He answered with a low, deliberate look, dark and steady, before he lowered his mouth to my center.
His shoulders were broad under my calves, steady as the rest of him, and he held me there like I weighed nothing.
The shock of it ran parallel to the shock of his tongue—firm, unhurried, knowing exactly where to press and circle and pause until my hips jerked against the wall.
He made a sound against me, approval or encouragement, and his fingers dug into the backs of my thighs, holding me open,holding meup. I pressed the heel of my palm to my own mouth, breath coming in thin, broken rhythms, because he was still so controlled, still so careful, and I was coming undone anyway.
“Mine.”
The word was a growl against my skin, and the vibration of it sent a tremor through my thighs. He pulled back just long enough to look up at me, his eyes deep blue in the dim light, his mouth slick, his breath hot with sweet mint, and the hunger he was still trying to control unraveled me completely.
Then he was moving.
Still holding me, still buried between my legs, he pushed off from the wall and carried me down the hall.
“Left,” I managed.
“I’ve got it.” He didn’t lift his head. The man had mapped my hallway with his mouth full.
The bedroom door was half-open.
He shouldered through it without breaking rhythm, and when the backs of my knees hit the mattress, he eased me down.
For one suspended second, nothing moved except the rise and fall of his chest.
At the foot of the bed, he watched me sprawled across the sheets with my dress open and my thighs still trembling. His hands found his belt. The metal clinked.
“Knees,” he said, low and calm. “Hands on the bed.”
I didn't think. I just moved, crawling back on the mattress until I could turn and kneel facing him, the dress pooling around my hips. My hair fell across my face. I didn't push it away.
Nick undressed without hurry and without hesitation, shirt first, then slacks, then the last thin barrier between patience and everything after. When he came onto the bed, he looked like a man who had already decided exactly how he wanted me. His hands found my waist, turned me, pulled me back against his chest so my spine curved into him and my head fell against hisshoulder. One arm banded across my ribs, holding me upright. The other hand slid between my legs.
"You're shaking," he said against my ear.
“You’re—” I couldn’t finish. His fingers found where his mouth had been, slow and certain, and I bucked forward into nothing. He caught me, arm tightening, and began to move his hand in a rhythm that had no mercy in it.
“Tell me you’re mine,” he murmured. His thumb circled, and my vision blurred at the edges. “Let me hear you.”
I turned my face into his neck, bit down on the tendon there just to keep from screaming. “Yours.”
He pushed deeper. “Again.”
“Yours.”
He turned my head with his free hand, kissed me once, hard enough to steal the sound out of my throat, and then his fingers left me empty. I made a sound I didn't recognize.
“Good,” he said, and laid me back on the pillows. “Now stay there.”
He caught the hem of my dress and dragged it up slowly, not because the fabric required patience, but because apparently he did. The silk whispered over my ribs, my breasts, my arms, and then it was gone, tossed somewhere near the foot of the bed with the rest of my ability to appear composed.
His gaze stopped.
The black lace had been for him. All of it.
Nick’s hand closed around my ankle.
“For me?”
