He didn’t.
His hands moved to the backs of my thighs and he lifted me. I wrapped my legs around his waist as he carried me through the house without breaking the kiss, navigating the hallway and the stairs with a certainty that told me he could find his way through this house blindfolded.
My back hit the wall once. He pinned me there, his hips pressed against mine, his mouth leaving my lips to trace the line of my neck, my collarbone, the place where my pulse was hammering so hard he must have felt it under his tongue. I arched into him and his grip on my thighs tightened. The soundhe made against my throat was something between a groan and my name.
“Christopher.” His name came out breathless and shaky.
“Say it again.”
I said it again. And again. Each time his name left my mouth, his grip tightened, his breathing roughened, his mouth moved lower. He carried me the rest of the way to his bedroom, and laid me down like I was both precious and urgent, like he wanted to be careful. But couldn’t afford to be, and the contradiction was intoxicating.
He stood over me for a second. Breathing hard. His eyes traveled from my face down the length of my body and back up. The way he looked at me made my skin burn before he even touched it. He got wet because of me. I could see a water droplet running down his neck, tracing the line of his collarbone before disappearing beneath his shirt collar. I bit my lips, wanting to follow it with my mouth.
He pulled his shirt over his head in one swift motion. The dim light from the hallway caught the lines of his chest, his stomach, the V of muscle that disappeared below his waistband. I’d seen him shirtless before, that first morning, coming out of the pool at the resort. But seeing and touching were different countries and I was about to cross a border I could never uncross.
He came back down to me and the feeling of his bare chest against mine through the wet fabric of my dress was so good it made me dizzy. His hands braced on either side of my head, his body hovering over mine, close but not close enough, and he was doing it on purpose. Making me wait. Making me feel the distance between his skin and mine and want it closed.
“Tell me to stop,” he said. His voice was wrecked. “If you want me to stop, tell me now. Because in about ten seconds I’m not gonna be able to.”
“Don’t you dare stop.”
His mouth found the hollow of my throat. His lips pressed against my pulse point and lingered there, feeling my heartbeat with his mouth. The intimacy of it made my breath catch. Then lower. The curve of my shoulder. His teeth grazed the strap of my dress and he pulled it down slowly, painfully slowly, following the fabric with his lips, kissing every inch of skin he uncovered. The other strap followed. He peeled the wet dress down my body like he was unwrapping something he’d been thinking about for a long time and wanted to remember every second of.
The cool air brushed my skin and then his mouth was there, warm, erasing the cold. His lips traced a line from my shoulder to the swell of my chest and my back lifted off the mattress on instinct. He pressed me back down with one hand flat on my stomach, holding me there.
“Patience,” he said against my skin and smiled mischievously.
His mouth moved lower. His lips brushed the curve of my breast and my breath left me in a rush that I couldn’t disguise. He didn’t rush. His tongue traced a slow, deliberate circle around my nipple, teasing, not touching where I needed him to, and the anticipation built until my fingers twisted in the sheets.
Then his mouth closed over me, warm and wet, and the sound I made was raw and uncontrolled, pulled from my deepest core that I didn’t know existed. My fingers found his hair and gripped and he groaned against my skin, a low, guttural sound, and the vibration of it sent a current through my entire body.
He took his time. His tongue flicked and swirled and his lips pulled and when he used his teeth, gentle but intentional, just enough pressure to make my spine arch off the bed. I gasped so hard I forgot to breathe. He did it again. Harder. And thesound that left me was closer to a cry than anything resembling composure.
He moved to the other side. Same maddening pace. Same devastating attention. His tongue drawing circles that made my hips lift and my thighs clench. He cupped the breast his mouth had just left, his thumb rolling over the wet, sensitized skin, and the combination of his hand on one side and his mouth on the other was so much that my body arched into him and I whimpered. His groan against my skin told me he was enjoying this as much as I was.
“Christopher.” I meant it as a sentence. It came out as a plea.
He looked up at me from where his mouth was pressed against my ribs. Those blue eyes, dark in the dim light, and the expression in them was so focused, so intent, that I felt it in waves. .
His hands were everywhere after that. My waist, my ribs, the dip of my spine where his fingertips traced patterns that made me shiver. He kissed a trail down my stomach, his lips hot and unhurried, his tongue dipping into my navel and making me squirm. His hands slid back up to my breasts, cupping them, kneading, his thumbs teasing my nipples while his mouth moved lower, and the dual sensation made my brain go blank. I existed only in the places where his skin touched mine.
His palm skimmed up the outside of my thigh, over my hip, along the curve of my waist, and then back down, and I was trembling under his hands.
When his fingers found the inside of my thigh, my breath left me in a rush. He paused. His thumb drew a slow circle on my skin, teasing, testing, watching my face for the reaction. I gave it to him. I couldn’t help it. My hips rose toward his hand and a sound left my mouth that was embarrassing and honest. But I didn’t care about being embarrassed anymore.
His fingers moved higher. Slowly. Tracing the crease where my thigh met my hip, close, yet not close enough, and I made a sound that was half frustration and half plea.
“Please,” I whispered.
“Please what?” His voice was rough velvet against my inner thigh where his mouth had followed his hands.
“Touch me.”
He did. And the sound I made when his fingers finally found me was loud enough that I would have been mortified in any other moment. But I had no brain cells left to feel shame. They’d evacuated somewhere around the time his tongue circled my breasts and they hadn’t come back.
He watched my face while his hand worked. Studied every reaction with total focus, adjusting when I gasped, pressing when I arched, finding a rhythm that matched my breathing and then breaking it just to hear the noise I made when he changed pace.
He waslearningme.
