"Green. Very green."
He cuffed my wrists to the iron rail of my headboard. The metal was cool, unyielding. I tested the hold. Solid. I couldn't touch him, couldn't rush him, couldn't do anything but lie there and let him do whatever he wanted.
The vulnerability should have scared me. It didn't.
He kissed down my body. Inch by inch. "You're so beautiful like this," he murmured against my hip. "Spread out for me. Waiting. Mine." His mouth moved to my inner thigh, teeth grazing skin. "I'm going to make you come so hard you forget your own name. But not yet."
"Dominic. Please."
"Please what?"
"You know what."
"I want to hear you say it."
This was the escalation. In the SUV he'd told me what to do and I'd obeyed. Now he wanted me to ask. To use my voice. To say out loud what I wanted instead of hiding behind bravado.
"I want your mouth on me," I said, and my voice barely held.
"Good." He rewarded me immediately. His tongue found my clit and my back arched off the bed, wrists straining at the cuffs. He took his time. Slow circles. Building. Backing off when I got close, making me chase it.
"Ask me again," he murmured against me.
"Please don't stop."
He didn't stop. His tongue was relentless, his hands gripping my thighs, spreading me wider, and every time I asked for more he gave it. The praise came between strokes.Perfect. So good. Mine.And each time he said it, my body responded like it had been trained to, tightening, climbing, desperate.
I came with his name in my mouth and the cuffs biting into my wrists and his hands bracing me through the aftershocks.
He didn't give me time to recover. He shifted over me, pressed inside, and every nerve lit up.
"Eyes on me," he said.
I opened my eyes. His face was inches from mine. His hand came to my throat. Not squeezing. Grounding. His palm flat against my pulse, pinning me to the present.
"Stay with me," he whispered. "Right here."
I couldn't look away. Couldn't crack a joke or build a wall or pretend this was just sex. His eyes held mine and his body moved inside me and his touch stayed warm on my throat like an anchor, and I was stripped bare.
The disguises didn't exist here. The fake names, the borrowed identities, the woman I'd built to keep people at arm's length. None of it. There was just me. Charlie. And he hadn't looked away.
I stopped fighting it.
Every instinct I had said to deflect. To put a name on this that made it smaller, safer, easier to walk away from. But his hand was steady on my throat, and his eyes wouldn't let me go, and I let him see it. All of it. The want and the terror and the thing underneath both that I'd been running from since the Conservatory.
"Dominic." His name came out wrecked.
"I'm here." He reached up and freed my wrists. The cuffs dropped to the mattress. He pressed deeper, slower, his forehead against mine. "I'm not going anywhere."
I wrapped my arms around his neck and held on. And when I came apart, he was right there with me — his breath ragged against my lips, his body shuddering against mine, neither of us moving afterward. Just staying. Breathing each other in.
THE SHOWER WAS TOOsmall for two people. We made it work.
He washed my hair. Stood behind me with his hands in the lather, working his fingers through the tangles, and I leaned back and let it happen. I was so far past my own walls I couldn't find them with a map.
He worked down to my shoulders. Kneading the tension from muscles I'd been clenching for weeks. Water running over both of us. Steam filling the bathroom.
I'd had sex with men who brought me champagne after. Men who ordered room service. One memorable disaster who applauded -—actually applauded -—like I'd performed a gymnastics routine. But none of them had ever stood behind me in a cramped shower and washed my hair like it was the most important thing they'd do all day.
