Page 81 of If Not for My Baby
He’s squeezing himself over his jeans. Hand flexing as if he’s not even aware he’s doing it. The slow working of his thumb…I pinch my legs together again and grasp uselessly at his curls.
“Can I?” he asks, like he’s in pain.
I don’t even know what he’s referring to but I nod. I’m just grateful to be sitting—my knees would have given out at that roughness in his voice.
In one swift movement he pushes the entire bodice of the dress down to my waist. His ragged inhale makesmefeel lightheaded. I press my forehead to his and find his lips clumsily. He’s enchanted me so bad I don’t even remember how to kiss. We still attempt it, while I shimmy out of the dress altogether.
And then I’m utterly naked before him, and his lips have parted and he’s breathing like he’s just climbed six flights ofstairs. He’s still staring at my body, watching how I move, when I bring my mouth to his neck. Tom’s hands find my bare breasts and we both groan. That thrumming in my core has become unbearable.
He works me over, and though his hands are much too large for what I believe to be my quite unremarkable breasts, the way he kneads me as I lick up the column of his throat makes me sure that his touch was made for my body and my body alone.
One roll of his thumb and forefinger over my peaked nipple has me shuddering. My eyes fluttering closed, I forget the good work I’m putting in right beneath his ear and press my entire face into his shoulder in desperation. He lets me lean against him, weathering his touch, as he pinches my nipple again, and I shove my lips into him to stifle the whimper.
“This can’t be legal,” I say.
“Jesus.” His laugh is rough. “I fuckin’ hope it is. Come here.”
Still in his jeans, he pulls me onto his lap, and the friction on my clit sends my eyes rolling back in my head.
He drags me over his length once, as if to show me what this has done to him, too. WhatI’vedone to him. I arch my back and catch him looking me up and down. His fingers are tight on my spine. His mouth finds that sensitive spot on my throat. “You’re so beautiful I can hardly make sense of you.”
I know the feeling. When he moves me off him to unzip his jeans, I find it so diabolically hot, the sound alone makes my core clench around nothing. For a moment I’m too stalled out by his presence to even touch him. His curtain of darkViking hair, his overall hugeness, his stirring words. I could get myself off just staring at him. In fact, I’d take that over all the other sex I’ve had in my life.
And the way he’s looking at me…it’s obscene. I must have done something very right in a past life to have earned the full attention of a naked Thomas Patrick Halloran. Not only his full attention, but his most gentle, careful attention, even when it’s edged in something ravenous.
He doesn’t join me on the bed. Instead he slips his hands beneath my knees and drags me to the edge of it. Then he slowly kneels to the ground. My entire body heats in anticipation.
“Oh, God,” I mutter.
Gently he nudges my knees farther apart. His chest is rising and falling too fast as he takes me in. “You really are holy, Clementine.”
He kisses the bones of my hips. The curve of my thigh. The thin skin at my ankle. Eyes closed, breaths broken, he presses his mouth to every inch of me. Tongue, lips, teeth. I am being consumed by him and there is no better way to go.
When his tongue finds my clit, brushing lightly against the small V of damp hair there, I exhale in a rush. The pleasure is mind-altering. I cry out against my will with each decadent stroke and swirl. He’s not even applying any friction or pressure, just indolent laps of his tongue. Just watching me wind tighter and tighter.
“This what you like?” A long swipe of his tongue down my seam. “Sure sounds like it.”
“Please.” I tug at his hair. “I’m going to die.”
His laugh rumbles right into me and it’s better than any vibrator on earth. And because he doesn’t want me to die, apparently, he picks up speed and I become wrecked. With a low groan, he slides one finger inside me. Up to the knuckle, which is already longer and thicker than I’m prepared for. He pumps into me once, and his whole enormous body shudders as I contract.
“Fuck.” His voice is choked against the inside of my thigh. “Clementine.”
My cheeks go warm. My nipples so tight they feel sore. My eyes are wet with a need I can’t describe. His mouth wraps around my clit again and I dig my nails into his broad shoulders until I know I’ve left marks. He works the rest of his finger in until it curls toward a sensitive spot I’d always thought was a mythCosmotold teenage girls.
“So tight. So sweet. Just beautiful.”
He isn’t even talking to me. He’s murmuring to himself, in awe as he withdraws his finger to use my own wetness over my clit. To lick it up. To make a mess of me. All the featherlight grazes are making my muscles twitch. My climax threatens to flood me. He parts my folds with his tongue and nips at my lips, eating me like I’m ripe fruit, juicy and dripping. Every time his finger dips back inside, and then glides out, I stretch and whine and wring myself out until pleasure bursts across my entire body.
When I come down, Tom grunts his satisfaction, pressing a slow kiss to my navel. His finger is still inside of me and I clench around it with aftershocks, squirming a bit in a pleasure daze.
“Good girl.” His eyes are glazed and dark when he looks up, lashes low. “So very good.”
But instead of easing back, he presses up once more to that spot that dropped me off the edge last time. I’m still boneless from my orgasm but his tongue has found my clit again and a new heat is already curling low in my abdomen. Then he adds another finger and this one goes in effortlessly. I contract around him, my inner walls thrum, my pulse ratchets, my eyes screw shut—
Until he withdraws both, and I groan with the aching. “Tom,” I plead. My teeth dig into my lower lip.
Finally he stands from his place of worship and roots around in his discarded jeans. I scoot up the bed and admire his punishing beauty. Fine hairs from his chest thicken down to his groin. The softly lit curve of his shoulder, the perfect arches of his feet. Perhaps he was carved by some sculptor centuries ago and left in a wood. I’d believe it. Maybe when he awoke as a real man, he was just as shocked as the rest of us.
