He isn’t smiling, he’s totally serious. “I want…” He leans forward, eyes locked on me.
He wants to watch.
And I…
I’m under his spell.
I glance down and touch it—just the tip of the vibrator—lightly against my nipple. It tightens, peaks with the slightest vibration.Oh, my God.
I shiver.
He still hasn’t laid a single hand on me, and yet I’m hot everywhere, and wet, craving so much more than his gaze.
“Look at you,” he murmurs, voice thick. “God, Ash… after everything I’ve put us through—all the darkness—you’ve always been my light.”
When his hand lifts—just slightly—I see it: the tremble in his fingers.
“I want to touch you, suck on you,” he murmurs. “Tug you into my mouth. Mark your skin with my teeth…”
The silence after that is thick and full of promise.
“But right now? I just want to look at you. All those nights away, I imagined you, like this, and… I want to watch.”
His voice breaks a little. “Touch it down your belly, Ash.”
I drag the vibrator lower. Over the curve of my ribs. My navel. My stomach.
I don’t flinch when it passes over the soft silver lines at my hips—reminders of what my body’s done. What we made together.
My skin isn’t taut the way it once was. But his gaze doesn’t waver.
“Oh, God, Ash…” he breathes. “Open your legs, beautiful.”
My knees part slowly. Willingly. And I feel wanton, vulnerable. But safe. “Now,” he says, rough. “Touch it over your panties.”
My hand dips lower, the soft hum pressing against the thin fabric stretched over me.
His breath catches.
“Are you wet already?” he rasps.
I meet his eyes, tilting my head. “Are you hard?”
He groans. “So damn hard.”
“Then I want to see, Beckett.”
For a second, we’re suspended there. And then he moves.
Off the bed in one fluid motion, he strips—quick and rough, no teasing now. His socks. His pants. Shirt already gone. And finally, his boxer briefs.
God.
His body is… amazing. A little leaner than I remember, but still… him.
The piercing catches the light, and I don’t know why that glint sends a jolt through me.
But he doesn’t climb back onto the bed.
