I breathe. Or I try. His mouth trails up my inner thigh, letting his warm breath warm caress my skin. He kisses the soft flesh halfway up, then opens his mouth and sucks hard enough that I'll have a mark tomorrow. My hips jerk.
"Stay still," he says.
"I can't stay still when you're doing that. That's an unreasonable expectation. File a complaint with management."
His mouth moves higher. He reaches the crease where my thigh meets my hip, presses his open lips there, open, then traces a line with his tongue. It's so close to where I need him that my pussy clenches around nothing. I can feel how wet I am, slick, swollen. My body is begging before my mouth does.
His tongue drags through my folds. One long, slow pass from my entrance to my clit, flat, wet, taking his time. My back arches off the bed, and my hands grab the sheets.
"Nash, please, I need—"
"You need what?"
"More. Faster. Something. Anything."
"Not yet."
He keeps the pace torturously slow. Long, flat strokes that build pressure without releasing it. His tongue circles my clit, light, barely there, the ghost of the contact I need, enough to make my thighs tremble but not enough to push me over. My heels dig into the mattress. Every muscle in my body is pulled tight, climbing toward something he keeps just out of reach.
He pulls my clit between his lips and sucks, gentle at first, then harder, his tongue flicking against the tip. My hand flies to his hair.
"Oh fuck. Nash. Right there, right—"
He stops. Pulls back. Presses a kiss to the inside of my thigh.
"No. NO. Nash, what the—"
"Consequence," he says. His voice is calm. Perfectly calm. Like he didn't just take the orgasm I was building and yank it away. "You moved your hands."
"I grabbed your hair. That's a natural response. That's biology."
"That's why you don't get to come yet." He presses another kiss to my thigh, his lips soft, his breath warm, and the contrast between the tenderness and the denial makes me want to scream. "Hands on the mattress. Keep them there."
I put my hands on the mattress. My fingers grip the sheets so hard the fitted corner pops off.
He lowers his mouth back to my pussy and starts again. Slow. Patient. The same devastating circles around my clit, building the pressure, stoking the heat. He slides one finger inside me and my walls grip him immediately, tight, clenching, my body trying to pull him deeper. He curls the finger forward, pressing against the spot that made me scream the first time he found it, and my entire body rolls toward his mouth.
A second finger joins the first. He works them in slow, deep strokes, curling on every withdrawal, while his tongue maintainssteady circles on my clit. The rhythm is perfect, synchronized, the kind of deliberate focus that I associate with the way he runs a perimeter sweep, except right now the perimeter is my body and the sweep is destroying me.
I'm climbing again. Faster this time. The muscles in my thighs lock. My stomach clenches. My pussy tightens around his fingers in rhythmic pulses, and I can feel it building, building, the edge right there.
"Nash. Nash, I'm going to—I'm so close—"
"I know you are." He doesn't stop. His fingers keep moving. His tongue keeps circling. "Hold it."
"I can't hold it when you're doing THAT—"
"Hold it, Ruby."
My jaw clenches so hard my teeth ache. I grip the sheets with both fists, my body screaming, every nerve firing, and the orgasm sitting right at the edge. His voice is the only thing keeping me from going over. My thighs are shaking, my back is arching, my pussy is clenching around his fingers in desperate pulses.
He pulls away. Fingers, mouth, everything. Gone.
The sob that comes out of me is involuntary. My body contracts, empty, aching, and my hips lift off the mattress, chasing contact that isn't there. I'm trembling from head to toe.
"NASH."
"Rule three."