Page 15 of After-Party Consequences

He found the back hook of her bra, released it. She sighed as he took off the lace. He skimmed his thumb over one ruchednipple. Her vicious shudder rippled through his overwrought body.

Damn, but she was gorgeous. And so responsive...

Lifting the quivering flesh, he dragged his tongue over the swollen peak. She moaned as he drew the hard tip into his mouth and began to suck gently.

She grasped his head and arched her back, instinctively pushing herself into his mouth. Her panting breaths encouraged him as he learned what she liked the most, tormenting and torturing her until the hard peaks elongated even more.

Her musty scent filled his nostrils—sweet and spicy. But he took his time, determined to draw out her pleasure and contain his own—even as her eager, artless responses battered his self-control.

At last, he could wait no longer, cupping her sex, delving beneath the satin shield of her thong. She gasped, so ready and tender each stroke made her buck against his fingers.

He circled the stiff nub, grazing over and around it as he gauged her responses. The pants became sobs, her chest heaving beneath his mouth as he continued to tease her breasts.

‘Oh... That’s...’ She strained against him, her head falling back against the glass wall, the lights of the bay sparkling in her glossy hair.

He lifted his head, blew across her damp nipples, reddened now from his attention, and continued to work her clitoris with his thumb. He pressed one finger, then two inside her—his breathing becoming ragged at the realisation of how tight and wet she was. For him.

‘Relax, Charlotte, and let it take you...’ he coaxed, focussing his caresses on the slick heart of her at last.

She jerked, bucked against him, her hands grasping fistfuls of his shirt as she shuddered through the climax—the tortured sounds she made part pleasure, part pain.

Her body sank against the glass as the orgasm ebbed. He withdrew his hand, rested it on her hip. And waited for her eyes to open.

The green gaze locked on his, her expression dazed. Something pure and strong cinched tight around his ribs.

She seemed fragile and strangely vulnerable in that moment—her hair a soft, tangled mess, her breasts reddened from his lips, her sultry fragrance filling the room, and her face unable to hide her astonishment. As if the bad girl had been stripped away to reveal the needy, neglected girl beneath.

‘How...how did you do that?’ she asked, perplexed. ‘I’ve never... Well...’

The swell of affection and pride—because he had given her something precious—made his lungs tighten. How could she be so bold, jaded even...and yet also so unsure?

She was much more complex and fascinating than he could have imagined.

‘It’s not hard to pay attention...’ he said, then pressed his palm to her flushed skin. ‘How do you feel about another round?’

The chance to explore all those facets, unravel more of the puzzle she represented, excited him beyond bearing.

It occurred to him he’d become impossibly jaded about sex too, because her unguarded response to each touch, each caress, was somehow more erotic than the most practised seductress.

A grin split her features. ‘Much more enthusiastic now.’

Gripping his shoulders, she leapt into his arms—the reckless girl returning. He caught her with a huff, his hands gravitating to her backside.

‘But I want you naked too, Galahad.’

‘No problem,’ he said, enjoying her demanding tone.

He strode into the master suite and dropped her on the bed, then ripped open his shirt.

Her eyes flared with excitement as she watched him strip.

‘What’s the tattoo on your shoulder?’ she asked.

He paused as her avid gaze roamed over the ink he’d got at seventeen to celebrate flipping his first house—a broken-down two-storey Arcadian in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, which he’d gutted and remodelled over one endless, back-breaking summer.

‘A phoenix,’ he said, embarrassed by the dumb decision now, made when he’d been drunk with excitement about the big fat profit burning a hole in his wallet. ‘Kind of a cliché, but it seemed appropriate at the time,’ he added, because he’d come to despise that ink in some ways, and the naive kid who had thought he’d be accepted, just because he had money to invest.

‘It’s cool,’ she said as she kicked off the ankle boots she still wore. ‘And very hot!’

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