6. 2
He found the bottom edge of her sports bra and stopped. By doing nothing but hovering over her with his breath brushing her neck and his hands motionless across her ribs, he was toying with her.
She pressed her hands hard against the desk and locked her elbows, pushing her body higher and closer to the heat of his mouth, the roughness of his cheeks and chin.
“Not yet,” he muttered. He trailed his fingers across the writing on her inner arm.
Where he touched, she shivered.
“You didn’t tell me what it means.” The pad of his thumb felt rough as he traced the words she’d jotted hours ago.
“Work.” She wanted that thumb on her nipples or her stomach or between her legs, but all she got from him was a touch on her arm. Damn him.
“Hmm.” As he lowered his face to her shoulder, the hair on the back of her neck stood as erect as her nipples, wanting. Everything in her was defined with that one word: wanting .
“Tell me about it.” His mouth was so close to her skin, she felt the moist heat of his breath, felt the brush of his loose hair along her jawline, but still, he didn’t kiss her. She wanted him to touch her breasts, but he didn’t. She imagined this moment, frozen in a never-completed chase like Bernini’s Apollo and Daphne for infinity.
“No.” He could play tormentor, ask or coax, but the Oracle assassins were an idea for her other life, with no place as a distraction in this room. His thumbs moved to the edges of her collarbones and followed them toward the center, meeting at the hollow of her throat. She shivered. He must have felt her pulse and known her wild heartbeat, her wanting. “Can’t. It’s work.”
“Fair enough.” Side by side, his thumbs trailed from her throat to the center of her bra, the dip where the two cups met and her flesh swelled above the seam.
If wishes were all it took, she’d already be suckled deep in his mouth. Instead, he stroked his thumbs around the edges of her bra, out to the sides, then jumped to the skin of her inner arms and down to the exposed creases where she’d locked her elbows for support on the desk. Stroking, feeding her fire, but holding himself back.
“You’re teasing me.” She inhaled, willing him to delve behind the fabric and find her nipples.
“I’m slowing things down.”
Screw that. This time when his hands slid back across her upper arms, so near her ticklish spots, she squeezed her biceps to trap his thumbs against the outer curves of her breasts. The pads of his thumbs pressed deeper into her arms and the knobs of his knuckles balled against the fabric constraining her breasts. Thrusting out her chest forced his thumbs even harder against the curve of her breasts, but none of it was enough.
“May I move your bra?”
“Yes.” She shuddered with relief. “Yes.”
He yanked down the cups of her sports bra, releasing her flesh with a hint of roughness that felt like wildness held in check. The confining band kept her breasts raised and her nipples pointed at his mouth. He had to touch them now. She dropped into the darkness behind her closed eyelids, anchored by the smooth cabinet under her hands. Her inner thighs squeezed the solid bones of his pelvis as she focused every other nerve running through her body on waiting for his breath, waiting for him to replace the air caressing her with his mouth or fingers, waiting for him to ravish her begging flesh.
Waiting.
So many sensations, stringing her so tightly, but none were the wet heat of his mouth encircling her nipple. He hadn’t stopped the mind fuck that was driving her to the point of silent begging.
She opened her eyes. His head was bent, his gaze focused on her breasts. Spots of color flushed his cheekbones and his tongue darted out to moisten his lips. She wanted it in her mouth or on her skin, not gliding across his own lips. She needed him to feast on her, fall on her, fuck her, needed anything but his restraint, these teasing thumbs circling too low on her ribs and stroking her sides, lighting her skin everywhere but where she wanted.
“You have amazing breasts.”
He wanted talk? Fine, she could play the same game, and she was hungry enough to win. “Show me.”
His nostrils flared, and she thought his shoulders jerked, but he didn’t look up.
Then she put her hand under his chin—the stubble, she wanted to rub against it like a cat, use his chin all over her chest to raise the sensations that only a man’s beard could cause—and lifted his face until their gazes locked. She made sure each word whipped out, hard consonants and smooth sibilants turned into a clear command. “Suck my nipples.”
She watched his dark pupils grow larger, his tanned skin flush across his cheekbones, and the slight part of his lips. He finally took both her breasts in his hands and lifted them together, while every muscle in her spine wanted to rise toward his mouth. She watched him lower his head, his dark hair loosely screening his face until she couldn’t see, could only feel, as his mouth latched to her nipple.
For a woman used to her vibrator, used to fast stimulation, to finding her orgasm and coming quickly and then extending pleasure’s after-ripples, this was nothing like fast. This was her whole body narrowed to one point, the place where he took her nipple. This was his teeth, scraping the nerve-packed flesh of her nipple that must have connected to every muscle, every millimeter of skin, every follicle. This was his mouth. On her. This was him.
She’d thought her breasts had peaked, until he pushed them together tightly enough to rub nipple to nipple, the stretched skin supersensitive, and took both nipples into his mouth. His tongue flicked from one to the other, and her whole being instantly compressed to that one place. Her panting was loud in her ears and her breath riffled through his hair, but she couldn’t stop the sounds. She felt a near-scream building below her throat. She needed a valve to let out the small sounds, because she was too damn close to a big one and he was toying with her tits like there was no end. Like he’d never stop. Like this was how he was going to make her come, nothing but playing with her breasts. It would work. She would. Her hips thrust, but nothing was there to meet them. If he gave her something more, something there between her legs, she would.
Then his mouth abandoned her breasts, what the fuck , leaving her one instant away from pounding on his shoulder to bring him back.
“Fuck,” he said.
“Yes,” she consented. “Now.” They’d both been reduced to single-word sentences.
“No.”
He couldn’t mean to deny this, he couldn’t, not now. Not when she was this close.
“Wait.” He was looking at where his hands pinched both her nipples. Hers were big in proportion to her breast size. Men loved to dawdle with them, and she loved it when they did. This close, she could see that the points protruding from between his thumb and finger were shiny and wet. Tiny puckers of skin almost like freckles marked the response he’d pulled from her body.
He rolled her nipples harder, tugging until her breath stuttered on the end of a moan. “I want to hear you.”
His words increased that paradox she always felt with sex, the tightening of muscles combined with the loosening of her limbs. Her neck had become too wobbly to support the weight of her head, but her buttocks were so hard-clenched, they raised her off the desk. The disarrayed bra strangled across her ribs, but at the same time, the space between her legs felt open and begging. She was open and loose, she was tight and throbbing, all that contradiction in her body. Sex. Fucking. Sex.
“I want you to scream,” he continued.
She’d do anything if he kept rolling her nipples hard like that. Anything.
One of his hands dropped to the center seam of her shorts, cupping her thrusting pussy. “Can I open these?”
“Fuck yes.” He kept asking questions, giving her power through words despite how his deeds pushed her to mindlessness. “Yes.”
Her waistband loosened, then she felt his fingers hunt the small zipper tab. Crap, she hadn’t waxed, but as her jean shorts parted and his hand slipped inside to press against her lower stomach, she stopped worrying. Men like pussy, she reminded herself, even bushy pussy. And his fingers were rubbing over the fabric and his mouth was back at her breast and she was tight and wet at the same time. His hand was big, but he wiggled those fingers over the spot where her panties clung to her groove. At her neck, his mouth found nerves that seemed to connect directly to the ones he’d found in her pants. And his other hand still toyed with a nipple.
She didn’t think she could breathe. Couldn’t even see beyond the swirling blackness of her closed eyes. She pushed with her hips, but he held her pinned. Thrusting harder at his hand pressed that finger deeper, although her own panties prevented her from getting what she wanted: him inside her body. “Take them off me,” she ordered.
“No.” He moved his finger, but the fabric didn’t glide. Her panties were too wet and her shorts too tight to permit him the entry she needed. He grazed his teeth across the outside curve of her breast. “Let’s do it like this.”
“Ni- co-oh .” The second syllable sounded stretched and gasping, exactly how she felt pinned to the desk all splayed and wanting, her underwear a barricade he wasn’t rushing to cross. His mouth found her nipple again, and that was good, better than good, that was pulling her out of herself, but he didn’t slip under the edge of her panties. Fuck him.
“Can I make you come in your pants?”
Fuck his questions. He should push aside her panties. Reach through the leg opening and stab that finger into her wetness and give it to her. But instead, he was rubbing in the constrained space of her open shorts, tiny pressure circling her fabric-covered clit. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
“Louder. Let Tyler hear you say that.”
She must have spoken. She should be embarrassed, but Nico made her want to yell, even with the other man in the house. He found the part of her that wanted to be loud enough to be heard, to be a woman who screws the moving guy, a woman who relishes being seen.
“You want that?”
Whether he meant his finger or being overheard didn’t matter as she rolled the back of her head against the wall, not while she wanted his finger to slide beneath her panties, find her pussy, and plunge. She pulsed her hips, but, pinned to the desk like this, unable to wiggle or thrust upwards hard enough for satisfaction, all she could do was accept whatever he gave her. She wanted him to take her, but no, he was all touches and teasing. Flicking and stroking, separating her clinging folds, nothing more.
His head dropped to her chest, and his lips and tongue found the points that she’d swear were hard enough to blind him. His mouth, dirty busy mouth, tongue-lashed her nipples, and still, he toyed between her legs. “Want more?”
More what? Didn’t matter. She wanted it all. “Do it.”
The hand between her legs slipped past her panties, the imperfections of his rough hands catching at her hair but at the same time gliding so smoothly through the slick heart of her need that she nearly screamed. She was overwhelmed by what he did and what she felt, how he twisted his finger and suckled her nipple at the same time as he pulled back, the way he rolled her point lightly between his teeth when he finally pushed his finger inside.
“Tell me.” Each word he spoke matched the rhythm of his finger probing her slick channel. In the pause, he withdrew. “What you.” His control nearly shattered her, but no matter how aggressively she tried to thrust, she couldn’t find the leverage to make him go deeper. Or faster. “Want.”
“More,” she moaned louder than she’d meant to, and her voice echoed off the bare walls. She tried to clench on his hand, raised her hips to signal him to increase speed, but he held his pace. Filled with sensation, but not with enough of him, she begged. “Faster.”
“If you want faster.” In and out of her, slow and steady, his finger. That other hand, on her nipple, a steady pressure. His mouth on the slope of her breast. All of it almost there. So much almost. “You have to be louder.”
“Fuck you.”
That got her a deep plunge, as hard and far as he could penetrate with her shorts on, and a twist to her nipple that sent her reeling toward the ceiling, she’d swear to it, but then he stopped and left her hanging from a taut wire, not able to let go and drop because he wouldn’t speed the fuck up. She wanted him to skip the light strokes, thrust as many fingers as he could deep into her hunger and take her until the shelf brackets broke and they had to slam together in the shards, but no. He was fucking teasing her with half strokes.
“Dammit, harder .”
“Good. Say it again.” He grabbed the back of her hip, pulling her past the edge of the desk and angling her upward so that her thighs cradled his waist instead of his hips, and his forearm supported the back of her thighs. If she were unclothed, she’d be spread open for him, but the shorts restrained her. “And I mean louder.”
Not pretend, then. He did want Tyler to hear. She closed her eyes and saw vivid pictures of herself and Nico, wrapped around each other and linked as if carved from one block of marble. She imagined Tyler somewhere in the house, crouched over a box. Head to the side, listening. Hearing, but not believing the noises until he heard her voice say More, heard her yell Harder. Understanding would fill him at the same time Nico’s fingers filled her. He might enter the hallway to listen. He might get aroused too.
“ Har-der! ” The request pushed out of her lips with the force of two separate words. It felt so delicious in her mouth that she shuddered with the pleasure of it.
His finger drove deeply, pistoned in and out as she arched. Her body sought to pull him in, and her legs quivered. She needed to hold on, but the smooth teak supplied nothing to grip for anchor as he lifted her hips and finger-fucked her until she forgot to breathe. Everything in her whirled around where that finger pushed past her slippery folds. His thumb pressed on the rise above her panties. Everything in her was connected to his hand, but she realized it was only one finger. “More.”
He bent closer to her body, moving his chest parallel to hers, but didn’t change the rhythm of his hand.
Fuck that slow burn. She dug her fingers into his arm and yanked his chest to hers, pushing her hips to force a rhythm faster than his finger. “I said more. ”
He gave her another finger. When he pulled his hand back, his withdrawal wrenched her shorts so tight against her butt that his motion lifted her thighs from the wood, but his chest kept her from going airborne. When his fingers plunged back into her pussy, she was immersed in the sensation of clenching around him, and nothing else mattered. She was the husk left behind, the shell on the beach. She felt his mouth all over her chest, and she was his feast. His hand in her panties, in her pussy, his other arm supporting her legs, and his mouth linking to her bare nipple. The only thing she could feel that wasn’t him was the wood against her spine.
They were noisy. Her name, his name, words, moaning, panting. Nothing made sense. His hand had burrowed so deeply into her shorts that she heard the wet sounds as he screwed fingers into her liquid silver. The universe contracted to his body over hers, pressing her down even while he pushed her at the wall and pulled her back. His thumb skimmed over the spot. That spot.
“Feel you. Fuck.” He groaned while his fingers kept thrusting. “Squeezing my hand. So strong. Fuck. That’s—”
He choked, or more likely her hearing cut out, because she crested into the colors that blocked her ears until she couldn’t make out anything but the vibration of her own chest, couldn’t feel anything but her body throbbing around his fingers. Later, she guessed she’d breathe again. For now, she’d gasp and pant, maybe hyperventilate, but she wouldn’t try something as difficult as regular breathing. Nothing was regular about this.
The fingers that had been inside her body moments before trailed across her stomach. She felt the dampness they left on her skin and shuddered with the aftermath.
“Full service, as promised.” The laughter underlying his murmured words vibrated against her clavicle. When his fingers reached her nipples, which were dark and swollen, the smutty sexiness of watching him toy with the points extended the pulsing between her legs. Even the light touch he gave her, gentle as the brush of fabric, made her shiver.
He helped her reposition herself to a stable seated position, then straightened. “Any more requests?” He smiled, indicating that he meant to joke, but his eyes slid away from hers sooner than she’d expected.
“Ah…” She didn’t want to whoop her satisfaction into Nico’s ear, so she dropped her gaze. The ridge in his jeans showed that he hadn’t come. She reached for it, wanting to feel the strength of his arousal. She could—
He intercepted her hand. “Later.” He shook his head. “If you want to. No pressure.” He guided her hips into a natural seated position and then eased away from the shelf unit. “That was great,” his voice cracked. “Even if that’s all.” He looked like he knew he was speaking too quickly, but he didn’t know how to stop. “I’m sorry—I’m—”
He turned his back toward her, raising his hands to cover his face. She watched him shudder.
“I’m sorry—” he started again.
She heard him gulp air, the hoarse sound filling the still room as her confusion mounted. “It’s okay.” That seemed inadequate. “I’m okay.” The implication that he wasn’t hovered in the air between them.
“Yeah. Me too. It’s just—” He broke off. “I’m still so fucked up.”
“Really, it’s okay. Whatever it is.” She was as much at a loss for words as he was, although the conversation he’d had with Tyler gave her the idea that a woman named Chloe was deep in Nico’s head.
“I thought I could—” She suspected he was scrubbing at his face. “Then I remembered—” By now, his shoulders were hunched high up around his neck, and his spine curved. “I’m okay.”
He so obviously wasn’t, but she had no idea what would ease his turmoil. All she could do was reach out to rest her fingertips on his shuddering back.
“Nico.” She willed him to turn around to see that she was fine, that maybe a twenty-year-old wouldn’t have understood that whatever burdened him wasn’t a personal rejection, but thirty-five-year-old Megan had the experience to know that a guy falling apart when a woman tried to touch his erection was about something way outside the here and now. “It’s fine.”
He turned. With one hand raised to half cover his eyes and forehead and the other pressed against his stomach, he looked older. “Look, I—I want to, but—” He uncovered his face and gestured vaguely in her direction. Tears glistened on his eyelashes. “It’s been…”
She held out a hand. She didn’t need any assistance to drop the six inches to the floor, but asking might change the topic for him. “Help me down.”
A look of relief, either because she’d diverted the conversation or perhaps a result of having an action to take, eased a few of the grooves bracketing his mouth and eyes.
She’d intended to merely use his hand, but he wrapped his hands around her waist and she knew to put her hands on his shoulders as he lifted her. When her feet settled on the floor, he closed his eyes, but didn’t let go of her waist. She watched his face. His lips parted. She thought he was going to speak again.
“Shhh.” She laid a finger across his lips. “It really is okay. Whatever you need, whatever you want or don’t want, I’m not worried or upset.”
He nodded silently, his lips rubbing slightly up and down her finger. “Later. Maybe we can—” Opened, his eyes were dark pools so close to overflowing that someplace under her ribs hurt from witnessing his pain. “Try again.”
“If you want to, I’d like that. Only if you want to.”
“Okay.” His smile was wavery, but she felt a connection between them.
“Yes.” She returned his smile. “Okay.”