“Delicious,” he murmured when he pulled away and I whimpered with regret.
“Please,” I said.
“Trust me.” His hands roamed down, finding the band for the thong, then easing it down until I could step out of it.
He stood, then made a circular motion with his finger. “Turn around.”
I complied, then sucked in air when he unfastened my bra and peeled it off my body. He let it drop to the carpet, leaving me standing there completely naked and entirely aroused. “This,” he said. “I like this a lot.”
He reached around, then cupped his hands over my breasts. From behind, he trailed kisses over my body, tracing the outline of my tattoos, but never asking about them. Slowly, slowly down each vertebra, then a soft brush of lips over the dimples above my ass. Then he was on his knees and his tongue was dancing gently along the soft line of flesh that marked the juncture between the back of my thigh and the curve of my ass.
He had turned my entire body into an erogenous zone, and I trembled, so unsteady that I reached up and cupped my hands over his, as if holding on to my own breasts would somehow keep me steady.
When he told me to turn again, I did so without hesitation. His mouth was even with my sex, and I saw the way his mouth quirked in a teasing smile as he tilted his head back and looked up into my eyes. “You’re beautiful,” he said, then slowly traced a finger down, down, over my breasts, my tats, my belly button.
“A ribbon,” he said, when he reached the red ribbon tattoo that scrolled along the crease of skin between thigh and torso. “And a lock,” he added, touching the first tattoo on my pubic bone that Cass had inked so long ago. “Why? What’s written on the ribbon?”
“Nothing,” I lied. “I just liked them in the artist’s book.”
He held my eyes for a moment as if in challenge, but I stayed silent. How could I share the extent of the lie? How could I explain that contrary to what I told him, those tats were far from nothing. Instead, they were everything. Marks of both shame and power. A reminder of who I was, and who I would never be again.
“Someday you’ll tell me the truth,” he said, as he stroked his thumb lightly over my sex. “But right now, all I want is to taste you.”
And then, with no more warning, he closed his mouth over my sex, then drew his tongue so delicately over my clit that I saw the world turn gray and stars explode in front of me. “It won’t stay this way,” he said.
“What?”
“Gentle. Just a taste, sweetheart, and then I’m going to make you scream.”
He was as good as his word, and his tongue played and teased as his hands roamed, holding on just tight enough to keep me from toppling over. But I felt the shift in him when he cupped my ass in his hands, then demanded that I spread my legs as he laved me in long, liquid strokes, then slid his tongue inside me, tasting and teasing and making me squirm against him, desperate for him to take me harder, to take me further.
I was shameless, standing there with this man on his knees in front of me, his mouth so violently tormenting me. And yet all I wanted was more. All I craved was everything.
“Please,” I begged, when I was certain that I could take it no more. “Please, Jackson.”
“Tell me what you want,” he whispered, pulling his mouth away just long enough to murmur the words against my skin.
“You. Oh, god, please. I want you.”
“At your service,” he said as he stood and drew me to the couch. With casual ease, he tossed off his shirt, then took off his jeans. He wore briefs, and before he removed them I could see the hard, thick bulge of his erection. And when he did take them off, I drew in a breath, awed by the sheer perfection of this man’s body. A man who’d surely been carved by the gods on a particularly good day. He’d taken a condom packet out of his pocket, and I watched, mesmerized, as he rolled the condom on.
Then he sat on the couch and held out his hand. I went eagerly, then straddled him, feeling the hard, enticing heat of him at my core. “I want to watch your face when you come,” he said. “And I want you to take what you need.”
I licked my lips, realizing that he wanted me to be in charge. To thrust myself down on him. To ride him. To bring us both to the peak.
And oh, dear god, I wanted that, too.
It was familiar territory, being the one in control. Except with Jackson, I knew damn well that he’d never truly relinquished his hold.
And in his arms, I really didn’t care.
“That’s it, baby,” he said, as I moved over him. Teasing both of us with the tip of his cock.
He took my mouth then, kissing me rough and deep, and I thrust downward, so wet that it was easy to take all of him, and then to rise up on my legs and then ease my body down again. Slowly. Torturously. Letting the pleasure—and the anticipation—build.