31. Jamison #4
“No, baby.” I leaned closer. “I decided because you’re mine. The guilt only clarified how badly I’ve mishandled what already belonged to me.”
“That is a terrible apology.”
“It wasn’t the apology.”
Her eyes lifted.
I swallowed my pride because it had never done anything useful for her.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
The words felt inadequate.
“I am,” I continued, hand steady on her cheek. “For the doors. The events. The whiskey. The cars. The tables. The way I made you stand beside me and then acted as if you had forced yourself there. Every time you asked for my hand and I made you feel foolish for wanting it.”
She gave a shaky little smile.
I bent and kissed the corner of it.
Then her mouth.
She inhaled against me, fingers sliding up my wrist and over my forearm, the bathwater moving as she rose closer.
The kiss deepened slowly, because I refused to rush the first thing in years that felt honest.
Her mouth opened under mine.
I lost another part of whatever sainthood had survived the bath.
“Baby,” I murmured.
She kissed me again.
Harder this time.
She went up onto her knees in my bath and pulling me closer by my shirt.
I reached into the water and caught her under the arms.
She gasped when I lifted her out, warm water streaming down her body and soaking straight through the front of my clothes. I grabbed the nearest towel and wrapped it around her back, holding her against my chest while she clutched my shoulders.
“Jamison.”
“Legs around my waist, baby.”
Her legs locked around my waist, and every disciplined thought I had ever owned left the room quietly and without loyalty.
“That’s my good girl,” I murmured against her mouth.
She made a soft sound, and tightened her thighs.
My hand spread beneath her, holding her through the towel while water soaked my shirt and ran down my forearms. She clung to me, arms around my neck, mouth open under mine, trusting me to carry her.
“Jamison,” she whispered.
“No.” I kissed her again, slower this time, letting the word melt against her mouth. “Not right now.”
Her breath caught.
I felt the moment she understood what I wanted to hear, and I felt the moment she grew too shy to give it.
I set one knee on the bed and lowered her onto the sheets, keeping her against me until her back touched the mattress. The towel loosened around her. That dangerous little trust she kept handing me even after everything I had done to teach her better.
My fiancée looked up at me.
Fuck sainthood.
Overrated.
I had tried. Briefly. Admirably, given the state of that bath and the fact she had spent half an hour naked under bubbles pretending she was asking innocent questions.
But now she was spread beneath me on my bed, wet and some brutal part of me decided restraint had made its point.
She was my altar.
And I would worship willingly.
I braced one hand beside her head and lowered my mouth to her jaw. Her head tipped back at once, giving me her throat. I kissed beneath her ear first, slow, and her fingers slid into my hair.
“Good,” I murmured against her skin. “Give me your throat, baby.”
I kissed it, then opened my mouth over that racing place and felt her breath shudder. Sienna, finally in my bed.
I kissed lower, down the side of her neck, letting my lips drag across. Her body arched slightly when I reached her collarbone.
“Sensitive,” I said.
Her fingers tightened in my hair. “A little.”
“A lot.”
She tried to laugh, but it broke into a breath when my tongue traced the delicate line of bone. Slow. Learning her. I had watched her for years without seeing her properly. Tonight I was done with blindness. I wanted every place that made her hands clutch at me.
I kissed across her collarbone, then down to the hollow between them, and her whole body melted under mine.
“My beautiful girl,” I said, voice rough.
Her breath hitched.
I lifted my head enough to see her face. “You don’t hear that enough.”
She looked away.
I caught her chin, gentle but firm. “No. Eyes here.”
Her gaze returned, shining.
“You are so fucking beautiful.”
Her mouth trembled. “You don’t have to—”
“I do.” I brushed my thumb over her lower lip. “Because you need to hear it from me until the past dies.”
Her legs curled lightly around my hips again, asking without words for closeness.
I gave it to her.
My mouth moved lower. The towel fell away, and I finally saw her.
All of her.
My lungs stopped doing their simple job.
Sienna lay beneath me, breasts rising with each shaky breath. So devastatingly mine that the thought moved through my body with the force of an oath.
I had been a fool for three years. A criminally stupid, emotionally illiterate bastard with too much power and no understanding of what had been placed within reach.
I touched her ribs first. My palm moved over her side, across the curve of her waist, then up again, slow enough to let her breathe through being seen.
She covered herself halfway on instinct.
I caught her wrist and kissed the inside. “Don’t hide from me.”
“I feel…”
“What?”
Her cheeks flushed deeper. “Exposed.”
“You are.” I kissed her wrist again. “You’re also safe.”
I released her hand, and this time she didn’t cover herself. She let her arm fall beside her head, fingers curling into the sheet.
Good girl.
I lowered my mouth to her chest, kissing where the water had cooled on her skin. She made a sound that went straight to my cock, and my sainthood, already dead, deserved no memorial. I took my time anyway. Because worship had pace.
My tongue moved over her slowly.
She gasped and arched, and I closed one hand over her hip to hold her steady.
“Easy, baby.”
“I’m trying.”
“I didn’t tell you to behave.”
That pulled another sound from her, needier, and I smiled against her.
I kissed down her stomach, over the little shiver that followed my mouth. My thumb stroking beneath her ribs, then lower, over her hip. Every inch of her felt unfamiliar and mine at once. A contradiction I had no interest in resolving.
When I reached the towel gathered at her thighs, I stopped.
Her breathing had gone shallow.
Mine had gone worse.
I lifted my head.
She looked down at me, flushed and frightened enough that I wanted to kill every person who had ever made her nervous about wanting.
“Sienna.”
Her lips parted. “Yes?”
“I need to ask you something.”
The heat in her face shifted, becoming uncertainty. “Okay.”
I moved up enough to cover her again with my body, but kept my weight braced off her.
“Have you been with someone before?” I ran my thumb over her hip. “I need to know what you’ve done, what you haven’t done, where I need to go slow.”
She swallowed. “You mean sex?”
“Yes, baby. Sex. Touch. Anything that matters.”
Her gaze slid away.
I caught her face again. “Stay with me.”
“I’m embarrassed.”
“You’re with me. You don’t have to perform innocence or experience. You tell me the truth, and I take care of what the truth needs.”
Her eyes flickered.
I lowered my voice. “Has anyone fucked you?”
Her breath caught.
“No.”
The answer hit me like a hand around the throat.
Possessive satisfaction came first, ugly and immediate, so strong I had to pause before speaking.
Then anger, because part of me imagined every year she had spent feeling unwanted while keeping herself untouched beside a man too stupid to deserve that kind of loyalty.
Fuck, she was looking at me as if the answer might disappoint me or change the way I saw her.
It changed everything.
It made me want to be gentler.
“No,” I repeated.
She shook her head. “No one.”
I exhaled slowly through my nose and lowered my forehead to hers. “Then Daddy needs to be extra gentle with my baby.”
Her eyes closed.
A little sound left her, so soft I felt it more than heard it.
Fuck, I loved the sounds my fiancée made.
“What else?” I asked, brushing my mouth along her cheek. “Tell me.”
She took a shaky breath. “I’ve kissed. Laurent, before the engagement. A few times.”
My jaw tightened on his name.
She felt it and touched my face. “You said truth.”
“I’m listening.”
“He touched me over my dress once.” Her cheeks burned. “At a garden party. He kissed my neck. I liked it, then felt awful because my father had already said the match wouldn’t go anywhere, and then the Crow announcement happened.”
I kept my hand gentle on her hip through the violent little urge to rewrite Laurent Armand’s anatomy.
“What else?”
“That’s it.”
My eyes searched hers. “No one had you in a bed?”
“No.”
“No one inside you, fingers or anything else?”
She shook her head, barely able to hold my gaze. “Just you.”
The restraint required to stay still became a living thing. It paced inside my ribs, furious and hungry.
I kissed her mouth once.
She made a tiny noise against my lips.
I kissed it from her mouth. “Such a good girl. Brave for me.”
I kissed down her throat once more, slower now, letting my hand move along her side.
Her fingers slid into my hair again.
I kissed the center of her chest, then lower, to the soft line beneath her ribs. Her body arched under my mouth, and I smiled against her because every sound she made felt like theft from a world that had kept her too quiet.
“You’re so responsive,” I said.
She covered her face with one hand. “Don’t say that.”
I caught her wrist and pinned it gently beside her head. “I’m going to say much worse.”
Her eyes widened.
“Because you deserve to know exactly what you do to me.”
I dragged my mouth down her stomach, tongue tracing a slow path. Her hips shifted, legs tightening around my waist again when I moved back over her.
“That’s it,” I murmured. “Hold on to me.”
Her heels pressed into my back, and the feeling of her wrapped around me, trusting me made something dark and devotional open under my ribs.
I kissed her mouth again.
“I’ll go slow,” I told her against her mouth. “Daddy’s going so slow for you, baby. I won’t rush this.”
Her fingers tightened in my hair, and the trust in that small grip made my chest ache in a way I would have mocked on any other man.