Page 102 of Just One Little Bargain

“Yes.”

The embarrassment burns off his face. His attention drops to my mouth, then lower, and something about the absolute concentration settling over him makes my thighs tighten around his hips. It’s the same look he gets when he’s determined to master something, except this time the subject is me.

He finds the hem of my sweater and gathers the fabric between his fingers. He pauses there, watching my face, leaving me room to stop him. And here’s where my brain, ever the team player, decides to pipe up. He’s a demon. He has presumably encountered succubi. Desire wraiths with tails, teeth, and several centuries of unfair advantage. Whatever the underworld considers a ten. I brace for the flicker of second thoughts I’m sure will cross his face the moment he sees more of me. When I don’t stop him, he lifts.

Knuckles drag up my sides as the fabric rises, and my muscles jump beneath the touch. Milo’s lips part at the reaction. He eases the sweater over my head and drops it somewhere behind him without looking, attention already back on me, both hands settling at my bare waist. His thumbs press into the soft give above my hips. The way he takes me in, reverent and a little dazed, retires the insecurity for the moment.

Then he reaches behind me for the bra clasp. His fingers fumble at it, working blind, brow furrowing against my shoulder, those unfairly long fingers defeated by two hooks. When it still doesn’t give, a frustrated breath escapes him that makes something in me go tender and stupid.

“Sorry,” he murmurs.

He tries again, muttering something under his breath that might be an apology to the clasp itself, and I have to bite down on a smile. Then, finally, the hooks give, and his exhale of relief is so earnest that I nearly abandon the entire endeavor in favor of simply holding him.

Cool air meets my skin. My first instinct, honed by every unflattering angle I’ve ever been aware of, is that sitting bare-chested in his lap does me no favors. I don’t manage to look at his face. My attention snags lower instead, on the tense spread of his thighs beneath mine.

“Don’t say anything poetic,” I warn him.

“I wasn’t going to. I was trying to decide whether to tell you I’ve thought about this more times than is decent, or just show you.”

And just like that, the anxious voice in my head shuts up. I finally look at him, and he looks like I’ve personally rewired his entire brain.

His eyes haven’t moved from my chest. “Just give me a second to figure out where I want to start.”

“We don’t have seconds. I need you to touch me.”

Milo’s hands close over my breasts, and the first firm sweep of his thumbs across my nipples pulls a sound out of me before I can swallow it. He freezes for half a second, then does it again. Harder. My back arches into his palms, and that’s apparently all the permission he needs to squeeze, thumbs circling until both peaks are tight and aching beneath them. Goosebumps rise down my arms. My hips shift against his, and wetness slicks hot between my thighs.

“I don’t think you understand what you’re doing to me.” His eyes lift reluctantly from my breasts. “Every time you make that sound, I want to find out how many different ways I can make you do it again.”

Then his mouth closes over my nipple. His tongue drags slowly across the hardened peak before circling it, and when his teeth catch me with just enough pressure to sting, the sensation shoots straight between my legs. My hips grind down against him before I can stop them. Milo groans around me and does it again. Every time my body gives him something, he follows it. When I gasp, his tongue comes back to the same spot. When my hips roll, he gives me more pressure. When my hand tightens in his curls, he groans against my skin, and the sound makes me arch hard beneath him.

“More.” I’m breathless and beyond shame. “Milo, I need more.”

He lifts his head, lips flushed and damp. There’s a new steadiness in him now, fed by every sound he’s pulled out of me. “Lie back for me.”

His hands slide beneath my thighs. He lays me back against the cushion, one hand cradling the back of my head so it meets the arm of the couch instead of hitting it. My hair fans out beneath me.

He braces over me on one forearm and looks down the length of my body, then back up.

“I know this is the part where I’m supposed to say something devastating,” he admits, his free hand still moving over my thigh. “I’ve read enough romance novels and advice columns to know better. Unfortunately, none of them seem especially useful now that you’re in front of me. You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, and somehow that’s still all I can come up with.”

His free hand goes to the button of my jeans, fingers pausing.

“Yes,” I say, because I’ve learned that he’ll ask every time, and I like that about him, but if he waits much longer I may actually combust.

He hooks his fingers into the waistband and works the denim down my hips. It clings stubbornly to my thighs. He has to peel it free inch by inch, the tip of his tongue caught between his teeth in concentration. The focus of it makes me clench around nothing.

When they’re gone, he kneels between my legs.

“You should know I’ve got a very active imagination, and not one version of this came close.” His hands settle higher on my thighs. “I thought I knew what having you would feel like. I was catastrophically underprepared.”

His hands close around my ankles and move upward with deliberate slowness. Over my calves. Behind my knees, where my hips twitch at the touch. He follows the path with his mouth, and he’s not gentle like I expected. His teeth scrape the inside of my thigh before his tongue smooths over the same spot, and my legs open wider without him asking. By the time his breath brushes my pussy, I’m so wet it slips onto the cushion beneath me. Milo groans and presses his fingers into the crease of my hip, holding himself there.

“Evie,” he says, rough and disbelieving. “All this, and I haven’t even tasted you yet.”

His fingers hook into the waistband of my underwear and he glances up at me through his lashes.

“Yes. God, yes.”