“Eyes on me,” I said. “Right here.”
She looked at me. I unhooked her bra, slid the straps down her arms, let it drop. Her breasts were full, perfect, her nipples already tight, and I lowered my mouth to one and heard her gasp, felt her hand come up to the back of my head and grip.
I took my time with her. Learned what made her breath catch, what made her fingers tighten. The spot below her ear. The curve of her ribs. The way she arched into me when I scraped my teeth across her nipple. I undressed her the rest of the way, jeans, underwear, peeling the layers off like I was unwrapping something I’d been waiting for my whole life, and when she was naked in front of me I looked at her and the want was so sharp it bordered on pain.
I picked her up. Her legs wrapped around my waist and I carried her to the bed, laid her back against the sheets. She watched me pull my shirt over my head. My hands went to my belt, her eyes tracking every movement with a focus that made my cock harder than it already was.
I came down over her. Kissed her mouth, her jaw, her throat. Worked my way down her body with my hands and my mouth, learning the geography of her, the sounds she made, the placesthat made her shake. When I settled between her thighs and put my mouth on her she made a noise that I felt in my spine.
I licked through her, slow, thorough, feeling her thighs tense against my shoulders. She was wet, swollen, and every stroke of my tongue made her hips roll against my face. I pushed two fingers inside her and she cried out, her hand fisting in the sheets, her back arching off the bed.
“Oh god. Doc, I can’t...”
“Yeah, you can.” I curled my fingers, found the spot that made her whole body jerk, and worked it while my tongue circled her clit. “Let go. I’ve got you.”
She came apart. Hard, her thighs clamping against my head, her body shaking, a sound torn out of her that was half my name and half something she couldn’t hold back. I didn’t stop until she was twitching, oversensitive, her hand pushing weakly at my shoulder.
I kissed the inside of her thigh. She was flushed from her chest to her hairline, her eyes glazed, her lips parted. She looked at me like I’d taken her apart and she couldn’t figure out how to put herself back together.
“Good girl,” I said. The words out before I could think about them, thick with something I hadn’t meant to show.
Her whole body responded. A full-body shudder, her eyes going dark, her hips lifting toward mine. The words landed in a place I could see but couldn’t reach, somewhere private, somewhere deep, and whatever they triggered in her was immediate, visceral, and had nothing to do with obedience.
“Say it again,” she whispered.
I pushed inside her. Slow, inch by inch, feeling her stretch around me, feeling her nails dig into my shoulders. She was tight, slick, burning hot, and the sound that came out of me was wrecked and desperate and completely beyond my control.
“Good girl,” I said against her throat. “Taking me so well. Fuck, Evie.”
She moaned. Her legs wrapped around my hips and pulled me deeper and I bottomed out inside her and had to hold still for a second because the feel of her was threatening to end this before it started.
I fucked her slow at first. Long, deep strokes that let her feel every inch of me, that let me watch her face change with each thrust. Her mouth open, her eyes half-closed, her hands on my arms, gripping hard. She was tight enough that every stroke was a fight not to lose control, and the wet sound of me moving inside her was obscene in the quiet room.
“Harder,” she said. Her voice shaking. “Please.”
I gave her harder. Hiked her thigh up against my ribs, changed the angle, drove into her with a force that made the headboard knock against the wall. She cried out, her back arching, her nails raking down my back, and the sting of it mixed with the heat of being inside her and I stopped being patient.
I fucked her like I’d been thinking about it for two weeks straight. Because I had. Every night in my room down the hall, knowing she was fifty feet away, replaying the sound she’d made when I kissed her, going out of my mind. Now she was underneath me, matching every thrust, her hips rolling up to meet mine, her body answering mine with a greed that shattered every assumption I’d had about her inexperience.
She was close. I could feel it in the way she tightened around me, in the pitch of her breathing, in the desperate grip of her hands.
“Come for me,” I said. “Let me feel it.”
She broke. Her whole body clenched around me, pulsing, squeezing, and the feel of her coming on my cock dragged me over the edge with her. I buried myself deep and came hard, my hips grinding against hers, a groan ripped out of my chestthat I couldn’t have held back if I’d wanted to. She held onto me through it, her arms tight around my back, her face pressed against my neck, both of us shaking.
I didn’t pull out right away. Stayed there, inside her, my weight on my elbows, my face in her hair. Her heart hammered against my chest. Mine hammered back. The room was quiet except for our breathing, ragged, slowing, falling into rhythm.
“You okay?” I asked.
She laughed. Breathless, still shaking. “I didn’t know it could feel like that.”
I kissed her forehead. “It can feel like that every time.”
She went backthrough to the bar for the opening shift. I watched her go, wearing my shirt because hers was somewhere behind my dresser, and the sight of her in my clothes walking down the corridor of my compound did something to me that I was going to have to sit with for a long time.
I was at the bar two hours later, nursing a beer I wasn’t tasting, turning the inspection problem over in my head. Two in two weeks. Someone with money and reach leaning on the county, and I kept coming back to the timing. The week after Evie started, and the week after someone new showed up in Forsaken. I was smart enough to know there was more to her story than she’d told me. I began to wonder if I’d got myself mixed up with something that was going to come back and bite me somehow.
The noise camefrom the lot before I could follow the thought any further.
