"You're really going to make me spell it out?"
"Yes." He lowers his head, drags his lips along my jaw, my neck, the sensitive spot below my ear. "I want to hear you say it. I want to know you're choosing this. Choosing me."
I close my eyes. My pride is screaming at me to stay silent, to make him work for it, to maintain some shred of dignity in this situation I've completely lost control of.
But my body doesn't care about pride.
"I want you," I whisper. "I want you to touch me. I want you inside me. I want—" My voice breaks. "I want you to make me forget why I'm supposed to hate you."
Something shifts in his expression. It’s raw and almost vulnerable that disappears as quickly as it came.
"I can do that," he says.
And then his mouth is on my throat and his hands are pulling at my clothes and I stop thinking about anything at all.
He undresses me slowly, like he's unwrapping a gift he's been waiting for. Every piece of clothing that falls away earns a kiss, a touch, a murmured word I can barely hear over the pounding of my own heart. By the time I'm naked beneath him, I'm trembling.
"Look at you." His voice is reverent, almost awed. “You are so beautiful..."
"Phoenix, please?—"
"Please what?"
I don't answer. I can’t. Can barely breathe with the way he's looking at me.
He strips off his own shirt and I reach for the bandage on his arm, suddenly worried. "Your arm?—"
"Is fine." He catches my hand and presses a kiss to my palm. "I don't care about that. I care aboutthis. About you. About finally having you underneath me after all this time."
He kisses his way down my body—my collarbone, the swell of my breasts, the dip of my stomach. By the time he reaches in between my legs, the place where I need him most, I'm shaking so hard the whole bed is trembling with me.
"Phoenix—"
"I've got you." His breath is hot against my inner thigh. "Just let go."
And then his mouth is on me.
My back arches off the bed and a sound tears from my throat that I don't recognize. His tongue drags through my folds, slow and deliberate, like he's savoring every taste. When he finds my clit and sucks it between his lips, my hands fly to his hair, gripping hard.
He groans against me like my pain is his pleasure.
"Oh god." I'm panting, my hips rolling against his face without my permission. "Oh god, Phoenix?—"
He doesn't answer. Just slides two fingers inside me while his tongue keeps working that sensitive bundle of nerves, and the dual sensation makes my vision go white at the edges.
The orgasm builds fast, too fast. I try to hold it off, try to make this last, but he knows exactly what he's doing. Every stroke of his tongue, every curl of his fingers, every scrape of stubble against my inner thighs pushes me closer to the edge.
"Let go," he murmurs against my flesh, and the vibration of his voice is what finally breaks me.
I shatter.
The climax rips through me like a wave, my whole body convulsing as I cry out his name. My thighs clamp around his head, my fingers yank at his hair, and still he doesn't stop. He works me through it, drawing out every last tremor until I'm gasping for air and pushing weakly at his shoulders.
"Too much," I whimper. "It's too much?—"
"No it's not." He pins my hips to the mattress with one strong arm and looks up at me, his mouth glistening, his eyes dark with intent. "You can give me another one."
"I can't?—"
