him, wherever he went.
     
    “Ah, found ‘em,” I muttered.
     
    He started to ask me, “What?” when I playfully drug the very tip
of my tongue over the vague white line. He cut off what he’d been
about to say and a shudder went through him. Emboldened, I let my
tongue make a trail up between his shoulder blades and up the back
of his neck. Kellan squirmed and dropped his forehead to the
pillow, his breath definitely faster. Another old memory seizing
me, I very gently bit the back of his neck. He groaned.
     
    Before I could really process it, and definitely before I could
stop it, he twisted underneath me, bringing up his arms to pull me
down to the bed. All of the air whooshed from my lungs with the
force he used to get me off of him. I giggled when he crawled on
top of me. His lips attacked mine, his tongue practically searching
for my tonsils.
     
    I pushed him away from me. With desire evident in his smoky
bedroom eyes, he growled, “I said don’t tease me.”
     
    I smirked and ran a finger across his parted lips. “Payback.” I
raised an eyebrow at him. “At least I didn’t do that in a crowded
club.”
     
    His face startled. It was almost like he’d forgotten about that
very intense moment when he’d licked me in the middle of a packed
dance floor. Denny and Anna had both been somewhere in that club at
the time. His brow scrunched