For a split second, I see his pupils blow wide, black nearly devouring the hazel, and then his mouth is on mine again.
He tastes of tea, of wanting, and deeply male, and I mean to tease him, to keep control, but he’s already reading my strategies and rerouting them.
He lifts me straight onto the table, not a hint of effort, not even breaking the kiss.
The ceramic mug clatters to the floor, a neat little implosion I feel in my bones, but I don’t care. I’m on the kitchen table,legs bracketing his hips, and he has one hand splayed across my lower back and the other in my hair, and both are necessary, both are urgent.
My sweater hitches up far enough to bare my thighs but not enough to shield the shivering. My skin is fire, my blood is static, and nothing he does can keep up with the frantic pace of wanting more, always more.
He palms my cheek, fingertips digging just enough to pull my focus.
“Is this okay?” he asks, and I want to tell him it’s critical—the only thing keeping me from dissolving.
Instead, I nod, too breathless for words, and seize his mouth again. He licks into me, slow at first, then with a hungry tilt that makes me answer in kind. I scrabble for his belt, desperate and graceless. My hands tremble, but he steadies them with his own, weaving our fingers together before letting go.
He takes over, makes quick work of the buckle and zipper, and pushes his jeans just enough. He’s hard already, the press of him impossible to ignore, and even clothed, he fits perfectly between my thighs.
“Tell me what you want,” he whispers, and the sound of his voice almost undoes me again.
“Everything,” I say, and mean it.
He nods, taking it as a challenge. Drops to one knee, pulling me flush to the edge of the table. He pushes my thighs wider, mouth finding the bare skin just above the fold of my underwear, biting down and sucking gently until I start to shake, then kissing the mark he’s made.
I realize I’m holding my breath only when he runs his tongue along the waistband. Up, then down, then lower, so close to where I burn that I almost cry out.
“Fuck.”
The single word knives through the darkness, a plea and a threat and a fact. His mouth hovers there, at the edge of transgression, and I want, no, need, him to erase every boundary between us.
He looks up at me. In the scant light of the kitchen, his eyes are molten, almost animal. All the cleverness and self-control from earlier is a thin, breakable shell. I hook my leg around his shoulders, digging my heel into his back, urging him, and he laughs against my thigh. An exhale, a vibration that goes straight through me.
He doesn’t rush. He maps me with his mouth, tracing a slow path up the inside of my thigh. I feel it everywhere. His mouth, his hands, the furnace blast of his intent tuned entirely to me.
“Please,” I say, or maybe just breathe, and he hears it.
He tugs the fabric aside so gently it feels almost overwhelming, then his mouth is on me, warm and wet and devastating. His tongue flicks once, testing, then he licks into me with a hunger that steals every bit of air from my lungs.
He eats me as if he’s been thinking about it for weeks. I fist both hands in his hair, knuckles whitening, and the only thing in the world is his mouth, the slide of his tongue, the guttural sounds he makes as he works.
My hips come off the table. I can’t help it. He holds me down, forearm braced across my thighs, and groans when I come apart, nearly arching off the table, and he moans as though my pleasure is a meal he’s starved for.
I feel the aftershocks in my knees, my throat, my goddamn teeth, and when he finally draws back his mouth is swollen, jaw set, almost feral. He looks like he wants to do it again, to keep going until I don’t remember who or where I am.
I blink, vision rimmed with static. He kisses my inner thigh, then my knee, then stands, sliding his hands over my hips as if to keep me from floating away.
I reach for his face and pull him up to me. I taste myself on his lips, on his tongue, and instead of embarrassment, I feel a primal satisfaction. His hands squeeze my hips. We’re both breathing hard, bodies locked together as if the world might split if we come apart too quickly.
"You good?" he asks, husky and cautious at the same time.
My laugh is a cracked-open thing, still shaking. "Are you?"
His fingers slip under the hem of the sweater, hesitating at my hips like he's asking rather than taking. I nod, a short, sharp movement, and he slides it up over my ribs, up my arms, off and away. I’m left in nothing but panties and the wild shock of my hair, and I should be mortified, but there’s no room for shame in this room.
Not with his hands on my skin, mapping me like I’m a country worth warring over, not with him using his hand to pull himself free.
He doesn't even let his own pants fall. Just pushes them down enough to bare himself, to line us up. The quick jerk of his fist is all the warning I get before he tugs my panties to the side again and teases the head of his cock along where I'm still pulsing. He watches my face the whole time, every micro expression, every stutter of my breath. He seems to need the data as much as I need his hands.
"Tell me if you want me to stop," he says, and it's a command, not a courtesy.
