Can't Get Enough (Skyland, #3)(84)
“Some of the best advice my mother ever gave me was to take my time getting married.”
“Um, didn’t you tell me your parents met in the eighth grade?” He grins, brows lifted.
“And married by nineteen, yeah.” I blow out a laugh. “Not exactly taking her own advice, huh? She didn’t regret the sacrifices she made, though. My parents had a once-in-a-lifetime love, but she knows me. She recognized that I needed more than that. That if I made the same decisions she did, I would eventually regret and resent them. She urged me to take my twenties to figure out who I was and what I would and wouldn’t settle for.”
“And your thirties?”
“Well, once I figured out what I wanted and needed, I realized how few truly eligible men there were. I mean eligible for me. In my thirties I learned to be happy with myself and the life I was building. I learned to be whole.”
“And now?”
“Now I’m on the cusp of everything I’ve been working toward in my career, and I realize that acknowledging those parts of me that want care and companionship doesn’t make me less whole. It doesn’t mean I’m not happy, but that this is something else that can make me happy.”
“Thank you for trusting me, Gorgeous.” He leans up and whispers against my lips. “You won’t regret it.”
I can’t resist kissing him, and I take his bottom lip between mine, sucking and tugging, groaning when he returns the favor even more aggressively. Biting down and licking at the sting.
“I knew we needed to talk.” He tips my chin up and kisses the curve of my jawline, the slope of my neck. “But I’ve barely been able to focus on anything except how good it felt to be inside you last night. I want that again, Hen.”
I nod, leaning back on his lap, my fingers shaking and clumsy on the buttons of my pajama top. My breasts spill free and he’s on me like lightning, his mouth frantic and desperate and starving as he licks and sucks and laves. His dick is so hard pressing into my heat, and I need to feel him now. I wiggle to get the shorts and my underwear down and off my legs. Naked, I resettle on his lap and reach for his zipper.
“Hey.” He covers my hand. “Let’s go slow this time. Take me to bed, Hen.”
I bring him in for a kiss, a slow, sensual dance of lips and teeth and tongues. When I’ve waited one more second, I break the kiss and stand, completely naked. I extend my hand and pull him from the couch. He scoops up the bottle of whiskey and then grabs my hand. Everything is slowed down. Even our journey up the stairs is punctuated with stops every few steps; pauses for him to kiss my shoulders and caress my arms, test the weight of my breasts in his big, gentle hands. By the time we reach the bedroom, my legs are shaking and my heart feels like someone rang a gong in my chest.
With Maverick trailing me, he has an unrestricted view of my bare ass, all my cellulite and any extra flesh on my back. I search for self-consciousness, but can’t make room for it, not with him. Maverick steps close behind me and walks us to the bed, my fingers clutched in one of his hands and the bottle in the other.
“If I make a mess,” he says, greed in the look that sweeps over my body, “I promise to clean it up.”
“A mess?” I ask. “What do you mean? I—”
“This,” he says, holding up the bottle of Macallan, “is a two-hundred-thousand-dollar bottle of whiskey.”
My jaw falls open. That’s more than my car. It’s more than my last commission. It’s a lot of damn money.
“And you want to get me drunk first?” My laugh is weak as I try to play off my shock.
“No.” He doesn’t smile or laugh. “I want to pour it as an offering before I worship you.”
I gasp as he lifts the bottle and pours chilled liquid down my body. It sluices over my breasts, down my belly and between my legs. Hands free, he leans to take one dripping nipple in his mouth. He greedily bobs his head between the right and left breast, sucking and licking and laving. Delving into my cleavage to sop the drops up before they dry. I’m standing, writhing beneath the heat of his mouth cleaning away all traces of the whiskey. Unable to bear it one more second, I grab his head and kiss him. We devour each other, and the intoxicating effect of the kiss has nothing to do with the whiskey.
It’s us.
He nudges me toward the bed and lays me out, staring down for a few seconds before sinking to the floor between my knees. He presses my legs apart and leans forward and fixes his eyes there.
I tip my head back and laugh up at the ceiling. “Mav, don’t just stare at it.”
“But it’s so pretty.”
My breath catches and the muscles in my stomach clench, my whole body on high alert preparing to be touched and taken by him.
“I’m naked and you’re still fully clothed.”
“And that’s a problem?” His teasing grin between my knees makes my insides somersault.
“Do I get to see as much of you as you get to see of me?”
“You want to see me?” His brows lift and one corner of his sinfully full lips quirk.
“Show me the goods, Bell.”
With his eyes fixed on mine, he slowly undoes each button on the fine cotton of his collared shirt, revealing ridges of muscle in his torso and abs beneath. It’s as arresting a sight as when I saw him on Instagram in his wetsuit.