Page 112 of Just a Heartbeat Away

“Of course, Via.” He shucked his jeans down, kicking them off one foot at a time. He wondered what sex with Evan had been like for her. Not in a jealous way, really, but in a sad way. The way she was looking at him made him think that she had some very specific ideas about sex. Maybe some nonrealistic ones. “I’m about to finally touch a woman I’ve been crushing on for so long. That would make anyone nervous.”

Her eyes were on his underwear, and, he was sure, on his very obvious arousal for her. She glanced up at him and licked her lips, her eyes wide windows.

“Via.” He waited until he had her gaze, her full attention. But then he found that he didn’t really have anything left to say. Anything left was for their bodies to do.

Seb knelt in front of her and reached out for her ankles. He brought them forward so her legs hung off the bed. And that’s just where he started. First it was his hands over her feet. He traced her arches, her ankles, he even screwed a finger in between her toes and made her giggle.

Next, he circled her calves, traced the back of her knee. He used two hands apiece on her thighs and touched every inch of her legs. Then each hip. Her belly button. He laid her back and pressed his hot palms to her breasts, but he didn’t let himself get sidetracked. He laced one arm over her head and then the other. His fingers traced over her armpits, which made her shiver, and up to her elbows. Every one of his fingers touched every one of hers. His hands slicked up her throat before he turned her on her stomach. Sebastian dragged his palms over every slice of her back, tracing the shadows from the lamp. And then down into her rosy underwear and over her ass. When he turned her back to her side and lay on his as well, he buried his fingers in her hair. He touched her entire scalp and then the shells of her ears. Next were her eyebrows, her eyelashes, her eyelids. He walked his fingers down her nose and traced her lips.

“Sebastian,” she whispered, and her lips trembled.

But he ducked his head, buried his nose in her underarm, and took a hearty sniff. Nothing, literally nothing, smelled better than a slightly sweaty Via DeRosa. She was still trembling nerves, struggling against her own desires. Her thighs worked against one another and he figured it was time to get them out of their own way. Seb slid down the bed and spread her knees apart. Without preamble or discussion, he landed his mouth between her legs.

VIA’SBACKARCHEDoff the bed. Her hands flung out like she was looking for some cosmic handhold to keep her tethered to Earth. Her entire body hummed from his touches. He’d warmed every inch of her, set her buzzing and owned her. She’d know that man’s touch if she were blindfolded, if he wore gloves. She’d never been touched like that in all her life. Like this was the most important thing that would ever happen to either of them. Maybe it was.

And now his hot mouth was between her legs. She still wore her underwear, and he didn’t seem to mind. He worked her through the fabric, one of his giant hands circling her ankle and the other spread across her stomach, pinning her to the bed.

His tongue started to work in slow circles, around her clit, and Via’s hips bucked. She wasn’t sure she’d survive this. But then he was sliding upward and it was her nipple in his mouth instead. The hand at her leg started an inexorable slide up her calf and then her thigh as he suckled her. He was rougher there than she’d ever experienced, like he was trying to swallow some ungettable part of her soul. She couldn’t think. Couldn’t do anything much more than grab at his hair.

He took long pulls at her breast and then moved to the other. She felt each suck from somewhere deep inside. Apparently, all her good parts were connected by some internal, slippery, glossy chain that he was tugging at. His tongue was at her breast but she felt it between her legs. By the time his finger hooked her underwear to one side, Via was swirling with sensation and literally begging for more. She could feel the individual threads of the comforter beneath her, the tickle of his leg hair, the delicious scrape of his stubble.

And then—yes, God, yes—she felt one of his wide, rough fingers at her entrance. He didn’t press in. Instead he stroked her, playing in her wetness and groaning against her breast. His mouth slicked up to her neck, her ear.

“I want inside you, baby. I’ve touched you almost everywhere, and now I want inside.”

She let her knee fall even wider to the side. “Yes. Seb. Please.”

He pushed that thick digit inside her quickly, and he turned his face into the comforter and said her name into the bed. He was still, but she was electric, riding an internal beat and pushing herself against the heel of his hand.

A moment passed and he lifted his head, a little smile on his face. “That’s my job,” he told her. He reared back, onto his knees, and tossed that loose leg over his shoulder. One of his hands stilled her hips and the other worked itself even farther inside her. He didn’t tease her. He circled her clit with his thumb insistently, watching her face and increasing the pressure when she could take it.

“That’s right, baby,” he murmured when she started to gasp, when her eyes started rolling back. “Don’t fight it. Just give it up. Give it to me.”

It hit her in a long, rolling wave that had no clear beginning and no clear end. Her body was tight and arching as she tried to tame the pleasure that wanted no leash, no master. The pleasure he gave her fully owned her body. Her leg pressed so hard into his shoulder, she couldn’t tell whose skin was whose. She shook with the rolling perfection of it. The tips of her breasts seemed to spark and ache. The best orgasm of her life, and somehow, she needed more.

Seb, seeming to sense that she needed closeness, stripped off her underwear and fell over her. His mouth came to hers and both thumbs to her breasts. He was gentle on her tender, glittering body, but even his small little teases against her nipples were waking her again. She wrapped her legs around his waist, smashing her heat against his hardness.

“You’re so pretty when you come. Seriously, I hope it’s the last thing I see before I die.”

She laughed, surprised, but it ended on a moan when he kicked his hips forward and pressed them together. The only thing that separated them was his underwear. She was ready. She needed him. It was time. Now.

“Seb,” she said, her hands falling to his hips and pushing at the waistband of his underwear. But he slithered away from her, back down her body until he was face-to-face with her womanhood.

Via’s heartbeat kicked up another notch, and some of the nerves he’d fully dispelled when he’d first laid her down started to pick their dizzy heads up from the floor. His gaze was penetrating and heated, and she resisted the urge to wiggle.

She gasped when he grabbed her firmly by the hips and rolled her. Somehow, Via ended up on her hands and knees on the bed straddled over his head. She looked down at him, self-consciousness rising in her until he gripped her ass and dragged her down to his mouth.

Any protesting she might have done immediately dried up at his first, hot contact. He didn’t go in for the kill. At first, he simply tasted her. Via’s legs tensed and trembled on either side of his face as he slammed his eyes shut and slipped his tongue inside her. His hands tightened on her ass as he groaned, a helpless, captive noise.

“I knew it,” he groaned against her. “I knew it.”

Were she capable of words, she might have asked what it was that he knew. But all she could do was grip the sheets and hang on for dear life. His tongue was dangerous, deadly, insistent. He sucked and pulled, swirled and circled. He was by far the most skilled lover she’d ever been with and she knew why—he was creative. He was practically playing in her. Gripping and paying attention and enjoying himself. She dropped her head to watch him and saw his eyes were trailing their way up her body, immensely appreciating the view. His feet were planted and his hips were working upward in the air. He was so hard, he was pulling the waistband of his underwear up and away from his body. It was that sight that had Via rearing back so that she sat up tall over him. He didn’t stop eating at her, but his hands went instantly to her breasts.

She trembled, spread even wider and laced her fingers through his as he worked her nipples. This orgasm caught her by surprise. He almost tricked it out of her with some fancy dance step of his tongue that he did over and over once he realized that she’d pulled tight, that her eyes had gone wide and unseeing, that she was somewhere off in the stratosphere, tasting stars and shivering in the cold heat left behind by an asteroid.

She collapsed to the side, halfway on top of him. She was breathing hard and sweaty, her vision covered by the comforter. She was trembling, laughing, slicking her hair back from her face.

“What’s so funny?” he asked, out of breath himself. He patted down the covers so that they could see one another.

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