“King,” he drawls.
Reaching up, I feel the loop of wood and pull it down, let my fingers curl around it. With my arms up, I somehow feel more exposed, more vulnerable.
Moreexcited.
“Happy?” I counter, grip shifting, tone brazen.
He doesn’t reply. Instead, his fingers come down to the last remaining buttons on my shirt. Scooping them through the slits, letting each one come undone.
“What are you doing?”
Outside, people say too much to grasp. In here, he says nothing at all.
Somehow, that’s louder.
Both hands come up, calloused and warm, slipping the center of my shirt apart like peeling open the pages of a book. He lets the fabric rest at my sides, stomach exposed, breasts heaving inside my bandeau.
My skin crackles, every nerve ending sitting up in wait for what he’s going to do next. But I don’t expect him to slip down to the ties at my pants. To pull the string and let them loose.
One of my hands snaps down, finger and thumb circling his wayward wrist. “What are you doing?”
He pauses, black brow crooking up. “Did I tell you that you could let go of that handle?”
My heart skips a beat. “Slade...”
I receive a pat against my ass from his other hand, so swift and sharp that it makes me flinch. “Hey!”
“I want your hands up and gripping it.”
I don’t know what it says about me, but when Slade looks at me with this hunger in his eyes, when his rumbling voice slips out words of sensual command, I buckle. Boil.Burn.
My hand comes up to take hold of the loop, my chest automatically arching back up. Bending toward him.
He nods in satisfaction. “Now, where were we...”
His hand slips down to the waist of my pants, fingertips grazing inside and making the skin of my stomach jump.
“You want to climb a mountain—I’ll be right there to make sure you don’t fall,” he goes on, just as the first inch of his fingertips grazes over my panties.
“You want to build something? I’ll be handing you the tools.”
My head whirls and my nerves whip, and when his hand molds against me, when I know that he’s just found the wetness gathered there, I quake.
“Mmm, you’re wet for me, Goldfinch.”
I can’t help my wobbling breath. “Yes.” I shift my hips, an urge for him to move, to touch where I’ve begun to throb.
He answers my silent beckon. His fingers come up to my clit, rubbing and circling, making a moan drift past my lips. My hold on the loop tightens, grounding me, even as it helps me lift my hips, seeking his touch.
“You want to flirt in a pub?” Slade asks, mouth coming down against my breasts, over the thin band right at my hardened nipple. His lips close around it, tongue wetting the fabric, just as his finger moves past the edge of my panties and slips inside of me.
The gasp that tears from my throat is a corrugated rip that seems to echo inside this confined space.
“You can flirt and play all you like,” he purrs, tongue lapping, moving to my other nipple, making it match in wet heat. “You can make men and women desire you,craveyou, and I will crave right along with them.”
My heart is flexing in my chest, wrinkling my ribs, making it hard to catch my breath. His finger begins to pump. Curl. Thumb lapping at my clit and making it surge. Making meneed.
“Slade...”
