Not naked.Not yet.But seen.
“Beautiful.”He breathed the word against my collarbone, his lips trailing fire down toward my chest.His scent surrounded me now, warm and masculine, mixing with mine until I couldn’t tell where he ended and I began.“You’re so fucking beautiful, Lena.Do you have any idea what you do to me?”
I didn’t answer.Couldn’t.His mouth had found my nipple through the thin fabric of my bra, and the heat of it made my spine arch off the bed.He sucked gently, then not so gently, his teeth grazing the sensitive peak, and I made a sound I’d never made before.A moan.A plea.Something between the two.
His fingers found the clasp at my back.The bra fell away and then his mouth was on my bare skin, hot and wet and demanding.He lavished attention on one breast, then the other, his tongue circling, his teeth grazing, until I was writhing beneath him, my fingers clutching at his shoulders like I might fly apart if I let go.
“Raphael.”His name came out heavier now.More important.“Please.”
“Please what?”He lifted his head, and his eyes were dark, the pupils blown so wide I could barely see the gray.“Tell me what you want.”
I wanted everything.I wanted him to never stop touching me.I wanted to feel him inside me, filling me, claiming me.I wanted to stop being the virgin who’d never been touched and become the woman who belonged to him.
But the words stuck in my throat, tangled up in years of being taught that good girls didn’t ask for things like this.
“I want you.”The words came out broken.“All of you.I want to know what it feels like to be yours.”
His breath caught.Just for a second.And then he was kissing me again, deeper and more desperate than before, his hands finding the waistband of the soft sweatpants I’d borrowed with the shirt.I lifted my hips to help him, and they slid away easily, taking my underwear with them, and then I was naked beneath him.
Completely exposed.Completely vulnerable.
He sat back on his heels, just looking at me.I fought the urge to cover myself with my hands.To hide.But I didn’t want to hide from him anymore.I wanted him to see me.All of me.
“You’re trembling,” he said.
“I’m scared.”The honesty surprised us both.
His expression shifted.Not pitying.Tender, maybe.Reverent.He leaned down and pressed a kiss to my stomach, right below my navel.The brush of his lips sent heat racing through me.Another kiss to my hip.Another to the inside of my thigh, close enough that I could feel his breath against my center.“I’m going to make it good for you, malyshka.I promise.I’m going to take care of you.”
The Russian endearment made me shiver.
He stripped off his own shirt, and I forgot how to breathe.
I’d seen him shirtless before.During our evening rituals, in the half-light of his bedroom.But this was different.This was him offering himself to me the way I’d offered myself to him, and I couldn’t look away.
His chest was a map of violence and survival.Scars I’d only glimpsed before stood out in the firelight, pale lines against tanned skin.Old wounds, long healed, that spoke of a childhood I couldn’t imagine.Some were thin and surgical.Others were jagged, brutal.Stories written in his skin that I didn’t know how to read.
The tattoos I’d glimpsed before now drew my eye, intricate black patterns covering his arms and climbing over his shoulders, though my gaze kept drifting lower.To the hard planes of his stomach.To the V of muscle at his hips.To the dark trail of hair that disappeared beneath his waistband.To the obvious bulge straining against his zipper.
His skin radiated heat.I could feel it from here, more warmth than seemed normal, like he was running a fever.But his eyes were clear, his gaze steady.Just naturally hotter, then.I filed the observation away without examining it too closely.
“See something you like?”There was a smile in his voice, but his eyes were serious.Watching me watch him.
“Take them off.”The words came out breathier than I intended.“I want to see you too.”
He obliged.The pants came off, and the underwear with them, and then he was as naked as I was, and I couldn’t stop staring.
His cock stood thick and hard against his stomach, the head flushed and already glistening with moisture, and a bolt of nervous anticipation shot through me.That was going to be inside me.That was going to take something from me that I could never get back.
No.Not take.I was giving it.There was a difference.
“We don’t have to.”He read the flash of fear on my face, and his voice gentled.“We can stop.We can do something else.I don’t need?—”
“I want to.”I reached for him, pulling him back down over me.Skin against skin.Heat against heat.His cock pressed against my hip, hot and hard.“I want you, Raphael.I want this.I’m just nervous.”
“I know.”He settled between my thighs, the weight of him familiar now, comforting.His cock pressed against my center but he didn’t push inside.Just let me feel him there, heavy and waiting.“We’ll go slow.As slow as you need.”
Slow was the last thing I wanted, but I didn’t say that.I just kissed him, trying to pour everything I couldn’t say into the press of my lips against his.
