28. Quinn #3
He was warm and slow and devastatingly thorough.
His tongue circled, then drew me into his mouth.
My back bowed off the bed, needing more.
One of his hands spread across my ribs to ground me, his thumb moving over skin as if even restraint could be a kind of touch.
He moved to the other breast, and I heard myself make a sound I might have been embarrassed about if he hadn’t answered it with a rough breath against my skin.
“Rafe.”
He kissed lower, over my stomach, pausing once near the soft place beneath my navel, his mouth reverent over the very human shape of me.
My fingers tightened in his hair. He glanced up, and the sight nearly undid me: Rafe Virelli, exacting and untouchable and mine for this moment, kneeling between my thighs with his mouth on my skin and his eyes fixed on me like I was something he had chosen with his whole life.
His hands found the waistband of my pants. “May I?”
I nodded too quickly.
His mouth tilted. “Words, Quinn.”
That voice. That careful, serious voice asking for permission while his fingers rested at my waist and my entire body had become a yes.
“Yes.”
He eased my pants down my legs, taking my underwear with them, and kissed the inside of one knee before setting both garments aside.
It was so unexpectedly tender that my throat tightened.
Then he pushed my thighs apart with warm hands and settled lower, and tenderness became something else entirely.
He didn’t rush into it.
He kissed my inner thigh first, then the crease of my hip, then looked up again when my breathing changed.
It wasn’t teasing exactly. Rafe didn’t strike me as a man who teased without purpose.
He was learning me. Taking in every small shift, every sound I tried to swallow, every place my body softened under his hands.
“Still okay?” he asked.
I pushed my fingers into his hair. “If you stop now, I’ll become a legal problem.”
Grinning, he lowered his head.
The first touch of his tongue stole every clever thing I had ever planned to say for the rest of my life.
Heat opened low in my body, sudden and bright.
I gripped the sheets with one hand and his hair with the other, not pulling him closer so much as holding on while the world narrowed to his mouth and his hands and the impossible patience of him.
He learned quickly, which was both predictable and personally devastating.
A small adjustment of pressure. A slower stroke.
His fingers pressing into my thigh when my hips lifted toward him.
I tried to be quiet out of some last, ridiculous instinct toward dignity.
Rafe noticed. He lifted his head only enough to say, “Don’t.”
My face burned. “That’s bossy.”
“Yes.”
Then his mouth was on me again.
I broke embarrassingly fast after that.
Or maybe not embarrassingly. Maybe after weeks of wanting, after nearly losing him, after being touched like I was precious and wanted and safe all at once, my body simply made the only reasonable decision available.
Pleasure gathered tight, then tighter, until I was shaking beneath him, his name coming out of me once, then again, no longer polished enough to sound like language.
I came with one hand in his hair and the other flying to my mouth.
He kissed the inside of my thigh, then climbed back up my body and gently moved my hand away.
“I want to hear you,” he said, and he removed the last of his clothing.
He kissed me before I could answer. I tasted myself on his mouth, tasted the heat beneath it, the restraint he was still holding in his body for my sake.
I reached between us and found him, wrapping my hand around his hard length.
His hips jerked once, involuntary and sharp, and he broke the kiss on a sound that made my entire body pulse again.
“There,” I whispered, because apparently, I had learned one useful thing about undoing him and wanted credit immediately.
His forehead dropped to mine. “You’re pleased with yourself.”
“Extremely.”
His laugh was low and unsteady. Then his hand covered mine, guiding the rhythm for only a moment before he stopped us both with visible effort.
He opened the drawer in the bedside table, found protection, and paused long enough that I touched his face.
“Still me,” I said.
His eyes lifted.
“Still okay,” I added.
Something in him eased and tightened at once.
He kissed me again while he rolled the condom on, then settled between my thighs.
The weight of him there made the room tilt.
His chest brushed mine. His arm slid beneath my shoulder, bringing me closer instead of holding himself above me like I might break.
I wrapped my legs around his hips, feeling the heat and strength of him, the careful restraint in every muscle.
When he slid inside me, he went completely still.
His forehead pressed to mine, breath rough, one hand gripping the sheets hard enough to whiten his knuckles. I understood that this wasn’t casual for him. He felt the consequence of it, the promise inside the wanting, and somehow that made me ache so much more.
I touched his face. “Rafe.”
His eyes opened.
I had seen him angry. Amused. Terrified for me. Dragon. Man. Heir. Client. The severe stranger who had once demanded a necklace from my throat.
This was something else.
Or maybe this was all of him without the armor.
“I love you,” I whispered.
He moved then.
Slowly at first, careful of my tired body. The first stroke made me close my eyes. The second made me dig my fingers into his back. By the third, I was pulling him closer with my legs, asking without words for more of his weight, more of the drag and heat and pressure of him.
His restraint changed into passion.