Do Your Worst(80)
“You better keep that mouth occupied,” she warned him. “If I see one hint of a smirk, I’ll—”
Clark caught her chin in his hand and tilted her face up to his. “You’ll what?”
“Fall in love with you,” she finished, and this time when she kissed him it was soft. Hopeful. She kissed the corner of his mouth that marked his scowl. Then his often-furrowed brow.
Riley gathered his hands in hers, large, warm, rough, and kissed his knuckles. Then turned them over and kissed each palm.
“Promise me,” he said, barely a whisper. “You’re not just saying it because you think it’ll break the curse?”
“I promise.” Riley rubbed her thumb across his cheekbone. “Like you said, we’re half a day away from the castle.” She tucked herself under his chin, held on tight. “This is just us.”
Clark stared at her for a moment, like he was trying to make sure she was real.
“In that case,” he said, a little breathless, a little giddy, “I love you.”
Even after all the lead-up, the words still took her aback. Riley hadn’t known how much she wanted to hear them. How much she wanted them to come from Clark. How much she kept from herself, because wanting it scared her.
But now. She carried his love for her in her chest. As if she’d swallowed the sun. And all she could think was I hope it’s the same for him. That he doesn’t just hear the words, but that they stay somewhere safe behind his ribs—a light that doesn’t burn out.
Chapter Twenty-One
“I’m sorry,” Clark said when he grew hard from all the breathless necking. He brushed his lips across her temple, hiding his rapidly heating face. They were in public, for Christ’s sake. Besides, he was cheapening the moment.
Only, Riley didn’t seem to think so.
“I’m not.” She trailed her hand down his chest to cup him through the fabric of his wool trousers.
Clark couldn’t help himself; he bucked into her palm.
“What are you—We can’t.” Because it wasn’t so much that he didn’t know what she was suggesting as it was that he found himself utterly scandalized.
The wooden floors underneath their feet were original to this very old, very important academic institution.
“Sure we can.” Riley undid the top button of his shirt and licked the exposed hollow of his throat.
“Someone could come in here,” he said helplessly.
The idea spiked his pulse, made his whole body overheat.
Riley still had her hand on his cock, her thumb circling the head through the rough fabric, barely-there pressure.
“Yeah.” She went to her knees in front of him, holding his gaze. “They could.”
Clark sagged against the bookshelf at his back as she pushed his shirt up to ghost her blunt fingernails over the hair below his navel. Goose bumps spread from the point of contact, making him shiver. She tugged down his zipper very slowly, as if waiting for him to stop her.
He didn’t.
Smirking like she knew exactly how hot the threat of discovery made him, Riley flicked open the button on his pants, wrapped her hand around his bare cock, and kissed the tip.
Clark had never—oh, god—never done anything like this. Never broken a rule—a law, he corrected with a heady jolt—certainly not on purpose.
Riley must have assumed as much, since she sat back on her heels, licked her perfect pink lips, and raised her eyebrows like it was Clark’s call whether or not she’d suck him off in the bloody rare books room.
“Please.” His hands went to her hair, threading through, gentle but sure, urging her forward. “God, Riley. Please.”
Her little smile in response was wicked. Wanton. Said she knew she was his bloody wet dream. On her knees. In a library.
Clark was so hard as she slid down his length, the tight, slick heat of her mouth almost too much already.
Even though Riley must have known he was in a bad way from the hectic pace of his breath, from the way his thighs tensed as he leaked against her lips—as always, she didn’t take it easy on him. There was no starting slow to warm him up. No, she went ahead and tongued the slit straightaway, squeezing around the base, setting a rhythm that had Clark biting his lip ruthlessly to keep from crying out.
He brushed his thumb across her round cheeks as they hollowed, working for him. The risk of this made everything more intimate. Their secret.
As the shuffling of footsteps and faint strains of conversation drifted in from the hallway through the gap between the wooden door and the floor, he tensed even further, balancing on a razor’s edge for control, pleasure and fear zinging up and down his spine in equal measure.
He wouldn’t last like this. No chance. And as much as he’d love to spill in her mouth, he needed to be inside her knowing it wasn’t for a ritual or some game between them.
Gently, he pulled Riley to her feet, kissing her, sucking his taste off her tongue before tucking his throbbing cock up under his waistband and walking her backward until her knees hit the table where they’d been studying.
He thought for a moment about making a grand sweeping gesture, knocking everything to the floor like in a movie, but he didn’t want to damage a piece of the collection—and their notes were really important—so he quickly, carefully, gathered all the materials in his arms and deposited them safely on a chair in the corner while Riley gazed at him, looking amused, looking—incredulously—charmed.