I covered her hand with mine. "Don't thank me yet," I said. "I'm not done with you tonight."
She laughed, low and warm against my ribs, and I felt it settle somewhere inside me like something coming home, and outside Chicago was dark and cold and neither of us were thinking about any of it at all.
CHAPTER 13
CECILIA
I'd been kissed by boys before.
I understood that now in a way I hadn't the night before, because there was absolutely no comparison between the fumbling attempts of boys who didn't know what they were doing and waking up in the warm dark with Constantine's mouth on my neck and his hands moving over my body like he'd been studying me and intended to use everything he'd learned.
I hadn't even fully surfaced from sleep before my body was already ahead of me, already responding to his touch with a certainty that bypassed thinking entirely. His fingers slid between my thighs and touched me where the only person to go before was me, and I made a sound into the pillow that I had no interest in managing.
"Good morning, amore." His voice was low and rough with sleep against my ear, and I felt it everywhere.
"Is it morning?" I managed.
"Just." He pressed his mouth to the curve of my shoulder. "Go back to sleep if you want."
"Don't you dare stop," I said, and felt him laugh against my skin.
He didn't stop.
"You're beautiful," he said as he moved down my body, unhurried, like a man with no competing interests in the world. He settled between my thighs and looked up at me once before he lowered his head and his tongue found my clit and the touch on that sensitive spot made me buck my hips hard, which only made him press harder, and I gripped the sheets with both hands and stopped pretending I had any dignity left to protect.
It was getting genuinely difficult to breathe when he slid a finger into me, and then a second, and moved them in a way that made my vision go white at the edges.
"Con, please." I couldn't manage his whole name. I didn't have the brain cells for it. Why had anyone ever told me this was something to be afraid of? Was it wrong to feel this extraordinary? The thought dissolved immediately because he crooked his fingers and found a place inside me that made coherent thought completely impossible.
My breaths were shallow and the familiar buildup of my climax was washing over me in waves and I stopped fighting it, stopped managing it, just let it come. Constantine moved his fingers against that spot and I gave into the moment with total surrender, my body spasming around him while I ran my hands through his dark hair and groaned his name, and another wave exploded through me before the first one had finished.
He slid up my body while I was still shaking, keeping his fingers moving slowly, drawing out every last tremor. "That's it, baby. Are you ready for more?"
"Yes," I said, without any hesitation whatsoever.
He looked at me with dark eyes and a smile that was doing things to me that had nothing to do with his hands. "Have you ever tasted yourself, CeCe?"
I shook my head because finding the word no required resources I didn't currently have, and then he drew his fingersaway and pressed them gently against my lips and I opened my mouth and he slid them in and I tasted myself on his fingers and heard him make a low sound deep in his chest that told me the effect was entirely mutual.
"Good, isn't it?" I didn't need to open my eyes to know he was smiling. I could hear it.
He pulled his hand away and shifted on the bed. "Open your eyes."
I did, and looked down at him, and my entire nervous system made a collective decision that last night had not been nearly enough. He watched my face with the focused attention he gave everything and rubbed the crown of his shaft slowly between my legs and I felt my hips tilt toward him of their own accord.
I wanted to touch him. I reached for his chest, the tattoo I'd been meaning to ask about since I first saw it, tracing the lines of it with my fingertips while he watched me do it with an expression that was heat and patience in equal measure.
"Con," I said.
"Yeah."
"I want you." I held his gaze when I said it, the way I'd held his gaze last night when I'd told him the other thing, because this man deserved directness and I was done being afraid of my own wants. "Now. Please."
Something moved across his face that I was going to spend a long time learning to read. He pressed into me slowly, watching me the whole way, and this time there was no pain, just the extraordinary feeling of being completely filled by him, and I exhaled on a long slow breath and felt him shudder slightly above me at the sound of it.
"God, CeCe," he said against my mouth. "You're going to be the end of me."
"Good," I said, and pulled him down to me.
