“I might?—”
“Might what.”
“I think I might be close already and you haven’t even?—”
He smiled against my skin. “That’s not a problem.”
“It’s embarrassing.”
“It’s not.”
He moved his mouth down. Across my stomach, slow, kissing each rib. My breath was coming in short. I’d never been touched like this. Slowly, deliberately, like every inch of me deserved theattention. My eyes were closed and my hand was in his hair and I was no longer a woman who read books on couches. I was a woman on a bedroll on a flat rock by a river, half-naked, with a man’s mouth on her stomach, and I was going to come because of it.
He got to the button of my shorts. He looked up at me.
“Yes,” I said before he asked.
He undid the button. Drew the zipper down. He hooked his fingers in the waistband and slid the shorts down my hips, slow enough that I had time to lift them, slow enough that I could have stopped him at any second. He took my underwear with them. He dropped both onto the blanket, and then he was kneeling between my legs, fully dressed himself, looking down at me.
I lay there on his blanket with the sun on my skin and a man between my knees who was looking at me like I was the only thing in the world. I had no idea who this woman was, but I liked her.
“You’re beautiful,” he said.
“You said that already.”
“I’m going to keep saying it.”
He lowered himself down. He kissed the inside of my thigh. The other thigh. He took his time. When his mouth finally moved to where I needed him to be, I made a sound that wasn’t a word, and he made one back, and his hands wrapped around my hips and held me still, and I lost track of everything.
His tongue was slow at first, teasing, exploring every slick fold like he wanted to memorize me. Then he found my clit and latched on with perfect, steady pressure—hot, wet, and relentless.
Heat exploded low in my belly and rushed outward in pulsing waves. My back arched sharply off the blanket as my thighs started to shake. I gripped the bedroll on either side of myhead, knuckles white, while desperate, broken sounds I barely recognized poured from my throat.
“Ross—”
“Mmm?” The vibration against my swollen clit made me cry out.
“I—I can’t?—”
“You can. Let go, Sunnie.”
He didn’t change a thing—just kept that same devastating rhythm, sucking and licking until the pressure coiled tighter and tighter inside me. My inner walls fluttered and clenched around nothing. My breath came in sharp, frantic gasps. Every nerve in my body pulled taut until I felt like I might snap.
Then it broke.
A devastating wave of pleasure crashed through me. My entire body bowed violently as I came hard, pulsing and flooding against his mouth. I cried out loud enough to scare every bird along the river, my thighs clamping around his head while spasms ripped through me again and again. Ross held my hips down firmly, never stopping, drinking every twitch and flutter until the pleasure finally ebbed and left me limp, trembling, and gasping.
When I floated back down, my body was still twitching with aftershocks. He pressed one soft kiss to the inside of my thigh, then climbed up and gathered me against his chest. I buried my face in his shoulder, breathing in soap, coffee, and warm male skin, my heart still hammering.
“That was…” I whispered.
“Yeah,” he murmured, the low rumble of his voice vibrating against me.
After a long, hazy minute, I pushed away and looked at him, desire already stirring again. “You’re still wearing clothes. That’s not fair.”
A slow smile curved his lips. “I was getting to it.”
“I want to see you,” I said, voice husky. “All of you.”
