Page 126 of Bought for Blood

She rolls her eyes. “Beautiful in a very macho and manly way.”

“I can live with that.”

Her thumb finds the scar on the back of my right hand and stops on it. She doesn’t say anything. Neither do I.

Then she bends her head, and her mouth starts at my stomach and goes lower. When it closes over my cock, the breath leaves me in one hard rush. My hands close on the sheet instead of on her, because if I touch her now this ends in about a minute.

“God,” I say.

She isn’t practiced at it. She doesn’t need to be. She watches my face the whole time she works, patient, thorough, finding out what works. Everything works. She takes me deeper and hums, low, and my hips come up off the bed. I don’t fight it. There is nothing in me that wants to hide from her.

“Serenity—”

She lifts her head just enough to speak. “You’ve never let me do this.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I wouldn’t have stopped.”

“Then don’t stop.”

I have spent months being careful with this woman. I told myself the care was for her sake, because she’s small and I’m not. That was a lie. I was afraid of what I’d do if I ever stopped.

Then I sat in a room and waited for the sun, and everything that wasn’t her stopped mattering. I couldn’t harm her if I tried.

“Come here,” I say.

She starts up my body, and I catch her at the waist and turn her under me instead, onto her back, her hair fanned out pale against the dark of the pillow. When she reaches for me, I take both her wrists in one hand and set them above her head.

“We’re not in a hurry,” I tell her.

“Speak for yourself.”

“I am.”

I start at her mouth. I have kissed this woman a hundred times, and every one of those was me taking something. This one isn’t, and she can tell. She goes still under it, and then her mouth softens and opens, and she gives it back slower than she’s ever given me anything.

I go down her throat. Her heart is right there under my lips, quick and strong, and I stay on it a moment. Just listening to the beats.

“Bastien.” Her wrists flex under my hand. “What are you doing?”

“Paying attention.”

I work down her body. The mark under her collarbone. The soft inside of her elbow, over the scars, and her breath goes uneven when my mouth touches those, because nobody has ever touched them like they’re worth anything. Her ribs where the bruise is going yellow. The point of her hip.

Then I settle between her thighs, spread her wide with my thumbs and trail my tongue along the entire slick line of her.

“Oh—” Her hands come down out of my grip and land in my hair. I let them stay. I take my time, learning her all over again from this close, what makes her thighs tense and what makes them fall open, the exact pressure that pulls that low sound out of her. There’s no performance in her at all. She rolls her hips against my mouth and says my name and pulls my hair hard enough to mean it.

“I can’t— Bastien, I’m—”

“Come,” I tell her. And she does, back arched, fingers twisted into the sheets, a moan low in her throat. I stay with her through it, gentler and gentler, until she’s twitching away from my tongue and laughing and shoving at my head.

“Enough. Enough. Come here.”

I come up her body and settle between her thighs and push into her while she’s coming down, and she makes a sound like the air’s been pressed out of her.