Page 153 of The Lies We Play

“You process with your mouth covered?”

“I process in a variety of formats.”

Despite myself, I smile against her thigh.

It ruins her a little. I see it happen. Her face softens before she can stop it, and the look she gives me makes my throat go hot with something I don’t want a name for.

Need, maybe.

No. Worse.

Hope.

I kiss the inside of one thigh, then the other, slow enough to make her hips move. She tries to hold still. She is terrible at it. I bite gently, leaving a mark high enough that no one else will see it unless she chooses to show them. The thought makes my hand curl around her leg.

I keep going, slower now, kissing my way up the inside of her thigh while she stares down at me with her entire body trembling from restraint. At the crease of her hip, I hook one finger in the side of her panties and stop.

This time, I make myself breathe.

This time, I make myself look at her.

“Still okay?”

Her lips part.

For half a second, I think she’ll make a joke. Something brisk and cutting, something about consent forms or legal exposure or how I’m taking longer than a municipal permit review. I’m almost grateful for it. Humor would put one thin wall back between us.

She doesn’t.

Her gaze holds mine.

All the cleverness leaves her face, and what remains is so honest I feel it like a hand closing around my ribs.

“Yes,” she whispers.

One word.

I slide my finger under the fabric and understand, with a calm that scares me more than hunger ever could, that this is the moment I stop pretending I can give her only part of me.

I pull them down, kissing her knees as I do it, because I need one second where my mouth is somewhere safe. Somewhere, I can still pretend I am in control.

Then her hand slips into my hair.

Not to pull me away.

To keep me there.

The air in the room changes. It goes warmer, thinner, too full of skin and breath and the low hum of the city behind the glass.

Her pussy is beautiful. Wet. Dark pink. Open for me.

My jaw locks.

Need hits me so hard it almost makes me angry. Not at her. Never at her. At myself, maybe, because I know what it costs when wanting becomes honest. I have built an entire life around keeping my needs polished, contained, banked behind glass. I solve problems. I pay invoices. I move people out of harm’s way before they know danger has entered the room.

I don't get on my knees for a woman and feel something in me break open.

Except here I am.