Chapter 23 #3
I ran both hands up his legs at once, palms flat, feeling the lace slide slightly under the pressure, and when I reached the tops of his thighs I spread them a little and looked up at him from that angle and found him watching me with his chest heaving and his forearm thrown across his face like he needed to block out some of what he was feeling.
“Hey.” I pressed a kiss to the inside of his right thigh. Then his left. “Look at me.”
He moved his arm. His eyes found mine, dark and fully blown, and I held his gaze while I pressed my lips to the lace at the top of his thigh and watched his jaw work.
“I've got you,” I said. “I'm not going anywhere.”
His hand tightened in my hair.
I turned my attention back to his legs and let my hands do the talking — long strokes down to his ankles and back up, thumbs working into the muscle of his calves, palms spreading wide over his thighs.
My mouth followed a different path each time, never predictable, going by the sounds he made and the way his hips moved in small, involuntary shifts toward me.
“Rook.” My name, barely holding together. “Please.”
I slid my hands down his calves in one long stroke, pressed a last kiss to the inside of his knee, and then I moved off the bed and stood at the foot of it and looked at him.
He looked back from the pillows, chest heaving, lips parted, eyes dark enough the hazel had all but disappeared.
“What are you doing,” he said. Less question than accusation.
“Giving you something to look at.”
He opened his mouth. Closed it. His hands, which had been loose at his sides, curled into the duvet.
I reached down and grabbed the hem of my shirt and pulled it over my head. I dropped the shirt on the floor and stood there for a second and let him look and watched his jaw clench.
I reached down and undid the button of my jeans.
I went slow. The jeans hit the floor and I stepped out of them and straightened up and just stood there at the foot of the bed in nothing but my boxers, and I watched his eyes move down my body like he was taking inventory.
I let him look.
Then I ran both palms flat up my stomach, slow, the way he'd done to me — from the waistband of my boxers up across the muscle of my abdomen and my chest, pressing in, feeling the warmth of my own skin under my hands, and I heard the soft sound he made from the pillows and kept going.
“Rook.” His voice had a raw edge to it. “Come back here.”
“Not yet.”
I spread my hands across my chest, thumbs dragging inward, and rolled my shoulders back.
I then dropped one hand to my stomach, dragging my fingers down the center of it slowly, following the trail of hair south to the waistband of my boxers, and let my fingers rest there for a moment. His eyes followed my hand the whole way down. His chest was moving faster.
I brought my palm down against the front of my boxers.
The sound of it pulled a sound out of him that was half-laugh and half something rawer than that, and I felt myself throb under my own hand and didn't try to hide it.
“Rook—”
“You're staying there.” I wrapped my hand around myself through the cotton, loose and unhurried, feeling the weight of it, and watched his hips shift against the mattress. “You're going to watch.”
He made a sound that was nowhere near a protest.
I stroked myself slowly through the fabric, not enough to be anything other than a demonstration, and kept my eyes on him the whole time.
The stockings were still on his legs, the lace bright against the sheets, and he was pressed back against the pillows looking like something I should not have been trusted with.
His hand had moved to his own stomach and was resting there without quite touching himself, fingers curled like he was physically restraining the impulse.
“Don't,” I said.
His hand went still.
“That's mine,” I said. “You don't touch that without me.”
The breath that left him was audible from the foot of the bed, long and controlled and losing the fight it was trying to win. His head dropped back against the pillow for a second and he stared at the ceiling.
“You are going to be the actual death of me,” he said to the ceiling.
“Probably.” I brought my palm down again and the sound landed in the quiet room with enough weight that his whole torso tensed. “But not yet.”
I ran both hands up my chest again, slower this time, and let them spread wide across my pectorals before dragging my thumbs down along the inner line of muscle, tracing the definition there.
His eyes were back on me now, wide and tracking and fully locked, and the expression on his face had the quality of a man who had made peace with the fact that he was completely at someone else's mercy and had decided he was fine with it.
I hooked my thumbs into the waistband of my boxers and drew them down just an inch. Held them there. Watched his eyes drop.
Then I let the waistband snap back.
“Rook.” The word came out stripped down to its bones.
“Tell me what you want,” I said, and my voice had gone low and unhurried in the way that happened when I'd stopped moderating anything. “Tell me and I'll come back.”
He lifted his head off the pillow and looked at me directly, eyes dark and fully certain.
“I want you to come up here and let me take those off you,” he said. “And then I want you to stop teasing me and put your hands back on me and not stop until neither of us can remember what city we're in.”
I looked at him for one more second.
Then I put both knees on the mattress and crawled up the bed.
He tracked me the whole way, eyes moving from my face to my chest to the front of my boxers and back up, and by the time I reached him he had pushed himself up onto his elbows and was looking at me with his lips already parted and the particular focused expression he wore when he had stopped being coy about anything.
I got one hand under his jaw and tipped his face up and kissed him.
He opened immediately, hands coming up to grip my shoulders, pulling me down into it, and I kissed him slow and thorough and deep and felt him make a sound low in his chest that vibrated against my lips.
His fingers were digging into my shoulders hard enough to leave something behind and I let him, kissing him until his arms started to tremble with the effort of holding himself up.
Then I pulled back just enough to put an inch of air between our mouths.
He chased me. Of course he did.
I held his jaw firm and looked at him with his eyes closed and his mouth still open and waiting, and I gathered saliva on my tongue and let it drop.
He took it.
A full-body shiver moved through him when he did, visible from his throat down to his stomach, and the sound he made was soft and raw and entirely genuine.
His tongue moved against the inside of his own mouth and his eyes opened slowly and the look in them when they found mine was dark enough to rearrange something in my chest.
“Rook,” he said, and my name had gone thick.
“I know.” I ran my thumb along his lower lip. “Good boy.”
I straightened up onto my knees and looked down at him for a moment. Then I got my hand into his hair.
My fingers curled against his scalp, palm warm against the back of his head, and I applied gentle, steady pressure downward.
His face pressed into the front of my boxers and I heard the exhale he let out against the cotton, warm and slow, and then he pressed in closer and breathed deeper and the sound he made after that was muffled and grateful and completely undone.
“Yeah,” I said quietly, keeping my hand where it was. “There you go.”
His lips found me through the fabric. Mouthing along the length of me with the cotton between us, and the heat of his breath translating through the boxers made the muscles of my stomach go rigid. His hands were on my thighs, gripping, and I could feel the slight tremble in them.
“You smell so good,” he said against the fabric, muffled and low. “Fuck. You have no idea.”
“Keep going.”
He dragged his lips up the cotton and pressed the flat of his tongue against me through it and I felt the wet warmth of it even through the cloth and the sound that came out of me was not quiet.
My grip in his hair tightened and he made an approving sound against me and did it again, slower, running his tongue in a long unhurried stroke.
My hips moved forward without asking me first.
He took the hint. His mouth worked over me through the boxers with genuine focus, learning the shape of me through the fabric, and the sounds he was making against the cotton were muffled and continuous and doing things to my nervous system that required active management to survive.
“Take them off,” I said. “Use your teeth.”
He got his teeth into the waistband.
It took him a moment, working the elastic down by degrees, using his lips and tongue and the edge of his teeth, and the warmth of his face pressed against my hip and stomach in the process was its own specific torment.
The boxers cleared my hips and dropped, and I stepped out of them and knelt back above him, and the cool air of the room on my skin was a relief that lasted exactly as long as it took his mouth to find me.
He kissed along the length of me with the same unhurried patience he had apparently decided was his permanent approach to ruining me, lips warm and open, and then he ran his tongue up from the base to the tip in one slow, deliberate stroke and I pressed the back of my head against the headboard and looked at the ceiling.
“Soren—”
He did it again. Taking his time. Learning me with his mouth the way I'd learned him with mine, going by the sounds I made rather than any particular script, adjusting his pressure when my thighs tensed and slowing further when my breathing changed.
His tongue circled the head of me and the sound that came out of my chest was low and sustained and completely past managing.
I pulled back.