Page 39 of Bargaining with the Devil

“I . . . can’t. I want to, but I can’t.”

“Do you want me to talk to you? Like I did behind the door?” His fingers slid deeper, curled upwards into a spot that had her arching under him again. “Because I’ll gladly tell you what it is I’m thinking right now. What it feels like here when I do this”—he curled his fingers upwards again—“and what ’tis doing to my cock and ballocks.”

If it hadn’t been dark and if she hadn’t already been in the position of having Quinn’s face between her legs, she would have buried her face in her hands to hide her burning cheeks. She nonetheless managed to choke out, “Yes.”

“’Tis grand then.” And between licking and sucking and tonguing her, fingers working inside her, he whispered things. Frank with a filthy mouth, as always, but now saying things she’d never imagined one person might say to another. Things that might have scandalized her, except they also made her nearly out of her mind with need because it was Quinn saying them to her. Tension coiled, tighter and tighter, and that precarious cliff edged closer and closer. Her hips bowed up, every muscle rigid. She couldn’t bear it—couldn’t bear⁠—

He cupped hands under her arse, hauling her onto his mouth, and then his tongue and lips were relentless until sparks filled her vision and she shattered against his mouth, crying out.

“So beautiful, Lucy a mhuirnín,” he murmured when she’d come back to herself a little. He’d moved back over her on hands and knees.

She was almost without words, but that nonsensical comment needed an answer. “You can’t see me in the dark.”

“Don’t need to see you, not when I was touching you and listening to those little noises you were making.” He leaned closer. “And while I tasted you.”

Her cheeks grew hot. In the dark, where he couldn’t see them.

“I could describe it,” he murmured in his devil’s voice. “Just what you ta⁠—”

She found his mouth with hers, shutting him up temporarily and tasting herself on his lips as she kissed him. “Now I know,” she said when she drew back.

He made a sort of growling noise like something wild unleashed and pushed her flat, his body weight claiming her. “Goddammit, a mhuirnín.” And he kissed her hard, without mercy, not that she wanted mercy from him. She hooked a hand around the back of his neck and got the other around his back while he devoured her mouth.

His hips moved against her, grinding down into her once, then again.

She got a hand between them, wrapping fingers around his cock. “I’m ready now. For the rest. And I want it.”

“Sure, and God knows I want it too. But I’m not going to put my cock in you. ’Tis a promise I can make you.”

Did he still not trust her to know her own mind? It was understandable if he didn’t but rather deflating as well. “If you’re still worried I’ll change my mind⁠—”

“’Tisn’t that. ’Tis— See, ’tis a chance I don’t take, ever. A promise to myself, like.”

How . . . odd. It brought her mentally up short trying to understand something that seemed rather unusual. It certainly wasn’t because things weren’t working properly. “Never?”

“I’m not saying I’ve never in my life, but ’tis something I don’t do anymore.”

Why they couldn’t, she didn’t understand, but he clearly meant it, and it seemed it didn’t even have to do with her.

So they wouldn’t.

She couldn’t reciprocate in the way he had, even though⁠—

No, she wasn’t going to think about that. Not here, not with Quinn, the two of them enclosed in this little world apart from everything else. It wasn’t like there weren’t other ways of going about it.

She ran a hand from his arse across his hip and around. “Then what do you do instead to . . . finish?” He’d just had his mouth on her intimate parts, but she wasn’t blasé enough about it to put it to words. She circled fingers around him and added pressure. Slid those fingers up, up.

Renewed heat and throbbing within said perhaps she wasn’t done yet herself. She stroked her thumb over the head of his cock, slicking the moisture there. An answering twinge stabbed deep within when his hips moved again, thrusting into her grip.

“You can help me. Or I can finish myself. Whatever pleases you, a mhuirnín.” His laugh was a little strangled. “’Tisn’t going to take much, any which way.”

Her choice? She knew what she wanted ever since he’d put the images into her head the other night.

Lucy released his cock—a momentary disappointment, that—and came up on her knees. “I want you to . . . do what you did the other night. Behind the door.”

The words sent a charge through his blood. ’Twas a shame ’twas too dark to see her face. “Sure, and I’ll do that if you like. Keep yourself warm in that blanket.” She couldn’t see him, but he’d imagine it like she could, her wrapped up in the blanket watching him stroke his cock. Maybe he’d talk to her while he touched himself. She’d liked it when he’d talked to her on the other side of the door. She’d liked it when he’d talked to her just now between tastes. ’Twas almost enough to undo him, that, the little noises she’d been making and her wetness flooding his tongue.

He knelt beside her, legs spread a little, taking a firm grip on himself.