Page 57

Something tells me I’m already halfway down that slippery slope.

Hooking my chin over his shoulder so he can’t see what’s in my eyes, I fumble to pull his shirt off. The fabric is soft and worn, not his usual designer stuff. Comfortable.

Kissing along his neck, I push away the voice telling me we shouldn’t be doing this. I’ve told myself the same thing a million times. Every time we crossed a line we shouldn’t have crossed. Every day.

“Is this the punishment?” I don’t mean to ask out loud, but it must be. He knows I don’t want gentle touch and sweet kisses. What we did before, with a client watching, no less, almost wrecked me. He’s got to know.

“Maybe,” he murmurs against my cheek. “Or maybe I’m letting us both have something we need for a change.”

As he kisses downward, his short beard brushes a spot in the hollow of my throat that nearly makes my soul leave my body. Then he slides farther, pressing kisses to the tops of my thighs, my shins, the tops of my feet before he climbs between my legs. “Where’s the lube, Dean?”

For a second I think of lying, saying I don’t have any. But denying that I want him is as stupid as thinking he won’t call my bluff and spit in my hole like it’s a porn set.

“Bedside table.”

I clench the sheets in my fist as he turns to the side, giving in to the guilty pleasure of studying his profile. The sliver of sunlight coming in under the blinds kisses his dark skin, making him look almost like he’s glowing. I’ve always been jealous of his lips; the fullness and the pronounced dip in the top one’s center.

What do they call it again? Cupid’s bow.

There’s a scar on his shoulder from the time we got stupid at a campus party freshman year and stumbled through some thorny bushes. Another on his arm from when we helped a friend move and his arm scraped against some metal shelf in their garage. At this point, every inch of him is a memory. Our lives have been woven together for so long.

And those lips… Those lips were just on me. The thought makes me breathless, and that’s before he climbs between my legs, spread wide enough that the left one is hanging off the side of the bed, and then he⁠—

“Oh, God, Mike.”

He’s never done this before. One hand wraps around the base of my erection as he presses those lips I was just thinking about to my weeping head, before sliding them down my length. I’m already dying when the tongue action starts, the slow slide, the firm but gentle licks.

“Mike, please.” I squirm under him, the suction and the heat making my limited brain cells short out as I try to figure out whether I want to ask him to stop or keep going.

He answers my question when he murmurs “Hold your knees” and pushes my legs back until I’m wearing my kneecaps as earrings.

“God. Fu—fricking. Gah!”

Slowly, too slowly, he trails kisses along my leg. The click of the lube bottle is loud in the room, and for unknown reasons that small sound gives me the shakes.

He’s careful as he gets me ready, the same as before. One finger, then two, then three, even though he knows damn well I don’t need that kind of care.

In the six years since I agreed to work for Brennan, I’ve accepted pretty much any amount of abuse any client wanted to throw at me. I became the best whore Belle Argo has ever seen. And here he is treating me like I’m a virgin who can’t handle the size of what’s between his legs.

I can handle anything. That’s what I’ve always told myself.

Anything except the warmth that blooms in my chest when his eyes meet mine as the tip of a condom presses against my hole.

“Where did you get the condom?” I don’t have any here. Why would I?

The pads of his fingers brush my stomach. “Brought some with me. Knew you wouldn’t have any.”

I suppose I can take some small satisfaction from how he sounds like someone is strangling him right now. Is this driving him out of his mind as much as it is me?

Until his hand slides under the back of my neck, gripping me, forcing me to face him, I hadn’t realized I was looking more at his shoulder than anything else. It’s easier than meeting his gaze, confronting the way looking in his eyes makes me feel.

To be fair, it’s a nice shoulder. He’s kept his body up much better than I have mine over the years.

He always did. The first time I saw him, he was holding up a hundred-and-twenty-pound cheerleader with one hand.

He drew me in even then. At the time, I thought it was pure admiration. Hero worship.

When his thighs meet my ass, it hits me we’ve strayed a long way from hero worship. As the pressure and burn of him pushes my breath out of my body, his lips twitch. His right eye crinkles, almost the way eyes do when someone smiles.