I swallow hard. How do you even begin this conversation? Hey, just so you know, I've spent my entire life on parental lockdown and never been touched by a man. Never been allowed the courtesy of any toys.
"I haven't..." I groan. "This is my first."
His hand stills. "You're a virgin."
It's not a question. He starts to rise off me, and I grab his wrist.
"Don't." It comes out stronger than I expect. Not desperate. Certain. "Don't you dare. I didn't sneak out of a tower to be treated like glass."
He exhales hard, a quiet curse under his breath, and his face is pure war. I can see it. The decent part of him that says stop, fighting the part that has me pinned to a hotel bed in my underwear.
I sit up. Close the distance. Press my mouth to the corner of his jaw, right where the beard ends and bare skin begins.
"I chose this," I whisper against his skin. "I chose you. Don't take that from me."
Something shifts in his eyes. He's quiet for a long moment.
"You should know I'm not the kind of man who does promises," he says. "I can't be a boyfriend, Elle. This is just tonight. No strings."
"I didn't come here for a promise." I pull back enough to look him in the eye. "I came here to feel alive."
That earns me the ghost of a smile. The kind that feels like winning something dangerous.
He closes the distance again. Slower now. His kiss isn't rushed; it's intentional. Like he's rewriting the terms.
His hands resume their exploration, careful and devastating. He unclasps my bra, tosses it aside, and dips his head to take a nipple into his mouth.
"Oh God." I clutch his hair. Silver strands between my fingers.
The scrape of his beard against the swell of my breast sends sparks down my spine, pooling low and hot in my belly. He sucks harder, then softer, then grazes his teeth across the peak, and I arch off the bed like something's short-circuiting in my nervous system.
His fingers return between my legs, gentler now, circling my entrance until I'm rocking against his hand without shame.
One finger slides inside. Slow. There's a brief sting that makes me wince, but he's patient, working me with a focus that borders on worship. When he adds a second, I moan, hips lifting to chase the stretch.
"That's it," he murmurs. "You're doing so good."
His words burn through me. No one has ever talked to me like this. No one has ever touched me like I'm something worth being careful with and destroyed by in the same breath.
Then he shifts lower on the bed. Between my legs. His hands grip my hips and drag me to the edge.
The first stroke of his tongue has me crying out so loud my hand flies to my own mouth.
"Don't." He pulls my hand away. "I want to hear you."
His tongue circles my clit, teasing, learning, before flattening against it in a way that makes my vision go white. And his beard. Oh God, his beard. The soft scrape of it against my inner thighs is its own form of torture, rough and tender at the same time, a contrast my body doesn't know how to process except by shaking.
His fingers work inside me while his mouth drives me higher. The tension builds like a live wire coiling through every limb, pulling tighter and tighter until I can't breathe, can't think, can't do anything except exist inside the sensation.
"I can't," I pant. "It's too much."
He lifts his head just enough to say, "It gets better," and then his tongue presses flat and firm and relentless, and I stop being a person and become a sound.
The orgasm doesn't build. It detonates.
My back arches, my fists twist the sheets, and I come so hard the room goes dark at the edges. He doesn't stop. Just holdsme open and works me through every wave until I'm boneless, trembling, barely coherent.
I'm still shaking when I hear foil tearing. Through hazy eyes I watch him strip off his pants and roll on a condom. His cock is thick enough that my brain short-circuits for a completely different reason.
