Page 17 of Ignition Rites

“Feel what?”

“Don’t.” His thumb traces my jaw, feather-light, and my pulse answers it. “Don’t make me spell it out. Not tonight.”

The music from the main crowd is muffled through the walls, leaving only his breath and mine, the gold light, and the mask between us.

“I don’t even know your name,” I say.

We both know that’s bullshit.

“Good,” he says. “Keep it that way. Tonight, you don’t have to.”

His mouth finds the curve of my throat instead of my mouth, unhurried and deliberate, and whatever sound escapes me isn’t one I recognize as mine.

Somewhere outside, an engine screams to life, the crowd roars, the first heat of the night tearing off down the strip.

Inside this small gold room, everything narrows to his hands, his mouth, and the fact that neither of us has said the name we both know.

His mouth works higher along my throat until he stops just short of mine.

He waits.

“Yes,” I whisper.

I close the last inch and take his mouth with mine, one hand clutching the back of his head.

Fuck. He tastes exactly like the kind of mistake I came here hoping to make.

He bites my lip hard enough to make me gasp. Before I recover, his hand is already sliding down my body, stopping at the soaked black lace between my thighs.

He hooks his fingers beneath the edge and looks at me.

“Still yes.”

Only then does he slide them slowly down my legs and tuck them into his back pocket.

I hurriedly shimmy out of my black crop top, leaving me in my matching lace bra and the skirt I wore through the gate.

He traces the edge of one cup, sending a shiver straight through me. I’m already wound too tight, desperate for him to stop taking his time.

He does. He drags the cups down and frees my breasts, rough enough to make me suck in a breath, then pauses. The look he gives me is almost worse than his hands.

Then whatever restraint was holding him snaps.

His tongue traces my jaw to my neck before his teeth close there. He works lower, mouth hot against my chest, until he takes one nipple between his lips.

“Holy fuck.”

I let myself moan. Nobody has ever made me feel this good, and I’m past pretending I care who hears.

He swirls his tongue before biting down and repeating the same treatment on my left nipple. By the time he lifts his head, I’m breathless and desperate to feel him inside me.

Like he read my mind, he lifts me, and I lock my legs around his waist and my arms around his neck.

This time he takes my lips with his, and the kiss turns sloppy almost immediately, all teeth and tongue and no patience left between us.

It’s hot and hungry and loud, neither of us bothering to soften it.

I break our kiss, gasping for breath, and decide it’s my turn to mark him. Leaning down, I drag my mouth along his neck, sucking hard before I bite just enough to pull a sound out of him.