Page 44 of Boiling Point
It was hunger. Fire. A question asked and answered in the same breath.
He slid his hands into my hair, tangling them at the base of my neck as he kissed me deeper, harder—like he needed to make up for every hour we’d spent apart. I melted into him, fingers fisting in his shirt, mouth opening to his like we were made to fit this way.
He walked me back until the bed hit the backs of my knees.
“I can’t—” He broke the kiss with a growl, forehead pressed to mine. “If we start, I won’t be able to stop.”
“Then don’t stop,” I breathed, dragging his mouth back to mine.
He swore—low, reverent—like I’d just granted him absolution.
Hands on my waist, he pulled me flush against him, the contact igniting something molten. I gasped into the kiss as he slid his fingers under my blouse, sweeping over bare skin. He pulled back just long enough to tug it over my head, his eyes raking over me like I was something precious and half-forbidden.
“You’re beautiful,” he said, voice rough with want.
“So are you,” I whispered, fumbling with the buttons of his shirt. “But wearing too many clothes.”
His laugh broke warm against my throat. “Then by all means…”
Clothes vanished between kisses like we’d both been waiting far too long for this. When he eased me onto the cool sheets and came down over me, the last of my doubts dissolved.
This was happening.
And it was everything.
He looked at me like I was sacred.
Not fragile—never that—but important. Desired. Revered.
He was solid and warm, every inch of his body pressed against mine. The weight of him was grounding, his presence a gravity I didn’t want to escape. He kissed along my collarbone—soft at first, then hungrier—tasting my skin like it was a language he’d once known and ached to relearn.
“Tell me if I go too fast,” he murmured, voice frayed, hands roaming—discovering me inch by inch. “If I do anything you don’t want?—”
“I want—” I cut him off with a breathless pull of his mouth back to mine. “God, Cal. I want all of it.”
That broke him.
He kissed me like he’d been denied for days, like every second we hadn’t touched had been torment. I arched into him, hips rising on instinct, and he groaned into the kiss—low, rough, unraveling.
His hands were everywhere, each pass more certain than the last. He traced the curve of my waist, the swell of my hip, the sensitive line where my thigh and torso met. He learned me like he learned everything—thorough, exacting, maddening in his focus. I gasped when he replaced his hands with his mouth—charting lower, kissing across my stomach, teeth grazing just enough to make me tremble.
“I need—” The rest burned away. I couldn’t find words. Only fire.
“I know,” he said, eyes lifting from between my thighs—dark with something close to worship. “Let me.”
And then there were no more words.
Only sensation.
Pressure.
Heat.
Anticipation gave way to devastating relief as his mouth moved against me—slow, sure, relentless.
Each stroke of his tongue was maddeningly precise, coaxing pleasure in rising, measured waves. I arched into him, hungry for more, and he didn’t hesitate—hooking my thighs over his shoulders, pressing firm hands to my hips to hold me still as he devoured me like a man starved. For this. For me.
I clutched at the sheets, at his hair, at anything to keep myself from flying apart. I couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe. I was reduced to nerve endings and want, unraveling one breathless second at a time. His mouth—God, his mouth—was revelation made flesh. All that intellect, all that control, funneled into the way he moved against me. Methodical. Deliberate. He teased and tormented, then soothed and satisfied, mapping me with a scholar’s devotion combined with the hunger of a man who’d waited far too long.
