Beckett is quiet, her fingers trailing the mark. “Interesting,” she finally says. “I like it.” She leans forward and presses hot, open-mouthed kisses to my shoulder before her tongue sneaks out to trace the lines of my birthmark.
My knees nearly go out from under me then, and I swear the only thing that keeps me upright is the strong arm Beckett wraps around my waist. “Still okay?” she murmurs as she licks and kisses and bites her way down my spine.
“Not even remotely,” I manage to gasp out.
She pauses about halfway down my back. “In a good way?”
“In the best way.”
“The best way,” she murmurs as she drops to her knees behind me. “You’re good for my ego.”
“Yeah, well, you’re good for my everything.” It’s not even an exaggeration.
She laughs, then moves to unclasp my boots. I kick them off as she tugs on my jumpsuit, drawing the material over my bottom and down my legs so that I can step out of it. And then I’m standing there in nothing but the pair of black panties Kali got me on Askkandia what feels like a lifetime ago.
Suddenly, I’m nervous. What if Beckett doesn’t like the way I look? My skin is so pale next to the rich olive of hers, my small curves so different than her long, lean angles. It’s hard to stand here like this without seeing her face, without being able to judge if she likes what she sees.
But then she lets out a low, shuddering exhalation that fans across my lower back as she slides reverent hands over my hips and down my thighs. “You’re so beautiful,” she breathes, her voice rough.
“So are you,” I tell her.
But she’s not listening, her hands and her focus moving to the edges of my panties. She skims a finger along the edges of the legs, moving back and forth several times before dipping inside to stroke my mons, the edges of my sex.
I whimper at the first touch, my already shaky knees turning completely useless in a moment. She moves quickly, sliding around until she’s kneeling in front of me, her arms wrapped around my thighs to steady me.
“Brace your hands on my shoulders,” she tells me in between the soft, tickling kisses she presses to my abdomen.
I do as she says, unable and unwilling to even think of saying no. As soon as I do, she hooks her fingers inside the waistband of my panties and slides them down, down, down my legs. As soon as I step out of them, she leans forward and presses a long, wet kiss just at the top of my mons.
I’m trembling now, a shaking, sobbing mess of want and need and fire—so much fire licking its way over my skin, along my veins, through the very heart of me. “Please,” I whimper as she traces designs on my skin with her tongue. Over my hip, around my belly button, and then down along the seam where my legs meet my torso. “Beckett, please.”
She laughs again—this time, it’s definitely a wild, wicked sound—and stands, her mouth moving straight up the center of my body—from my navel to my heart to the hollow of my throat. She tastes all the different parts of me before finally taking a step back.
I reach for her with desperate hands. I don’t want her to stop, don’t want this feeling to ever go away. “I just need a moment,” she whispers, bending forward so she can nibble her way along my collarbone.
Then she’s stripping off her own boots and jumpsuit, leaving them in a jumbled pile on the floor that is totally unlike the obsessively tidy Beckett. The fact that she doesn’t care tells me she’s as into this as I am, and I feel a strong wave of gratitude.
For tonight.
For this moment.
But most of all for Beckett. Always for Beckett.
It’s my turn to take a step back as she shimmies her panties down her legs. And I’m glad I did because I have the most glorious view—her rosy brown nipples; her long, lean body; the soft curls between her legs.
“I’m not beautiful like you,” she says, gesturing to her scars, and for the first time I realize she’s as self-conscious as I am. Maybe even more, though she has no reason to be.
I take her hands, holding them tightly as I bring them to my heart. “You have nothing to be self-conscious about,” I tell her fiercely.
“I know what I am,” she says.
“Good,” I answer. “I’m glad you know that you are beautiful and powerful and strong—” My voice breaks as I look at the scars—the many, many scars—marking her warrior’s body. “So, so strong. Not to mention the sexiest person I have ever seen in my life.”
“I think you’re mistaken,” she teases. “That title belongs to you.”
“It doesn’t, no. But I’m glad you think so. That’s all that matters to me.”
Beckett smiles as she slides a finger beneath my chin. She tilts my head up and then slowly, carefully, perfectly, lowers her mouth to mine.
The moment our lips meet, my body sinks into hers. She tastes like the sweetest berries from the monastery garden, like cream and sugar and just a hint of gerjgin.
She feels even better, the dips and valleys of her body magic beneath my questing palms.
And when she leads us toward the bed, when she lays me down across it, every particle in my body yearns for more. For everything. For her.
She follows me down, and her mouth finds mine again as I wrap my arms around her and stroke my hands down her warm back. My fingers run into scars, and a part of me wants to linger, wants to explore each one with my hands, my eyes, my mouth. But I’m afraid doing so will only push her away from me—at least for now—so I ignore the badges of courage, of survival, that she carries on her body and focus on all the other things that make Beckett Beckett.
I toy with the coarse curls that frame her face.
Trace a finger along her full lower lip.
Rest my hand over her big, strong heart.
She whispers my name every time I touch a new place, until the sound of it falls around us over and over again, like the softest droplets in a summer storm.
She gives me a few minutes to explore her—to taste and touch and smell all the beautiful pieces of her. And then she takes over, kissing my throat, my jaw, the pulse point beneath my ear.
Heat licks through me as she moves lower, kissing and sucking her way over my collarbone to the hollow of my throat to the upper curve of my breast. My head spins, my heart races, and my hands clutch at her shoulders, her arms, her waist.
I’ve never felt like this before, never imagined that I could feel so much at one time without crying—without dying. And still, somehow, want more.
My body arches off the bed, a desperate plea for something I don’t know how to ask for. Beckett understands, though—she always understands—and she slides lower, lower, lower, until her mouth is on my thighs and her fingers are dancing over my mons to the edges of my sex.
Need explodes through me as she eases my legs apart and presses light kisses to my inner thighs. When I whimper low in my throat, my hips moving against her, she grows bolder. Surer. More devastating.
Her fingers slide along my sex, stroking, petting, circling, and I can’t stay still. My hips come off the bed, my hands clutch at her hair, my legs wrap around her as I urge her, “Hurry, hurry, hurry.”
But Beckett won’t be rushed as she kisses her way inside my lips to my clit. She flicks her tongue back and forth across it as her fingers slide deep inside me, and nothing in my life has ever come close to feeling as good.