“Can I touch you anywhere else?”
“Anywhere,” I rasped.
“Will you tell me if you want me to stop?”
“Yes.”
“Say it.”
“I’ll tell you if I want you to stop.”
“Good bull,” she murmured, and the praise almost took my knees out.
I lay back on the chaise. The cushion was cooler than I expected, the leather smooth against my shoulders. My cock was heavy and high, the head already slick, the vein along the underside hard enough to see my own pulse. Ivy knelt between my thighs, hands bracketing my hips for a moment like she was aligning herself for the guillotine.
“Breathe,” she said. However, I wasn’t certain if it was for her or for me.
I did. In. Hold. Out. I could control my breathing, but I couldn’t control the way my body reacted to her. The need to touch her, to claim her. To be claimed by her. I hoped to God this wasn’t a mistake.
CHAPTER EIGHT
IVY
My heart was hammered. My palms went damp. My throat tasted like iron and heat.
This was insanity. This was dangerous. This was mine.
His breath caught. Mine did, too.
“This is my first time,” I whispered to him, and the confession felt like taking a blade out of my own body and setting it down.
His eyes went darker, protective and ravenous at once. “I’ll guide you,” he murmured. Low. Intimate. Not for the room. For me.
Heat licked up my throat. “Tell me what to do.”
He swallowed, then softened his shoulders, as if to make himself easier to carry. “Start slow. Breathe. Use your hand to… steady. Don’t rush. Let your tongue learn me.”
The words shouldn’t have made my knees weak. They did.
I braced one palm on the cushion beside his hip—he was a blazing, feral sun—and let the other curl around him to anchor my courage. I leaned in until the world narrowed to breath andscent and sound. His thigh jumped under my wrist. His chest rose, fell, rose—held.
“Good,” he whispered, like a blessing. “Just like that.”
I tasted him.
Lightning. Salty. Man. Sex.
The gallery ceased to exist. There was only heat and want, and the way his hands didn’t grab for me but flexed, hovering, as if he was trying to hold back the ocean with ten careful fingers. He smelled like clean sweat and summer storms. I drew him in a little, then a little more, my lips learning the shape of his need, my tongue tracing what made him shiver.
“Slow,” he breathed. “You’re… perfect.”
I liked the way his voice broke on the word. I liked it too much.
“Ivy,” Max murmured, a warning and a prayer.
I hummed in acknowledgment, and he shuddered. So that was a thing. My cheeks heated—part embarrassment, part triumph. I tried the hum again, lighter. His hand hovered, retreated. I caught his wrist and pressed his palm flat to my hair. Not to push. To anchor. To say: I choose this. I choose you.
His fingers dug in, careful. “Careful,” he said to himself, not me. “Don’t… rush her.”
