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"I don't pretend."

And somehow that's worse.

Valentino

The question I keep circling is obscene in its simplicity. Do I tell her before or after I take her again?

There's no easy version. I know that. I've cleared rooms with less hesitation than this.

She catches me staring and points her fork at me.

"You're doing the thing again."

"What thing."

"The looming. The brooding thing. You just stand there sweeping the room with your eyes." She takes another bite and grins around it. "It's very atmospheric. Hard to digest under, though."

"Eat your eggs."

"I am eating my eggs. You're watching me eat my eggs like it's a hostage situation."

"If it were a hostage situation, you'd be quieter."

She laughs, and I cross the kitchen before I think about it. Her chair scrapes half an inch when I stop in front of it.

She tips her head back to look up at me. The line of her throat in the morning light is the kind of thing that ends careful men.

"Hi," she says.

"Finish your breakfast."

Her hands come up and land flat on my chest, over the shirt, and she drags them down slowly, then back up again.

"You know what I figured out?" she says, fingers walking back down. "You make this face when you want something. Your jaw twitches. Right here." She taps the hinge of my jaw with one finger, bold as a debt collector. "It's been twitching since I sat down."

Her hands settle low on my stomach, fingertips hooking just over my waistband, and she looks up at me through her lashes with an expression that has zero innocence in it. She knows exactly what she's doing.

I slide my hand along her jaw, tilt her face up.

"Still hungry?" I ask her.

Her eyes go dark, and her lips part.

"Yes," she says. "Starving."

Madonna. The last of my restraint goes to its knees.

I gather her hair in my fist, giving her every chance to pull back. She leans into the grip. When I take my cock out, her exhale washes hot over the head of it, and my whole spine tightens.

"Open that pretty mouth," I tell her, and my voice comes out lower than I planned, like gravel dragging over my vocal cords.

She opens.

The first slide of her tongue pulls a sound out of me I don't usually make. She takes me in slowly, wet heat closing around me inch by inch, her eyes on mine the entire time because she doesn't do anything without watching what it does to me. Her cheeks hollow.

The chair creaks under her as she shifts forward to take more, and the small wet sounds she makes fill the kitchen.

"That's it," I murmur, cradling her skull, guiding her rhythm without forcing it. "Just like that, bella. Christ. Your mouth."