Chapter 37
Miles collapsed to his side next to her, the tip of his wet cock sticking to her outer thigh, his breathing heavy.
Tabitha wanted to lower her arms. To slide her fingers through his dark hair. To soothe him as he recovered from his orgasm. To get back some of that connection they’d had only moments ago.
She didn’t move.
Couldn’t. She was frozen, her heart in her throat, her head spinning.
The man had barely touched her and somehow, he’d still managed to shake loose her last remaining truth.
This was her own fault for pushing him. For insisting they move forward.
She’d asked for something big enough, explosive enough to break their old patterns.
And it had blown up in her face.
She knew better than to mess around with the truth, and she’d gone and fucked with it anyway.
Oh, she could try and claim her reasons were noble. That she’d only wanted what was best for her and Miles’s new and fragile relationship. That asking for the truth had been a courageous act on her part. A selfless one.
But she was a liar from way back.
And that whole I’m doing this for us was just another one she told herself.
Yes, she’d wanted the truth.
Miles’struth.
She’d wanted him to open up to her. To let her in. To let her see all of him. She’d wanted his secrets and darkest fears and deepest fantasies.
But she hadn’t wanted to give him too much in return. She’d already shared more with him than she’d ever shared with anyone else. But she still kept a few things hidden. Only gave him enough to encourage him to give her more and more.
She trusted him with her memories, but not her thoughts.
She trusted him with her body, but not with her heart.
Or the secret she kept so closely guarded there.
She was in love with Miles Jennings.
And she had been for ten years.
She’d convinced herself the feelings she’d had for him before hadn’t been real. That whatever she’d thought she felt for him no longer existed.
But the truth was a sneaky bastard. Always there, lying in wait, ready for the right moment to pounce and rip your life to shreds.
Staring up at the ceiling, she inhaled a slow, careful breath. Blinked back tears trying to get free.
She couldn’t just blurt out an I love you. Not now. Not when they were in the midst of some seriously filthy sex play.
Not after she’d never told him before.
Not when he wouldn’t believe her.
She needed to think. To process a few things on her own before sharing anything with him.
She needed to take a page out of Miles’s handbook and choose her next steps carefully.
Then, after a couple of days or a few weeks, after some deep inner work, after some much-needed reflection, she’d decide what to do with this truth.
And whether or not to trust him with it.
As if he’d heard her inner musings, Miles stirred. Pushed himself up onto his elbow and stared down at her.
She schooled her features in case those cop instincts of his were coming into play. Telling him she was keeping something from him.
But her breath caught when she realized he wasn’t studying her like a cool, level-headed cop wanting to get to the truth.
He looked at her like a man who’d just been ruined.
And wanted to return the favor.
Yes and please.
Lifting his hand, he swiped the bead of his release from her chin, but instead of offering it to her like he’d done with his precum earlier, he rubbed it across her lower lip.
The light touch was like an electric shot, straight from her mouth to her pussy, and she squeezed her inner core muscles.
Oh, she definitely had something left to give him.
She just needed him to take it.
When he didn’t, when he continued stroking that thumb idly over her mouth, tracing her lips with his moisture, she flicked out her tongue, trying to capture a taste.
Only to have him shake his head and draw his hand away. “You’ve had enough. I know you’re a greedy girl, but this isn’t for you. This is for me.” He pressed his thumb against her lower lip. “Understand?”
His words from earlier, the promise he’d made replayed in her head.
Everything you’re about to do is for me.
Those two words, for me, had the same effect on her now as they had then.
Complete and utter compliance.
Keeping her mouth open, but her tongue safely inside, she held his gaze and nodded.
He straightened. “I made a mess of you,” he murmured, taking her in, his voice a low purr of pleasure. “Such a pretty, pretty mess.”
Shifting to his knees, he collected more cum on the tip of his forefinger, then swirled it around her areola. Her breath caught on a moan as he tapped the sticky pad of his finger against the tip of her nipple.
“Do you feel safe,” he asked, moving onto her other nipple, “with your arms above your head like that?”
“Yes. I feel safe.”
He laid his fingertip between her breasts at her sternum where some of his cum had collected. “Keep them that way.”
And he went to work, painting her with his release as if her body was his canvas. It was filthy and primal, having him mark her this way.
She loved it.
She loved the sight of it glistening on her skin. Loved the sticky feel as he spread it around. Loved the pungent, musky scent. Loved watching his gaze go from glassy to sharp, his expression from relaxed to severe, as the last of the pleasure from his orgasm left him.
As desire and need built once again.
Turned out she didn’t have to seduce him to show him what she felt about him. She didn’t even need to touch him.
All she had to do was lie still.
And trust him.
“Are you on birth control?” he asked, his gaze on his finger as he circled her belly button.
“Yes.”
“I’m safe. I get tested regularly.” He lifted his head and met her eyes. “I haven’t been with anyone else. Not since before that first night when you came home with me.”
Her heart lodged in her throat. The man certainly made it difficult for her to do something as simple as speak, what with his touches and commands and confessions.
Not when she had a good idea about why he was confessing.
“Yes,” she said again, this time softer, her heart pounding.
He immediately swiped more cum onto his finger, then rubbed it on her clit. She inhaled sharply at the cool, silky feel of it against the hard nub. Lifted her hips to encourage him to press harder. To go faster.
And he removed his hand altogether.
“I’ll give you more,” he promised her, using the conversational tone that drove her crazy, “when I’m ready to give you more. And not a moment before. Do you understand?”
This time, she was quiet in protest. To prove that while he may be a king over certain domains—including her body—she still had free will. She still had some semblance of control.
She still had her pride.
Lips twitching, as if her silent show of independence amused him to no end, he went back to those circles around her belly button. “Tabitha, I need to hear you say you understand or else I can’t keep going.”
She blinked, then blurted out a quick, soft, and emphatic, “Yes.” Shut her eyes on how desperate she sounded.
Free will, control, and her pride had nothing on the need spiraling through her.
His fault. Again. For touching her this way. For looking the way he did, all golden skin over hard muscle. For his cock once again hardening against her thigh. For being this dirty and commanding and making her like both so much.
Making her want even more.
Making her wonder how much dirtier he could get.
She licked her lips. Tasted him there and licked them again. “I understand.”
He grinned, so obviously pleased and proud, and she squirmed.
“That wasn’t so hard, was it?”
And he collected the last of his cum that he hadn’t spread over her skin onto the tips of his pointer and middle fingers, then slid them into her pussy, mixing with her own wetness.
She sincerely hoped that had been a rhetorical question, because the only affirmation she could give was the low, raw moan that sprang from her throat.
He repeated that pattern, withdrawing to gather more cum, then coating the inside of her pussy with the remains of his release. When there was no more to collect, he worked her with long, leisurely strokes.
“You were such a good girl,” he murmured, his words a praise, his actions her prize as he continued pumping his fingers inside her, “taking me so deep. Trusting me to make it good for you. But you took more than you were supposed to after I told you not to.” His strokes slowed and he withdrew his hand so that the tips of his fingers barely brushed her opening. “So now you’re going to lie still while I take what I want. No squirming. No talking, unless it’s to beg me to stop. Understand?”
Having learned her lesson a moment ago, she didn’t hesitate this time. “Yes. Yes, I understand.”
Whatever he wanted, whatever she had to do in order for him to keep going, to take his fill, the answer was yes, yes, yes.
She couldn’t imagine wanting him to stop.
Especially when he shoved those fingers back up her pussy. “You’re so wet,” he grunted as he quickened his strokes. Went deeper. “So tight.”
Keeping still when lust was spinning into an ever-tightening spiral inside her, when every instinct she had screamed at her to move—to squirm and undulate against his hand, to cup her breasts and pinch her nipples, to do anything and everything she could to get off, now, right now—was one of the hardest things she’d ever done.
Luckily, thanks to Miles’s talented fingers and her own body’s amped up state, the moment he curled his fingers inside her while pressing the pad of his thumb to her clit, her orgasm flowed through her, long and lush. Softer, milder than the one she’d given herself had been, but no less intense.
And just as wonderful.
More so even. Because Miles was the one who’d given it to her.
His strokes slowed. Soothed now, instead of enticed, before he removed his fingers. Leaning forward, he placed a soft, quick kiss on her mouth. “That is how you take the edge off.”
Still catching her breath, all she could do was nod.
Lesson learned.
Although, to be honest, it was one lesson she wouldn’t mind repeating.
Endlessly.
One side of Miles’s mouth lifted, his smirk firmly back in place.
The breath she still hadn’t fully recovered caught.
He looked like a man on a mission.
“And this,” he murmured, as he slid off the bed and knelt between her knees, “is how you build it up again.”
Then he slipped his hands under her thighs and dragged her slowly, slowly toward him. Settled one of her legs, then the other, on his broad shoulders.
With his eyes glinting with promise, his grin wicked with intent, he pressed his hot, wet mouth to her pussy.