Page 67 of How I Met Your Murderer

“And can I do the same to you?” When he swallowed hard and nodded quickly, I added, “Just . . . don’t rush. I want to feel you for as long as I can.”

He lifted a hand to cup my cheek and started lightly kissing my face. All over, not just my lips, but my forehead and my nose and the corners of my eyes. And for the first time since finally remembering my death, I felt tethered again. Not to the world, but to him.

I played with his hair as he sucked a kiss on the side of my neck that would have, in life, left a fun mark in the morning.

“Is this okay?” he asked, slowly lifting my shirt. He knew I was a virgin—it was one of many things that had come up as we sat out on the balcony all those nights—and he was being so thoughtful with me, handling me with such care. Which was exactly why I intended to keep giving him anything he wanted.

When I nodded and quietly groaned my agreement, he started running his hands over my chest. Down my stomach. Following the brush of fingertips with his lips, like he wanted to retrace his steps and flood his senses with me.

Lingering over my one and only tattoo, the colorful one on my ribs. He pressed a kiss into it before murmuring against the skin there, letting it vibrate through my core, “Heard ribs is a dreadful sore spot for a first tattoo. You’re such a chaotic good boy.”

I clenched my teeth and shifted beneath him when he started kissing all around my navel, his fingers hooking into the belt loops of my jeans to expose a little more of my skin. He started kissing over the tiny pinprick scars of insulin needles that hadn’t gone in quite right, making old hurts better in a way I hadn’t known was even possible. The weight of him as he shifted overtop of me and unbuttoned my pants was the opposite of the cold pressure that had killed me—not crushing, not taking. Just steady, warm, and beautifully human.

I didn’t even realize how badly I needed it until it was happening. I threaded my fingers in his hair and pushed gently down, not a suggestion but an outright need, because if he kept kissing my stomach and flicking his tongue over the sensitive skin there for another minute, I was going to explode in my jeans. That wasn’t how I wanted it to happen. Before I was gone, I wanted to know what Raff’s hands felt like on every part of me.

I wanted to know the heat of his mouth and forget that I had ever been so cold.

“Still doing okay?” he checked again, a big hand rubbing my thigh as the sound of my zipper sliding down nearly undid me.

“Trying,” I whispered, “but I’d be even better if you took off my pants and threw them somewhere I’d never see them again.”

He laughed, full and throaty, gusting over my skin in little bursts that strengthened my glow and made it easier to stay in physical form. “You’re doing perfect just like this,” he said, no teasing in it. He could read the need tensing every part of me, and he hooked his fingers in my boxers so he could tug them off with my jeans, discarding them on top of the pile of blinking ghost-hunting gear.

“Christ, but you’re perfect,” he repeated, this time looking down at me, fully on display for him. Cock curving toward my stomach, pink and needy, more slender than his but clearly something worth seeing by the way his eyes went wide—as if he hadn’t just seen it a few hours ago in the parlor. But this was different, somehow.

Now, his breath spilled over it as he studied every part of me up close as I spread my legs a little on instinct. It didn’t matter that I hadn’t done this before. I simply needed to feel something that was mine, and that was him.

“I’m not letting anything touch you but me—tonight, or any other night,” he vowed as he wrapped his fingers around the base of my cock and swirled his tongue over the head. His mouth was fucking incredible. Toe-curling, stars piercing the van ceiling kind of stuff, the answer to all my fantasies.

But his voice did something to me, too—softened something I’d held tight since that horrible moment in the office when everything had hit me. I let the brightness of my manifestation expand a little, past my skin, giving his face a faint glow so I could better watch his eyes as he held mine.

“Keep talking, please,” I whispered, even though it was kind of a big ask while he was exploring me with his hands and mouth.

He jacked me slowly as he licked and kissed the creases of my thighs, not going back to my cock just yet. “You’re warm,” he said, which might have been nonsense, but it was still sweet of him to try giving me what I wanted when I also wanted his mouth to stay busy. “It’s nice. I like it. I like”—his breath gusted over my cock again, and it twitched in answer— “How you move with me.”

My hips twitched like they had a mind of their own, trying to push the tip past his lips.

He grinned at me, that fucking cheeky bastard, fully aware of what I wanted.

But he also knew what I needed, which apparently was his free hand caressing and squeezing my ass while he took my balls in his mouth instead.

My whole back arched up off the mattress.

“These are so pretty and sweet, just like the rest of you,” Raff murmured once his mouth was free again, though he dipped his head back down and laved his tongue across my balls for good measure. All the while, his hand kept slowly jacking me, letting me leak all over myself. “Makes me wonder what your cum is going to taste like.”

He smiled, his eyes catching mine, and flames engulfed me as he lapped up the beads of precum while holding my gaze the entire time.

“Makes me wonder,” he continued slowly as his fingers stroking my thigh went somewhere new, lower, stroking between my cheeks until one settled hot but gentle against my hole. Not pressing in, just a suggestion of wanting. “How this would taste, too. Next time.”

I very nearly told him about number ten on my list right then.

I would have.

But he finally let several inches of my cock slide into his mouth, stuffing himself until it looked wonderfully obscene, and I was too busy letting cold become a distant memory as I soaked in the heat of him. His tongue rubbed me in all the right ways, just like the noises he made as he lifted his hand away and took me as deep as he could.

I had nothing to compare it to, but I didn’t need to. As far as I was concerned, there was only him, and the fire he effortlessly stoked between my legs.

“Not fair,” I panted, carding my fingers frantically through his hair as I danced on the edge several minutes later, “that I can’t touch you, too.”