And then she pulls, slow enough to drive me insane, slow enough for me to feel every brush of her knuckles, every inch of space disappearing between us. I’m bare and coiled like a spring with anticipation.
Sloane just looks at me for a second, her pupils are huge, and her cheeks are glowing with morning light. Thenshe’s kissing down my belly, over the tattoo on my ribs she once traced a thousand times. Lower and lower until her mouth finally finds me.
The world ends. Or starts over, I can’t tell. She has always known exactly how to touch, how to tease, how to make it so I forget who or where I am. I let go. All of me. I cry out, and she’s so, so proud. Her smugness makes me want her even more. I fist the sheets, clamping a hand over my mouth because it’s a habit I’ve formed since sharing an apartment with other people, but she grabs my wrist and tugs it away, like she wants to hear all of it, every embarrassing, desperate sound I make.
“Don’t hide from me,” she says between kisses, and I don’t.
After I’m limp and shaking, Sloane crawls up beside me and pulls me tight against her chest. I can hear the steady thump of her heart in my ear. We stay like that for a while, breathing in sync, until my brain stitches itself back together.
She tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. “Was that too fast? Are you okay?” Her voice is hoarse.
I smile and roll on top of her, pinning her with my hips. She yelps, shocked, and I kiss her mouth with the taste of me still on her tongue.
“My turn,” I say, and her grin is so wild it’s almost feral.
22
Sloane
“My turn,” she says with a grin that is pure lust. “I need to feel you,” she murmurs, voice a little ragged from sleep and sex. “I need to taste you. It’s been too long.”
Her hands are hot on my wrists, braced beside my head, and her thighs clamp around my hips like she’s worried I’ll escape if she lets up. I could, in theory. I could roll her right back, wrestle her for top spot, but I don’t. I let her anchor me to the mattress, because in this weird, tangled moment, I think we both need it. Needthe certainty, the yes-this-is-happening of it, and also the oh-my-god-please-don’t-ever-leave-again of it.
My soul is burning for her. Eden looks at me like she’s seeing me for the first time. Every inch. Her eyes are dark and laser-focused, and her mouth is just a little bit open as she slides down my body.
It’s so surreal I almost start laughing. But then she bites down—gently, but enough to let me know she means it—on the spot just below my collarbone, and the laugh turns into a gasp, then a moan.
“Jesus,” I whisper.
“I want to know if you still taste the same,” Eden says, and the way she says it, low and playful, with a thread of pure need woven in, my heart rattles against my ribcage.
I arch my back, offering up the rest of me. Eden gets the hint and works her way down, lips pressing, tongue tracing, teeth grazing but never quite marking. She slides her hands under my back and kneads at the muscle there, which would be distracting if her mouth wasn’t zeroed in on my nipple, tugging it in a way that has my eyes squeezing shut.
I can’t decide if I want to be louder or quieter, so I settle for breathing through my teeth and letting my hands tangle in her hair. She moves lower, her cheek scrapingalong my abs, her tongue hot and slow as it circles my belly button, then lower still.
It hits me, out of nowhere, how much I trust her. That she could break me right now, could drop me from a hundred feet up and I’d thank her for it. The truth of that makes my eyes sting.
Eden pauses right above where I want her, pressing a slow, almost reverent kiss to my inner thigh. She tilts her head upward, meeting my gaze. The dim morning light seeps through the thin curtain, casting a warm glow across the room.
“Hey,” she says with a soft voice. “You still with me?”
I nod. Too choked up to speak, but definitely present.
She smiles, all warmth and mischief. “Good.”
She runs a palm up my thigh, fingers splaying as she nudges my knees farther apart. Every muscle in my body goes liquid. Eden starts kissing her way up, slow as hell, teasing, until I’m about to scream.
I dig my fingers into the sheets, maybe to anchor myself, maybe to keep from grabbing her too hard. She licks me once, a taste-test, and the sound I make is totally humiliating, but I don’t care. She does it again, slower, and I see stars behind my eyelids. She’s relentless—not in a bruising, conquering way, but in the way a wave grinds a rockdown over years: patient, focused, inevitable. She knows exactly how to break me.
When her tongue finally slips inside, I let out a full-throated moan. I’m shaking, and she’s barely started. Then her hand comes up, two fingers sliding in alongside her tongue, easy and smooth, and I lose track of everything but the hot, thick pleasure that’s building between my hips. She curls her fingers, presses, and I nearly come on the spot.
“Fuck, Ed—”
“Not yet,” she murmurs, lips never leaving me, and the vibration of her voice makes everything more intense.
It’s a goddamn symphony, the way she works me. She never misses a beat, and when she wants to, she knows how to slow it, then ramp it up until I’m on the edge, nearly sobbing with how good it feels. When she adds a third finger, I nearly black out. She works them in, careful but deliberate, and my body arches so hard I think my spine will snap. She holds on, steady, grounding me with her free hand against my hip.
It’s too much, but I want more, and she knows that, too. She speeds up, then slows, then teases, determined to push me beyond my limit, and every single time I think I’ve hit the limit, she proves me wrong. My hands grip her shoulders, and when I finally look down, she’s got her eyeson me, unblinking, waiting, deciding the exact moment she will let me come apart.
