“Use your words if that changes.”
“It won’t.”
“It might. That’s why you tell me.”
That should not have turned me on as much as it did. The pause. The check. The fact that control with him always had a door I could open from the inside.
“Green,” I said again, steadier.
He turned me around.
My palms hit the counter. He stepped in behind me, big and warm, and pressed the hard line of his cock against my ass through my sweats. My breath left in a stupid, broken sound. He rocked once, slow, making me feel exactly what I’d asked for and exactly how little patience he had left for my little performance.
“You came in here vibrating out of your skin,” he said near my ear. “Instead of asking for what you needed, you decided to be a brat in my kitchen.”
I gripped the counter. “Maybe I needed both.”
His hand slid over my stomach, fingers spread, holding me against him. “Then you say that.”
“I need both.”
He went quiet behind me for one second.
Then his mouth touched the side of my neck.
“Better.”
My knees almost unlocked.
He kissed under my jaw, teeth grazing skin, then released me long enough to tug my sweats down. My underwear went with them. Cool air hit my thighs, then his hands were on me, spreading me open.
“Declan,” I said, already wrecked and embarrassed by how fast I got there.
“Stay on your feet.”
Then he went down behind me.
The first touch of his mouth made my forehead drop toward the cabinet in front of me. He gripped my hips and pulled me back into him, beard scraping the backs of my thighs, tongue hot and deliberate as he licked over me.
My thoughts shattered.
Not disappeared. Not cured. Nothing that clean. But they lost their edges. The list, the legal names, the ownership meeting, the future, all of it got pushed back by sensation so specific I couldn’t outrun it. His hands held me open while his mouth worked me with filthy patience, licking and sucking until my shoulders shook from the effort of staying upright.
“Fuck,” I gasped. “Declan.”
He hummed against me.
My hips jerked. He held them still.
That was the part that broke me fastest. Not being forced. Being held. Being given one instruction simple enough to follow when the rest of my life had become too complicated to touch.
Stay on your feet.
I stayed.
He pushed his tongue inside me and I made a sound I would have denied in court. My cock was so hard it hurt, trapped against nothing, leaking onto the lower cabinet. I tried to move back, tried to get more, and his grip tightened in warning.
“Please,” I said.
