Page 95 of Reluctant Bride

He goes still behind me.

“Turn around,” he says, and I do, and I watch his whole face come undone at the sight of the white lace stick-on bra, garters, the whole deliberate architecture I picked out weeks ago in a shop in Missoula and never told him about.

“You planned this,” he says, like an accusation, like a gift. “White.”

“I plan everything, Dawson. You married a woman who brings a folder to her own kidnapping. White, well, you know why.”

“Sage, I love you.” The words come out like a sacred prayer, like he’s been holding them back one second too long already. “You’re the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my life, and I have seen you in a lot of states of undress. This one might actually kill me.”

“Don’t die yet. I’m not finished with you.”

I breathe him in first, cedar and whiskey and the warmth of a man who’s been holding himself in check all night. I take my time with every button after that, working down his chest, letting myself have every second of watching him open up in front of me, scars and ink and muscle he’s built into a weapon and somehow still lets me touch like it’s just skin. His arms, his stomach, I drag my hands over every inch of it like I’m memorizing him for the first time instead of the hundredth. My fingers graze his waistband and go for his belt next, opening it up and push his slacks down until he’s bare from the waist down, and I let my hands linger on the thick, powerful line of his thighs before I let myself have the rest of him. He sucks in a sharp breath.

“You’re staring,” he says, echoing my own line back at me.

“I’ve earned it. Years of not looking.” I push the shirt off his shoulders and drag my palms down the dark ink on both arms, from shoulders to wrists, over the sagebrush hidden at his right wrist, and this time I don’t let him deflect it. “Tell me. You said you’d earn the right eventually. I think a wedding qualifies.”

He catches my hand and holds it flat against the ink, over the small green sprig hidden at his wrist.

“It’s you,” he says, simple, no armor left in it at all. “Sagebrush grows wild on every fence line either family owns. You can’t kill it, can’t fence it out, can’t stop it from coming back no matter how hard you try to root it up. I got it the year I came home, because I finally admitted to myself I’d spent years trying to root you out of my life, and instead you just kept growing into my heart more every day.”

I don’t have words for that. I lick his bottom lip instead, and he lets his hands find my hair, pulling the pins free one at a time until it falls loose down my back and over my breasts, dark against white lace.

“There she is,” his voice like fine whiskey.

His hands stop at the white lace bra, hovering over each cup, not certain what to do. I place my hands over his and help him peel it off and drop it to the floor between us. Satisfaction lingers on his lips as he moistens them and places his mouth over my nipple. My pulse is already quickening, heat building low and delicious between my thighs.

Then he picks me up again, one arm banding under my knees, and lays me down on our bed like I’m something worth being careful with.

“I plan on worshipping every inch of you tonight,” he says, kneeling over me. “Starting now.”

And I let him.

He starts at my ankle, working up the inside of my calf, over the garter still clipped to my stocking, taking his time unhooking each one before he peels the silk down each leg, his mouth following the bare skin it leaves behind. By the time he reaches my hip I’m already writhing under a mouth that hasn’t even found the part of me screaming for it yet.

“Dawson.”

“Patience,” he says, against my stomach now, tongue circling my navel before he drags lower. “I’ve waited years for this. You can wait a few more minutes.”

I don’t last a few more minutes. He hooks two fingers into the lace at my hip and drags it down my legs, and when it’s free he brings the scrap of white to his face and breathes me in like he’s memorizing it, eyes locked on mine the whole time.

“Fuck, Sage, your scent is intoxicating.”

His mouth finds me bare, hot and soaking, and I arch clean off the mattress, both hands fisting in his thick hair, my hips already chasing a rhythm he refuses to give me faster than he’s decided to.

“Wider,” he says, hands pressing my thighs open. “Let me have all of you.”

I do. I spread for him shamelessly, moaning something incoherent, and he rewards it by sliding two fingers into me while his tongue stays right where I need it, curling deep and rhythmic until the pressure building in me finally breaks loose in one long, shaking wave that has my whole body trembling under his hands.

He comes up with my slickness on his mouth, his eyes gone dark and hungry in the lamplight, and he doesn’t wipe it away. He just looks at me like a man who’s finally gotten the one thing he’s spent years convincing himself he didn’t deserve.

He doesn’t climb back up my body this time. He flips me onto my stomach instead, one hand pressing flat between my shoulder blades, and kisses a slow line down my spine, over the small of my back, to the curve of my hip, before he hauls me up onto my knees in front of him.

“Different view tonight,” he says, rough, his hand splaying possessive across my lower back. “I want to feel you shake from this angle too.”

His palm lands sharp against my ass, just enough sting to make me gasp, and before the heat of it even fades he smooths his hand over the same spot in slow, soothing circles, until I feel myself go slicker for him just from that alone.

“That’s very ambitious talk for a man who’s about to lose every bit of his composure.”