“What?” Her hand goes to her lips, embarrassed.
“That trembling business. Stop it.”
Dez grimaces. “We’re not shooting a scene, Rafe. You can’t direct how I cry.”
“This is not an aesthetic preference. It’s self-preservation.”
“Excuse me?” She crosses her arms over her chest, her elbows jutting into his very taut abs.
“Your mouth is driving me crazy, and I swear if you draw any more attention to it—”
“What’s wrong with my mouth?”
“It’s too fucking sweet,” he says, annunciating every syllable.
Dez opens her mouth, closes it. She feels Rafe’s eyes watching these motions like he’s hungry, like she’s his favorite kind of feast. He lets out a soft, frustrated moan that sends a targeted bolt of heat right to Dez’s core.
He’s given her no choice. She grabs his shirt and pulls him to her, pressing her objectionable lips to his. Serves him right.
And serves her right, too. Because the way Rafe kisses her back—his mouth hot and firm and pliant, his teeth toying with her lower lip, and his hands so firmly tangled in her hair, then around her neck—it changes Dez on a cellular level.
His kiss is strong, knowing exactly what it wants. The precise right amount of pressure, the heat of his tongue exactly where she wants it in exactly the right dose, the way his face fits against hers as she tips her head back and moans.
Who kisses like this? Who’s this fucking good at kissing?
He’s cast a spell on her, put her in a kind of ecstatic trance, so it takes her a white-hot thirty seconds to ask the all-important question:
What the hell is she doing, kissing her mentor?
She pulls away, her hands on his chest as she glares at him and gasps for air. She’s furious that he’s gotten her so turned on. And she finds in his eyes the exact same accusation, the same exact fury and desire.
Interesting.
“Fuck it, it’s fine,” Rafe says, his voice breathy and short as he pulls Dez back to him and kisses her deeply again, and again, and again. His mouth is intoxicating, his hands, firm on her back, decadent and thrillingly possessive.
So, they’re doing this. She might as well enjoy it.
She slides her hands up his chest, grips his shoulders and pulls her body to his. He tears at the neckline of her white button-down shirt, popping buttons, liberating her breasts.
“No bra,” he says with obvious relish as he dips his head and draws her to his mouth. He sucks her nipple firmly. She cries out in pain and pleasure, pulling his hair until she makes him do the same. She hikes a leg around his waist, pleased when he responds by deftly lifting her up, so that the heat of him is right against the heat of her, and God, he’s hard and fucking huge.
“You’ve been thinking about my mouth?” she teases as his tongue circles her areola.
“On an endless loop.”
“What is it,” she gasps, hips writhing against his—the friction agonizing and insane—“about my innocent mouth that tortures you?”
“It’s not innocent in my fantasies,” he says with a shuddering breath. “It gets in all kinds of trouble.”
“I’m going to need examples.” She lowers her leg to climb off him, only so that she can climb onto him better from the bed. She tugs him with her, needing to be horizontal with this man, his muscles, and his mouth.
“In my fantasies,” he says, his voice breathy and hot, “the way you suck dick is unholy.”
“Well, let’s see about that.” Dez pulls the duvet back and climbs onto the sheets, her hand at the waist of Rafe’s pants, like she owns what’s inside there, like she knows how good it is. Desire has never made her so bold before.
She licks her lips, eager to show him what she can do.
She gets only the first button undone, glimpses the dark hair beneath his navel that she longs to put her mouth to, before Rafe steps away, forcing distance between their bodies.
