Page 28 of Honeyfires

"Hands," I said.

She put them back above her head without being asked twice.

I got my mouth to her throat, her jaw, the spot just below her ear that I was already learning was the beginning of an undoing for her. She made a small, desperate sound, and her hips moved, and I pressed them back down with one hand, flat and firm.

"Hold still."

"I'm trying—"

"Try harder." I kissed the hollow below her collarbone. Felt her whole body tighten with the effort of not chasing it. "You can do it."

"You're doing this on purpose," she accused, breathless.

"Yes." I kissed lower. "How am I doing?"

She laughed, cracked and helpless, and then my mouth found her taut, pink nipple and the laugh dissolved into a moan that went straight down my spine. I sucked hard, and she cried out, her hands flying off the headboard toward my hair—

"Hands," I said against her breast, without looking up.

A pause filled the space between us. Then, slowly, her arms went back up.

"Good girl."

The whimper she made at that was obscene in the best possible way. I gave her other breast the same attention, teeth grazing the sensitive peak, feeling her shake with the effort of keeping still, and I was incredibly impressed by how hard she was trying.

I said so.

"You're doing so well," I told her, working my way down her stomach, and she made a sound that was half moan and half something embarrassingly close to a sob. "You feel that? That's what being good gets you."

"I will do literally anything you tell me," she said, in a voice that had lost all its usual composure. "For the record."

"I know." I kissed her hip. "I'm counting on it."

I pulled the lace underwear down and off and settled between her thighs, and she was already wet enough that I could see it in the light.

"Christ, Vera."

"Don't be smug about it," she said weakly.

"Too late." I looked up the length of her petite body, past the freckles and the flush, at her face: mouth open, chest heaving, hands white-knuckled on the headboard, watching me with eyes that had gone nearly black. "Here are the rules."

"Rules," she repeated, like she was trying to keep up.

"You don't come until I tell you to." I kept my gaze on hers, letting it land. "Your orgasm belongs to me tonight. I decide when."

The sound she made was helplessly desperate and the hottest thing I'd ever heard in my life.

"Are we clear?" I asked.

"Yes," she breathed. "God, yes, we're very clear—"

I lowered my head and put my mouth on her.

She cried out so suddenly the sound rang off the walls.

She tasted sweet and musky and went straight to my head like a shot of expensive whiskey, except better, because whiskey had never made me want to spend the rest of my life exactly here, doing exactly this, and consider it a life excellently spent. I groaned against her and felt her hips surge up, felt her hands finally tear free of the headboard and find my hair.

I let her have that. She needed something to hold.