Chapter Fifteen
Fifteen
The towel Theo grabbed was almost an afterthought as he rushed out of the bathroom and limped straight over to his perfectly made bed, sending pillows flying through the air and sliding across the floors after he ripped the covers back with one long arm.
He left a dripping trail of footprints in his hurry to get them there, an urgency she’d never seen before lighting up his face.
“This isn’t what I had planned, Miss Adams,” he muttered in her ear while he wrapped her in the towel, dropping her onto the bed before lunging for his nightstand and tearing the drawer open with a trembling hand. “You’re making me skip several steps.”
“Oh yeah? What was originally on the agenda for us tonight, Mr. Sullivan?” She clasped the towel around her neck with an impish grin. He was always so particular.
Theo turned to face her, a white condom packet gleaming between his fingers in the lamplight. Water still tumbled down the sides of his face, sending his dark waves curling deliciously around his jawline, and the way he looked at her so intensely, so darkly, sent flames licking down her spine.
He ripped the packet open with his teeth.
“First, I was going to make us dinner. Pesto gnocchi with homemade focaccia, wine, and a salad—fresh heirloom tomatoes with buffalo mozzarella, basil from my garden, and a balsamic drizzle, topped with flaky sea salt.” Theo stepped forward to close the gap between them and placed one wide hand on her waist, pulling her into the center of the bed on top of the towel.
He crawled after her, settling over her and dipping down to kiss her, peppering her neck with his lips over and over again.
“That sounds incredible.” Something about what he just said nagged at her, even as distracting as his mouth was right now. “Wait. You have a garden?” she asked between breaths. “Where?”
Theo nodded with a hum, twining her hair between his fingers. “The roof. Haven’t gotten to show you yet. The weather was too shitty.”
“And you were going to make me gnocchi? Potato pasta? My two favorite things combined?”
He nodded again, smirking in satisfaction. Then his eyes dropped and his smirk slowly faded. “My god,” he whispered, his dark eyes staring reverently at her skin. “Look at that. You’ve got a galaxy speckled across your shoulders. Gorgeous.”
That was right. He’d never seen her freckles before—they’d always been covered.
When he leaned down and pressed his lips to one of them, closing his eyes and running his nose softly along all the tiny russet spots she’d so long despised, Audrey felt her cheeks burn anew.
She’d never really liked them. Kids used to make fun of her for them in school, calling her a dirty little orphan, permanently flecked with mud.
It didn’t help that her foster mom at the time didn’t wash her clothes very often.
“I would spend a lifetime trying to count, catalog, and kiss all of your stars.” When he did exactly that with another, and another, and another, tracing them all with his fingers and tapping pointedly as he pretended to number them, the corners of Audrey’s lips tugged upward despite herself.
Trust an artist to appreciate the paint the universe had splattered her with.
But still something itched at the back of her mind. “You’ve made me pasta before, haven’t you?”
Theo waggled his eyebrows at her, his smug look back in full force. “Maybe.”
She sighed and shook her head. She should have guessed. “You’ve never brought me anything from a restaurant, have you?”
His smugness only grew, and he dipped down to nip at her lips again, drawing the bottom one between his teeth.
“Maybe I really like cooking, since I like working with my hands. Maybe I got into dough-based foods as part of my PT, since kneading works all my hand muscles so thoroughly. And maybe I quite liked it, and got quite good at it.”
“You cheeky bastard.”
He cooked.
She’d won the lottery.
He snorted. “That’s not all I had prepped.
I also made dessert—a surprise—and I had something else planned while we waited for things to cook.
An activity for us to do together.” He trailed his fingers down her neck and tilted her head to the side so he could press his lips just beneath her jaw.
When he grazed his teeth across her skin, she shivered.
“Oh yeah?” Her voice shook as she spoke. It was all she could do to stay coherent for whatever game they were playing now. “What activity?”
“I was going to eat you out on top of my quartz counters.”
He—what?
Audrey’s mouth went dry.
“You were going to be my appetizer,” he growled. Theo dipped lower, nuzzling along the swell of her breasts while he mouthed at her nipples again. “Tiny thing that you are—a delicious. Little. Snack.” He punctuated each word with a deliberate suck, smacking his lips with apparent relish.
Oh god.
When his calloused hands grazed across her ribs, she jolted and arched beneath his weight at the sensation. He was steadily making his way lower, sweeping his lips across her stomach, teasing her and tickling her softly with his fingers and his mouth as he went.
“I was going to lift you up, rip those fucking jeans off, and spread your pretty little legs wide for me,” he breathed, his breath swirling warm atop her stomach, scalding her far more than the water of his shower had.
“Taste you with the tip of my tongue”—he licked it across her skin in a demonstration, dragging it lightly along her hip while his fingers dug into her thighs—“listen to you gasp and scream, watch you writhe, make you beg until my mouth made you see stars.”
He pressed a kiss to the top of her mound where her hair curled dark before leaning down and slowly parting her legs with his wide palms, watching with rapt attention while he gradually revealed her sex for a closer inspection.
“I’ve been dying to explore you, you see.
I’m really quite the intrepid adventurer.
” He looked back up at her and raised one dark eyebrow, his expression positively wicked.
“I’m curious about what sounds you’ll make for me this time.
And I want to see for myself if you taste every bit as sweet as I suspect you do. ”
Audrey could hardly breathe as he tugged her legs over his shoulders, tilting her hips up slightly and sliding a pillow underneath.
She’d never done this before, no one had ever been down there like this before, her heart was pounding in her ears, her cheeks were hot, she couldn’t breathe, and then—
And then Theo lowered his face between her legs.
The second his mouth made contact with her clit, Audrey gasped and threw her head back.
Lightning coursed through her entire body.
Electricity danced beneath her skin.
Theo didn’t look up. Instead, his lips continued their ministrations as he mouthed at her slit, languidly kissing her everywhere he pleased, taking his time while he tasted her the way he’d promised he would.
But when she flailed on the bed, his left hand shot up to grab one of hers, and he gradually lowered it to his damp hair.
“Hold on tight, sweetheart,” he murmured against her inner thigh, pressing her fingers to his scalp while he pressed another kiss to her skin. “Pull hard. I like it.”
She buried her hands into his thick waves and held on, exactly as he said. And when she jolted and yanked as he grazed a particularly sensitive spot with his lips, he moaned before digging his hands forcefully into her ass, pulling her all the way up to his mouth and slipping his tongue inside.
Audrey closed her eyes and gave herself over to the building sensation as Theo devoured her with the enthusiasm of a man starved and rabid, hungry and desperate.
The urge to move was overwhelming, and he helped her when he seemed to sense it by rocking her hips across his face with his hands as he worked, his large nose grazing against her clit and driving her mad with every tilt forward and up.
It took them a moment, but together they found their rhythm.
The more Audrey moved, the more she burned.
The more she ached.
It was agony.
It started in her fingertips and toes, the simmering heat curling in her limbs before shifting to pool in the pit of her stomach, bubbling and burning and widening and spreading, molten and hot, at once both liquid and fire.
Theo sucked again, swirling his tongue around that elusive bundle of nerves before dipping it inside her once more and chasing it with a finger.
She was unbelievably wet, and as soon as she had something to clench around, her body seized.
She moaned, the sound originating from deep inside.
The ache was unbearable.
It wasn’t enough.
She needed more.
“Theo!” she cried with another gasping, ragged breath. “Theo, please. I-I can’t—I need—”
“Not yet,” he muttered, looking up at her as he gulped hungrily for air, his eyes just as dark and liquid as the heat pooling inside her, threatening to incinerate her from the inside out.
“I need you to come at least once, Audrey. Can you be good and do that for me?” She didn’t even have the wherewithal to nod before he licked her wetness from his lips and dove between her legs again.
When he slipped a second finger inside while he sucked her once more, stretching her slowly and deliciously, carefully and with delight as he pumped and curled his hand in and out, she began to break.
With one final, hard tug on his hair, her hands fell from his head and she wound her fingers into his pristine white sheets, twisting and crying out for better leverage while her back arched.
Her vision began to fizzle at the edges, grayed and spotty, like snow on an old television screen.
Her senses contracted, all sound and sight fading down to a single point:
Theo’s gaze, his pupils blown black and wide, the brows framing them heavy and dark while he watched her writhe from between her legs.
When she caught sight of his eyes, they crinkled.