“I need more.” I’m beyond pride now, beyond pretense. “Please, Boone. I need?—”
“I know what you need.”
His mouth moves lower—across my stomach, my hipbones, the sensitive skin just above the waistband of my borrowed sweatpants. He hooks his fingers in the elastic and looks up at me.
“Yes?”
“Yes. God, yes.”
He slides the sweatpants down my legs, taking my underwear with them, and I’m bare before him. Completely vulnerable.
For a long moment, he just looks. His gaze travels over me like a physical touch—my breasts, the soft curve of my stomach, the flare of my hips, the place between my thighs where I’m already aching for him.
I’m suddenly, painfully aware of what he’s seeing. Not just the body of a forty-year-old woman with all its imperfections—but the patches of stubble where they shaved my head for surgery. The angry red line of stitches near my temple. The ugly purple bruising that still runs along my ribs. The bulky cast encasing my wrist like a plaster prison. Not to mention that I haven’t exactly been personally grooming lately.
I’m a mess. A disaster. The furthest thing from sexy I’ve ever been.
But the way he’s looking at me—like I’m a feast and he’s been starving for years—makes none of that matter.
“I’m not exactly at my best,” I manage, gesturing vaguely at the stitches, the cast, the general wreckage of my body.
“You’re alive.” He presses a kiss to the bruise on my ribs—so gentle it makes my chest ache. “You’re here.” Another kiss, to the inside of my arm, just above the cast. “You’re mine.” His eyes meet mine, blazing with heat. “That makes you the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
Jesus Christ. I’ve never felt more powerful.
“Look at you.” His voice is lower now, rougher. Reverent. He settles between my thighs, broad shoulders forcing my legs wider, and the position feels obscene in the best way—me spread open, him still fully clothed, all that coiled power focused entirely on me. “So wet already. Is this all for me?”
I make a noise of affirmation.
“Yeah.” He presses a kiss to my inner thigh. “Good girl.”
Oh god.
And then his mouth is on me, and I stop thinking entirely.
He licks me with long, slow strokes—learning my body, discovering what makes me gasp and moan and writhe. The flat of his tongue drags through my folds, hot and wet, and I hear myself make a sound I don’t recognize. Something between a whimper and a plea.
“That’s it,” he murmurs against me. “Let me hear you.”
He explores me like he has all the time in the world. Traces the seam of me with the tip of his tongue. Dips inside, just barely,then retreats. Finds my clit and circles it lazily—once, twice—before moving away to press open-mouthed kisses to my inner thighs.
“Boone—” My hips buck, chasing his mouth. “Stop teasing.”
“Not teasing.” He holds my hips down with one broad hand, pinning me in place. “Savoring.”
He returns to my center, and this time his tongue moves with more purpose. Long strokes from my entrance to my clit, over and over, each one building the pressure coiling low in my belly. He finds a rhythm that has me keening, my good hand fisting in the sheets, my head thrown back against the pillows.
But every time I get close—every time I feel myself climbing toward the edge—he pulls back. Changes the pressure. Slows down.
“Boone—” I’m panting now, my skin flushed and damp, desperation clawing at my throat. “Please?—”
He lifts his head just enough to meet my eyes. His lips are swollen, his chin wet with me, and the sight of this powerful man between my thighs—wrecked and hungry and completely in control—makes my core clench deep.
“Please what?” His voice is rough, raw. “Tell me.”
“Make me come. I need to come.”
“Since you asked so nicely.”
