Chapter Five
The last thingSerena wanted to do was bring down the excitement of their first Christmas gifts with a possibly off-putting conversation about kink and power and trust with her boyfriend who loved her so hard…and knew absolutely nothing about any of that.
So she looked him straight in the eye and lied, at least by omission, ignoring the awful tug in her gut. “I grew up in a crazy religious family. I have some skewed perspectives of what should stay inside one’s head, never spoken of.” She could see his doubt writ all over his face. Yeah, she hadn’t exactly been a prude since they’d gotten together. “I’ve had a decade of learning otherwise, of course, but there’s—”vanilla and then there’s kink, but would using those words give her away? “Regular dirty and extra dirty.”
“And when I turned on the extra dirty, you liked it.”
Loved it. Her heart leapt into her throat as she nodded.
“So what else don’t I know about?”
He was too smart for her. She sighed. “God, Hunter, you don’t really expect me to list all the random things that have turned me on, do you?”
He gripped her chin again—speaking of things that turned her on—and gave her a stern look. “Yes, I do.”
“I like this,” she whispered. If he was already doing it, no harm in letting him know it made her breasts ache, right? “You being bossy and…”
He stroked his thumb over the ridge of her jaw. “This, too? Holding your gaze like this?” She tried to nod and he held her head in place. “Use your words.”
“Yes.”Sir. “I like it when you grip my chin like that. It…” She might be a submissive, but she was still a healthy adult woman capable of teasing her boyfriend and pushing back. “It makes me wet. Stern does it for me in a big way.”
He searched her face. “I’m not always stern.”
“And I’m not a one-trick pony.” She wound her arms around his neck and pulled him close. Talking about her long-hidden kinky tendencies was pretty far outside her comfort zone. Seducing Hunter? That was smack in the middle of it. “I was just thrown by your gifts. Let me pause right now to say, again, that I’m falling in love you. It started the day I met you and every day, every part of you makes me tumble faster. I love you when you’re goofy, and I love you when you get all excited. And I love it when you get all macho and demand things of me, too. But whether or not you do that doesn’t impact on how much I adore you. And I’m more than a little terrified of losing all of that, of losing you. I don’t want to be a freak, you know?”
He let her kiss him, let her shift beneath him until her softest parts were rubbing against his hardest parts, but her SEAL wasn’t easily distracted. As soon as her hands wandered close to his fly, he captured them and dragged them back up to the safe zone.
The conversation zone.
He pinned her hands to the bed on either side of her body. “But do you want me to do that—this—more often? Do you like it when I’m in charge?”
Too damn smart.
The problem was she wanted him to want it. It didn’t work if wasn’t real. And telling him what she wanted would be too much like topping from the bottom. How to explain all of that without ruining what they had?
“Is that the wrong question?” Her heart skipped a beat. He held her gaze as she nodded slowly. Then he grinned. It was the predatory smile of a hunter who’d picked his prey. Hunter rocked his forehead against hers as he looked deep inside her, then he seared a scorching kiss against her lips before rising up on his knees. “Stay there.”
Direct orders worked. She closed her eyes and held very, very still.
Less than a minute passed before he’d returned from the living room. He climbed right back on top of her and whispered for her to open her eyes. He wiggled two foil packets in front of her face. A condom and…lube. Well, then. “Here’s what’s going to happen. I want to play with your presents a bit. I promise to be gentle. Got a problem with my plan?”
Nope. She beamed up at him.
He dropped the accessories somewhere nearby on the bed and stretched out on top of her. She loved the weight of him, how he melted her into the mattress with just enough pressure to make the world go away. His knees nudged her legs apart and he let her rub against him as he took his time moving in for a kiss.
He brushed her hair away from her ear, then traced the curve of her lobe with his fingers, tugging gently at the bottom. “Pretty earrings,” he whispered, his breath hot against her skin as he lowered his mouth to her neck. He sucked at the skin there, below her ear, then lower still, finding her collarbone with his tongue.
His nose traced up her neck to her jaw, then he held her gaze as he fit their bodies together and moved in for a real kiss—and when he claimed her mouth, it was like flipping a switch.
From man to machine. No, still man, just…now he was a trained predator, intent on making her his. Oh yes, she wanted him to hunt her down. Trap her and devour her, just like he was doing.
This time, he didn’t stop to ask if she wanted this. He kissed—no, kissing wasn’t the right word—he fucked her mouth, his tongue a silky, powerful tool of arousal that he used without mercy.
When she was rocking beneath him, spun out on his taste and touch already, he lazily rolled her onto her stomach, then pulled her pants off, taking her underwear with them.
His palms skated across her ass before gripping her hips and hauling her up onto all fours with a chuckle. He traced a line up her spine with one finger, sliding her t-shirt across her overheated skin, but he didn’t follow it with anything else. He just bared her to his gaze, and made her wait.
Each passing second heightened her arousal, and when he finally touched her again, on her hip, she jumped from the rawness of it.
