Dakota answered him the only way she could in that moment, not with words, but with her mouth finding his, the kiss tasting of salt and grief and something reckless that had long since stopped measuring the cost of anything.
Kade kissed her back with the careful control of a man holding himself to a very fine and deteriorating edge, one hand tightening in her hair while the other pressed her firmly against him as though the distance between them had already become intolerable.
When he finally broke away, both of them breathing unevenly, the space between them felt less like air and more like the moment before something irreversible.
"Do you think it's easy to climb onto my bed?" he whispered, his voice low and carrying a dark current beneath the softness, while her fingers worked steadily at the buttons of his shirt. "Only dead bodies fall out of it."
