Page 125 of Bought for Blood

I stop her hands.

“Don’t tell me to rest,” she says.

“I wasn’t going to.”

“Then what?”

“Take that off first. I want to look at you.”

She steps back and pulls the shirt over her head.

There’s a pink scar on her shoulder now. The bruise down her left side has gone yellow at the edges, and the needle scars run up the inside of both arms, same as always. She stands there and lets me look.

“Well?” she says.

“Come here.”

She comes. I kiss the mark under her collarbone, and her hand comes up into my hair.

“Bastien—”

“Quiet.”

I turn her and find the one behind her shoulder and put my mouth there too. She takes hold of the bedpost with both hands and leans her weight into it.

“That’s not fair.”

“What isn’t?”

“You’re fully dressed, and I’m holding furniture.”

“I’ll get to that.”

I walk her backward to the bed and lay her down. I take her breast in my mouth, and she arches up off the sheet. I use my teeth, carefully.

“Oh.” Her head goes back. “Do that again.”

I do it again. My hand goes down her stomach and between her thighs, and she’s already wet, already moving against my fingers before they’ve settled.

“There.” Her hips lift. “Right— there—”

I work her slowly, two fingers and my thumb, and watch the flush come up her chest. She’s climbing fast, her hands fisting in the sheet, her breath going short.

Then both her palms land on my shoulders, and she pushes.

I let her.

“Stay there,” she says.

She strips the rest of my clothes off me without ceremony. Then she sits back on her heels, and she looks at me the way I looked at her. She takes her time about it.

“You’re pretty, you know that?” Her fingertip is between her teeth. She lets it go and traces it down my chin to my throat to the center of my chest.

“I’m not pretty. Pretty is for flowers. And birds. And you.” I brush her cheek with my thumb.

“Okay, beautiful then.” She smooths her palms down my shoulders, over my biceps to my wrists.

“That’s you too.”