Oh.
This is different from normal. Every other time we’ve done this, there’s been an element of urgency and competition. Just two people trying to wreck each other in the best possible way.
But Leo isn’t competing tonight.
After he’s kissed me thoroughly, he carries me to the bed and lays me down with the kind of care you’d give something irreplaceable. But before I can make a joke about it, his mouth is on mine again.
And once we’re both naked, his mouth gentles against mine and his hands stop gripping and start exploring. It’s unhurried, deliberate, like he’s got nowhere else to be for the rest of his life.
Being on the receiving end of such care and attention makes my stomach squirm.
I pull out all my tricks to speed things up. I run my nails down his back. I bite his lip. I roll my hips against his. I’m trying to make it our usual dynamic, where it’s only about bodies, heat, and competition.
He doesn’t take the bait.
Instead, he catches my hands and pins them gently above my head. He holds them there, looking down at me.
“Let me,” he says quietly.
It’s only two words, but something in his voice disarms me so completely that I go still beneath him.
I should pull free.
Instead, I turn my hands over and lace my fingers through his so I’m holding on rather than being held down.
His breath catches.
Fingers interlaced above my head, his weight braced on our joined hands, he starts to kiss down my jaw. His mouth traces the line of it, slow and warm, then moves down my neck and into the hollow of my throat. He presses his lips against my collarbone and stays there, breathing me in.
No one has ever just…breathed me in before.
Then his mouth continues to map me. It’s not with the urgency of someone trying to get somewhere.
Instead, it’s with the patience of someone who’s already arrived.
He kisses my sternum. The space between my ribs. A freckle on my side that I didn’t even know I had.
My throat tightens.
He gently untangles my hands from his and lifts one of them to his mouth. Kisses my palm, and my fingers curl involuntarily. Then the inside of my wrist, where my pulse is doing something frantic. He continues onto the crook of my elbow, which shouldn’t be an erogenous zone but apparently is when Leo Brennan is involved.
Nobody has ever paid attention to the crook of my elbow before.
Actually, nobody has ever paid attention to any part of me like this. Like there’s no hierarchy of interesting parts, as though my wrist is as worthy of study as my mouth, like the curve of my hip matters as much as my cock.
I’m used to being consumed and devoured rather than studied.
Leo’s mouth traces the line of my hip, and my fingers tighten in his hair. He finds the soft skin below my navel, and I make a sound that’s somewhere between a laugh and a gasp.
He stays there, sucking gently.
I reach for him. But this time it’s not to speed things up. Instead, I cup his face in both hands and kiss him the way he’s been kissing me. Deep and slow.
Leo’s body softens against mine.
I don’t know what I’m telling him with this kiss. I just know I need him to hear it.
The kiss ends, but we don’t pull apart. We stay there, foreheads touching, breathing each other’s air.
