The sound in my throat gets louder still as his mouth drops lower, skimming my waist, then my thighs, then up again. He breathes heat against the flimsy material that covers me, and I groan with aching desire. My hands go to his head, tugging him forward like they’ve forgotten a lifetime’s training of holding back, and I’m rewarded by his fingers sweeping the layers aside and sliding his tongue in their place. My body disappears, leaving behind a sea of sensations. I am a sky filled with pulsing stars.
I buck beneath the building pressure, whimpering when he pauses long enough to pull my panties and shorts down the length of my legs. He stills at the sound, settling on his knees down by my ankles. I lift my head to look at him but catch sight of myself instead, splayed out ridiculously, my tank top around my waist like a deflated inner tube. My legs are spread apart like I’m awaiting an exam.
Embarrassment hits like a bucket of ice water, dumping over me and extinguishing all of my heat. Never have I so completely lost myself. Years of performing perfunctorily in gorgeous, expensive lingerie, and the one time it really matters, I’ve shown up like a pig at the county fair. I cringe and tug my knees together.
“Don’t,” Deiss says in an unrecognizably gruff voice.
I look up apprehensively and discover his eyes scanning the length of me. They’re dark beneath his furrowed brow, filled with reverence like he’s discovered a priceless piece of art. His fingers run across my leg in featherlight strokes before he lifts it to press a kiss into my ankle. He’s shadowed in the weak light that leaks through the window, dark and mysterious and impossibly gorgeous.
“I like you like this,” he says, “all wild.”
Slowly, he slips my tank top down the length of me, his fingers stroking my hips as they pass and then my thighs. He works his way slowly back up, kissing every inch of me until the world goes hazy again and I’m too filled with pleasure to think of anything but the feel of his mouth against my skin. When his body covers mine completely, he cups his hand beneath my head like I’m something precious.
We kiss slowly this time, not like two people hurrying to make up for the past but two people desperate to hold onto the moment. I press into him, warm and delicious. And when he finally pushes inside me, I feel just as out of control as I did when we started, but in an entirely new way.
“You’re amazing,” he murmurs into my shoulder after we’ve collapsed, intertwined and satiated, onto our backs. “I’ve always been so in awe of you.”
“No, you haven’t.” I don’t want his pillow talk. It just reminds me this is normal for him. While I’ve never experienced anything like what we just did, I have to assume it’s always like that for him. After all, he is the one who provided the experience.
“I have.” He strokes my arm lightly, tracing a line from my wrist to elbow. “I used to study you all the time back in school, trying to figure out how you could be so untouched by it all. Everyone else on campus was copying each other, playing their roles as college kids, but you knew exactly who you wanted to be.”
“But I didn’t.” The confession slips out, even though I’d like nothing more than to let myself believe the pretty picture he’s painted. “I only knew who I was supposed to be. I was trying to be perfect.”
“You think I don’t understand that?” He leans over and presses a soft kiss against my shoulder. “I’ve been watching you for eleven years. But you’re missing the point. I was in awe that you tried so hard for yourself. You weren’t attempting to be perfect so the other girls would be jealous or the boys would want you. You hardly seemed to notice what anyone thought of you at all. It was your own standards that dictated who you wanted to be, and I thought that was inspiring.”
“But you told me to get off the treadmill,” I argue.
“I suggested it because nobody needs you to be perfect, including you.” The corner of his mouth quirks up. “But I certainly didn’t tell you to do anything. I’d never dream of telling Olivia Bakersfield how to behave.”
I laugh, but my chest swells in a way that’s almost painful. This feels like yet another twist I’m unprepared for. First, the closeness. Then, the lust. Now . . . whatever this is. Deiss’s appreciation of me? His ability to see me so clearly and translate my flaws into something I can be proud of?
It’s overwhelming. Even my mother, the one person who’s always known me, chose to pretty me up with makeup so she could view me through a filter. I don’t know how to face someone who’s managed to see through it all. Even if Deiss does seem to appreciate what he’s uncovered.