Page 22

“Yes.”

I turn my head. He is standing beside the bed, shirt still on, sleeves still rolled, honey dipper in his hand, looking at me with an expression of absolute focused intent.

“The sheets,” I say. “It’s going to get the sheets sticky.”

He looks at the dipper. Looks at the sheets. Looks at me. His jaw tightens in the way it does when two parts of him are having an argument and one of them is winning decisively.

“I will change the sheets.”

“But, you’re meticulous about—”

“I will change the sheets,” he repeats, and there is something in his voice that tells me Silas Lowe has decided that honey on his Frette sheets is an acceptable cost for what’s about to happen.

I face forward. My heart is hammering. I feel exposed and electric and so turned on that my arms are trembling slightly and I press my palms into the mattress to steady them.

The first drizzle of honey lands on my lower back.

It’s warm. Body temperature, maybe slightly above, thick and slow, trailing down the curve of my spine in a line that I can feel with every nerve. It pools in the small of my back.

I hear him set the dipper down.

His hand. Palm flat against my lower back, spreading the honey across my skin, slow and deliberate. The friction of his palm through the slickness. Warm and thick. My elbows nearly buckle.

“You are shaking,” he observes.

“I’m aware.”

“Should I stop?”

“If you stop I will genuinely lose my mind.”

More honey. He drizzles it lower. Over the curve of my ass. It runs down the crease and I jolt when I feel the warm trail reach sensitive skin and his hand is there, following the honey, spreading it, his palm sliding over my ass and then lower, fingers slipping between my thighs, pressing the warm stickiness against me, spreading it over me, and the sound I make is not something I would repeat in public.

“Beautiful,” he says, and his voice is barely a voice. It’s smoke and gravel. “The way the light catches the honey on your skin. I want to remember this for the rest of my life.”

His mouth lands on my lower back.

I gasp. His tongue. Slow. Flat and warm and deliberate, tracing the honey off my skin in long strokes, tasting me and the sweetness together, and I feel his breath and his lips and the faint scrape of his teeth and my back arches involuntarily and I press my face into the mattress.

He works his way down. Each lick deliberate. He is eating honey off my body and I am coming apart under his mouth one vertebra at a time.

His hands grip my hips. Hold me steady. His mouth reaches the base of my spine, the curve where my back meets my ass, and he pauses there, and I feel his breath and then his tongue and then he moves lower.

Lower.

His tongue slides through the honey he spread between my thighs and when his mouth finds me I make a sound that is not a word. His tongue is hot and slick and he licks my clit with the same unhurried precision he gives to everything and I am gripping the sheets and my thighs are shaking and I hear myself say his name like a prayer.

He pushes his tongue inside me. I cry out. My back arches so hard my chest drops to the mattress and he follows me down, his hands spreading me open, his mouth relentless, licking the honey and my arousal together, and I can feel every nerve ending I possess converging to a single point.

Then he goes higher.

His tongue traces up. Past where I expect him to stop. Over skin I have never felt a mouth on. His tongue, flat and hot and slow, drags over the most sensitive place and I am not prepared and the sensation is so thrilling and so foreign that I nearly collapse.

“Oh my God.” My voice doesn’t sound like mine. My toes curl. My back arches so hard it hurts. Stars, actual visual interference, bloom behind my eyelids. “Silas, I’ve never… I haven’t…”

“I know,” he says against my skin, and his voice vibrates through me. “Let me.”

He licks me again. Slow. Gentle. Savoring. My entire body is a live wire and I am shaking so hard the bed moves and his hands hold me in place and his tongue does something deliberate and specific and patient and I am going to pass out. I am genuinely going to lose consciousness in this man’s bed with honey on my body and his mouth on me and the lights behind my eyes are going white.