Page 68 of Honeyfires

"I'm not asking."

"I won't," she said again, differently. Lower. Meaning it in all the ways it could mean.

I climbed over her and didn't kiss her. Just looked at her. The candlelight on her flushed skin, her hair spread across the pillow, her wrists crossed exactly where I'd put them, her chest rising and falling with the effort of lying still while I hovered above her, not yet touching anything.

"Please," she said. Barely a sound.

"Please, what?"

"Please touch me."

"Where?"

She made a sound that was almost a laugh and almost not. "Everywhere. Anywhere. Petra."

I got my mouth to her throat and bit down.

Not soft. Not gentle. The kind of bite that left a mark, that she'd feel tomorrow, that would tell her every time she touched it what tonight had been. She cried out, her whole body jerking, her wrists lifting off the headboard—

"Hands," I said against the mark I'd just made.

They went back down. She was shaking.

I bit her again, lower, at the curve where her throat met her shoulder, and she made a sound that went straight down my spine, and I sucked the skin there until I was satisfied and moved lower. Her collarbone. The swell of her breasts. I took my time with her like I owned her, which tonight I did.

"Petra—"

"Mm?"

"I need—"

"I know what you need." I dragged my teeth across her nipple and felt her entire body clench. "You'll get it when I decide."

The whimper she made was obscene and involuntary.

I worked my way down her body with my mouth, teeth and lips and tongue, leaving marks where I felt like leaving them—her ribs, the curve of her hip, the soft inside of her thigh—and she was gripping the headboard hard enough that her knuckles had gone white, hips barely moving, working so hard to hold still that I could see the effort in every muscle.

"You're being so good," I told her, against her inner thigh, not touching where she needed it. "You have any idea what that does to me?"

"Please," she said rawly, nothing left of composure. "Petra, please."

I lifted my head and looked up the length of her.

"Ask properly."

"Please, will you touch me?"

"Please, will you touch me what."

A pause that lasted exactly as long as it took her to decide she didn't care about dignity right now. "Please will you touch me. I need you. I'm—I'll do anything, I'm so—please."

"Good girl," I said, and put my mouth on her.

She came in under four minutes, which wasn't the plan but wasn't not the plan either, and I worked her through every second of it with two fingers curled inside her while she arched off the mattress and pulled her own hair and made sounds that I would be thinking about for the rest of my life.

When the last wave ebbed, she was gasping, eyes glazed, hands loose on the headboard at last.

I gave her approximately thirty seconds.