Page 45

He carried me through the library doorway and into the hall. The movement should have made me feel ridiculous. I was a grown woman being carried down a hallway by the man who had turned my life into a controlled environment study, my legs wrapped around him like I’d forgotten all common sense. The worst part was not that I let him. It was that I tightened my hold when he shifted me higher.

His mouth brushed my ear. “Still thinking?”

“Unfortunately.”

“That sounds exhausting.”

“It is.” I dragged my teeth lightly along the side of his neck because I needed him to be affected too. I needed evidence that I wasn’t the only person making horrific decisions in real time. “You should try it sometime.”

He briefly shifted his hold on me so that he could slap my ass. I gasped before I could stop the sound from leaving my lips. I looked up and noticed him smirking at my reaction. “You liked that. Good to know.”

“Don’t get a bigger head,” I said.

“Too late. And something with a head is about to get even bigger.”

Before I could throw back another retort, I realized he’d walked into his room and was in the process of using his foot to close the door behind him. He tossed me on his bed before walking back to lock the door.

The lock clicked into place and my stomach dropped in a way that had nothing to do with fear. I was on the bed—his bed—in the room I’d stood in a couple of weeks ago pretending it held no interest to me.

Cain turned around slowly. He didn’t rush toward me as if he was about to maul me alive. He stood at the foot of the bed and looked at me the way he’d looked at me across the conference table during the Wiles and Co. call. It was as if he was studying me or trying to paint a picture with his eyes because he didn’t believe I was here, on his bed.

As if something clicked in his mind, he dropped down to his knees and pushed my legs apart. His hands slid up my thighs, slow enough that every nerve ending had time to come online. The dress I’d put on this morning was pushed up around my waist as his mouth moved closer to my center. I watched, transfixed, as he pulled my underwear down my legs slowly, his eyes never leaving mine.

“Cain,” I whispered, not sure if I was protesting or pleading to him.

He didn’t answer with words. Instead, he placed a kiss on the inside of my thigh, then another, each one higher than the last. My fingers twisted in the duvet beneath me as anticipation built to an almost unbearable degree.

When his mouth finally made contact with my pussy, I couldn’t suppress the moan that escaped me. His tongue moved like a thing of beauty, finding exactly where I needed him most. The sensation was so intense that my hips lifted involuntarily, seeking more contact with his mouth.

He worked me slowly, methodically, as if he had all the time in the world and intended to use every second of it. When he added a finger to the mix, I felt myself spiraling out of control. The rhythm he kept was relentless and before I knew it he’d added another finger and then another.

The stretch was almost too much, almost not enough, and the sound that left my throat was obscene in the quietness of his bedroom.

“Look at me,” he said and I swear it almost came out as a growl. It only turned me on further.

I didn’t want to because looking at him meant acknowledging that this was Cain, that his mouth was between my legs, that I had stopped fighting this particular war. However, my eyes found his anyway, because apparently my body had stopped taking orders from the part of my brain that knew better.

His gaze held mine as his tongue found that spot again, and I felt the orgasm building in my lower belly. I grabbed his hair, not sure if I was pulling him closer or trying to pull him off, and his fingers curled inside me at the angle that made my vision blur.

“Cain, I⁠—”

I couldn’t finish the sentence. The words dissolved into nothing as he added pressure with his thumb against my clit while his fingers continued to work their magic. My back arched off the bed and my grip on his hair tightened involuntarily. The orgasm hit me like a freight train and I was so relieved to finally have crossed that bridge.

My body clenched around his fingers as wave after wave of pleasure crashed through me. And then, something I’d never experienced before. I felt myself release in a way that left the sheets beneath me soaked. The sensation was so intense, so unexpected, that a sound tore from my throat that didn’t even sound human.

Cain didn’t pull away. His tongue continued its gentle circles, continuing the aftershocks until I was trembling uncontrollably. When he finally rose from the place where he’d made his home, his chin glistened with my juices and his eyes were dark with something I refused to name. He shifted the dress out of his way as he moved up my body, slowly planting kisses along the inside of my thigh, my hip, my stomach, the curve of my breast. Each point of contact felt like a brand, marking me as his.

“You came so hard, little lamb,” he said against my collarbone. “I felt you everywhere.”

I couldn’t respond because I was still processing the fact that my body was still pulsing, still floating in that hazy aftermath where thoughts refused to form coherent sentences. Cain Ashcroft had just made me squirt all over his bed.

He took my silence as an invitation to continue. His hand traced a path from my hip to my breast, and I shivered as he cupped it. When he kissed me again, I tasted myself on his lips and couldn’t bring myself to care.

“You’re beautiful like this,” he murmured against my mouth. He’d moved his hands away from me and was unzipping his slacks to free himself to take me. His cock was hard and throbbing against my thigh. I reached down and wrapped my fingers around him and gave a small smile at his reaction.

Cain took a deep breath and the only thing he could say was, “Sutton.”

I stroked him once, and then again. “You don’t get to have all the control,” I whispered.