He began with the same deliberate care as every other part of him—the kisses at the thigh, at the mound, at the soft cleft, then at the lips, then at the place where the lips met, then, finally, a long sweep of his tongue up the seam and over the clit. The tongue was hot. Inhumanly hot.
I bucked.
He held me down with his hands at my hips.
He licked again, more deliberately. Then circled with the tongue, then flicked, then returned to the long sweep, as if studying every stroke, learning every response, logging the feedback like a chemist.
It was too much.
I tried to deflect. “You don’t have to—”
He stopped.
He lifted his face. The lower half of it glistened. His golden irises were molten.
“Maria. What did the contract say.”
I could not catch my breath.
He waited.
“It said—” I stammered. “Praised without flinching. I want to be touched without apology. I want—”
“You want to be worshipped, baby.”
I nodded.
“You are going to let yourself be worshipped.”
I nodded again.
He buried his mouth in me.
Without the earlier sweep, the tongue was insistent, parting me, working into the heat, into the slick, into the wet that had gathered over two days and one night and all those years of wanting. He licked into the channel, then sucked on the clit, hard, and the sound I made echoed in the chamber.
He pressed a finger at the entrance.
He looked up. “May I enter you?”
“Yes,” I said. “Please, yes.”
He eased one finger inside. Then another.
I bucked again. This time, he allowed my hips to rise, then set his free hand at my lower belly and pressed, working the fingers up and into the slick, then the tongue again, the mouth and the hand and the voice all combining in the worship, in the thing I had not known could be for me.
The well’s light went white.
It was not just the well. The bond at my wrist was a physical band now, tight and alive, braided in red and white and gold, and at my breastbone, just where his hand had pressed, the sigil flared through the skin in a white-hot star.
He took me up to the edge.
He waited until I had begged for it. Not once, but three times, as though he needed the muscle to be trained to ask for what it wanted.
“Please,” I said. “Please, Daddy, please let me—”
He flicked the tongue over the clit in a way that was almost cruel.
“Again,” he said.
