I curl my fingers slowly, and I swear I can feel her center pulse against my lips.
Her body arches. Her hips shift. The leg braced against my shoulder tenses hard.
But I don’t stop.
Not until I feel her fall over the edge in short, hot quivers.
Finally, she exhales and stills.
She slumps slightly in her chair, thighs still trembling, fingers gripping my hair like it’s the only thing anchoring her to the floor.
I stay there a moment longer.
Just breathing her in.
Then I press one last kiss to the inside of her thigh and slide back up into my chair like nothing happened.
Across from me, she’s flushed and beautifully wrecked.
She’s staring at me as if I’ve just detonated every nerve in her body with nothing but patience and a dare.
“You’re a menace,” she says finally, her voice ragged.
I sip my wine. “You look like you enjoyed the food.”
She stares at me for three long seconds.
Then she smiles. A slow, devastating smile.
“We’re not making it through dessert, King.”
That’s my girl.
I lean in, voice low.
“Well, then, Whitmore, you best finish your wine.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Tessa
Idon’t know what pulls me out of sleep first. The light shifting behind my eyelids or Waffles snoring like a tiny, wheezy grandpa at the foot of the bed.
For a second, I stay still.
Rowan’s arm is heavy across my waist, his chest solid at my back. It takes my brain a moment to register that something is off, because physically, nothing has changed. I’m still wrapped up in him. Still tucked into the space he made for me.
But then I feel it.
Not sound. Not movement.
Stillness.
Tense stillness.
The kind that fills a body when it’s bracing.
Rowan’s breath isn’t even. It’s short. Like every inhale has to pass through something jagged.
