Page 66 of Just Come Over
He was undoing shirt buttons, and she struggled onto her palm and turned to help him. He put out a hand and shoved her gently back down. “No,” he said. “Not this time.”
She was watching him strip the shirt down his arms. It fell to the floor, and she didn’t care. The skin of his chest glistened, its dusting of black hair making her greedy to feel it. His tattoo covered the muscle of his shoulder and ended below his elbow, shining blue-black in the lamplight, and its spirals and chevrons had so much ground to cover.
He came down on a palm over her, and she put a hand out and drew it down his body. Over the bunched muscle of his shoulder. Over the swell of pectoral muscle, then drifting over the flat brown nipple, which had him sucking in a breath. Over the ridges of abdomen, and on down the trail of black hair below his navel. She got her hand on his belt buckle, and he said again, “No.”
“Then kiss me, boy,” she said, and he smiled. White teeth. Chin dimple. All of it. He moved down her body, got a hand around her ankle, and she tensed. He was going to just dive in, then, and not even get her dress off? She wanted that, but she didn’t. She wanted some more kissing. She wanted some slow, sweet loving.
He slipped her shoe slowly off, dropped it over the side of the bed, raised her foot to his mouth, and kissed the inside of her ankle, and she forgot to think about what she wanted. His thumb traced over the delicate skin, then across her instep, and he kissed her there, looked up, his dark hair brushing his jaw, and said, “Dark red nail varnish. My favorite.”
“Yes.” She barely knew what she was saying, because he’d set her foot down, touching her gently still, and was doing her other shoe, then running slow hands up her calves, then higher, his thumbs brushing the sensitive skin of her inner thighs, taking her skirt with them until it was all the way up her legs. He looked down at her and said, his chest rising and falling with his heavy breath, “You have the prettiest legs.”
And then he came down over her, first on one palm, then the other, lowering himself down in the world’s slowest press-up, and finally going to his elbows, until at last, his body was over hers, and he was kissing her mouth. Slowly, still, sucking her lower lip into his mouth, licking into her, not in any hurry at all. And she had her hands on the shifting planes of his back, the indentation that was his spine, supported by all that muscle. A hand, then, on his jaw, as he continued to kiss her. Blackberry and chocolate and plum, rich, dark, and deep.
Kisses sweeter than wine.
He kissed her cheek, and then she felt the gentle brush of lips on her closed eyelid. “Behold, thou art fair, my love,” he murmured. “Behold, thou art fair, thou hast doves’ eyes.”
Oh, God,she thought.Rhys. I am going to burn up and fly away.
He brushed his lips over her other lid, then said, a laugh in his voice, “Sit up, though. I need this dress off.”
She laughed herself, but it came out breathless. When she sat up and reached behind her for the zip, though, he brushed her fingers aside, got a hand on her shoulder, and lowered it himself, centimeter by centimeter. A brush of his lips at the top of her spine, and he was working his way on down as he pushed the bodice of the dress over her shoulders, down her arms. His hands stroked down with it, from her shoulders to her wrists, then came back up again, and he drew his hands down her back and sides, and sighed. She felt it, even though he was behind her.
She said, “I’m taking it off. Take off your trousers.”
“You’re anxious.” There was a smile in his voice now, and he hadn’t stopped kissing her spine. He was on his back, somehow, and she was still sitting up, feeling his hands gliding over her sides like he was learning her by touch, seeming in no hurry to get to the point.
“I’ve waited three years to feel this,” she said.
“And yet...” His lips had moved to that most sensitive spot, just above her tailbone. He had a hand on her belly, his fingers splayed, pulling her back against him, and if he thought that belly wasn’t flat enough, he wasn’t saying so. “As I’ve waited ten, I think I’ll take my time and do it right. I think I’ll make you remember it.”
She shuddered. The edge of roughness in his voice. The idea that he’d been waiting for her, that he’d wanted her, had burned for her, maybe, with the same shameful desire she’d felt for him. The hunger in his hands, the brush of his lips against her skin, and the aching slowness with which he explored her.
She said, “Not in a... rush? To get to the... good stuff?” It was a bit hard to breathe. Who knew that the small of your back could be so erotic?
“Sweetheart.” There was that laugh again. “Thisisthe good stuff.”
“Oh.” It was a breath.
He let go of her at last, though, and said, “All the same, let’s get this off you. Naked is good. Naked is brilliant. And if I get to take everything off myself? It’s even better.” She pulled the dress over her head and dropped it as he worked the trousers down his hips, and then she turned around and gave him a hand. She pulled fine woolen fabric over hair-roughened thighs corded with muscle, down long calves and oversized feet, and then she got her fingers under the silky waistband of black boxer briefs.
Wait.Not yet. He’d waited? She’d waited, too. She lowered herself down, stroked her hands down his broad chest, teasingly, letting her fingers flirt with him, then kissed him through the soft fabric.
He jumped into her. She smiled, and he swore and said, “Zora—”
“Shh. Somebody told me this was the good part.” She had her palm there, tracing over the length of him, and he was kissing him again, still through his briefs, all the way from bottom to top. He was on his elbows, watching her do it, and she looked up at him, the smile curving her lips. “Nice, eh,” she said softly.
“Killing me,” he said, but he didn’t move to put an end to it. She got her fingers under the waistband again and peeled the briefs down slowly, a centimeter at a time.
She kissed him there, softly, a brush of butterfly wings, did it again, then sighed. “Oh,” she said, “that’s going to feel good.”
His smile was slow. “Yeh. It is.”
She got the things down his legs, and he was naked, but she wasn’t. She put a hand to the front clasp of her bra, but his hand closed over it. “No,” he said. “That’s mine,” and pushed her onto her back again.
When he kissed her neck, she shivered, and he slowed down and did it some more. When his hand finally traced over the edges of her low-cut bra, she shifted. When he flicked the clasp open and closed his mouth around her nipple, she moaned.
“You like that?” he asked, then sucked harder, and her back arched. A third time, and she was on her heels, stiffening, starting to go up. She cried out, he slid a hand right under her thong and rubbed once, and she came apart. He swore, slid all the way down her body, shoved the damp silk aside, and sucked her into his mouth. And she screamed.
