Page 44 of Tick Tock, Darling

All that time telling him no. All that time sure I knew exactly what he was.

I’d never let anybody stand behind me. Not once, not ever, and here I was.

His knuckles brushed my spine and I closed my eyes.

“Tinker Bell.” Low, right against my ear. “You’re shaking.”

“I know.”

“Do you want me to stop?”

“No.” I got the word out and it came out steadier than I felt. “Don’t stop. I want your hands and lips on me.”

“You don’t know how long I’ve waited to hear you say that.”

He pulled the dress off my shoulders and it went down and I stepped out of it, and I kicked the thing across the floor and neither one of us looked at where it landed.

There was nothing under it. There’d been nothing under it the whole time — on that deck, in front of Pan, in front of every man on that ship — and I’d known it every second and hadn’t been able to do one thing about it.

I turned around and let him look at me anyway.

Because this time I picked it.

His lips found my bare shoulder and something unlocked in me, a warmth that pooled slow and deep.

“Now, you.”

All I got was a boot cracking off the far wall and a rush of air, and then he was standing in front of me with nothing on. White hair, long enough to brush his collarbone, caught the low light of the room. The breadth of his shoulders, the hard taper of him—he was built like something that had never once been fragile. He came to me without hurry now, slid his arms beneath me, and set me down against the sheets like I was something he intended to keep.

His mouth found mine. Slow, unhurried, tasting of something spiced I couldn’t name. One hand went down my side, rough palm following the curve of my waist and the dip of my spine. The other cupped the back of my neck and held me there.

I let my hands wander in return—over the hard line of his shoulders, down the ridges of his stomach—and then around to his back.

Smooth. All of it. Not just where the whip had been.

He’d had scars back there. I’d seen them in that church with his shirt off, old ones, the kind a man collects over a long life. They were gone. Every one of them, and I hadn’t meant to do that.

“Your scars,” I said.

“I noticed.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t⁠—”

“Don’t be.” He caught my hand and moved it back where it had been. “You gave me a clean back. I don’t want to remember who gave me those scars. Nobody’s ever given me anything like it.”

His mouth closed over my nipple, a hot, wet shock that made me gasp and arch against him. My fingers tangled in the thick, white waves of his hair, holding him there. He took his time, working with a slow, devastating precision that had my breath catching in ragged hitches—every suck, every graze of teeth a promise and a punishment. By the time he moved lower, I was already panting, skin flushed and sensitive, utterly at the mercy of him.

“Claim me,” I whispered, the words a raw plea in the quiet dark. Every cell in my body ached for him, a deep, consuming hunger that went beyond thought. He’d had a hundred women and I wanted every one of them gone out of his head. That’s not a nice thing to want. I wanted it anyway.

“I will.” His voice was a low promise against my lips before he began to move. He shifted his weight and then the whisper of his hair trailed like silk down my fevered skin, over my ribs, my stomach. When his mouth finally found me, hot and knowing, the shock of it arched my spine off the sheets. My hands fisted in the cotton, gripping for purchase in a world that had dissolved into sensation.

A tremor began deep in my core, a shuddering wave that made me clutch the sheets, my knuckles white against the linen. The room dissolved into a constellation of silver sparks behind my eyelids.

“Please,” I breathed, the word ragged.

He shifted his weight, the mattress dipping as he moved between my thighs. His gaze locked with mine, dark and intense, the pupils wide and swallowing the light. “I’ll claim you now and forever.” The low timbre of his voice vibrated through me.

“Promise me you’ll never look at another woman or want another woman.”