Page 48

"Tell me to stop and I'll stop."

"Aiden." I put my hand on the back of his neck and pull his head down. "Put your mouth on me."

He makes a sound. Rough, broken, grateful. Like I just gave him permission to do something he's been starving for. His lips land on my collarbone and the heat of his mouth on my rain-cold skin sends a shock through me so sharp I jolt against his mouth, my hand tightening in his wet hair, pulling him closer.

He works his way down. Open-mouthed, slow, tasting the rainwater off my skin between my breasts, his stubble scraping against me, leaving a trail of sensation so intense I'm already panting before he reaches my bra. He drags the cup down with his thumb and closes his mouth over my nipple and I stop being quiet.

The sound that comes out of me bounces off the workshop walls. Loud enough that I'd be mortified if I could think, but he's sucking and scraping his teeth against me and his other hand is on my hip pinning me to the bench because I'm arching into him, trying to get closer, trying to get more.

"You have no idea," he says against my skin, dragging his mouth to the other side, pulling the second cup down, giving it the same slow treatment, "How many times I've thought about this." His tongue circles my nipple and my hand fists in his hair hard enough to hurt him. He doesn't stop. "Every time you lean over that desk. Every time you walk past me in the workshop. I've been losing my mind."

"I know the feeling," I manage, which is an understatement so massive it probably has its own zip code.

He straightens up long enough to look at me. Breathing hard, eyes dark, rain still dripping off his jaw. My shirt is open, my bra shoved down, and I'm sitting on his workbench in the middle of his workshop looking thoroughly debauched. I’m not embarrassed. Not even a little bit.

This is the one place I know exactly who I am.

"I want your mouth between my legs." I say it in the same voice I’d use to tell a customer their payment cleared. Calm. Direct. A complete sentence.

His whole body shudders.

"Say that again."

"I want your mouth between my legs."

His hands go to my jeans. Button, then zip. He works them down my hips, my thighs, taking my underwear with them, peeling the wet denim over my knees and leaving it bunched around my boots.

I'm bare from the waist down on his workbench with my shirt hanging open, bra cups hooked under my breasts, peaked nipples on eager display. His hands are on my thighs, spreading them, and the look on his face makes something inside me clench so hard I gasp.

He drops to his knees on the concrete floor of his own workshop and puts his mouth on me.

The first stroke of his tongue is slow and careful and nearly shatters me completely. My head drops back and my palms slam flat on the wood behind me. I’m not being quiet this time. The noise pouring out of me fills the whole workshop over the racket of the storm. He doesn't tell me to hold it in. He groans against me instead, the vibration of it traveling through my clit and up my spine, and his hands tighten on my thighs, holding them apart, holding me open for his mouth.

"Fuck." He pulls back just far enough to speak, his breath hot against me. "You taste like fucking heaven, Vanessa." He licks a slow, flat swathe through me and my hips buck off the bench. He catches them with one arm across my pelvis, holding me down. "Stay still."

"I can't."

"Then I’ll help you."

He seals his mouth over my clit and sucks gently, then harder, hands on my hips keeping me locked in place. I want to squirm as the sensation overwhelms me. The fact that I can’t move intensifies the pleasure.

I cry out so loud that a boat captain three slips over would hear it if the wind weren't howling. My hands leave the bench and find his hair, pulling him into me, and he lets me. His tongue is doing something devastating, circling and flicking and pressing flat in a rhythm that's winding me tighter with every pass, and I can hear myself talking but I've lost control of what's coming out.

"Right there. Right there. Please, Aiden, just like that-"

He pushes two fingers inside me while his tongue keeps working, and the stretch and the fullness and the pressure of his mouth all at once makes fireworks pop in my head, blinding me. I'm gripping his hair with both hands, rocking against his face, and the sounds coming out of me are desperate, raw, nothing I'd recognize as my own voice in any other context.

He pulls his mouth away just enough to look up at me from between my thighs. His chin is wet. His eyes are consumed. "I want to watch you come." His fingers curl inside me, finding the spot that makes me clench around them. "Can you do that for me? Can I watch? Do you want me to look while you shatter?"

"Yes." I can barely get the word out. "Yes. Watch me."

His mouth comes back and everything accelerates, his tongue moving faster, his fingers pressing deeper, curling, stroking, relentless, and I'm making sounds I've never heard myself make, his name mixed in with pleas I'll never remember the specific wording of, my hands fisted in his hair, my thighs shaking around his head.

When I come, it's nothing like the dock. The dock was silence, everything locked away in secret. Magnificent in its own way. This is the opposite of silence. His name rips out of me. Aiden, Aiden, Aiden. Voice cracking on the second one, breaking completely on the third, my back arching off the bench, both hands pulling him against me while my hips roll and roll into his mouth and his fingers, and he stays with me through all of it, groaning against my pussy like the taste of me coming is something he needs, working me through every wave until I'm gasping and shaking and my grip in his hair loosens and I can't hold myself up anymore.

My elbows give out and I fall flat on the workbench, staring at the ceiling, breathing like I've been pulled out of water again.

He stays where he is for a long moment. His forehead resting against my inner thigh, his breath slowing down. Then he presses one soft kiss there, against the muscle that's still twitching, and stands up.