Page 22 of Strict Confidence (Rochester Trilogy 2)
Her hips rock away from my questing hands. And then back. She’s skittish, this woman, this goddess. I made her this way. I cup her sex in apology. In reassurance. I might be a coldhearted bastard, but her body trusts me. She’s already wet. Was she slick when she dreamed about me? When she writhed in her nightmare? Did she know, even then, that I would kiss her better? I run my middle finger through the slickness. My cock flexes in my jeans, wanting that wetness, wanting this heat. No. This isn’t about me. It’s about Jane.
The pad of my middle finger makes circles around her clit. Once. Twice. Three times and she bucks her hips. She’s so hungry for it. Maybe this is the medicine she needs. Not the orange pill bottles the hospital sent home. Not the butterfly bandages or the salve. She needs this pussy fucked—by my fingers, my tongue. My cock. Anything will work.
“Beau,” she says, the word ending in a whine. “I need… I need…”
“Say it for me, sweetheart. Tell me what this little pussy needs.”
Her hands grasp at me—my shirt, my hair. She’s drowning in sensation, and I’m the current, dragging her to the bottom. “You,” she breathes.
My breath hitches at the admission. There’s only a small pause, a split second where I wonder what the hell I’m doing here, where I sail over the cliff, on my way down. Then I’m on top of her, around her, kissing her like this is the last chance I’ll ever get. I push two fingers inside her sweet cunt. Her inner muscles pull me deeper, and I groan at the sweet sensation. I want to feel her around my cock, but I know I don’t deserve that. Not yet.
I move down her body, spreading her legs wide. She squirms, sensing where I’m going, what I’m doing. I’ve tasted her before, but she was tipsy then. Now she’s sober. And shy. It makes me harder, of course. Everything she does makes me harder. I’m determined to do this, to show her my apology this way. My palms push her thighs apart, revealing her to me—all dark, musky surrender. I press my face into her sex and nuzzle into her curls, reveling in the salt scent of her. God, she’s delicious. Woman and desire. I find the slick, dark center of her. I slide my tongue from the bottom to the top, feeling her smoothness, her secret skin. At the top I lash her clit, the place I touched with my middle finger, I circle with my tongue. She moans.
Her hips rock in little desperate movements. I have no desire to rush her to the finish line. Not when my cock throbs against the sheets of the bed, leaking precum onto the sheets. I want to draw this out—for her pleasure and my pain.
I write her a message on her clit, the most sensitive place on her body with the most tactile part of mine, drawing each letter with a lash. I L O V E Y O U.
And then I continue, D A M N Y O U.
She’s making little sobbing sounds by the end. I have to hold down her hips to keep her steady. Her body undulates against the mattress. She’s damn near begging me to fuck her, and my cock wants to do it, but something holds me back. Guilt. Dread. Some sense that if I fuck her, if I sleep in her bed, we’ll wake up in a raging fire again.
I attack her clit with focus, with the intensity I can’t give her. I spell out the words I can’t say, until she breaks apart in my arms, her cunt wet against my mouth, her desire sweet as I lick it up. She collapses on the bed, her body boneless. I move to lie down next to her. Yes, my cock hurts like a motherfucker. So does my leg, for that matter. It’s pain that I’ve earned. Pain that I deserve. I’m not sure when my crimes started. Was it when I risked Jane’s life in the fire? Or was it earlier, when I walked away from Emily when she needed me? I can’t be what a woman needs. I’ll only hurt her. It’s inevitable.
She curves herself over my body, her legs straddling me, a goddess rising from the water, all bronze skin and dark hair, her hands uncertain on my cock. I grunt against the sudden pleasure, the urge to come right there and then. I watch from beneath slitted eyes as she lifts her body.
“Is this right?” she asks, breathless, fitting the head of my cock against her slick core.
If I were a better man, a good man, I’d take her hips in my hands. I’d fuck her from underneath, make this easy, but instead I watch her struggle. I relish each brush of her soft, clumsy fingers against my hardness. I enjoy the awkward angle of her body as she rides a man for the very first time. For a moment it seems like it won’t happen, like we’ll be poised on this precipice forever, the wrong angle, the slightest bite of pain—and then all at once she slides down. We’re connected completely, effortlessly, her body completely enveloping mine, her hips resting on me.
