Chapter Nineteen #2
When I finally looked up, something had shifted in her face. She wasn’t going to say anything about it, and neither was I. We both understood.
I moved higher—running my hands up the sides of her ribs, until she dissolved into a squirming giggle that cracked the tension like a window being thrown open.
“Ticklish?” I asked, deeply pleased with myself.
I wanted us to have fun tonight, too.
“Especially there,” she said, still laughing, trying to twist away.
“Noted.” I filed it next to the spot on her neck, the inside of her left thigh, and the sound she made when I—
Focus.
I ran my fingertips slowly up her sternum, and she stopped laughing.
“I’ve neglected these,” I said, a low growl to my voice, as I admired her peaked nipples. Her breath went shallow. “We’re going to fix that. Do you like them played with?”
She nodded.
“Words.” I kept my hands perfectly still and watched her register that I meant it. “Tell me what you want.”
The whole time she’d let me lead, and I’d been glad to.
But this—hearing her ask for something—mattered to me in a way I wasn’t fully able to vocalize.
I wanted her to know it was safe to ask.
That whatever she said wouldn’t be too much or too little or wrong.
It wouldn’t be judged or used against her.
I wanted her to trust me enough to be greedy.
“Touch them,” she said finally, her voice rough. “Please.”
There it was.
I cupped her breasts in both hands, felt their weight. “Perfect,” I murmured. “Made for me to touch, to cherish, to worship.”
I lowered my head and pressed a kiss to one peak, then the other, then blew a soft breath across both, drawing a shiver from her. Then I went to work—licking, grazing my teeth, and alternating suction with the lightest scrape of my teeth—watching her face to read what landed.
The answer, apparently, was all of it.
But what she loved most—what made her hands tighten in my hair and her back arch—was when I scraped my teeth across a nipple and then immediately flicked it with my tongue, the sharp sensation soothed with warmth. I did it again. Her hips rolled.
“One of these days,” I said against her skin. “I’d like to fuck these.”
She made a sound that was part moan and part laughter. “I would be extremely open to that discussion.”
Her hand slid down between us, reaching for her clit. I caught her wrist.
“Marc,” she turned my name into a complaint. “Seriously?”
“What do you want?” I held her gaze and held her wrist while I waited.
I’d keep asking that question until she grew sick of me saying it. Until she began to tell me without me having to ask.
The debate moved across her face in real time—she was absolutely weighing whether defiance was worth it, and what form it might take, and if the consequences could possibly be interesting enough.
She bit her lip and let her head drop back. “Please.” The word ragged and intense, the last of her defiance going with it. “I want you circling my clit, please.” The second please was softer, breathy, needy.
“Are you going to be dirty for me now, Hart?”
“Yes. Make me come, Marc.”
A deep, low chuckle left my throat. “Don’t you worry, you’re going to come, and I can’t wait to hear you scream. It makes me even harder for you, Delaney.”
Something shifted within me, a possessive little thing that desired to be the only one she made demands to in bed. And it wasn’t just the words or the sound of them. I knew that giving up control wasn’t easy for her.
I suspected she’d been handling her own pleasure for a long time. Making do. Adjusting expectations downward until asking for things stopped feeling worth the effort.
She didn’t have to do that here.
I pulled her hand down and kissed her knuckles before releasing it. “That’s all you ever have to do. Just tell me.”
She let out a shuddered breath. Nodded.
I slid my fingers through her slit—she was soaked, still swollen from the last two orgasms—and I pinched her clit lightly before circling it. She jerked, oversensitive, and I eased up, letting her adjust, then shifted my palm so the heel pressed against her while I worked two fingers inside.
She clenched immediately. Hard.
I went back to her breasts with my mouth while my hand continued to slide in and out of her—fingers curling, finding that spot over and over, feeling her hips start to stutter. It didn’t take long.
Her legs trembled, her stomach seized, and she came in a long, low, rolling wave that left her shaking.
Three.
I gave her about fifteen seconds to recover.
“Sit on my face,” I commanded.
The silence that followed was spectacular.
“I’m sorry,” she said slowly, blinking at me from the pillow with an expression of confusion, as though this request deserved clarification because her brain couldn’t process my words. “What?”
“You heard me.”
“Marc.” She gestured vaguely at herself. “I’ve come three times. I’m a mess. My legs don’t work.”
“Your legs don’t have to work. That’s the whole point.”
“You want me to sit on your face?”
“Enthusiastically.”
She stared at me. Then, slowly, a smile pulled at the corner of her mouth—a dangerous one, the one I’d been cataloging for months, if not years—and she said. “You’re going to have to help me.”
“I was counting on it.”
I helped her get upright, helped her swing her leg over, and guided her forward until she was exactly where I wanted her. “Hold on to the headboard.”
She grabbed it without argument. Orgasm-drunk, cooperative, and absolutely stunning.
At my first touch, her whole body bucked. “It’s too much—Marc, I can’t.”
I held her hips tighter and kept going. My tongue moved faster, circling, flicking.
The sounds she made this time were different—lower, less controlled, like she’d run out of energy to manage her own reactions. Her thighs shook against my shoulders.
Her body tensed faster than the other three times.
She moaned and whimpered, chanting, “Fuck.” Over and over again. Her rhythm broke as I pushed her higher.
I sucked her clit into my mouth.
When she came, it was with a keening cry I felt in my sternum. And a rush of wetness slid down my chin.
Her hands white-knuckled the headboard, and her body went slack all at once.
Four.
I eased her off carefully—she was boneless, which had been the plan—and pulled back the covers and tucked her in like she was something precious, worth taking care of, because she was.
Her hand reached as I stood.
I squeezed it. “I’ll be right back.”
I ran a washcloth under warm water and came back to find her exactly where I’d left her, eyes half-closed, her body fully relaxed. I cleaned her up gently, left the cloth on the nightstand, and brushed back her hair from her face.
“Are you okay?”
“I think my soul left my body,” she murmured. “Can you tell me when it comes back?”
I laughed—loudly, the kind that came from somewhere unguarded—and sat on the edge of the bed.
“I’ve never done that before.” The corner of her mouth curved, small and unguarded, her eyes not quite meeting mine.
“What do you mean?”
“Squirt. I didn’t even think it was a real phenomenon.”
“Fuck. I’ll make sure it happens as many times as you want.”
She let out a breath. “I’d like that. Can you cuddle me?” she asked, her voice low and tired.
Then she blinked up at me. Her eyes traveled down, and her expression shifted from blissed-out to indignant. “For fuck’s sake. Are you still dressed? You just gave me four of the best orgasms of my life and you’re still—take them off. All of it. Off.”
I stripped down to my boxers and dropped everything in a pile on the floor, which I would absolutely regret tomorrow, and pulled her into my arms.
I settled her against my chest, and she snuggled into me as if she’d been doing this for years. “Much better.”
She fit there.
That was the thing. She just—fit. Perfectly, seamlessly, like she belonged in that spot.
“Thank you,” she said quietly, her fingers tracing patterns on my skin.
I kissed the top of her head. “For what?”
A pause. “For making me feel safe.” She paused again. “I didn’t realize how much I’d been letting things happen to me instead of me saying what I actually wanted.”
I held the following silence for a moment. Didn’t rush to fill it.
“An intimate relationship is a give and take, but you should never be left feeling disappointed when it’s over,” I finally said. “What happens between two people is supposed to matter to both of them.”
She nodded. Her cheek rubbed against my chest. “I’ve never had someone so focused on whether or not I orgasmed that they didn’t even want it reciprocated.”
“Tonight was about you.” I pressed my lips to the top of her head. “But don’t misread that as sainthood. All I’ve been thinking about for the past few hours is what it’ll be like to sink into you and to feel your pussy clench around my cock when you come.”
She let out a sleepy exhale. “I want that, too.”
“Good.” I tightened my arm around her. “Go to sleep.”
She went quiet. Her breathing slowed. Her hand stilled on my ribs.
I stared at the ceiling in the dark and thought about how I was in serious trouble, and couldn’t find it in me to care.