Chapter 9 #3
I bared her. The lace down, both shoulders, the pale soft swell of her free, and I bent and took one breast in my mouth and she cried out and her hands came off the bench—
“Hands,” I said.
They went back.
“Good girl.” And I felt the rule start to be born between us in that second, the shape of the thing we’d live inside, because she’d reached without permission and put herself back without being told twice, and the obeying was the heat, the obeying was the whole engine of it, her surrender and my holding fused into one current that ran both ways.
I worked her with my mouth, slow then not slow, my hand at the other breast, and she came apart under it, hips grinding forward, the sound of her climbing, and I felt how close to the edge she already was—a woman run down to the wick, lit now from a different fire entirely, every nerve standing up.
“Tonio—” My name like a plea.
“I’ve got you,” I said, against her skin, and I meant it the whole way down.
“Put it down. All of it. The loaf, the contract, the books, the year of doing it alone—put it down, give it to me, you don’t carry anything in here.
” I straightened to look at her and her face was open all the way, no armor anywhere, the rawest most undefended thing, and I kissed her once, soft, the tender hand against the back of her head while my other hand slid down over the lace at her hip. “I’ve got the counter.”
She broke. Just at those words—I’ve got the counter, the same words from the chair, the words that had set her down the first time—she broke, eyes flooding, and she laughed and gasped at the same time, the way you do when a weight you forgot you carried comes off all at once.
I hoisted her onto the bench, my forearm sweeping aside bags of flour in a cloud that caught the light.
The cold marble didn’t faze her—not a flinch, not a protest—just let me position her exactly where I wanted, her body pliant under my hands.
The sight of her surrender, this woman who controlled everything, sent a rush of heat straight through me.
I dragged her jeans down, peeling them off along with the lace panties clinging to her hips, leaving her bare in the golden glow of her kitchen. Then I dropped to my knees.
Not the way I’d knelt to confess my sins to her before—this was worship.
This was devotion. My mouth found the inside of her knee, and I worked my way up, slow, deliberate, her thighs already trembling under my touch.
The heat radiating off her was unbearable, intoxicating.
She watched me with parted lips, her breath shallow, her chest rising and falling like she’d forgotten how to inhale.
She was shaking already, bare and flushed and blinking at me like she’d stepped out of her own body and didn’t know the way back. I had her right where I wanted her, a little less than that, actually—I wanted her wrecked, undone, no thoughts in her head but the ones I put there.
“Open for me,” I growled, and she did, she did, she did, the obedience so clean and absolute it made my own vision swim.
Her knees fell wide, trembling, the whole long line of her bare and helpless while I crowded in closer, elbows locked on either side of her thighs so she couldn’t close them even a centimeter.
If she’d told me to stop, I would have. If she’d tried to take back the kitchen, I would have let her.
But she was gone. She was present and not—her eyes glazed, mouth open, cheeks gone wet without her even knowing it.
She made a sound when I started in earnest, a sound I felt all the way down, like she’d been punched.
Head back, hands clawing at the marble, feet coming up off the floor to try and get more of me.
“Please,” she said. Not a thing I’d ever heard from her before, not even once, and I nearly came in my own fucking pants over it.
I ignored the plea, steady and slow, the edge of my teeth catching on her clit just enough to make her flinch and try to lever herself up the bench with her elbows.
I held her down with one palm flat on her belly, pinning her, and used my other hand to spread her wider, two fingers sliding into her, slow and then urgent, and she keened at the ceiling.
“You taste so good,” I said, mouth a mess, and I meant it. No one in my life had ever made me want to kneel like this, to grind my own knees against the tile if it meant I could have another minute of her, another second of the sounds she made.
I set to work, sucking her clit, stroking inside her, working a rhythm that matched the way her hips moved—every time she tried to get ahead of me, I slowed down, every time she tried to pull away, I held her in place.
She was soaking by then, the whole kitchen full of the scent of her and the heat coming off her like a stove.
I thought, for a second, about the cameras, about the windows, about the possibility of anyone coming in.
But she didn’t care, and I didn’t care, and if the world ended right there I’d have gone out happy.
She got close fast. Her legs started to shake, her breath turned into whimpers, the desperate kind, and she tried to say my name but got stuck halfway, choking on it.
I lifted my mouth just enough to talk. “You don’t come until I say.”
A whimper escaped her. “What—why—”
“Because in here,” I murmured, my lips brushing her wet folds, “you give me control. Even this. Especially this.” I flicked my tongue against her clit, just once, and she gasped.
“You’ve decided everything for yourself for a year—when you eat, when you sleep, when you stop.
But you don’t decide this. I do. You wait for me. Understand?”
Her grip on my hair tightened, her knuckles white.
“Yes—yes, okay, yes,” she choked out, the word laced with relief beneath the desperation.
I felt her surrender like a physical thing, her body melting into the marble, and I rewarded her the only way that mattered—my mouth back on her, my tongue working her hard now, fast, the way her exhausted body craved.
She writhed under me, her hips bucking against my hands. “Tonio—I can’t—I’m—please—”
“Not yet.” I felt her teetering on the edge and gentled my touch, pulling her back just enough to keep her from falling. A broken cry of frustration tore from her, her heels digging into my back.
“Please—”
“Look at me.” I lifted my head, forcing her to meet my gaze, to see the hunger in my eyes as I looked up the length of her trembling body.
She was a mess—glassy-eyed, undone, nothing like the woman who commanded the world.
I could’ve wept at the sight of her. “You’re doing so well. Hold it for me. Just a little more.”
“I can’t, I can’t—”
“You can.” My voice was firm, unyielding.
“You’re going to. For me.” Then my mouth was back on her, my tongue circling her clit, two fingers sliding inside her, curling to find that spot that made her vision blur.
I felt her body lock, her muscles tensing as she hovered on the edge, suspended in agony and ecstasy.
“Daddy—please—”
The word slipped out of her, unbidden, and it hit me like a punch to the gut. It was the word I’d been too afraid to ask for, the word that undid me as much as it undid her.
“Now,” I growled. “Come for me. Good girl—now.”
She shattered.
Her body convulsed, her back arching off the bench as a broken cry tore from her throat.
The tension I’d built inside her snapped, rolling through her in waves I could feel against my tongue, my fingers, my palms. She came apart with a force that left her trembling, her orgasm ripping through her like a storm, the release of a woman who’d been wound tight for a year and finally, finally let someone else hold the reins.
I worked her through every shudder, every gasp, gentling only as the waves began to ebb, until she was boneless, her hands weakly tugging at my hair.
“Too much,” she whispered, her voice raw.
I pressed a kiss to the inside of her thigh, then rose, pulling her into my arms. Flour dusted her skin, her body still trembling against mine. I held her tight, my lips brushing her hair.
“I’ve got you,” I murmured. “I’ve got you. You don’t have to hold anything.”
She cried.
Not loud. Just shook, against me, her face in my neck. I held on and let her, didn’t ask, didn’t fill it, just was there, the way I’m built to be there, between her and the door, between her and the rest of her life.