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“Say yes,” I say.

“I’m not performing for you.”

“Not asking for a performance,” I say. “Asking for a yes.”

She holds my gaze. Then she crosses the room, stops in front of me, reaches down, wraps her hand around my cock through my pants, and squeezes. Hard. Her eyes don’t move from mine.

“There’s your yes,” she says.

I go hard fast. She can feel it, her hand still there, and she doesn’t move it, just holds me through the fabric while I get fully stiff against her palm. She squeezes again, slower this time, a long drag of pressure from base to tip, and my jaw tightens. She’s watching my face, looking for the reaction, and she’s getting it whether I want her to or not. I reach down and cover her hand with mine, press it harder against me. Her breath catches just slightly.

“Good start,” I say.

I reach up and pull the pins from her hair one by one and let it fall. She stays still for it. I find the zip at the back of the dress and draw it down slowly, feeling the warmth of her skin under my knuckles. The dress drops. She steps out of it without being asked, stands in front of me in her underwear with her chin still up and her eyes still on mine.

I take care of what’s left in under ten seconds.

She doesn’t cover herself. I take my time looking. Dark hair down now, pale skin, the kind of body that makes you forget what you were thinking about. Her underwear is simple, white, and there’s a wet spot at the center that she either hasn’t noticed or has decided not to acknowledge. I’m guessing the second one. I run my thumb from her collarbone straight down the center of her chest, watch her pull in a breath and hold it. Her waist is narrow, her hips flare out just enough, and her nipples are already hard through the fabric. I run my thumbs over both, and her exhale comes out uneven.

“Bed,” I say.

She goes.

I pull her underwear down and off and toss it. She’s bare now, spread out on my sheets. I take another second to look at her properly. Pink, wet, and swollen already just from my hands on her. I get back down between her thighs.

I start slow. Flat tongue, broad strokes, bottom to top, just getting her used to it. She sucks in a breath, and her thighs tighten on either side of my head. I do it again, same pace, same pressure, until she stops trying to stay still and her hips start a slow roll up toward my mouth.

Then I get specific.

I find her clit, and I work it with the tip of my tongue in tight circles. She grabs the sheets with both hands and makes a sound that’s mostly air. I vary the pressure, light then firm, fast then slow, learning what makes her twitch, what makes her gasp, what makes her thighs try to close around me. I hold them open with my forearms and keep going.

I suck her clit into my mouth, and she comes off the mattress. I seal my lips around it and suck slow and steady. She starts shaking, her hands moving from the sheets to my hair, gripping hard, not pushing me away, pulling me in.

I nibble, just gentle teeth. She says something incoherent that I don’t think is a word.

I go back to sucking, harder this time, and flick my tongue at the same time. She comes apart completely. She tries to muffle it but fails. Her whole body locks up, thighs clamping around my head despite my forearms, and then she gushes against my mouth, hot and wet, more than I expected, soaking my chin and the sheets under her. She makes a broken sound that she definitely didn’t plan to make.

I lick through every aftershock. Every single one. She’s shaking, oversensitive, and pulling at my hair, but I stay exactly where I am until she’s clean, wrung out, and her thighs have stopped trembling.

I sit up and wipe my chin with the back of my hand. She’s flat on her back with her arm over her face, chest heaving, legs still open, a wet patch on the sheets under her that she’s going to pretend she didn’t cause. Her hair is everywhere. She looks thoroughly fucked, and I’ve barely started.

She has no idea what she just did to me. Not a clue. That’s the part I can’t stop coming back to. She walked in here with her chin up and her hand on the door handle, and she’s been running some operation against me since the day she arrived, and underneath all of it she had no plan, no idea what would happen once we were in this room. That’s not performance. You can’t fake not knowing.

My dick is a serious problem at this point. I have to put it to good use, or I’ll explode.

I take her hands and guide them to my shirt buttons. She starts on them, steady at first, working down, but somewhere around the third button her hands slow. She gets the fourth open and her palms flatten against my chest, just for a second, feeling the muscle underneath. She catches herself and keeps going with the buttons, but her hands are warmer now, less controlled, spreading slightly as they move down like she’s taking inventory without meaning to.

She pushes the shirt off my shoulders, and it drops, and then her hands come back to my chest without being invited. She runs both palms down over my pecs, over my stomach, tracing the lines of muscle. Her breathing has changed again. She’s not doing it on purpose. I can tell because she’s not looking at my face, she’s looking at what her hands are doing. She gave in to need and want. She’s letting lust guide her and move through her whether she planned for it or not.

Her fingers find the scar along my ribs and trace it once. Then she catches herself again and looks up.

I hold her gaze and smirk, daring her to continue.

She reaches for my belt.

She undoes it, gets the button, gets the zip, and pushes everything down. I step out, and I’m right in front of her with nothing between us.

She stares. Throat moving. Lips parted. Takes her time about it too, which I don’t mind.