He kisses me until my knees give, and his hand on my ass is the only thing keeping me upright. He kisses me until I forget that my daughter is down the hall. And I am gripping his henley in two fists like I am drowning, until my chest is heaving againsthis, until I am making little broken sounds I cannot stop. Adam Maksimov kisses me until I am fucking ruined, any other man forgotten in a single minute.
Then he stops, pulls back just enough to look at me. And I imagine what he’s seeing: mouth swollen, eyes blown, breath wrecked…His eyes drop to my throat then lower, to my chest heaving against the thin cotton. And his mouth twitches.
“There she is.”
Then he goes down, dropping to his knees in front of me. So tall that his face is level with my chest. He grips the hem of my dress and pushes it without ceremony, baring my thighs to the bedroom air and my belly to the light, until the cotton is bunched up around my waist. And I am standing in the bedroom my dead husband used to sleep in, in front of a kneeling Bratva boss only wearing a pair of plain cotton panties from the waist down.
He looks at me. He looks at my body, and his pupils are huge;his full lips parted,his chest heaving.
Then he says, very quietly, “Look at ye.”
I am going to cry. I am going to cry from this. From a man on his knees in front of me, looking at my thighs like they are the answer to a question he’s had his whole life.
He hooks his fingers into the sides of my panties. But he doesn’t pull them off. He drags them down, slow, all the way to my knees, and lets them stop there. Doesn’t take them all the way off. He leaves them at my knees so I can’t open my legs any wider.
I make another noise, his mouth twitches again, and he says, “Hands on the wall, love. Behind ye.”
I obey before my brain catches up. My back hits the wall by the door. My palms press flat against the cool paint. The hem of my dress is in my mouth, where I have, at some point, grabbed it to keep it out of his way.
Adam nudges my legs as far apart as the panties at my knees will let them go, which is not much.
Then he puts his mouth on me.
Sweet.Sweet.Sweet baby Jesus.
His mouth ishot. His mouth iscertain. His mouth knows exactly what it is doing because of course it does, because of courseAdam Maksimovknows what he is doing with his mouth between a woman’s legs, because Adam Maksimov is eating me out like it’s the only meal he’s ever wanted and he’s beenstarving.
First, he licks me in one long, slow drag, from base to top, like he is fuckingtasting me. He hums against my pussy. The vibration traveling straight up my spine.
“Christ,” he breathes against my skin, “Aye, love.”
Then he getsto fucking work. His tongue finds a spot. The exact spot. The spot no one ever bothered to find in all my years, and which I have not been able to find for myself. His tongue finds it on the first pass andstaysthere. Right fucking there. He flattens his tongue against it andcircles, slow, deliberate, with the same focused intensity he’s used from the first second we met. The man does not improvise. The man goddamncommits.
I make a sound I cannot identify, drop the hem of my dress from between my teeth because my lips need to be parted for the noises that are coming out of me. I clap a hand over my mouth becauseJasmine is down the hallandJasmine cannot hear this. If Jasmine hearsthis,I will freaking die.
Adam reaches up without taking his mouth off me and pulls my hand off my mouth. He laces his fingers through mine, presses my hand flat on the wall again andholds it there, and the message is clear:I wanna hear you, lass.
I bite my bottom lip until it stings. And he keeps working me, sliding one of his long callused fingers inside me, slow, slow,fuck, the curl of it, thethicknessof it, hooking up against aspot in me that has, also, been unfound forever, and I’m fucking gone.
I come against his mouth, his hand and the wall in less than five minutes, and it’s loud,humiliatingly so.It’s the best five minutes of my entire life. My hand is still trapped in his; my thigh isshakingon his massive shoulder. He hums against me, low, pleased,proud, working me through it. Every aftershock. Each wave. The man does not let up. He stays on me until I am fucking whimpering, my hips jerking away from his mouth, until I am babbling.
“Adam…Adam…Adam…please…”
“Mm.” Soft. Against my thigh now. He has finally moved his mouth and is kissing the inside of my leg, tenderly, almost lazily. “Aye, love. That’s me.”
He sits back on his heels and looks up at me.
His mouth is wet;hisbeard issoaked. His eyes are blown black, his lips swollen, and he is looking at me like I have never…never…in thirty-five years been looked at.
I am going to cry. I think I am crying. He sees it. Of course, he sees it. Bastard sees everything. His face softens for a second, then he is on his feet and he ispicking me up.
Just like that. With one arm under my knees, the other around my back. My dress falls back into place, my panties still around my knees, my face pressed against the soft cotton of his henley, which smells like him and now smells likeme. I’m wrecked, a rag. Soft, ruined, sobbing in his arms, and he iscarrying melike I weigh fucking nothing.
Adam sets me down on the bed, kneels on the mattress next to me, pulls my panties the rest of the way off, slow, careful, and tucks them into his pocket. I should say something about that. But I don’t. My brain barely registers what’s happening. What just happened…
He pulls my dress down over my thighs, covering my bare legs, and runs his knuckles down my cheek.
“Stay right there, love.”
