Page 33 of The Queen (Masterpiece Duet 2)
Silver flashes through Damon’s dark eyes. “Who told you that?”
In the end it’s not Brennan or Dr. Stanhope who made me afraid of sex. It’s the man we’re going to see tomorrow. Green tiles and black soil. Deep roots that I can never escape. “I’m just saying, you don’t have to touch me. I don’t know exactly what to do, but if you tell me, I’ll do it.”
“You think I don’t want to touch you,” he says flatly.
“I don’t want you to pretend.”
He flips me over on the bed, so I’m looking up at him. “Let me make this very clear. No other woman has been in this bed. You’re the only one here. The only one I’ve ever wanted here.”
I know my eyes widen, know my breath stutters out of me, but he doesn’t acknowledge my shock. Doesn’t seem to care as he leans forward to press a kiss on the side of my neck.
There’s a switch in that inch of skin; that’s what I realize as my body arches in sudden tension. He doesn’t acknowledge that either. It’s with grim determination that he maps every inch of my chest with his mouth, that he feels me before he tastes. That he closes his mouth over my nipple. Flicks his tongue until I make a keening sound.
Damon isn’t the kind of man to tell me false platitudes, but if I doubted the truth of his words, he proves them with the thoroughness he shows my breasts—as if he could stay here all night, kissing me, biting me. Making my body writhe. It’s minutes, hours, an eternity later that I realize my body is moving in a specific rhythm. The same way I move my hand between my legs at night.
When he hooks his hand into the waistband of my pants and pulls them down, it’s an unspeakable relief. The heat is too much, the friction incendiary. Only, he leaves my panties on. White and plain. From the same metal rack as my bras. He presses kisses along the cheap seam, across my stomach and down my thighs. With a rough hand he shoves my legs apart, pressing his face against my dampness.
“Does this feel like pretending?” he asks, his voice dark.
It takes me a moment to realize what he means. My words. “No,” I whisper.
“Good,” he says, levering himself to look at me. “No lies between us. Not tonight.”
Complete honesty. I don’t think I’m ready for that. He definitely isn’t, no matter what he thinks. There are things floating in my head that would send him running. I’m afraid. Don’t hurt me. I love you.
It’s not only words that have truth. It’s touch. I cup his cheek in my hand, feeling his bristly jaw against my palm, taking his tension into my body. Then I curve my hand around his neck and draw him down.
A kiss. Is it possible to lie with your lips and tongue pressed together?
Is it possible to stand apart with your heartbeats attuned to one?
I’m not experienced enough to know, but the way he leans down to meet me, the way my body instinctively cradles his, it feels like a truth so deep I’m uncovering it instead of saying it.
He rears back, tugging my panties down my legs. He has no mercy when he spreads my legs—wide. Very wide. Is this normal? The way he studies me, as if trying to memorize every pink and every shadow?
I move my hands to cover myself. “Damon.”
“Penny.” It’s a plea that he ignores. Or maybe not ignores. One that he refuses, implacable, picking up my hands, pressing my wrists into the bed beside my body.
“It’s too much.”
“Why do you think I let you wait so long?”
The question holds a thousand implications.
It’s a patchwork I would need time to unravel, a cipher I need to study and decode, but he doesn’t give me time. He gives me his mouth against my sex, right up the center with the flat of his tongue. I make a squeak at the end, where he lingers at the peak of my body.
“Wait,” I moan.
That makes him laugh a little, a vibration I feel right against my clit. “What are we waiting for?” he asks, mocking. “For you to come? That won’t be long, sweet girl.”
He touches me, one finger combined with his tongue. It’s enough to send ripples of pleasure through my body. Enough to give truth to his words. Disproving the terrible secret I couldn’t admit, even to myself—that I didn’t know truth could feel good.
I want to touch him. To run my hands along the terrain of him—to feel the unlikely smoothness where ink hasn’t left a mark, to touch the silver-white scars that have. He shakes his head slowly, pressing my hands into the mattress. “No.”
“Why not?”
“Because we’re doing truth tonight.”
