His eyes met mine. Something moved in them, quieter than the moment deserved. “More than I expected to like anything.”
He pushed the blouse from my shoulders and reached behind me, unclasping my bra in one motion, and I felt the cool air of the penthouse against my skin before his hands replaced it — warm and unhurried, learning the weight of me, his thumbs brushing my nipples until they peaked beneath his palms.
I exhaled sharply.
“Look at me,” he said.
I did. He held my gaze as he bent his head, and when his mouth closed over my nipple the careful attention of it — still,even here, even now — pulled a sharp sound from me that echoed off the marble and made him smile against my skin.
He moved to the other side, gave it the same focused attention, his hands moving to my hips to hold me steady as I shifted against him. His mouth traced down my sternum, my stomach, pausing at the waistband of my slacks.
“Sebastian—”
“Patience.”
“I don’t have any?—”
“I know.” He looked up at me from where he was, his gray eyes catching the morning light, something in his expression warm and deliberate all at once. “That’s not going to stop me from taking my time.”
He worked my slacks and underwear off together, and the marble was cold against my bare skin and his breath was warm against my inner thigh and the contrast made me shiver in a way that had nothing to do with temperature.
When his mouth found me I stopped being coherent entirely.
He worked with the focused, unhurried patience he’d brought to the bedroom — reading every sound I made, returning to what undid me with the precision of a man taking detailed notes. My hands gripped the edge of the island. The city came through the windows in pale early light, indifferent to the fact that I was dissolving on a billionaire’s kitchen counter, and I didn’t care about any of it except his hands on my hips and his mouth on me and the specific, devastating way he made me feel like the most important problem he’d ever decided to solve.
When I came it was with my back arching off the marble and his name somewhere in the sound I made, my whole body clenching and releasing in waves that left me breathless and oversensitive and gripping his shoulders as he stood back up.
“That,” I managed, “was not patience.”
“That was exactly patience.” He pressed his lips to my temple, my cheek, the corner of my jaw. “Patience applied correctly.”
I laughed — breathless and genuine — and reached for his belt.
He was hard and hot against my hand when I freed him, and the sound he made when I wrapped my fingers around him was the unguarded kind, the kind that only happened when the control had stopped being available. I stroked him once, twice, felt his hips push forward involuntarily, felt the tension in every muscle of him.
“Em.” A warning with no real conviction behind it.
“I know.” I pulled him toward me. “Come here.”
He positioned himself and met my eyes — steady, unhurried, giving me every opportunity to change my mind. I answered by pulling him forward, and when he pressed into me in one slow stroke we both exhaled at the same time, his forehead dropping to mine, his hands braced on the marble on either side of me.
Neither of us moved for a moment.
“This,” he said quietly, his voice rough. “This is what I was afraid of.”
“What?”
“Needing someone more than I need to be in control.” His eyes found mine in the pale morning light. “Needing you more than I need to be in control.”
The specificity of it — you, not someone — landed in my chest with a weight I felt in my spine.
“Then let go,” I said.
He started to move.
Slow at first — deep, rolling strokes that built the tension between us with the deliberate patience he’d just demonstrated he was entirely capable of when he chose to be. I wrapped my legs around him, pulling him deeper, and felt the rhythm shiftin response — faster, harder, his hands gripping my thighs with an intensity that would leave marks I found myself entirely unbothered about.
The marble was cold and his body was hot and his mouth found my throat, my shoulder, the curve of my jaw as he drove into me with a focus that bordered on desperation — the desperation of someone who had spent a month being careful finally allowing himself to be less than careful.
