CHAPTER THIRTY
AXEL
In a move that isn’t at all my style, I rise and dash toward her, plopping into a chair and pulling her into my lap.
For just a minute, I allow myself to breathe her in, to ignore all the chaos and carnage waiting for us, to relish her filling the Zara-shaped hole I’ve been wrecked by.
She toys with the hair at my nape, nuzzles her lips against my neck, and stifles the anguish threatening to spill out of her, though I can feel it flooding us.
“I’ve got you, Zar,” I whisper against her temple.
Her chest shudders on a muffled sob, and I don’t take that gift of emotion from my proud and vicious girl for granted. I hold her through it until her breathing steadies and she relaxes against me.
Sweeping her hair away from her face, I drink her in, my gaze latching to the perfect Cupid’s bow of her upper lip before I manage to tear it away and focus on those deep green gems. “I know you’re familiar with hell, darling, but you just sold your soul to the devil.
One way or another, your eternity is mine. ”
She’s still shaken from her phone call, but she doesn’t let that subdue her feistiness. “I’ve always loved the heat. Make it burn.”
Though I was initially speaking of our challenges, erotic ideas of how we can bring that burn to fruition filter through my mind, and my cock stirs.
“Plenty of burn in store,” I assure her, my hand drifting beneath her skirt to find that her panties are soaked. “But tonight, I worship you.” I stroke over the silk a few times, and her eyelashes are already fluttering. “This is for me?”
A shyness she doesn’t generally reveal mantels her. “All for you.”
“Only me,” I warn as I increase the pressure on her clit, savoring the sight of her squirming for more. “How long have you been this wet?”
“Since you left me in your bed,” she admits. “Will worshipping me fix that?”
“Again. And again. And again.” Lifting her, I ruck her skirt up to her waist and set her on the table before me. “Panties off.”
Her breathing grows more rapid as she searches my face and then the door. Ryker locked it on his way out, but she can’t see that from this angle. I wouldn’t risk us being caught right now, but there’s an undeniable thrill rising to the surface of her cheeks at the possibility.
She bites her lower lip, fretting. “Someone could catch us.”
“We can’t let that happen, so you’ll need to be quiet and do as you’re told quickly. Unless you’d prefer I leave you with that ache.”
The truest testament to how much she’s been suffering comes with her sliding the soaked burgundy silk down her legs without another objection.
I take them from her and stuff them in my pocket to start a collection, along with the other pair I have. “Good girl. After that crawling stunt you pulled, I should put you over my knee. But you’ve had a rough day, so place your feet on the table and keep yourself spread for me.”
A hushed whimper leaves her, and her pussy—with its finely trimmed landing strip of brown hair and the swollen pink flesh—grows even wetter, despite the fact that I’m not even touching her yet.
It’s simply because she’s splayed out on a conference table, her whole lower half on display for me. I tuck that away for later.
Pressing on the small of her back, I slide her closer to the edge, which causes her knees to wedge against her shoulders, uncomfortably high due to her stilettos.
My eyes fasten to hers as I dip down and pilfer the first taste with a voracious groan. “So sweet. I missed you so fucking much.”
That confession penetrates her somewhere other than the ache between her thighs, but she chokes it back, and I pretend I don’t notice how good things warm her and wound her in equal measure. We’ll work on that.
Riling her up is nearly as exhilarating for me as her impending satisfaction will be.
So, with her juices coating my tongue to satiate the beast inside me, I take my time.
I plant kisses along her inner thighs, let my scruff tease her fiery flesh, use my breath to fan her with chills and my finger to rim her opening.
Her legs shake from the crunched position.
Her hips wiggle, imploring me for more, but I can be relentless.
“I thought you weren’t going to punish me.” Her voice is hoarse, sandpaper and syrup and so damn sexy. “Put me out of my misery.”
In response, I smack her pussy, relishing her salacious keen.
I’m unable to tamp down my chuckle as I dip my nose to swirl her wetness.
“Begging looks good on you, my beautiful Thorn. But I do prefer manners.” I tease her more—biting, stroking, skimming, pinching.
“I’m savoring, worshipping you, as promised. ”
That stings her, too, but again, she fights it in favor of her lust.
“There’s something to be said about devouring,” she argues in her desperation, tacking on a polite, “Please.”
“Better,” I praise, extending a touch of grace and circling her clit with my thumb as I study the way her eyes bounce and her throat bobs and all her muscles tighten.
“I want you like this all the time. Mine to feast on whenever I want. Naked on my desk. Pleading.” I keep watching her as she writhes, chasing me for more, and I continue with my fantasy.
“Or at my feet, letting me hold your pleasure, pain, and safety in the ways I know are best. But also beside me. For everything else. Would you like that?”
She smiles—so bright and genuine that it gleams like a treasure—as she rakes her fingers through my hair. “I would. I’d like all of it.”
It’s the all of it that undoes me, a growl rumbling in my lungs.
I have no strength left to torture either of us, so I plant my mouth on her glistening cunt, nipping at her throbbing bundle of nerves while my fingers curl to hit that coveted spot inside her.
She arches her back, her heels nearly sliding from their perch.
“Don’t let those feet drop, or I’ll have to stop,” I chide against her with a flat-tongued lick. “Or worse, keep you teetering on the edge all night, but never let you come. That would remind you not to let yourself go without permission, yeah?”
She answers by fisting my hair and pushing my face where she wants it, and I allow it, amused by the boldness. Her ruthlessness boosts my appetite. I give her everything she wants. My teeth graze her sensitive spots. My pace becomes more vigorous, my mouth more ravenous.
She’s so pent-up that it doesn’t take long to have her trembling and chanting, “Oh, please, don’t stop … don’t stop … don’t stop, Axel.”
My name on her lips with such unadulterated hunger sets something off inside me.
In both of us. She explodes, bracing her hands on the table and unabashedly rutting her hips against my face.
And I grow into a barely controlled feral beast, afflicting her with a climax that seems to be tearing her apart from core to limbs.
She spasms and moans and fucks my tongue with a fearless mission. I ravish every drop, drinking from her like a man who’s been asleep for forty years.
“So pretty when you come for me,” I praise, but even as she floats down, squeezing her thighs against the sides of my face to halt my consumption, I don’t relent. I grant myself this—the flavor of everything that feels right, even though nothing is.
She groans, too sensitive, but it turns into climax-tipsy giggles and a distraction plan. “Can I ask you something?”
“Of course.” I suck on her spent clit with a playful warning. “I’ll even consider answering.”
A throaty hum coasts out of her, part craving, part frustration. “I’m not pressuring or ruining the moment, but I’ve had a death-row kind of day, so everything feels … magnified.”
“That isn’t a question,” I remind her because she’s getting lost in the sensations that are no longer too sensitive, but are instead revamping her thirst.
“Does this mean we’re … together?”
“Not publicly,” I start, and I feel her flinch slightly, so I straighten with her arousal staining my face and our eyes hitched by the graveness of everything striving to split us apart.
“There are hurdles we need to cross. You have to trust me. There are steps for how we do this, so … staying away from you is impossible, but—”
“I have another question,” she breaks in, not appeased by anything I said and too impatient to let me tell her what she means to me. “Why don’t you kiss on the mouth?”
I wasn’t expecting that, but maybe I should have. I’ve struggled more with not kissing her than I ever have with anyone else. I’m sure she could tell.
Bringing her back to my lap so she’s straddling me, I skate my fingertips over the supple curve of her thighs, take a deep breath, and swallow the insecurity this evokes. “Because my father forced me to become a man when I was fourteen. At Magie Noire with a woman he’d paid for.”
“Fourteen,” she parrots. Aside from a subtle twitch of her eyebrow, she keeps her reaction stolid, which I appreciate.
“Yes,” I confirm, not even caring much about it.
Compared to other things he did, that was nothing.
“My mother couldn’t do much to protect me.
He was untouchable and had nearly killed her a few times.
Anyway, she told me that the one thing no one would bother taking without my permission was a kiss, so I should save it.
At first, it was powerful to withhold it.
Then I was uninterested because no one seemed worth it.
Eventually, it became the symbol of what if.
What if I found my person? Not that I was looking, but it was still there.
If I did, I’d have something for just her. ”
Her composure buckles, her plump lips popping open with shock, and those feline emeralds widen and frolic all over my face. “You’ve never kissed anyone?”
“Never.” And with my admission, I realize she isn’t just the object of my obsession or a woman I’m entangled with or even a person I’m willing to die for.