“Aunt Lucia is an old crone who doesn’t approve of anyone. She calls my cousin’s wife a crow to her face.”
“So the fact that I haven’t been assigned a bird is a compliment?”
“You want compliments, Sam?” he said, spreading his legs as if to make space for her. “I will give them to you.”
“Don’t patronize me,” she said, feeling wonky in her own skin. Even at her sickest, she’d never felt this disoriented. As if she was falling endlessly.
“You’re upset.” He frowned and swept his gaze all over her. “Come, Sameera,” he said in that calm, quiet voice that sent shivers down her spine. “I will make you feel better,bella.”
“I don’t want what you’re offering. Not today,” she said, her own voice breathless and shallow.
He didn’t call her out on her bad temper. Instead, he leaned his elbows against the piano, pushed his legs forward and waited. As if he were offering himself to her.
Afternoon sunlight poured through the window, over the olive-toned skin stretched taut over lean muscles. With that much light dappling over him, she could see the small imperfections that made him so gorgeous—the small scar under his chin, the slight bifurcation in his right brow, the too-tight jut of his cheekbones that gave him such a severe profile, the spot on his neck that he’d missed while shaving last night because she’d distracted him…
God, she was becoming dizzyingly addicted to running her fingers through the hair that coated his chest, the slight flare of his nostrils when he wanted to have sex and the predatory stillness that followed because his first instinct was to control the impulse, the warmth of his eyes that betrayed how much he liked her… She wished she could capture him with her brushes in this moment.
But more than that, she wanted to stay in this moment with him forever. And that was a terrifying thought that had been returning with an unerring frequency.
But right now, something else trumped fear. Right now, she felt bloodthirsty, possessive, feral in a way she’d been before. She wanted to claim him as hers.
The moment she reached him, his hands slipped under her T-shirt and slid to her hips and tugged her toward him. Sam fell into his warmth with a soft gasp as the hands that glided over piano keys so smoothly now played with her nipples. He pinched them with just enough pressure. “Tell me what would make you feel better. I’ll give it to you,” he said, right before sucking her nipple into his mouth along with the shirt.
A jolt of pleasure shot up her spine as his teeth tugged at the aching knot in a rough movement that made her core clench greedily. “Tell me where you would like my mouth so that…” One hand drifted down and snuck under her panties.
Sam closed her eyes as his fingers delved between her folds, played with her clit before the broad pad of his thumb notched into her opening. Dipping in and out, thrusting farther in with every motion while the pad of his palm pressed up against her clit… Her knees shook. Her entire body began that shuddering ascent, mindlessly in search of the freefall.
“Stay here with me, Sameera. Look at me. Kiss me,” he demanded, as he always did when she was getting close. As if it was her vulnerability in that moment when she was tumbling, her greediness for whatever he gave her got him off. He always made her come when he was inside her even if it meant postponing his own release, even if that meant revving her all the way up again.
Fingers sinking into his hair, Sam almost climbed into his lap. But that arrogant possessiveness in his gaze arrested her. Bending, she scraped her teeth over his jaw roughly. His gravelly moan gave her a foothold to fight the need for her own pleasure.
Nope, today she wanted to own him. Today, she wanted to be the one that made him mindless. In this moment, she wanted her name on his lips, in his heart, vibrating through his entire being. Not the ghost of another woman.
It was nearly impossible to stop when release was a shimmering starburst one breath away, but she did it. Clasping his wrists, she went to her knees.
From this angle on the floor, he looked like some otherworldly god she could never hold on to. Could only have in flickers of finite moments. And those were dwindling faster and faster.
“Sam? What’s going on in your head,bella?” A hint of frustration seeped into his words.
She lay a hand on the band of his sweatpants, her cheeks on fire. His abdomen clenched under her touch. A thrill shot through her at how sensitive he was, even to that simple contact. Licking her lips, she trailed her finger along the line of hair that thickened below his belly button and disappeared under his pants. “How come you never ask me to do this?”
Dark color crested his cheeks. His throat rippled, and Sam caught the flare of excitement in his eyes that he tried his best to suppress. And it lit a conflagration in her body. “Do what,bella?”
He was stalling until he could better control himself, she knew. “Go down on you.”
His palms scraped along her forearm as he caught her mouth in a gentle kiss. “Because…we’re still new to each other,tesoro.”
“Yeah, but it’s not like we have months for me to ease into it.”
Their gazes held. All of time and space should have stilled around them. And yet, Sam could hear the laughter from the patio rise, the chitter of some insects, felt the cold marble floor against her knees, felt her heart go boom in her chest.
She slid her hand down his abdomen. His erection twitched in her palm, thick and hard. “I want to experience everything with you—”
“Tell me what has you so…perturbed.”
She shook her head. “You’re distracting me, and I won’t be.”
“Bene,” he said, inclining his head. A king letting the peasant come to their knees.
