Page 35 of Crying Wolfe
Her eyes went wide, luminous even, as she closed the gap between them. “Prudence told me if were to…to share a bed, I needed to expect a paroxysm of pleasure, but she said it was your responsibility to…to do it to me.”
“Goddamned right, it is.”
Nodding as if that was settled, she lifted her hands to his shirt. “May I?”
“So polite,” he murmured. “I almost regret you’ll get over it someday.”
“I’ll always be polite.”
“Not to me, you won’t. Just wait.” One day, she’d be feisty and frank and filthy as she held the reins to their fucking. That would be a thing to behold.
Her skeptical smile charmed the shit out of him as deft fingers fell to his buttons and popped them free with infuriating deliberation. The rasp of the fine cotton over his skin, the motions of her fingers, so close to his flesh above the barrier of the garment. It made every one of his hairs individuate with appreciation.
“You’re killing me on purpose, aren’t you, honey?” he accused on a groan.
Shaking her head, she freed the last one. “I rather like that you call me honey. I’ve never heard that endearment before, and it makes me feel as though you think I’m sweet.”
“You’re just about the sweetest thing alive… And I know you’ve honey yet to be discovered.” He could almost taste it. Sweet and salty and slick on his tongue.
It was an infuriating and oddly erotic thing not to touch her. She needed his gentility. His patience. And if he got his hands on her, he might snag that pretty fabric or rend the garment in two. So he waited. Watched.
Wanted.
Rather than parting his open shirt, her hands slid inside the opening to test the texture of his chest.
They both gasped when her fingertips landed, and she snatched them away with an uncertain little peek up at him through her lashes. “This…is still all right?”
“Do what you want,” he gritted through his teeth.
She regarded him skeptically, the fingers on the bedpost gone white with strain, the muscles in his jaw tight enough to chisel iron from rock, the sheen of concentration and restraint blooming on his brow.
“Are you certain? You look as if you are in agony.”
He bared his teeth in what he hoped was a smile. “It’s the best kind of agony there is.”
“I’ll never understand Americans,” she muttered good-naturedly as she returned to her discovery of him.
Shaped and manicured nails slid through a whorl of crisp dark hair on his chest, making the whole of himself bristle and shiver as desire rioted through every nerve, vein, and sinew of his being. When she finally flattened her palms over his pectorals, he did his best to control the twitches and jumps his muscles made at the sensation of her touch.
She didn’t stay still for long; her hands roamed across the planes of his chest, gliding over the flats of his nipples in a way that made him bite his cheek so hard he tasted blood. She charted a course upwards, finally parting the shirt and easing it over the swells of his shoulders and down.
The tightly knit cords and grooves of his arms seemed to transfix her as she explored some of the roping veins along the length of them.
Before his shirt became a puddle on the floor, she’d lifted the backs of her knuckles to trail down the obdurate ripples of his ribs before discovering his abdominals. “I didn’t know one could count these,” she said just above a whisper, dragging a fingertip over each corrugation. “Three on each side.”
His teeth were set so deep he was afraid he might crack one, so he finally allowed his jaw to relax enough to reply. “I guess I’m on the lean side of large.”
“I’m lean.” She stepped back to look down at herself. “But I haven’t such definition.” A hand floated over her belly, where it curved beneath the navel with a quivering softness.
Fuck.Fuckhe was going to lose his control before she even undid his pants.
Maybe heshould… Maybe it was best he relieve himself once so he didn’t shove a cockthishard and hot into her virginal flesh.
“Goodness,” she said with a whisper he’d only heard in a church. “You’re so…”
When she trailed off, he found a few helpful descriptors. “Cumbersome? Rough? Unwieldy?”
“Exquisite,” she finished. “I’d commission a statue, but I’m convinced you’re already crafted from warm stone.”
