Page 124 of Just One Little Bargain

Her back arches, chasing the contact. Through the thin fabric, her nipple catches against the curve and slips free with every pass. By the third, my fingers are shaking so much that I brace my free hand on the counter.

“Again,” she demands.

“I don’t think you appreciate how little control I currently have.”

“Oh, I appreciate it exactly the right amount.”

A sound escapes me that’s embarrassingly close to a whine.

I repeat the motion, slower this time. The claw traces the edge of her areola, circling inward until the sharpened curve catches against the hardened peak. The fabric pulls taut around it, and her eyelids sink shut as she presses into the next pass.

“You like this,” I say, more stunned than anything.

Her eyes open. “Try to keep up.”

“I’m doing my best under hostile conditions.”

“Hostile?”

“You’re sitting on a kitchen counter asking me to touch you with claws.”

“Are you complaining?”

“Absolutely not.”

I slide my hand around her back and hook the curved tip beneath her bra clasp. The fastening resists, then flicks free with a quiet click, the cups loosening across her breasts. I ease the straps down her arms until the whole thing falls between us, and then I can only look. She’s flushed everywhere, her nipples hard and peaked from the teasing.

“Tell me if it’s too much,” I murmur.

“You’ll know.”

“That’s not as reassuring as you seem to think it is.”

I draw the flat side of one claw beneath the curve of her breast, skimming the skin with its unnatural coolness. Her fingers tighten around the counter when my palm follows the same path, heat flooding the line it leaves behind. I alternate between them without a pattern until gooseflesh rises across her skin and she starts leaning into each change before it arrives.

I hesitate with the point beside her throat until she tips her chin higher, deliberately giving me the vulnerable stretch of skin. Only then do I let the cool tip settle there and drag it slowly downward. I use barely enough pressure to leave a mark, but the trust required to let me do even that makes my cock throb hard against my jeans.

“You’re going to be the death of my composure,” I tell her.

I bend over the faint pink trail and cover it with my mouth, my tongue tracing the mark as if I can soften the sharpness after.

“Keep going.”

I map her slowly, following the ladder of her ribs until her laughter breaks into a gasp at the dip of her navel. From there, the claw traces her waist and skims the sensitive hollow inside her hip, leaving faint pink in its wake. I chase every mark with my mouth, heat replacing coolness until the sound she makes is filthy enough that I’d sell my soul to hear it again.

She’s a manuscript I want to memorize, each response annotated, and every broken sound cross-referenced. I tell her so between passes, the praise dissolving into incoherent worship. By then, Evie’s trembling, flushed dark, and rocking against me with nothing standing between her and satisfaction but my concentration.

“Do you want me to stop?”

She answers by pulling me closer, and the last of my hesitation disappears.

I kiss her as the points make their final path over her skin, every broken sound disappearing between our mouths. She keeps pressing closer instead of shrinking from the claws, trusting me to know the difference between pleasure and pain, and whatever control I had left is rapidly becoming theoretical.

“I need you,” she pants.

“You have me. Evie, you have all of me.”

The counter creaks when I rock forward. Her legs tighten, holding me there while she presses closer.