When he reached for the hem of my shirt, I tried to help and he caught both my hands. “I said I’d take care of you.”
“So do it faster,” I challenged. His answer was to kneel between my legs and reach for the top of my t-shirt. I gave a gasp when he ripped it open, leaving my body exposed, my breasts heaving.
“Fast enough for you?” he grinned down at me, and I thought that was even more shocking than his display of strength.
“I hope you’re not going to be fast at everything tonight.”
“Hellion,” he murmured as he removed the remnants of my shirt and unfastened my bra, throwing both aside. For just a second, an old reflex surfaced and I started to cross my arms.
He caught my wrists once again, holding them above my head.
“No.” Quiet. Absolute. “You don’t hide from me. Understood?”
“Understood,” I said, and heard the effort in my own voice.
“Again.”
“Understood.” Clearer this time.
The look on his face did something to every insecure thought I’d ever had about my body. Not the performing appreciation I thought most men probably did. Just — seeing me. Like I was exactly what he’d been expecting, and the expectation had been correct.
He cupped my breasts in his hands with the particular focus of a man who had been thinking about this for some time and intended to be thorough about it. His thumbs moved across my nipples, and I bit my lip against the sound that wanted to come out.
“Stop,” he said as if he knew what I was trying to do. “I want all of you, Charlie. These fucking curves. That damn sassy mouth. Let me hear how I make you feel.”
I made the sound.
“Good girl.” He lowered his head and took one nipple into his mouth. Those words and the sensation of his mouth made me make even more sounds.
He took his time. Learning what made me arch, what made me say his name, what made my hips roll upwards. He still held himself above me, not letting me feel him. He left nothing half-done and it was making me crazy.
I needed something.
I needed him. “Colt, you’re not being fair.”
“Who said anything about being fair, Charlie.”
He worked open my jeans and I thought, finally. Finally, he was going to touch me like he had on the bar.
I was wrong.
Oh, so deliciously wrong.
With a strong yank of his big hands, my jeans were gone, along with my underwear. Those tossed aside in the darkness too.
Then his hands were on my thighs, spreading my legs.
“What—what are you doing?” I tried to close my legs but that only earned me a sharp smack on the inside of my thighs. He pulled them apart again and I let him.
“Perfect,” he murmured and I believed him. Something about the way he said it — not a compliment, just a fact he was noting — made it land differently than any compliment I’d ever received.
I lay before him, completely bare. My breasts aching, my body weeping. All coherent thoughts fled as he settled himself between my thighs, my legs thrown over his shoulders.
He pressed his lips to the inside of my knee.
I shivered but didn’t say anything.
He kissed his way up my inner thigh, slow and deliberate, stopping just short of where I wanted him. The sound I madewas low and needy. He didn’t acknowledge it except to do it again on the other leg, stopping in the same place, making me wait.
