“You want to flirt in a pub?” Slade asks, mouth coming down against my breasts, over the thin band right at my hardened nipple. His lips close around it, tongue wetting the fabric, just as his finger moves past the edge of my panties and slips inside of me.
The gasp that tears from my throat is a corrugated rip that seems to echo inside this confined space.
“You can flirt and play all you like,” he purrs, tongue lapping, moving to my other nipple, making it match in wet heat. “You can make men and women desire you, crave you, and I will crave right along with them.”
My heart is flexing in my chest, wrinkling my ribs, making it hard to catch my breath. His finger begins to pump. Curl. Thumb lapping at my clit and making it surge. Making me need.
“Slade…”
His other hand comes up to cup my face, demanding my mouth that I willingly give. A harsh nip, a soothing lick, his plush lips pressing against mine.
The perfect dance.
“You want a friend? I’ll be very friendly to you for the rest of our lives.”
He looks at me, thumb brushing over my bottom lip while his other thumb presses even harder against my clit, building the pressure, making me squirm.
“Great Divine…”
Slade takes my jaw, turns my cheek.
“And you want to kiss a stranger?” he adds, the caress of his breath a dark smolder. “Go right ahead.” His touch at my core is pressed harder, a second finger fed in. His thumb moves faster. Deliciously so.
I can’t think, and yet, all I can do is hear him. Feel him. It’s his words and his touch and everything inside of me wanting to burn and to burst.
“If you need to kiss and fuck and play in order to feel free, then that’s what you’ll do.”
I arch up even more, body begging, seeking…all while my mind spins with his words. His mouth is against my ear, hand supporting my waist, the other using friction to make me ignite.
“But remember, Auren. Your body—your pleasure—you gave it to me. So I will be there, wherever you decide you need to be. At a pub. In a sea. On a bed. I’ll be there with you. Watching you. Joining you. You are mine, and I am yours, and whatever pleasure you seek, I will be there to watch you get it, and I will feed it to you tenfold afterward because you are mine, and I will see that you get what you need.”
His words. His filthy, delicious words.
They’re a balm against the turbulent doubts, coating me with provocative assent.
“Slade—”
“Come for me, Goldfinch.”
And I do. A strike, so hot it feels cold, charges through my body, making me arc. I cry out from the bolt, from the pleasure at his touch, at what he’s said.
It charges through me with pure electricity, until I’m struck and thundering, my whole body flashing from blinding pleasure that makes me tremble head to toe.
It takes several seconds for me to see clearly again, for my eyes to blink past the bliss still dotting my vision. My entire body feels raw, like the charred ground where lightning just hit, and I practically slump in his arms.
But he chuckles.
And I know that chuckle.
“Don’t get too comfortable. We’re just getting started.”
CHAPTER 50
AUREN
The residue of my relish slowly fades away, so it takes me a second to process what he’s said. There’s an impish glint flashing in Slade’s eye that makes my stomach tumble.
Hands dropping from the loop, I shift on his lap. “What?”
“We’re having a very serious conversation, and we’re not quite done yet.”
“Really? Because I’m sure I just finished,” I say with a smirk.
A grin stretches across his handsome face, his dark lines swaying against the skin of his neck.
“And besides, maybe I want to go and try to kiss one of those strangers we were talking about,” I tease.
Shocking the hell out of me, he reaches over and flicks back a corner of the curtain. “Pick one.”
I instantly slam my body against his chest, eyes wide as I look out the corner of the revealed window, at the people we pass on the street. “Slade,” I hiss.
“Don’t worry, they can’t see you. Not unless you want them to.”
There must be something wicked about me, because my blood heats.
His hand tucks the bottom corner of the curtain into the notch in the window frame, keeping it folded back that sliver of an inch. “I’m going to fuck you in this carriage, Goldfinch.”
A full-body shiver takes over, my hands pinned to the slope of his shoulders. “There are people outside,” I say breathlessly, even now, turning to look through the curtain. “I shouldn’t have even let you do what you already did. What if someone sees? Hears?”