"You're ridiculous," she murmured, her hands exploring. "This isn't fair. You look like this and you can cook."
"I also read thirty-one pages of your manual. I'm a renaissance man."
She was still laughing when I unbuttoned the flannel. One button at a time, slow, watching her face. The laughter faded into want as it opened. Bare skin underneath. No bra, and I'd known that, and knowing it was nothing compared to seeing it. Her breasts small and perfect, nipples peaked from the cold or from me. I cupped one in my palm and ran my thumb across the tip. She sucked in a breath and her head dropped back.
"Beautiful," I told her, and I meant it with my whole chest. "You're so fucking beautiful."
Her hips rocked forward. I could feel the heat of her pussy through my boxers, wet already, and knowing she was this turned on, this ready, made my cock throb. I kissed down her throat, between her breasts, took one nipple into my mouth and sucked, and she gasped and her hands gripped the back of my head, holding me there.
"Cliff — oh —"
I switched to the other breast. Licked, sucked, grazed my teeth over the sensitive peak, and she was squirming beneath me, her hips grinding on me, her breath coming in sharp little pants that were undoing me.
I pulled back and looked at her. Flushed, lips swollen, half-undressed, her eyes half-lidded and glazed. I'd never seen anything that hit me the way she did right then. The fact that she was right here in my cabin wearing my shirt with her legs open for me was a reality I needed a minute to process at some point. Not now.
"I want to taste you," I said. "Can I?"
Her eyes widened. She nodded, and the eagerness in it, how she bit her lower lip, made me want to take my time and make her lose her mind.
I dropped to my knees.
I pulled her to the edge of the counter. Hooked my fingers under the waistband of her underwear and slid them down her legs, simple cotton, nothing fancy, which was somehow hotter than anything she could have planned. I spread her thighs wide. She was wet, glistening, and the sight of her open and wanting made my cock ache.
I kissed the inside of her thigh. Then the other. Took my time, lips tracing the sensitive skin, and she was already trembling, her fingers gripping the edge.
"Please," she whispered. "Cliff, please —"
I put my mouth on her pussy and she cried out.
I licked her slow. Long, deliberate strokes of my tongue from her entrance to her clit, learning her, figuring out what made her gasp and what made her hands fist in my hair and what made her thighs clamp against my ears. She tasted like salt and want and warmth, and the sounds she was making. God, the sounds. Little moans that built into desperation, her hips rocking against my mouth, her whole body winding tight.
"Right there," she breathed. "Don't stop, right there —"
I circled her clit with my tongue, steady, focused, and slid one finger inside her. She was tight and wet and her muscles clenched around me and her breath broke into something between a sob and a moan. I added a second finger, curled them, stroked the spot inside her that made her back arch off the counter.
"Fuck — Cliff — I'm —"
She came with her thighs shaking around my head and her hand fisted in my hair and a cry that started as my name and ended wordless. I held her through it, my tongue gentle on her clit, my fingers still moving slowly inside her, drawing it out, and she rode the wave with her whole body, trembling and gasping and beautiful.
I stood up. Wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. She was boneless, eyes glazed, chest heaving, and she reached for me with fingers that weren't steady.
"Come here," she said, and her voice was so wrecked I was never going to forget it.
I kissed her and she tasted herself on my lips and moaned into it. Her hands found the waistband of my boxers and pushed them down, and then she slid off the counter and dropped to her knees on the kitchen floor, and my brain stopped working.
"Nell—"
She looked up at me. Flushed, hair falling across her face, eyes dark and deliberate, and she wrapped her fingers around the base of my cock and took me into her mouth.
I braced one hand on the counter. The other went to her hair, not pushing, just holding on, because her mouth was hot and wet and she was doing something with her tongue on the underside that made my vision go white at the edges. She took me deeper, her cheeks hollowing, her hand working what hermouth couldn't reach, and the noise that came out of me wasn't one I recognized.
"Been hard since you walked out of the bedroom," I managed.
She pulled back just enough to speak, her lips still brushing the head. "That was four minutes ago."
"Longest four minutes of my life."
She laughed with her mouth on me. The vibration went straight through my spine, and I made a sound that was not dignified. She took me deep again, her rhythm steady and confident. I watched her, Nell Chambers on her knees on my kitchen floor, and the whole picture combined with how she felt was going to end me in about thirty seconds.
