His heart is hammering against my palm where my hand rests on his chest. It’s faster than I expected or imagined from a man who is never rattled by anything.
I look up at him.
There is something in his face I haven’t seen before. It’s not desire, though that is absolutely there, but something underneath it. Something that looks like a man asking himself a question he isn’t sure he can answer. His jaw is tight. His eyes are on mine. And in them, beneath the want and everything, something that looks remarkably like a man who is terrified of not being enough.
Of not being theright man.
Of not being whatI need.
“Hey,” I say softly.
His eyes find mine.
“I’ve got you,” I say. “I’m right here.”
Something in him exhales. His forehead drops briefly to mine, and his eyes close for just a second. When he opens them again, there is something quieter and more certain in them, the question still there, but the terror of it is reduced to something he can carry.
“I need you to feel every single second of this,” he says, low and direct. “I’ve been wanting you for so long, Sophia.”
“Then have me,” I say.
His mouth finds my neck and breasts, beginning to travel, slowly and deliberately, his lips and tongue tracing a path down my stomach that makes my muscles contract beneath him. My hands move from his hair to the sheets because I need something to hold onto.
“Tate…”
“Let me,” he says against my skin. “Let me have you. I want to taste you. I need your scent on my tongue.” His mouth presses against the inside of my thigh, and I gasp. “You’re so fuckin’ perfect, Sophia. God, you do things to me no one else ever has.”
The words move through me like a current.
And then his mouth is where I need it most.
I stop breathing entirely.
His hands spread across my hips, holding me steady, completely certain, and his mouth moves against me with that same relentless, unhurried patience he gives to everything. He reads every sound, sharp intake of breath, and involuntary lift of my hips toward him.
“Tate, I can’t…”
“Yes, you can.” His response is low and commanding. “Give it to me.”
His tongue keeps moving, steady, building, and when his fingers push inside me slowly, I cry out, my hands gripping his hair, my back arching off the mattress.
“You’re so wet,” he breathes out against me. “You taste incredible, Sophia. Absolutely incredible.”
“Tate,please…”
“Let go,” he says. “I want to feel you let go.”
His fingers curl, and his tongue moves. I shatter completely and entirely, his name torn from my throat, my whole body shaking through wave after wave while he keeps going, drawing every last tremor out of me until I have nothing left.
I am lying there afterward, breathing hard and feeling genuinely, completely light.
He slowly moves back up my body, pressing his lips to my stomach, ribs, and collarbone, as if he is in no hurry to be done with any part of me, and lies over me on his forearms, his eyes finding mine.
“Hey,” he says quietly.
“Hey,” I manage back.
His eyes move over my face, completely open in a way I have never seen from him before. Unguarded and entirely his.
