Chapter 20
GABRIEL
Her soft fingers reached for me, moving over my body, flattening and pulling over the ridges of my stomach. Mapping the planes of my chest. Touching the curve of an ankle and moving up farther behind my knee, to my thigh. She paused for a moment, then her fingers curled around me, already hard in her palm.
Every muscle in my core went tight.
She traced the length slowly, intent, gaze darting to my clenching muscles before connecting back with mine. “Good?”
“Yes.” All of that determination, focused totally on me. Her fingers were smooth, her touches gentle. “You don’t have to do anything you—”
Her tongue touched the tip. I nearly shot off the bed.
Sure, bravery was one of her dominant traits, but most women I had been with had avoided this particular act. It had never upset me. It was too open. My face too easy to read. Entirely out of my control.
She grew more intrepid as she investigated. I smiled as she moved with the careful, absorbed attention of a scholar on a quest. Her head dipped and tilted as she methodically worked. A warmth I had no name for settled in my chest. She had never done this before, but she was making a study of it, and it would always be the thought that counted—
I arched up, a sound escaping.Holy—
Her lips slipped down and around me, her tongue grazing the sensitive spot underneath. She paused, then began athoroughinvestigation, making breathing difficult.
My stomach rose and fell in a higher arc than before. She paused again, peering up at me through a haze of hair shadedwith amber and honey in the lamplight. The sight of her like that, wanton and beautiful—
I arched off the bed again.Holy—
Her tongue pressed against me, tentative yet strong, and entirely a question. My body responded, my breath stuttered. She did it again, pressing even more strongly, and when I breathed in audibly, she concentrated fully on those spots that gave reward.
My resolve, my control, started to dribble right out of my ears, pushed out by all of the blood draining downward. She seemed to be cataloging each spot and its reaction, then systematically combining movements and finding new ones. Yet always basing subsequent actions on my reactions, on me.
Like cultivating magic, but instead cultivatingme.
Every other woman had been quite content to let me fulfill their desires, but none of them truly wanted to fulfill mine. To learn what exactly made me jump and shift and groan.
Gauging each of my reactions, Marietta gave every indication that she wanted to know all of them.
The warmth in my chest found its name.
A half-formed syllable escaped as she took all of me down. Her tongue pulled along the length of me—up, up—pressing against the top as her lips caressed.
Her name was a silent litany in my head. And thirty seconds later, it was a verbal litany from my lips.
She picked up her pace, a combination of untried maneuvers and those with which she had already found success. And the sight of her…dear spirits…
I couldn’t stop from pushing into the pillow, couldn’t stop the groan from passing my lips, the harsh breaths as everything exquisitelytightened. My arm went over my face, to block my expression, to stifle my cry.
Lips popped from around me, the movement nearly ending the battle. My arm was suddenly batted away.
“Stop that.”
My eyes snapped open. “What?” I stared at her, uncomprehending, breathing as if I had just run the length of the River Styx.
“I want to see you.”
I could do nothing but stare.
Her teeth caught her lower lip and she leaned one hand on the coverlet. “What you look like when you—” She moved her free hand in a circular motion, teeth worrying a soft track across a surface still wet from licking me.
