Page 305 of A Vicious Love

I kissed the center of her chest, then lower, to the soft line beneath her ribs. Her body arched under my mouth, and I smiled against her because every sound she made felt like theft from a world that had kept her too quiet.

“You’re so responsive,” I said.

She covered her face with one hand. “Don’t say that.”

I caught her wrist and pinned it gently beside her head. “I’m going to say much worse.”

Her eyes widened.

“Because you deserve to know exactly what you do to me.”

I dragged my mouth down her stomach, tongue tracing a slow path. Her hips shifted, legs tightening around my waist again when I moved back over her.

“That’s it,” I murmured. “Hold on to me.”

Her heels pressed into my back, and the feeling of her wrapped around me, trusting me made something dark and devotional open under my ribs.

I kissed her mouth again.

“I’ll go slow,” I told her against her mouth. “Daddy’s going so slow for you, baby. I won’t rush this.”

Her fingers tightened in my hair, and the trust in that small grip made my chest ache in a way I would have mocked on any other man.

She was trying to be brave. I could see it in the way she held my gaze for a second too long before her lashes dropped. In the way she kept her hands on me even when nerves moved through her body. In the way her thighs stayed around my hips after I had told her I would only take what she gave.

Good girl.

My good fucking girl.

“I mean that,” I murmured, brushing my thumb along her cheek. “Nothing happens because I’m hard enough to lose my mind. You tell me what you want, and I listen.”

I kissed it from her cheek, then lower, slow along her throat, because I was beginning to enjoy the exact second embarrassment turned into need under my mouth.

Her head tipped back again, and I felt the surrender through her entire body.

“See?” I whispered against her neck. “So good for me.”

She made a tiny sound.

I dragged my lips down to her collarbone. “That sound, baby. I’m going to become unreasonable about that sound.”

“You’re already unreasonable.”

“True.”

Her laugh broke into a breath when my tongue traced the hollow beneath her throat. I took my time there. The taste of her was so soft, so clean, so Sienna, that my fingers tightened in the sheets beside her shoulder.

She had been in front of me for years.

Years.

Holding out that small hand, asking for a scrap of touch while I sat there too blind and vicious to understand what I was refusing.

And now she was under me, and all I could think was that I had wasted time I would never forgive myself for losing.

I kissed lower.

Her chest rose sharply when my mouth reached the top of her breast. I paused there, letting my breath warm her skin, giving her space to say something if she needed to. She said nothing. Her hand slid over my shoulder, fingers curling against my shirt.