"Every other time, we were running from something or toward something. Tonight we're here." He looks up at me with steady, focused heat and nowhere to be behind it. "I want to take my time."
"And if I don't want you to take your time?"
"Then you can try to rush me." The corner of his mouth lifts. "I'd enjoy watching that."
"Is that a challenge?"
"It's an invitation."
He starts with my boots, pulling them off and setting them beside the bed. Then my jeans, his fingers working the button and zipper with the same efficiency he brings to a bull rope. He slides the denim down my legs and drops it on the floor, and hishands trace back up, palms flat against my calves, the outside of my thighs, the curve of my hips.
"Lift up."
I lift. He pulls my shirt over my head, and I'm left in my bra on his bed.
"You're staring, Holloway."
"I'm admiring. There's a difference."
"Is this the plan? Admiring?"
"This is the overture. The plan comes later."
"An overture. You're full of surprises."
"You have no idea." He unhooks my bra with one hand, and the fabric falls away. His mouth finds the curve of my neck, and the sound I make is involuntary and completely undignified and I don't care even slightly.
He is thorough. Slow and intent and touching everything with the focus of someone cataloging what he's been given and refusing to miss a detail.
His mouth maps a path from my throat to my collarbone to the space between my breasts, and his hands hold my hips still when I try to arch into him, pinning me to the mattress with a pressure that's immovable.
He takes one nipple into his mouth, and the flat of his tongue drags across the peak slow enough to make me hiss through my teeth. He gives the other the same attention, working each one until they're swollen and sensitive and every brush of his lips sends a current straight down through the center of me.
"Colt. Please."
"Not yet."
"You keep saying that."
"And you keep trying to rush." He lifts his head, and the look in his eyes has enough heat to char timber. "Let me have this."
"You're enjoying this."
"Immensely."
"You're enjoying making me beg."
"I'm enjoying making you wait. The begging is a bonus."
His mouth moves lower, down the plane of my stomach, teeth grazing my hip bone, tongue tracing the hollow beneath it.
He presses his mouth to the inside of my knee, then works higher, the inside of my thigh, higher still, his breath warm against skin that's already oversensitive. I can feel the cruelty of his pace in the way my hips try to lift toward him and his hands hold them flat.
"Colt, if you don't?—"
"Patience."
"I'm going to kill you."
