Chapter 5 Mouthful of Devotion
Gideon’s lips lingered at the nape of her neck.
Marlene felt the slow drag of his breath down her spine, a warmth that spread beneath her skin like honey poured into tea.
Her fingers were still tangled with his, pressed into the rumpled sheets, and she squeezed once—a silent signal she didn’t have words for.
He understood anyway.
His weight shifted. The mattress dipped as he rose onto his knees, his thighs bracketing her legs.
Cool air rushed in where his chest had been, and she shivered, turning her head to watch him over her shoulder.
The streetlamp lit him in gold and shadow—scars gleaming, eyes dark, his unbuttoned jeans hanging low on his hips.
He looked like a man standing at the edge of something he hadn’t expected to find.
“Turn over,” he said. His voice was rasped silk. “I want to see you.”
Marlene rolled. The sheets tangled around her ankles, and she kicked them free, settling onto her back.
Above her, the ceiling was cracked in a zigzag pattern she’d traced a hundred sleepless nights.
Tonight she didn’t see it. She saw only Gideon—the way he looked at her like she was a map he wanted to memorize, like he was afraid someone would take her away before he’d finished.
His knuckles brushed her ankle. Then her calf. Travelled up the outside of her thigh with a slowness that made her teeth catch her bottom lip.
“You’re still wearing these,” he said. His thumb hooked under the elastic of her black cotton underwear.
“Thought you’d never notice.”
The corner of his mouth curved. It wasn’t quite a smile; it was something hungrier. His hand flattened on her hip, thumb tracing the ridge of her pelvic bone through the fabric. The pressure was light. Teasing. Her stomach muscles contracted involuntarily.
Gideon’s eyes tracked the movement.
“Every time I touch you,” he murmured, “your body answers before your mouth does.”
“Is that a complaint?”
“No.” He leaned down, bracing one hand beside her head, the other still resting on her hip. His mouth hovered just above hers. “It’s the most honest thing anyone’s given me in years.”
She reached up. Her fingers traced the scar on his collarbone—the thin white seam she’d kissed earlier. This time she pressed harder, feeling the slight ridge beneath her fingertip, and his eyelids flickered. His breath hitched.
“You keep coming back to that one,” he said.
“It’s the one I want to know the story of.”
“Maybe I’ll tell you.” He kissed the corner of her mouth. “After.”
“After what?”
His only answer was a shift of his weight.
He moved down her body, lips trailing a path from her jaw to her throat, from her throat to the hollow between her breasts.
Her nipples tightened in the cool air, and when his stubble scraped the sensitive underside of her breast, she arched up without meaning to.
One hand found his shoulder. The other fisted in the sheets.
“Still okay?”
“Stop asking.”
“Can’t.” His breath gusted over her ribcage. “Need to hear it.”
Marlene lifted her head. Caught his eyes—those deep brown eyes that had been strangers’ eyes two hours ago and now felt like something she’d known forever. “I am more than okay, Gideon. I am—God, I don’t have the words.”
He held her gaze for a beat. Whatever he saw there made the last of the tension in his jaw dissolve.
His mouth continued its journey.
Kissing the curve of her waist. The jut of her hipbone. The soft skin just above the elastic. His tongue darted out, tasting the salt of her, and she made a sound that was half gasp and half his name. Her fingers found the back of his head—the short velvet of his hair—and held on.
His hands slid to her hips. Fingers curling around the waistband of her underwear. This time he didn’t pause to ask.
He pulled.
The fabric slid down her thighs. She lifted her hips to help him, the cotton peeling away from skin that had been trapped all day beneath denim and polyester and the weight of a life she was, right now, a thousand miles from remembering.
Her socks had come off with her jeans. She was naked now, fully naked, the streetlamp painting her in stripes of light and shadow. She’d never felt less exposed.
Gideon knelt between her legs, her underwear still bunched in his fist. He looked at her the way a man looks at land after months at sea.
“Marlene.” Just her name. Just that.
Then he dropped the fabric over the side of the bed. His palms settled on her thighs. Not pushing them apart—just resting there, his calluses catching on her skin, his thumbs tracing slow circles that raised goosebumps in their wake. Her breath came faster. Her heart hammered against her ribs.
“I’m going to kiss you here,” he said, pressing his thumb into the crease where her thigh met her hip. “And here.” His thumb slid inward, just shy of where heat pooled, and her whole body jerked.
“And then?” Her voice was barely a whisper.
“And then I’m going to put my mouth on you until you forget your own name.”
The words landed like a match dropped on gasoline.
She didn’t have time to process them. Gideon lowered himself onto his stomach, his shoulders pushing her thighs wider, and his lips met the inside of her knee.
It was such an unexpected place—so far from where she wanted him—that a startled laugh escaped her.
The laugh died in her throat when his mouth moved higher.
Slow kisses. Wet and warm and deliberate.
He worked his way up the inside of her thigh like he had all night to get where he was going.
His stubble scraped, and the slight burn of it made her gasp.
His tongue traced a vein she hadn’t known existed.
Her hips tilted up, seeking him, and his hand flattened on her stomach to hold her still.
“Patience,” he said against her skin.
“You keep saying that.”
“Because you keep trying to rush me.” His teeth grazed the tender flesh of her inner thigh. Not hard enough to mark. Just enough to make her cry out. “And I’m not rushing this.”
She let her head fall back against the pillow. The ceiling swam above her. Somewhere in the building, a pipe clanked—the old radiators waking up—and she heard Mrs. Calloway’s television click off. The silence that followed was vast and thick and theirs.
Gideon kissed the other thigh now. The same slow pilgrimage.
The same wet warmth. Her fingers twisted in his hair, not guiding, just holding.
Anchoring herself to something real. His breath was hot against the most sensitive part of her, and she could feel how close he was—could feel the promise of his mouth hovering a breath away from where she ached most.
“Look at me,” he said.
She lifted her head. Met his eyes over the plane of her own body—the swell of her breasts, the trembling of her stomach, the spread of her thighs. He was watching her with an intensity that made her feel like she was the only woman in the world.
“I want you to watch,” he said. “Don’t close your eyes.”
She nodded. The motion felt jerky, uncoordinated.
His mouth descended.
The first contact was—not gentle. Gentle wasn’t what this was.
His tongue was hot and sure and found her with a precision that made her back bow off the mattress.
The sound that tore from her throat wasn’t a word.
Wasn’t even a moan. It was something more like a sob, something that had been locked in her chest for years and finally found its way out.
His hand pressed harder on her stomach, keeping her steady.
His mouth worked her with a rhythm that was almost too much—too good, too intense—and then backed off just enough to let her catch her breath before building again.
He learned her body in real time, adjusting to every gasp and shudder, every time her thighs tried to clamp around his ears.
“Gideon.” His name was a prayer.
He hummed against her in response, and the vibration made her see stars.
Her head fell back despite her promise. The ceiling was gone.
The room was gone. There was only the wet heat of his mouth and the rough grip of his hands and the relentless, devastating patience of a man who’d been told to stop rushing and was finally, for the first time in three years, taking his time doing something that mattered.
His fingers dug into the flesh of her thighs. His tongue circled and swept and pressed. She felt the tension coiling at the base of her spine, winding tighter and tighter, and she knew she was going to shatter—knew it the way you know a storm is coming, the pressure dropping, the air electric.
“I’m—” She couldn’t finish the sentence. Didn’t need to.
Gideon lifted his mouth just long enough to speak. His lips were wet, his eyes blown black, his voice wrecked.
“Then let go. I’ve got you.”