Ian groans low in his throat at the tiny prick of pain, and the sound gets me hotter than it has any right to. I slide my hands up his back so that I can tangle my fingers in the short curls at the nape of his neck.
They feel surprisingly good slipping back and forth against my palms, sliding over my skin, wrapping themselves around my fingers. I wish we could live right here—right fucking here—in this moment of possibility forever.
But then he tilts my head back even more, and there’s a new moment for me to live in as his mouth devours mine. As he bites and sucks and licks his way inside my mouth, his tongue sweeping against my own until all I can think about is him. Until all I can see or hear or taste is him.
I moan low in my throat, and this time when my fingers tug on his hair, there’s no gentleness in it. How can there be, when Ian is driving me slowly, inexorably, out of my mind? And making sure that I love every second of it.
It’s my turn now, to nibble at his lips, to run my tongue over his teeth and the sensitive skin between his gum and his upper lip. He groans when I lick inside him, capturing my tongue and sucking it even deeper inside his mouth.
I’ve never been kissed like this before, never even imagined that a kiss like this could exist, and I want to hold onto this feeling for as long as I possibly can. For as long as Ian will let me.
But then he’s moving on, his lips tracing a hot trail across my cheek to my ear. He pauses there, nibbling at my lobe before moving on to press hot, open-mouthed kisses into the sensitive spot just below my ear.
I gasp when he licks his way across my skin, pausing for a moment to suck his way along my throat in a move that I’m fairly certain will leave me with the best kind of bruises tomorrow—the kind that will remind me that this isn’t a dream after all.
“Is this okay?” he murmurs as he delves even lower, his fingers dancing across the zipper of my jumpsuit and dragging it down to the center of my breasts.
I’m too busy arching my back, too busy grabbing onto his hair to hold his mouth in place against my skin to do much more than nod.
Thankfully, a nod is all he needs, and his fingers skim lower, tracing the curves of my breasts before delving inside my camisole to glance across my nipples. Once, twice, then again and again until I can’t breathe, can’t think, can’t do anything but drown in the sensations Ian pulls from me so easily.
“I want to see you,” he murmurs as he kisses his way over my collarbone and down the center of my body to the spot just between my breasts.
“Yes. Please.” I arch against his mouth to give him better access, and he laughs—a dark, seductive sound that shoots all the way through me.
Then he’s lowering the zipper on my jumpsuit completely, peeling it down my arms and body until it pools around my waist. He pauses then, sliding warm, calloused fingers along the sensitive skin at my waist, stroking his way under my camisole and up, up, up my ribs until he’s cupping the weight of my breasts in his hands.
He’s moving his mouth lower at the same time, nibbling his way down my neck to the spot where my neck meets my shoulder. And then he’s sucking gently there, too, and my entire body lights up like a meteor shower, sensation dancing along my nerve endings in every direction possible.
He spends a few minutes in that one spot before sliding lower over my shoulder to the round scar I’ve had as long as I can remember.
“What’s this?” he asks, pressing hot, open-mouthed kisses to the slightly slick skin.
“I fell when I was little, got impaled on one of the sharp wrought-iron spindles at the palace. I don’t remember it, but my mother says I screamed and screamed.”
“I bet. That’s a pretty big area to be hurt on a little kid.” He kisses it again—several times—before moving on.
“Ian,” I gasp, hand cupping his head as he moves even lower and my entire world narrows down to this moment. To this man and the way he makes me feel just by touching me.
I need to be touching him, too.
But I’m not nearly as skilled as he is, and my fingers fumble a little as they dance along the warm, resilient skin of his waist and burrow under his shirt to stroke his lower back, his sides, the smooth, taut skin of his abdomen. He’s lean and muscular and so, so warm, and I don’t think I’ve ever felt anything better in my life—at least not until he does the same to me and I forget how to breathe. How to think. How to do anything but just be.
And then he’s peeling my jumpsuit down, over my hips and down my legs as his fingers stroke each newly revealed centimeter of skin. It gets caught on my boots, and for a second my cheeks burn with embarrassment at forgetting to kick them off.
But he just laughs and drops to his knees in front of me so that he can pull them off and then slip my jumpsuit off as well.
“Lift up your foot,” he murmurs, and so I do, clutching at his shoulders as my trembling knees threaten to collapse.
He laughs again as he wraps a strong arm around my hips to help steady me before licking his way along the edge of my panties and then delving lower, lower, lower until he presses his mouth against the damp cotton at the very heart of me.
My legs go out from under me completely then, and I fall backward onto his bed.
“I like the way you think,” he teases as he follows me down. And then his mouth—his wicked, wild, wonderful mouth—is everywhere. Everywhere.
Kissing its way over my stomach.
Nibbling its way along the curves of my legs.
Sucking a path across my breasts.
And nothing has ever felt so good.
But it’s not enough—it’s not close to being enough. Not when every single part of me is aching for every single part of him.
And so it’s my turn to pull his shirt off.
My turn to slide to my knees in front of him as I fumble his boots off and his pants down his legs.
My turn to kiss a slow, hot trail right down the center of his body.
Ian groans, low and deep. And then he’s pulling me up, up, up and over his body, spreading my thighs so that I’m straddling him, a knee on either side of his head.
For a second, embarrassment floods me—I’m so open, so exposed—but then he’s groaning deep in his throat, ripping off my panties, and burying his face against my sex.
“Ian!” I gasp out at the first feel of his mouth on me, but his hands move to my hips, anchoring me in place. And then he’s kissing me everywhere—everywhere—and nothing has ever felt so good.
“Please,” I moan as heat continues to build inside of me. “Please, please, please.”
I don’t even know what I’m asking for, but Ian does, and he gives it to me, one long, deliberate lick at a time. And then he’s pulling my clit into his mouth, his hands holding me in place as he sucks so, so gently.
Heat turns to need, need turns to ecstasy, and just like that, my body explodes like a supernova. I call his name again and again as I drown in a maelstrom of sensation so intense that it would have terrified me if Ian wasn’t there with me, holding me, kissing me, loving me through every powerful, overwhelming second of it.
And when it’s over, when the pleasure finally stops racing through me like a shooting star, he rolls me over and settles between my thighs. Then he starts all over again, his hands cupping my breasts, his mouth gliding over my shoulder, his body sliding against mine. And somehow, somehow, the heat rekindles deep inside of me, and it isn’t long before I’m wrapping myself around him and pleading for more.