Page 52 of Claimed on the Ridge

"You're still wearing your boots," she says. Her voice is rough but the observation is pure Kendall, noticing details while my mouth is on her hip.

"They'll come off when I'm ready."

"Control freak."

"You're just now figuring that out?" I say with a chuckle.

I follow the line of her body lower. She knows where I'm going. Her thighs part before I get there.

I settle between her legs and hook one of them over my shoulder. The scent of her arousal hits me before my mouth closes over her, warm and salt-sweet, and the want in my body ratchets tighter. She is wet, slick and swollen, ready for me. Theimage of her spread open for me in the firelight is going to live behind my eyelids for the rest of my life.

I lick her in a long, slow stroke that starts low and drags up through the folds of her to the swollen center. The noise that escapes her has no syllables. Her fingers curl against my scalp.

I give her another stroke and then another. My tongue works in flat, broad passes that cover everything, tasting her, learning the specific geography of what makes her hips jerk and what makes her moan. She is trembling under me. Her hips try to lift and my hand holds them down.

"Alex." My name comes out of her on a breath.

I close my mouth over her clit and suck. Her back lifts off the mattress and her thigh clamps against my ear. The noise she makes fills the room, ragged and real, and I want to hear it again. I want to hear every sound she has been keeping locked behind four years of silence.

I release the suction and flatten my tongue against her, broad pressure followed by the pointed tip tracing circles around the hood. She is soaked. I can feel it on my chin, my jaw, and the slick evidence of what I'm doing to her feeds something primal at the base of my skull. I slide two fingers inside her while my tongue works, and she clamps around them, tight and pulsing with heat.

I curl my fingers forward. The pad of each one drags along the textured wall inside her, and the cry she gives when I find the right angle is sharper than anything before it. Her heels dig into my back. Her hand in my hair has gone from gripping to pulling, and the sting of it only drives my mouth harder against her.

I add my tongue back to her clit. I give her tight circles, focused pressure, a relentless pace. My fingers stroke inside while my mouth works outside. The dual assault breaks whatever composure she had left. Her breathing has turned tosharp gasps, and the rhythm of them tells me exactly how close she is.

She comes with her hand fisted in the sheets and my name in her mouth. She locks around my fingers and my tongue, thighs clamped tight, spine bowed. I keep my mouth on her through every pulse of it. She earned this and I am not giving it up early.

When the tremors slow, I press one more kiss against the inside of her thigh. She shudders.

I rise up over her. She looks at me with eyes that have gone dark, unfocused, and her hand closes on the back of my neck. She pulls me down. She kisses me with her own taste still on my lips, and the urgency in it tells me she is not done.

Her hands find my belt. She unbuckles it with the same efficiency she used on my buttons, and the zipper follows. Her palm presses against me through the cotton underneath, and the pressure of her hand makes my vision narrow.

She pushes at my hip. I let her move me. I roll onto my back and she follows, rising up on her knees beside me. She reaches for my boots first, unlacing them with quick, practiced fingers. They hit the floor one after the other. Her hand pulls the waistband down and I lift my hips to help her. The jeans come off. The boxers follow.

She looks at me. The appraisal in her gaze is frank and heated, and my cock twitches under the attention.

She positions herself between my legs. Her hand wraps around the base of me, and the grip is firm and certain. The intent in her expression makes my stomach tighten.

"I've been thinking about this since the kitchen," she says.

She lowers her mouth. Her lips close over the head of me and the wet heat of her tongue presses against the underside, and every organized thought I've ever had exits my skull.

She takes me deeper. Her mouth is patient and thorough, the same focused attention she brings to everything, and herhand works what her mouth can't reach. The combination is devastating. My hand goes to her hair. My fingers close in it, holding on, because I need something to anchor me while she takes me apart.

She pulls back to the tip and circles her tongue around the ridge. The sensation sends a jolt through my hips that I barely contain. She does it again, slower this time, watching my face while she works, and the eye contact with her lips stretched around me is enough to make my hands shake.

Her mouth slides back down. Her cheeks hollow on the upstroke, tight suction that pulls heat from the base of my spine, and her hand follows her mouth in a twisting grip that finds a rhythm designed to end me. She is good at this, deliberate, unhurried, in complete control, and the fact that Kendall Mitchell chose to put herself between my legs is doing as much to me as the physical act.

She finds a rhythm. Her head moves in a steady stroke, her tongue working the length of me on every pass, and the wet sound of her mouth fills the room alongside the crack of the fire. My hips want to move. I hold them still through force of will because she set this pace and it belongs to her.

Her free hand presses flat against my stomach, feeling the muscles clench under her palm. She hums against me, a low vibration that runs the length of my cock, and the noise that tears out of me is not a word in any language. My grip tightens. She responds by taking me deeper, the back of her throat closing around the head of me, and the pressure builds low in my gut like a wave gathering height.

She pulls back and runs her tongue in a flat stroke from base to tip. Then she does it again, the underside this time, following the vein with the pointed tip of her tongue. My thighs are locked. My stomach is a sheet of tension. She wraps her lips around the head and sucks, her hand stroking in firm, measured pullsbeneath her mouth, and the deliberate patience of it is worse than speed would be. She is savoring me. She is taking her time with my body the way I took my time with hers, and the symmetry of it would make me laugh if I could breathe.

One last stroke takes her all the way down, her lips meeting her fist, and holds there. The heat, the pressure, the tight suction of her throat drag a groan out of me that starts in my gut. My hand fists in her hair. My hips lift off the mattress, and I feel the edge rushing up to meet me.

I know my limits.