Page 171

"Stay still."

"I'm trying."

"Try harder."

I lowered my head and took her nipple into my mouth and sucked, slowly, and then dragged my teeth over it. She made a sound that was completely unperformed, involuntary and helpless, and her whole body pushed up toward me.

I pressed her hips back down with one hand, flat and heavy.

"Still," I said against her skin.

"You're doing that on purpose."

"Yes." I moved to the other side and took my time. Her wrists pressed into the pillow so hard that her knuckles paled.

"Cam." Her voice had already dropped into the register she only used when the armor was all the way down. "Please."

"Not yet." I kissed down her sternum, down her stomach, and felt the muscles tighten under my mouth. "You're going to hold it for me. You're going to be good, and you're going to wait, and when I let you come, you're going to look at me while you do it."

"You're very sure of yourself."

I lifted my head. "Am I wrong?"

She didn't answer. That was the answer.

I pulled her sleep shorts down her legs, the little stars, and tossed them over my shoulder, and pressed her thighs apart with both hands and held them there. I looked at her. She was already wet, visibly, in the dim gold light, and a feeling moved through my chest that was too big for one word. It was hunger, and it was gratitude so deep it made my whole body ache.

She was here. She'd let me back in. She was letting me have her like this.

"Cam," she whispered.

"I've got you," I said.

I lowered my head and put my mouth on her.

Her hips jerked hard, and I pressed them back into the bed and held them flat with my forearm across her, firm enough to mean it. She made a sound that was more breath than voice. I worked my tongue over her clit slowly, lightly, deliberately. Not the rhythm that would take her there fast. I knew that rhythm. I'd learned it in one night and never forgotten it. I chose a different one on purpose. Slow circles. The flat of my tongue. Long, unhurried strokes that built the heat without letting it break.

"That's..." She stopped. "More. I need more than that."

"I know."

"Cam."

"I know exactly what you need." I kept the same pace and felt her strain against my arm. "And you'll get it when I decide you've earned it."

"That's so... that's so unfair."

"Stay still."

"I'm trying, I'm... Cam!"

I'd pushed two fingers inside her without warning, and the sound she made was the one that undid me every time, shocked and helpless and completely real. She clenched around me right away, tight and wet, and I held still inside her just to feel it, just to feel her.

"Fuck," she breathed. "Cam, please."

"Please, what?"

"Move. Please move."