But all they have is now.
She lifts up on her tiptoes to press her lips against the curve of his, to know him now in every way she can.
“Knickers off this time,” she whispers, unzipping his stretchy jacket. The contrast between the stuffiness of his pin-striped pajama set and the stupefying beauty of his body is bewilderingly hot.
“Everything Now: The Ripley Adams Story,” he murmurs, amused. His breath brushes the hypersensitive spot beneath her ear. He pins her with one hand on her lower back and the other underneath her shirt, squeezing and stroking. She can feel the thick, hot push of him in a line from her lower belly to well past her navel.
“What’s wrong with that?” she asks, biting his chest through his shirt to feel him shiver.
“Fair. Knickers off,” he agrees, the words strained. “But not…not inside you.Fuck,” he says wretchedly, like he’s looking at the thing he wants most in the world from the other side of inch-thick glass. “I want to, Ripley. You have no idea how much Ifuckingwantto. But you love discovery, and I want us to have something left to discover. We don’t have to rush.”
“Patience is overrated, James.”
“That’s not what you thought last time,” he says, his voice as dark as his eyes.
“You want to win this argument? Fine, you win.” He gasps as she palms him through his shorts, pulls away with a shudder, then pushes back into her hand. His head is thrown back, neck exposed, teeth biting cruelly into his lower lip. To see him struggle for control is every bit as glorious as she’d imagined.
She’s dying to have all of him, but she’ll take what she can get. She’ll take every piece he gives her and every piece he lets slip through his fingers. She wants to watch him lose himself and know that she’s the reason.
He claims her mouth in a greedy, ransacking kiss, like he wants everything too. He fumbles behind his back, grabs his weekend bag, tosses it aside.
“Hey!” Ripley protests, spying the sketchbook on the mattress. “You’re going to ruin your—”
“I don’t care,” he says.
“Icare.” She snatches the book and lays it gently under the bed, barely muffling a shriek as he hoists her sideways across his lap, his erection jumping against her thigh. He takes the hem of her shirt and pulls it over her head. The look on his face is the best thing that’s ever happened to her, until he braces her against one solid arm and lowers his mouth. He murmurs soft things:BeautifulandI wantandI wish.He does this until she’s biting her fist, arching against the air, shaking from not getting what she needs.
“James, I—”
“Shush, my darling,” he says, his whisky voice so intoxicating,she wants to throw a match at it and watch the fumes catch fire. “Lie back.”
He lays her down like she’s worth a hundred sketchbooks of irreplaceable drawings. “Lift your pretty arse.” He throws her stripped-off shorts over his shoulder and places a pillow under her hips. Her pelvis tilts up, her thighs rolling apart. He sucks air through the fingers covering his mouth and groans a muffled series of syllables that sound absolutely fucking filthy.
“Quiet now, all right?” he whispers, his commanding tone undercut by the way his hands tremble as they slide up the insides of her thighs.
Ripley will do anything if it means he won’t stop. She’ll lie here for a thousand years, which is how long it takes for him to get down on his stomach and up on his elbows, his beautiful hands nudging her open.
His mouth makes her want to scream, but she manages to turn the sound into a tiny, breathy whimper. Every touch of his tongue is slow and thorough and meant to make things last, and she can tell it’s going to be over too fast. She wants to slow down—to stay where they are, like this, for as long as they can.
“James, I—”
“Yes, my darling. I know.” He backs off, blowing a soft stream of air at her clit, and she’s going to die from this.
“You won’t die, Ripley,” he says, sounding amused.
God, she said it out loud. “Don’t get…all cocky, Professor. It’s not that…big of a deal.”
He stifles a laugh against the inside of her thigh. “Oh, well, in that case,” he murmurs, going back to work. Her hips buck uncontrollably at the lightest touch of his tongue. He stops when she gets close again. “Too big of a deal?” he asks, pretending to be concerned.
“Goddamn it, James.” She’s a mess, her skin sheened with sweat, her voice almost a sob. His double-curved smirk is destroying her heart as thoroughly as his mouth is destroying her body.
“How I love it when you’re cross, my darling. Your cheeks get all pink, and you—”
“You conceited Britishass,” she says, reaching for his ears. “I swear to God I will—”
He holds her down with embarrassingly little effort, and then he doesn’t have to hold her down at all, because he’s sending his tongue into her again. Before she can tell him how easy it will be to push her over the edge, it’s too late.
The orgasm is obliterating, wiping out everything except his low hum of approval and a pleasure so blindingly sweet that for a long, long moment, she doesn’t know where or when she is. He stays with her, his movements soft and slow as she comes down. Every so often he pauses, shifting his weight away, then returns.
