Page 116 of Between the Lines

“I’m sorry. I’ve… well.” She looks down at my exposed skin rather than my eyes. “Used you as a pillow.”

“Does it seem like it bothers me?” I ask.

She smiles. It’s a small, almost shy expression, so different from the fierce Charlotte who negotiates, and who doesn’t take any crap.

The sight makes my chest tighten.

“No,” she whispers.

I lean my head back against the pillow. Desire still pulses through my body, driven by her presence and my dream. A memory, really.

Her body beneath mine on the couch.

“I like it too much,” I mutter.

“What do you—Oh.” She shifts again, and this time, it’s her forearm that brushes over my stomach and against my erection.

“Ignore it. It’ll pass,” I say tightly.

Charlotte doesn’t do that, of course. Because she is nothing if not curious.

Her hand traces my lower stomach until she brushes over my head. My cock twitches, and I close my eyes.

“Do you wake up hard often?” she asks.

“Sometimes. It doesn’t help when a pretty woman is draped over me.”

“Oh.” There’s a smile in her voice, and her fingers dance lightly along my length. The touch is tantalizingly light and not nearly enough. I grind my teeth together. “Maybe I’ll use this opportunity to ask you some… questions.” On the last word, her hand wraps around my balls, and a hissing breath escapes me.

“Like what?”

“Like… if you give me good answers, I’ll keep going. Stonewall me, and I’ll stop.”

“That’s extortion.” But my hand keeps moving up her back, slowly. I feel her warm skin beneath the fabric of her tank top.

She slides her hand up, flattening it against my stomach. “What was the worst part of the trial?”

I groan. “Talk like that will get me further from the finish line, Chaos.”

But then she moves her hand under the waistband. It takes every ounce of restraint I possess to lie still on my back and let her torture me.

Nimble fingers undo my button and pull down the zipper of my pants. She folds down the two parts, and I hold my breath. Waiting.

Then she takes my cock fully in hand. Skin against skin.

Heat surges through me. But she just holds her hand there, gripping me tight, like the sweetest kind of torment.Fuck.

“Okay,” I grind out. “What I hated the most? The media. Being picked apart every day for some minute expression. Having people place bets on whether I knew about Dad’s fraud or not, based on nothing but what color my fucking shirt was.”

I close my eyes and throw my head back. She’s stroking me now, base to tip, slowly and skillfully.

“That’s good. That’s great, actually.”

I look at her with half-slitted eyes. “I feel like I’m getting my ego stroked.”

“Not the only thing I’m stroking.” She looks glorious—all messy hair and soft sleepy eyes, lit up with excitement at the new game. “Okay. Do you still talk to him?”

I grip the comforter beneath me with both hands. Focus on breathing in. Breathing out. “I have almost no contact with him these days.”

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