His mouth finds the curve of my shoulder. “This is.” A kiss to my collarbone. “This is.” His palm spreads across my ribs. “All of this is perfect. And mine.”
That’s enough to talk me off the ledge. I settle back into the heady rush of lust and love. “Yours,” I whisper.
“Damn right.” His fingers hook into the waistband of my underwear. “Now, let me show you what I do with things that belong to me.”
He tugs my underwear down my legs and tosses it somewhere in the dark. Then his mouth is on my hip bone, my inner thigh, everywhere except where I need him most.
“Bastian—”
“Shh. Patience. I’m getting there.”
His breath ghosts over me. Then his tongue, flat and slow. I coil off the floor.
He takes his time, though. His fingers join in, one sliding inside me while his mouth works. The tension winds tighter. My breath comes shorter. My fingers clutch at his hair.
“That’s it,” he murmurs against me as he feels me arching and bucking. “Let go.”
I do. The orgasm rolls through me slow and sweet, nothing like the sharp, desperate ones he’s given me before. This is honey, not lightning. This is being held, not taken.
When I finally come back to myself, he’s kissing his way back up my body. He settles beside me on the floor, pulling me against his chest.
“Okay?” he asks.
I nod, still catching my breath. “More than okay.”
“Good. Because we’re not done yet.”
“No,” I say with a cheeky grin that he may or may not be able to see. “We’re not.”
I rise up onto my heels and push him flat onto his back. My hands on his bare chest, the way this all started, all those days and weeks ago. I find his belt and rid him of it, then take care of the button of his jeans. The zipper comes down with a rasp of metal teeth.
“Eliana—”
“Shut up, Bastian.”
I shove the denim down his hips. He lifts to help me. His boxers follow.
I take him in my hand first. He’s hard, hot, thick, but soft to the touch. His breath catches as my fingers close around his girth. Then I lower my mouth.
The taste of him is salt and skin. I work slowly, following the shape of him with my tongue. His hand goes to the roots of my hair. “Fuck,” he breathes.
I take him deeper. I flatten my tongue, hollow my cheeks, and move from one rhythm to the next until I find one that makes his fingers tighten on my scalp.
His breathing goes ragged. I feel the strain building in his thighs, his stomach. When he tries to pull me away, I don’t let him.
“Eliana, I’m?—”
“I know,” I gasp as I let him fall out of my mouth with a wet pop. “I want it. I?—”
“No.”
I should’ve known he wouldn’t let me take the reins for long. With a snarl, he throws me onto my back, though he’s sure to cradle my head against the hard floor. His hands pry my thighs apart, his grip firm on the soft flesh there.
“I want to be inside you when I come,” he tells me.
I’m simmering with need in every single pore and nerve ending, and yet I still hesitate. We haven’t done this yet. We haven’t really spoken about that, either—it was like we just came to this silent agreement that we wouldn’t go there until the time was right. How would we know when it was right? No clue.
Until now.
