Page 38 of Cruel Kiss

But I can't, so I just whimper into the dark of my empty room. Dream-Ronan takes pity on me the way real Ronan never would.

Do you want me to curl them right there, where you can't stand it? Do you want me to keep my mouth on you the whole time, so you've got nowhere to run?

Yes. Yes to all of it. Yes to every question he asks, one after another, each one worse and better than the last, each one narrowing the whole world down to this bed and this hand and that taunting snarl cataloging every single thing I've spent so long pretending I didn't want.

My real hips are rolling against my hand now, the sheets twisted around my ankles. I've kicked the covers half off. I'm sweating. I don't remember getting this worked up in my whole repressed life. The shame always used to hold me back.

Not anymore.

Ronan has set me free.

In my head, he pulls back just long enough to look at me. The glasses slide down his nose, and he starts to build to the finish.

Look at these hips.His palms drag over them, greedy, worshipful.Made to be held onto. Made to fill my hands.A kiss to the swell of one.This soft, wet cunt I want to press my face into.Another kiss, lower.These thighs I could live between for the rest of my days and call it a life well spent.

My hand moves faster.

You think I want you smaller?A dark laugh against my skin.Fuck no. I want more of you. Everywhere. This ass. These breasts. Every generous, gorgeous inch.His mouth returns to me, relentless now, no more stopping, no more teasing.You're a feast, kotyonok. And I am a starving man. Let me fucking eat.

I'm right there. The whole world is narrowing to a single unbearable point, my back arching off the mattress, so close I can taste it, so close it aches, so close, and?—

—cum on my fucking tongue, Ms. Meadows?—

And—

—Yes, fuck, Ronan, oh my God, I'm gonna?—

And—

—Soak my beard, ruin me, drench my lying lips and let me taste every drop of you?—

Until—

I stop.

I yank my hand away like it's the hard thing in the dark that turned out to be his crotch, and I lie there, gasping at the ceiling, every nerve in my body screaming bloody murder at me.

Because—no.

No.

I will not.

It'll kill me if I do.

I lie perfectly still, chest heaving, that terrible knot pulsing between my legs with nowhere to go, and I make myself breathe. In. Out. The ache is so sharp it's nearly a cramp. My whole body is furious with me, betrayed, straining toward a finish line I've just pulled out from under it, and it takes everything I have not to reach right back down and give myself the two seconds it would take.

Because that's the thing. That's the whole thing.

If I finish, he wins.

I know that doesn't make sense. He'll never know. There is no tracker for this. It's just me and the dark and my own hand.Nobody would ever have to know that Calista Meadows lay in her bed and came moaning as she imagined the man who ruined her life going down on her in a pair of reading glasses.

ButI'dknow.

And I'll be damned if he wins, even here. Even in a fantasy he will never, ever know about.

So I take my hand away and I lace my fingers together on top of the covers like a corpse laid out at a wake. It is, without exaggeration, the most physically uncomfortable I have been since giving birth. Isabella at least had the decency to eventually come out. This is just going to sit here.