Page 44 of Ward

“Noted.” His voice had gone rough at the bottom. His mouth found her jaw, then the place under her ear, and she felt exactly what it did to him to hear her breath catch: a hot, hard pulse of satisfaction through the loop, so male and so unguarded that she laughed out loud.

“You like that.”

“I can feel that you like it,” he said, against her throat. “It is difficult to be dignified about.”

“Don’t be dignified.” She got her hands under the hem of his under-layer and pushed. “Be naked. Arms up.”

He obeyed, which was a revelation all by itself.

The markings ran gold down his chest and along his forearms, and wherever her palms went they kindled brighter, a circuit diagram of everywhere he was letting her in.

She mapped him like a new kitchen, thorough and delighted and out loud. “This one’s brighter. Why’s this one brighter? Oh, because you’re ticklish there. Look at that. The big scary guard is ticklish.”

He shifted, and she loved that her little touches could make him undone. And she loved that she knew that they were doing it.

Each pass of her hands arrived in him twice, touch and echo, and she felt it land, felt him shudder under her fingers and fail to hide it, and the not-hiding was the hottest thing she had ever felt in her life.

“You narrate,” he said, strangled.

“I narrate everything. You’ve met me.”

“I have.” He took both her wrists in one big hand, loosely enough that she could have pulled free and firmly enough that she didn’t want to, and held them flat against his chest, over the hammer of his heart. “My turn.”

He undressed her the way he did everything: methodically, with total attention, as if there would be a test.

Apron. Shirt.

The practical bra she had not planned on anyone seeing, which he studied for one grave second like a lock and then simply defeated.

Then he stopped and looked, and she felt the look land through the loop before she saw it on his face.

It was a wanting so big and so long-starved it hit her like heat off an opened oven, and under it was something very close to fear.

“Hey.” She pulled one hand free and touched his cheek. “Still here. Still yes.”

“Still yes,” he repeated, as if he were filing it somewhere permanent.

Then his mouth was on her breast, and nobody filed anything for a while.

He was fever-warm everywhere, and his mouth was the warmest part of him.

He drew her nipple between his lips and sucked, slow and hard, and she arched off the counter and swore in three languages, two of them culinary.

Through the loop she felt his satisfaction spike so sharply that he groaned against her skin.

The groan went into her.

Her gasp went back into him.

Round and round, richer every pass, like a stock reducing on a back burner until it coated the spoon.

He lifted his white head, the almost-smile gone luminous. “Loudly,” he said, in the tone of a man confirming a rumor. “You feel loudly too.”

“Bunk,” she managed. “Bunk. My counter is not rated for this.”

He carried her.

Four steps; her quarters were not large.