Page 33 of 13 Nights

"You don't move until I tell you to move," he says.

He strips my shirt over my head without fumbling. My bra follows. He doesn't ask permission and doesn't pause.

His lips drop to my collarbone, then lower, and when they close around my nipple the heat of it sends a jolt straight down my center. His tongue is slow, circling while his palm presses flat against my stomach to keep me still.

The command pins me as effectively as his body. He takes his time with my breasts, one then the other, his mouth thorough and unhurried while the ache between my legs builds into something with weight and urgency. My hips roll toward him before I can stop them, and he clamps down on my hip bone hard enough to freeze me in place.

"What did I say?"

"That I don't move."

"Then don't."

He removes his own clothing and the remainder of mine. The cool air against bare skin makes me gasp, and then his fingers are between my legs and coherent thought becomes a luxury I can no longer afford.

He finds me wet and swollen. He puts his fingers to work.

He doesn't rush. He builds pressure with the patience of centuries, circling and pressing while he catalogs every response. When I arch against him, he pins my hip to the mattress with his free palm and holds the pace steady.

"You're analyzing me again," he says.

"You're a dead man getting warmer under my hands. Analysis seems appropriate."

His fingers go still. "Then report accurately."

"Your temperature has increased. Your touch is sharper. You're harder than last time." I hold his gaze. "Your control is deteriorating."

"My control is exactly where I want it."

"Prove it."

His grip tightens in answer.

His thumb finds my clit and presses with a slow, devastating focus while two fingers curl inside me, and the combination tears a moan out of me that I feel in my spine. He watches my face while he works me, reads every shift in my reaction. He adjusts pressure and speed with the focused attention of a man who treats this like command: total authority, total responsibility for what happens under his hands.

"Say it," he tells me. "Say what changed."

"Your hands." My voice comes out wrecked. "The heat. You're warmer than last time. I can feel your pulse through your fingertips."

His grip falters for one breath. His fingers go tight enough to bruise, harder than intended, and he releases instantly, adjusting back to control. Returning sensation has made him stronger faster than it has made him precise.

"Keep talking," he says, and his voice is raw at the edges.

He builds the orgasm with the patience he brings to everything. I feel it gathering low in my belly, tightening with each stroke, and when it breaks, it breaks hard. My body bows off the mattress. His free hand presses my hip down, keeping me open, keeping me still, making me take every second of it while his fingers keep working.

"Don't you dare close your eyes," he commands.

Pleasure is easy. Letting him watch me surrender to it is something else entirely.

He doesn't give me time to recover. He positions my hips at the edge of the bed and pushes into me while the aftershocks are still rolling through my body.

The fullness of him is different tonight. The last time he was inside me, he was pressure and outline, sensation experienced through a layer of distance. Tonight every point of contact is specific.

I feel the stretch as my body adjusts to him, the exact angle he's chosen. When he's fully seated, a low, rough groan escapes him, stripped of every pretense he's carried all night.

"Keep looking at me," he says. "You chose this."

He pulls back slowly and drives forward, and the headboard strikes the wall.