Page 108 of 10 Rings I Hate About You
I lifted the hem higher again. This time I almost got to my ribs, just under my breasts. Then let it fall.
His hands closed into loose fists at his sides. He didn’t move. Didn’t demand. Just waited, and the waiting somehow undid me more thoroughly than any urgency could have.
I ripped the sweater off over my head and tossed it to the floor.
“Good fucking girl,” he said. Low. Rough at the edges. His eyes moved over me slowly. His words slid across my skin, and I shivered. His eyes devoured me, making me want to do as he said. “Your body is fucking magnificent. You have no idea how badly I want to tear the rest of your clothes off of you.”
He stopped himself. Swallowed. It seemed whatever he’d been about to say was inadequate.
I brought my hands up to cup my breasts, squeezing them together, and enjoying how his thighs clenched, and his throat moved as he swallowed again.
“When I have you naked in my bed,” he said, his voice lower now, “I’ll use my tongue to trace every inch of you. Every place that makes you tremble until I’ve memorized what makes you fall apart.” His eyes finally came back up to me. “I’ve been thinking of this since the kitchen counter.”
That undid me just as much as his hands had.
I slid the straps of my bra down off one shoulder, then the other, keeping my eyes on his. When my confidence wobbled—and it did—I used the look on his face as an anchor. Kept coming back to it. Kept finding the same thing: want without conditions.
I turned, presenting my back to him, and glanced over my shoulder. “I could use a little help.”
He hesitated.
“Please,” I added quietly.
He crossed the distance between us without hesitation. His fingertips trailed down the center of my spine—one slow, deliberate line—before reaching the clasp. As he worked it free, he buried his face within the curve of my neck and breathed in.
“Lavender,” he murmured against my skin. “And something else underneath, something like what I’d imagine sunshine smelled like.” His stubble grazed my throat as he straightened, and even that small scrape made me shiver.
He stayed close as I finished undressing—close enough that I could feel the warmth radiating off of him as I shimmied out of my underwear. He took the lace from my fingers before I could set them down, and I watched him clasp it, then crumple it within his fist, before holding it beneath his nose.
He breathed in deeply. “I think,” he said, “you’re going to taste as good as you smell.”
Holy fucking shit,the mouth on this man.
I had nothing. Fucking nothing. The man had dismantled my entire vocabulary.
“Now get on the bed and show me what I get to play with.”
I’d never had a man claim me in or out of the bedroom, and this was so fucking hot. I just about blurted out that I’d never leave his bed.
His words were just as potent as any caress. I scrambled up onto his mattress and looked at him, waiting, wanting, trying to look more composed than I felt.
“Now,” he said, his eyes dark, “let me see you. Spread your luscious thighs.”
I let my knees fall open.
“Wider,” he demanded.
I instantly complied.
“Yes,” he inhaled. “Just like that. Perfect.”
I couldn’t have stopped my smile if I’d tried. Evidently, I was a woman with a praise kink, and it had apparently taken Marc Kingsley to find it.
His words rippled over me, like a siren’s song. I’d never had a man speak to me like this. Desire licked up my spine. Need settled within my muscles as they cried out for his touch, and my pussy clenched around nothing, desperate for his cock to be inside me.
“You like being praised,” he observed.
“I guess I do.” It was a revelation.
