Page 99 of Ruin
The sight of Cassius Wolfe on his knees between my legs is something that should feel like power, and it does, but it alsofeels like surrender—his, mine, both of ours—and the distinction between those things was never as clear as I pretended it was.
He presses his mouth to the inside of my knee.
A kiss.
Soft, almost reverent, completely at odds with the man I know him to be.
Then he works upward.
Slow, deliberate, open-mouthed kisses along the sensitive skin of my inner thigh that turn into drags of his tongue, wet and warm and devastating.
Each one higher than the last.
Each one closer to where I'm aching so badly that I can feel my own pulse between my legs.
"You don't have to forgive me," he says against my inner thigh, the words vibrating into my skin. "You just have to feel this."
His mouth finds me.
The sound I make bounces off the office walls and comes back to me unrecognizable.
He licks a slow, flat stroke from entrance to clit and my hands slam down on the desk behind me, bracing, because if I don't hold onto something solid I'm going to fall backward into the surveillance feeds and the whiskey and the paperwork of an empire I'm supposed to hate.
He's patient.
That's the devastating part.
Last time was rage and adrenaline and a knife that neither of us could put down.
This is something else.
This is Cassius at his most methodical, his most focused, his tongue working me with a precision that's almost clinical except for the sounds he's making against me, low groans that vibrate against my clit and tell me this isn't strategy.
This is pure fucking need.
He slips two fingers inside me while his mouth stays on my clit, curling them upward, finding the spot that makes my vision white out at the edges.
I'm gripping the edge of the desk hard enough to leave half-moon marks in the mahogany, and my thighs are shaking, and the sounds coming out of my mouth are not words.
They're fragments.
Pieces of language that broke apart somewhere between my brain and my lips and came out as gasps and moans and his name repeated like a prayer I don't believe in anymore.
He builds me up and pulls back.
Builds me up again, tongue circling my clit in a rhythm that's just fast enough to drive me toward the edge and just slow enough to keep me from going over.
Every time I get close, every time my thighs start to clamp around his head and my back starts to arch, he eases off.
Replaces pressure with softness. Lets the wave recede just enough that when it builds again it's higher than before.
"Please," I hear myself say.
I don't recognize my own voice.
It's wrecked. Hollowed out. Begging, and I don't beg, I have never begged, but his mouth is between my legs and his fingers are inside me and I've been fighting for days and I don't have any fight left for this.
He gives me what I'm asking for.
