Then I’ve got my arms around his shoulders and his hands are on my neck, and when his knee slides between my legs, I open up to him with a breathless sigh I had no idea my throat was capable of making. Arthur twists his fingers into my hair and tips my head back so he can run his lips across my neck. “Pretty,” he says. “You make such pretty little noises for me.”
His teeth graze the tender skin of my throat, making me whimper, and I push back against his hips with mine in retaliation.
“Oh, so that’s how this is going to be.” His hot laugh spills across my collarbone. “You like to be on top? Me too.”
“Guess we’ll just have to fight about it,” I manage to say in a mostly stable voice. I slip my hand down the front of his wrinkled shirt and tease my fingers over the curve of his hipbone. Arthur’s hips stutter, wet lips parting as he angles toward my hand.
“Nope.” I laugh as I move my fingers to the outside of his thigh. “Not so fast, King.”
Heat shimmers in his eyes, his jaw ticking like he can’t believe I’m not just touching him, or he’s trying to figure out which parts of this are a game to me. I don’t know where the line is, either; if I want to sleep with him tonight or if I just want to drive this man to the edge and watch him tip over.
Either way, he seems as into whatever this is as I am—so I follow the fire. “Have you ever been with a woman who’s been with other women?” I say.
The muscle in his jawbouncesat that. “No. Not that I… not that I know of.”
“Now you have.” Pulling a page from his book, I lean up on my toes and whisper as close to his ear as I can get. “It isn’t just about penetration for me. I like everything else more.”
My past experience was a topic that Max hated discussing. He always found a way to downplay that I’d fully dated a woman since, in his eyes, that was mycollege phase, and now I was with him, so who cared?
Me. I cared. He did, too, since ten minutes in our thin, squeaky bed didn’t thrill me to my core. I tried to tell him that it wouldn’t thrill any woman, heterosexual or not, but he got so tangled up in his own insecurity that he shut down the conversation altogether. And I cared about him so much that I let his shame of me leak into me, taking his guilt and making it mine.
If Arthur is going to run—or shut me down for being myself—I need to know now, before he’s seen me at my most vulnerable.
Thoughts swirl in his clouded gaze as he pushes me back against the wall. But he doesn’t look upset or uncomfortable. There’s a raw desperation in the way he studies me before kissing me again, almost… almost like he can’t believe I shared something this personal with him. He kisses me like I just told him the meaning of life: hard, thankful, shaky fingers winding in the cut fabric at the back of my dress.
“Down,” I gasp between breaths. “Push it off.”
He groans, momentarily irritated by the lack of kissing, before he realizes I’m giving him permission to get me naked. “Everything else,” he murmurs as he jerks the dress down to my waist. “God, you’re going to ruin me. I’ll never want anyone else.”
“Fine with me—”
I’m cut off by his hand grabbing my breast. He kneads it, teasing flinty sparks of pleasure with every touch. “Don’t think I’ll let you destroy me without taking you down with me. I’ll get you back, princess.”
“Nope.”
He scrapes his fingernails over my nipple. “Baby.”
“No.”
Smirking, Arthur rolls my nipple between his fingertips. Not fair. I grab the collar of his shirt. “Princess behavior,” he laughs as I huff through trying to lift it off his massive neck and shoulders.
“You’d like that, me all pliant and bratty.”
“I hate to break this to you, but—”
“I’mnotbratty.”
“Just pliant?”
“To be decided.”
I get his shirt off and start on his pants. When my fingers accidentally brush the part of him I’ve been careful until now to avoid, Arthur grabs my wrist and stops me. “No.”
My heart misses a step. “No?”
“You said everything else.” There’s a challenge in his eyes. “I want you to watch me. I want to see how long you lastjustwatching me.”
His boldness makes heat settle into the damp place between my legs. This isn’t exactly what I meant by other activities, but I’m not going to complain. “Deal.”
