Chapter 12 #3
Her heart pounds against my chest as I slip my tongue between her lips and taste her.
It’s the sweetness of melon and the bitterness of tea, and I sip from her lips like some starved thing.
I’m so invested in exploring her mouth I don’t realise she’s unwinding my hair until the weight of it disappears and settles against my back.
At once, her fingers are knitted into the strands, tugging, massaging.
It takes all my willpower not to melt into a puddle.
An embarrassing sound slips from me, and she drinks it down like nectar.
I’m not some blushing virgin, not an amateur in bed—but I am surrounded by her, drunk on her, and it renders me pliable, soft.
I untangle a hand from Marlowe’s hair and take hold of her jaw.
I want to coax every sound out of her; hear all the different ways I can break her.
I want Marlowe to feel as wrecked as I do, just from this simple taste.
I deepen the kiss, quickly becoming addicted to how she feels against me.
When I suck her tongue into my mouth, she writhes in my lap shamelessly.
Her fingers turn to claws against my scalp, and, carried away by desire, I disengage and bite down on the patch of skin below her ear.
I like pain, but it seems so does she.
Her moan unravels whatever threadbare self-control I had left.
In seconds, I have her lying back on the blanket, and I settle over her, pressing her body down.
Those gorgeous, dark eyes are lidded, full lips parted, pulse pounding against her neck.
When she arches against me, she pushes her thigh between my legs and is rewarded with a noise that would embarrass me again, if I weren’t so far gone.
I can feel the heat of her through my clothing.
I need more, all of her, before I lose my mind.
“You want me?” she whispers into my skin, licks a path up to my ear and catches the lobe between her teeth.
Need, I correct mentally—barely stop myself from saying it.
“From the moment I saw you standing in my cabin, drowning in my clothes, shooting daggers at me with your eyes,” I whisper against her collarbone. “I hated treating you like that.”
“Oh,” she breathes.
I bite down on the delicate skin, drawing my teeth along bone, and Marlowe gasps. She bucks against me, hands anchored in the curtain of my hair and pulls me in. “Harder. I won’t break.”
I obey and lavish her collarbones with stinging bites and careful kisses, until she’s twisting beneath me and setting my body alight with every shaky exhale. She’ll be marked for days after this.
A possessive pleasure zings along my skin at the thought. I’ve never wanted to corrupt someone before. As if we’re sharing the same thought, Marlowe trails fingers over her reddening skin.
“Fuck, I’m gonna be so bruised,” she moans. Every word is laced with a sweet anticipation. Maybe it’s the reason she wanted me to sink my teeth into her, maybe it’s just a delicious side effect, but the idea excites her, too. This woman will be the end of me.
From the first demand she ever made of me, I’ve been dazed.
No one has ever seen through me like Marlowe does.
No one ever tried. But Marlowe stands toe to toe with me and sees, instead of a reason to turn away, a reason to parse all those messy parts of me that kept others at arm’s length.
She makes it seem easy to be near me, when others always skittered.
That she wants me is like an afterimage against the back of my eyelids, a sensation so bright it can only be fleeting.
I feel emboldened by her desire, riled by her need. I feel raw.
With Marlowe distracted, I take hold of her arms, slide up to catch her hands and pin them above her head. In the shadows of the room, her expression is open and heated. I want to touch every inch of her body. I want to show her she was crazy to think anything could make me want her less than this.
I never imagined we could end up here, but now that we are, I’ll devour her.
She’s a bolt of lightning tearing through me, the blood in my veins like liquid fire at the sight of her pinned under me.
I think, looking at the urgency in her face, I could make her do anything right now.
But all I really want to do is take her apart and worship her.
She squirms against me. “Tanisira.”
I lick at her top lip, savouring it, laving the cupid’s bow. “Yes, valeja?”
“Get naked.”
“Patience.”
In truth, her demand sends my internal temperature rocketing. It’s only the sweetness of her skin against my lips that stops me from humouring her. I want her naked too, but to be able to take my time with her like this? No, I’ll take the moment.
With one hand around her wrists, I let the other trail over her cheek, down her neck, chest, and under the hem of her t-shirt.
Of my T-shirt. Not something I’d ever considered a turn-on until this moment, when I push it up and brush open-mouthed kisses over her stuttering heartbeat. She’s hot against my lips, searing.
“Tee,” she begs.
I raise my head, meeting her glazed-over eyes. “Tee?”
She tosses her head from one side to the other, wraps her legs around my waist and tries to pull me flush against her. “Sorry—”
“No.” I smile, almost shyly. “I like it. Say it again.”
Marlowe bares her teeth, and there’s nothing shy about it. “Earn it.”
When I run a finger over her stomach, just beneath the waistband of her pants, she almost throws me off.
But I don’t let her rush me, even though I’m dying to hear my name in her mouth again.
Marlowe trusts me, and she doesn’t hide it when she utters that syllable.
It makes something as simple as a name more intimate, more like a promise between us, here. It feels right.
I peel her t-shirt off, revealing the swells of her breasts, the softness of her arms, the thickness of her waist. When she tries to take advantage by winding her limbs around me, I mouth her nipple through the delicate material of her bra until she’s breathless beneath me.
She pulls her arms away and practically flings them back over her head.
It should make me laugh, but instead, I just burn.
From the very beginning with Marlowe, it’s been one endless litany of ‘I should’.
Her skin is like silk and just as dear. I trace prominent stretch marks with my fingertips, drawing the most wonderful patterns across her chest and her plump stomach.
She inhales sharply. Some of them I can line up with my fingers, as though life has taken vicious claws to her.
But she’s here, and she’s glorious, and she is all I can see.
“Please,” Marlowe whines, words catching in her throat, as I slowly tug the lace of her pretty bra out of the way.
I curl my tongue around a hard peak and tug.
Nothing has ever sounded as precious as her moan, tasted as perfect as her hot skin.
The bra ends up disappearing, and I spend precious minutes cupping, sucking and rolling her nipples between my teeth.
I’m rewarded by the slow undulating of her hips against me, sending zaps of pleasure along every single nerve in my body.
She thinks this is killing her? It’s destroying me.
Her hands fly back down, plucking at my waist. “Take this off!”
I lift my head in warning, a puffy nipple popping out of my mouth, but Marlowe just glares at me. Her patience has snapped and there’s nothing but fire in her eyes. “I don’t care. Take it off!”
I do laugh at this, and it feels just as good to share a smile with her.
She helps me take the t-shirt off, followed by my much more practical bra.
I slide back over her, and the feeling of our bare chests pressed together snaps the last of my willpower.
I take hold of the button on her pants and tug once, a question.
I ask out loud, too, because I like to be sure. “May I?”
“Fuck you. Take them off,” she growls.
I unbutton her pants, peel them down her legs, and throw them over my shoulder.
Boots and socks next, then I’m mesmerised, frozen in place by the wonder before me.
Somehow, Marlowe has managed to make the generic, plain underwear I’ve been providing her look indecent.
I want to rip them into shreds with my teeth.
The bands sit high on her hips, which are soft and thick beneath my hands.
I can’t even speak; my mouth is suddenly so dry.
It doesn’t matter because when I slide a hand between her legs, she’s wet and wanting. A groan comes tearing out of her mouth, just about masking the obscene noise my fingers make when they sink into her.
“Oh, stars. Tee.” She gasps. “Please. Please. I’m so close.”
Already? That shouldn’t make me feel so feral. It’s cruel, but I pull my hand away and meet her eyes. She watches me like she’s seconds away from descent into madness as I lick my fingers clean. The tang of Marlowe on my tongue is maddening all by itself.
“Are you sure?” I ask, a little cheekily, buoyed by her shudder of pleasure.
It’s the way she bites down on her lip that does it.
No more words. She has no more words, but she speaks to me with skin and heat.
I don’t bother to remove the underwear; I just push it aside and sink my tongue into her.
Marlowe arches off the blanket, presses my face deeper between her legs and says my name like a votive.
I can’t explain the fervour that comes over me, but I want to hear her call out for me in a thousand different languages, until her voice is hoarse, until she can’t even form sounds anymore.
It’s narcissistic and grandiose, and I want her to remember this moment way, way off in the future.