Page 43 of Stealing Cinder

I crawl backward across the mattress.

He grabs my ankle and drags me back.

"Where do you think you're going, princess?"

"Away from you." I kick, but there's no force behind it. My body is already arching toward him, betraying every word coming out of my mouth.

His knee presses into the mattress and the bed dips under his weight. He catches both my wrists in one hand and pins them above my head against the wrought-iron headboard. The metal is cold under my knuckles, sharp against the delicate bones of my wrists. He loops the pillowcase through the iron bars and ties it tight enough to hold, loose enough that I can twist without bruising.

I pull against the binding. It holds.

My pulse hammers against the fabric. I'm spread beneath him, wrists bound overhead, naked and dripping wet on his dark sheets, and every nerve in my body is vibrating at a frequency I didn't know existed.

"You asked for this." He settles between my thighs and the width of his shoulders forces my legs apart. Warm breath fans over the inside of my knee.

"I said tie me up and fuck me. You're only halfway there."

His laugh is low and dangerous. "You don't give the orders here."

He presses his mouth to my inner thigh. The rough scrape of his beard against tender skin pushes a gasp from my lungs. He moves higher, his lips dragging a hot, slow trail upward, and I can feel my pulse in places I didn't know had a pulse.

When his tongue parts my folds, my hips buck off the mattress.

He pins me down. One hand flat on my lower belly, fingers spread wide enough to graze the curve of my bump. His mouth closes over my clit and he sucks, hard, and the world fractures into white heat and desperate sound.

"Samuel." His name tears from my throat.

He pulls back. The cool air hits where his mouth was and I groan at the loss. His thumb strokes a slow circle over my hip bone, patient, while my body writhes under his hold.

"That's not what I want to hear."

I clench my jaw and pull against the pillowcase. The iron headboard groans under the strain. "You're delusional."

His tongue drags through my folds again, flat and slow, and the pressure on my clit builds with a precision that has my toes curling and my spine arching. Two thick fingers slide into me and curl forward, finding a place inside me that detonates pleasure so bright my vision whites out at the edges.

I moan. Loud. Shamelessly.

He works me to the cliff's edge and holds me there. My walls clamp around his fingers, desperate for the release he is deliberately withholding. Every muscle in my lower body coils tight, trembling, reaching for the orgasm shimmering just out of reach.

And then he stops. Pulls his fingers out. Sits back on his heels and watches me come undone.

"No." I twist against the restraints. "You can't just stop."

"Tell me, Cinder."

"No."

He lowers his mouth to me again and starts the torture over. The flat of his tongue works through my soaked folds, lapping, circling, pulling my clit between his lips until I can hear my own heartbeat in my ears. He pushes me to the peak a second time, my hips grinding against his face, my fingers wrapped white-knuckled around the iron bars above my head.

The orgasm crests, right there, right on the edge, and he pulls away again.

I scream. My back bows off the sheets and tears sting behind my lashes.

"Beg me for my cock the way I want and I'll give it to you." His voice is gravel and heat, rough enough to scrape against every raw nerve he's exposed.

I slam my eyes shut. My thighs are shaking. Slick heat runs down the inside of my legs and the empty ache between my hips is unbearable.

I twist my right wrist until the pillowcase loosens enough for me to slip free. My hand shoots between my thighs. One finger slides through my wet folds and pushes inside, and the relief is instant and overwhelming.