Page 76 of Rook

Not "Dante." Not the name. The sound of it — two syllables broken apart, the vowels stretched, the consonants bitten off — it's the first time she's said it like this. Like it means something she's not prepared to examine.

She pushes me back onto the mattress.

My back hits the soft blanket, and she's above me, her hair falling forward, her breasts swaying with the motion. Her hands go to my jeans. She pulls the zipper down, hooks her fingers into the waistband of my briefs, and drags everything down past my hips. I lift to help her, and the cool air hits my cock, which is rigid and flushed and already leaking from the tip.

She takes me in her hand.

Her grip is warm. Sure. The grip of someone who knows exactly what she's holding, who has touched bodies for twenty years and knows the difference between a job and a want. She strokes once, twice, her thumb sliding over the head, spreading the slick of pre-cum down the shaft, and she's watching my face.

I'm not quiet. My jaw is tight, my breath hissing through my teeth, and when her thumb circles the ridge beneath the head, my hips lift off the mattress. She watches. Her eyes track every micro-expression, every twitch, every place where my composure cracks, and there's something on her face I've never seen before.

Hunger. Not the clinical appetite of someone taking what's available. Hunger. For me. For this. For the specific reality of my body responding to her hands.

She lowers her mouth to me.

Her lips close around the head of my cock, and the wet heat of her mouth is so sudden and so total that the groan that rips out of me sounds like it belongs to someone else. She takes me deep — not teasing, not gradual, but a slow, deliberate descent that presses the head against the back of her throat and holds there. Her hand wraps around the base of my shaft where her mouth can't reach, and she works me with both. Her tongue presses flat against the underside, then curls, then flutters against the frenulum, and my hips buck. She takes it. She takes the buck and the depth and she doesn't pull back, she adjusts.

She pulls back. Licks a long stripe from base to tip. Takes me deep again. Sets a rhythm that's hers — not fast, not slow, but deliberate, every stroke purposeful, her cheeks hollowing on the pull, her tongue working on the descent. My hand finds her hair, not guiding, just holding, and I let her set the pace. I let her take what she wants.

"Come here," I say. My voice is wrecked. I pull her up.

She comes. She slides up my body, and I feel the wet heat of her through her pants as she straddles me again. I reach for the waistband of her pants, and she lifts, and I slide them off along with her underwear, and she's bare. Bare and wet and ready. The scent of her hits me — musk and salt and something sharper underneath, something that's purely her — and my cock twitches against her thigh.

She positions herself over me. I hold my cock steady, and she sinks down.

Inch by inch.

Her eyes lock on mine, and I watch her face as she takes me. The way her lips part. The way her breath stutters when the head presses inside. The way her eyes widen when she takes the full length, when her body opens around me and she settles against my hips with my cock buried to the hilt.

We both still. Breathing hard. The heat of her is everywhere — tight, slick, gripping me in rhythmic pulses that I can feel in my spine. Her walls flutter around my shaft, and the sensation is so acute, so consuming, that I have to close my eyes for a moment and just feel it. The wet clamp of her body holding mine.

She begins to move.

Slow at first. A roll of her hips that shifts me inside her, that grinds her clit against my pubic bone. Her hands press flat against my chest, and I feel her nails rake lightly across my skin as she moves. The friction builds — wet, slick, the sound of our bodies meeting a soft, obscene slap that fills the quiet room. She speeds up. Her hips find a rhythm, rolling, grinding, fucking me with a confidence that makes my head spin. Her breasts sway with each movement, and I reach up and take them in my hands.

I cup them. Feel their weight. Thumb her nipples, circling, pressing, and she cries out. A sharp, broken sound that cracks in the middle, and her rhythm falters. Her hips stutter, and I thrust up into her, meeting her, and the impact drives my cock deeper and she gasps.

"Don't stop," I say. "Don't you fucking stop."

She doesn't.

She rides me. She rides me until her thighs are trembling, until sweat gleams on her collarbone and her breath comes in ragged, open-mouthed pants. Her walls clamp down around me — a sudden, vice-tight grip that makes my vision blur — and I feel her come. A shuddering, gasping release that wracks her body, her back arching, her head falling back, her hips grinding down against me in desperate, uncontrolled circles. The sound she makes is guttural. Primal. The sound of a woman who has been silent her whole life finally letting something out.

The pulsing of her orgasm pulls me with her. I grip her hips, hold her down, and I come inside her. Hot. Deep. Pulse after pulse, my cock throbbing against her walls, and she milks me with slow, grinding rolls of her hips, drawing every drop out of me until I'm spent.

She collapses onto my chest.

Her breath is ragged against my skin. Her hair falls across my shoulder in dark, sweat-damp strands. I wrap my arms around her, one hand stroking the long line of her back, the other cradling her head, my fingers in her hair. I can feel my heartbeat slowing against her cheek. I can feel hers against my ribs.

"That," she says, "was not a mission."

I laugh. Low. Rough. The sound vibrates through my chest and into hers. "No. It wasn't."

She lifts her head. Kisses me softly. Her lips taste like me, and mine taste like her, and the mingling is obscene and perfect.

"I want to do it again," she says. "But I want to be on my stomach this time."

I roll her over.