I pause, let her anticipation build, then drag my tongue over the spiral again, this time with more pressure. She arches a little, and her hips lift just a little.
I work my way around the spiral with deliberate slowness, chasing flecks of gold down to the lowest point, then flick my tongue into her navel. She makes a sound, half-gasp, half-growl, and tugs me closer. The honey now gone, but fuck if I’ll stop licking her.
I move lower, following the natural trajectory, pressing kisses down the slope of her stomach to the edge of her waistband. She’s vibrating now, all nerves, and when I look up, her face is flushed, eyes fever-bright and defiant. Her handcradles the back of my head, guiding but not forcing. She wants to see where I’ll go without her direction.
I hook my thumbs at the hem of her underpants and sweats, pause for consent, and she lifts her hips in one smooth gesture. I slide them down, grazing the newly exposed skin with my teeth, drawing a line from hipbone to hipbone.
“Need to find out if you taste even sweeter down here?”
She says my name, just once.That’s not an answer.I kiss the inside of her thigh while grabbing the honey dipper and paint a sticky question mark. The honey beads, slow and lazy, and I chase it with my mouth until she’s laughing and cursing, hands twisted in the throw pillow, body arched toward me like the answer’s already yes.
When I finally bring my lips between her legs, she’s so ready it’s almost violent—the taste, the heat, the way her hips rise to meet me. I go slow, then fast, then slower still, always listening for the hitch in her breath that says,there, right there. She’s loud now, not shy about what she wants or how she wants it, and I memorize every sound, every plea.
I keep at it until her thighs clamp around my head and her heel digs into my shoulder, and then, only then, do I let her unravel.
Even with the honey gone, her skin, her cum is still sweet, and when I surface, she yanks me up by the shirt and kisses me hard, tasting herself on my lips.
“Pretty damn good, yeah?”
“I wanna know how you taste,” she says.
And what happens next…I stop her?
Chapter 31
Waking Up
Hildy
Iwake before the alarm, with Lenzin’s arm draped across my waist exactly how he fell asleep. He’s warm. Solid. The kind of man who seems completely unbothered by the fact that his life went from palace to puck pad, and now this. With a woman who researches his family history until three in the morning, a three-year-old who calls him Daddy like she invented the word, and twins he already talks to like they’re listening.
I smile a little, remembering Saturday night and the way he’d looked almost offended when I tried to give him head.
“No,” he’d said, voice low but absolutely certain, his eyes absolutely confused.
I’d lifted a brow. “Why?”
“Our children are growing in you; they eat what you eat, drink what you drink.”
His logic, not mine. But after the initial shock left his eyes, he was so serious, it made it impossible to argue without laughing.
So instead, we came upstairs and kissed under the hot water, kissing and touching until we took it to the bed.
Then this morning, before Lucy woke, we had what he called Sunday morning sex. The quiet kind of morning sex that’s slow and lazy yet feels just as amazing as Saturday post-game sex, where I had to bury my head in a pillow in fear I’d wake Lucy.
Yesterday had been… normal? Which is still strange enough to notice.
When Lenzin returned from the arena, Lucy and I were still in PJ’s. He slipped a pair of pajama pants and a T-shirt on, too, and that’s how we spent the day. In pajamas, snacking, with Candy Land spread across the living room rug.
When she got tired of winning, —because we let her—she turned on the TV, and climbed onto the couch beside him. “Hockey time.”
He studied game film on the television, Lucy on one leg, my feet in thick wool socks on the other. He absently rubbed my ankle while rewinding plays, explaining everything to Lucy, and somehow that led to a talk about her skating when her arm was all better.
We ate dinner, and then Lenzin and Lucy went up and picked out this week’s outfits.He is far better at that than I am.
Later, when I was straightening Lucy’s room, I found the bunny. The one on the very short list of things she wanted me to grab from the trailer in Elmira, under Lucy’s bed like it had been kicked there by accident.
I picked it up. “Did this fall?”
