Page 31 of Sting of Sin

Her smile widened, just enough for me to feel it where her mouth hovered over mine.

“You’re enjoying this,” I murmured.

“A little.”

“Cruel woman.”

“You have no idea.”

Then she kissed me.

Not cautiously.

Not by accident.

She kissed me with both hands in my hair and her body coming close between my knees, and every thought I had ever had about restraint went white at the edges.

I still didn’t move. Not until she drew back half an inch, frowned at me, and whispered, “Eli.”

“What?”

“You’re allowed to touch me.”

The words struck deeper than they should have.

My hands lifted slowly. I set them first at her waist, over the soft cotton of my shirt. No skin. No pressure. Just the shape of her beneath my palms and the terrible sweetness of being permitted even that.

Her eyes closed.

“Here?” I asked.

“Yes.”

I let my hands settle.

She exhaled.

The sound went through me like heat under a door.

Then she kissed me again.

Slower this time.

Learning.

Her mouth moved against mine with a kind of deliberate wonder, as though she had thought about this and thought about it and still hadn’t expected it to feel the way it did. I felt the instant she stopped thinking. The instant something in her loosened.

Her fingers tightened in my hair.

My hands moved no farther than her waist.

She shifted closer on her own until her knees touched the bed on either side of me, until the space between us disappeared, until I could feel the quick beat of her heart through the thin cotton between us.

I broke the kiss first. Barely. “Still okay?”

She opened her eyes. There was color high in her cheeks.

“Yes.”