Can't Get Enough (Skyland, #3)

by Kennedy Ryan

For the last twenty years identifying the exceptional and capitalizing on it has been my job. It’s an impossible habit to break, and Hendrix was much too exceptional to ignore.

When I drop my eyes from the spectacle overhead I meet Maverick’s considering stare. He almost seems to silently ask if I’m okay, if I’m better now. I smile and raise my glass to him, allowing the warmth of his answering grin to thaw out those last few corners that froze inside when I talked to

maybe Maverick’s right. Nothing ever happens by chance.

I don’t even physically hear his voice, and yet my imagination purrs it in my ear.

Not just the way his eyes flowed over my body, or the way I could feel him watching me throughout the event.

He shouldn’t be saying this shit to me,

I know a good thing when I see it. And Hendrix Barry is a good thing.

I study Hendrix. I can’t stop. I keep surreptitiously seeking her out. The moment we shared on the plane, her crying—it

it was intense and I haven’t been able to move on from the way I felt tied to her, not just by our shared experience, but by something deeper.

I’m finding out everything I can about her. What she likes, what she needs, what she hates.

What are you watching may as well have been what are you wearing. Simul-watching Netflix is like phone sex, like masturbatory streaming.

He slaps Yasmen’s ass when he walks by, and the casual intimacy of it creates a tiny ache in my heart. When was the last time someone slapped my ass like that? Not in a gropey, creepy way like sneaking a feel in a crowded club, but with a possessive familiarity? A sureness that his touch would be welcome because there’s no place on me that doesn’t feel like his and there’s no place on him that doesn’t feel like mine?

Wow. Kennedy Ryan, the woman, the writer, the intimacy maker you are!

I don’t want to acknowledge the way my nipples pebble under my satin top from the sensation of that deep voice licking over me. This is so dangerous. And surely not wise. But I’m doing it anyway.

It’s something fresh and clean, with top notes of fuck me against a wall. I’m instantly hard, and keep my arm at her waist, not willing to let her go yet,

I think of A Different World reruns

I’m genuinely tearing up. TO BE COMPARED TO A DIFFERENT WORLD?!?! Lord I don’t be calling men kings but THAT’S A BLACK KING RIGHT THERE!!!

when she smiles. She has a Kim Reese grin; wide and blindingly white and infectious. How could anyone not smile back at this woman?

detail, but I’m certain that’s where she sleeps. I’d love to be invited up there someday. To be invited into her bed. Into her life.

Risk is coded into my DNA. I’m completely comfortable with it like a boa constrictor you keep as a house pet. I fool myself into thinking I’m safe long enough to do what needs to be done.

She moves between wildly different spaces, never pretending to be anyone but herself. Her level of authenticity is rare and compelling. She’s as at home in her own

skin as anyone I’ve ever met.

Lord how do I get like her 😂

“Come on, babies,” she coos at us, shuffling past the packed booths. But then she tramples the “somebody’s grandma” image by hurling a stream of cuss words at the cook behind the grill.

LMAOOO I’m laughing omg

I nearly choke on how bad I want to close those last few inches between us. To feel him go hard against me.

Good lord

squeezing my waist.

whimpering at the feel of him, a hard column between my legs.

I press down and he pushes up, a glorious grinding I have dreamed of more than one lonely night in my empty bed.

Big hands slide from my waist down to squeeze my ass, then drag over my bare legs in long strokes...

It shouldn’t feel this good, just the repetition of my hips moving over him, but wetness pools in my underwear and my muscles tighten. I hump him harder, faster, chasing that nirvana that only comes when—

looking into his eyes this way, I’m completely exposed, my desire undeniable and on full display.

I could easily assume with that comment he’s making light of the situation since I obviously caved and orgasmed all over his lap, but his expression remains unsmiling. I scoot back and off him to stand.

you are someone who deserves all things, not just one.”

Needed this reminder!! Period Black

A

you, ain’t nothing like the right one.”

being whole means acknowledging all our parts. And that there were parts of me that wanted to be held, want to be needed and loved.”

Lorddd this is too good. Black women deserve this!!!!!

According to girl code, you don’t dry-hump a friend’s ex. You don’t come all over his lap. And you certainly don’t get yourself off in bed every night for a week from the memory of it.

Oh lord but if he’s Maverick Bell, it’s a different story!!!

That man’s been living rent-free in my head… and in my bed, if fantasies count.

Mmmm

Whatever it is about him that shifts the gravitational center of every room he enters, I don’t think it’s merely physical. I think it’s as elemental as fire or water or air.

Oh my! 😍

I’m going back to my hotel and ordering a bottle of something sent up to my room. Something to dull this throbbing between my legs and this ache in my chest.

🙈

Caught, like if you blew forensic dust over my body, Maverick’s handprints would show up clearly on my ass, my back, my thighs.

Ain’t bo problem!

I don’t allow myself to think If I get a next time. After this, there’s no way I’ll go the rest of my life without having her again.

to expose the curve of my hip. Maverick left souvenirs,

There are parts of you that want to be held, want to be needed and loved. That is just as emotionally valid as the parts of you that crave independence.

“My life won’t be measured just in what I did, but who I did it with.

“Before you have to take care of her, let me take care of you a little.”

*cries in eldest daughter*

Do I have a good enough reason not to pursue Maverick Bell? I don’t think I do.

“And you’re mine.” There’s a possessiveness in his tone that should make my feminist tendencies bristle, but it instead makes something inside me purr.

Father, forgive me for I have whored.

LMAO 🤭

it feels good to remember Mom without the miasma of grief.

Like when you realize the woman walking toward you, covered in sand and soaked by sun, wearing a smile more breathtaking than the horizon—that woman, her you’d probably do anything to keep.

🥰🥰🥰

“Just put on a pretty dress and trust me, okay?”

Looking at the handsome man eating my banana pudding and winking at me, I can’t help but think he’s one of the few men in my life I actually do trust. How the hell did that happen?