Page 32 of Kazimir

“Devon,” he said, my name shaped like an oath. “Do you want me to touch you?”

I didn’t mean to sound so eager. “Yes.” It leaped out unadorned, embarrassing and exactly true. I swallowed and tried again, softer. “Please.”

His exhale ghosted my cheek. “Thank you.”

Thank you. For saying yes to him in his kingdom. The words threaded themselves through the raw places in me and stitched.

The weight of his palm settled at my waist first, claiming nothing, announcing nothing. Just there. Present. He turned me and spread my legs across his. Then he traced the edge of the leather at my belt with his thumb and looked at me as if I were allowed to stop this at any second.

“Watch me,” he murmured.

I did. His fingers found the buckle with a practiced certainty—metal chimed, the whisper of leather sliding free sent heat skittering up my spine. The sound alone made me want to close my eyes. I didn’t. He asked me to watch. I gave that, too.

He didn’t rush the button. He tipped his head when it resisted and coaxed it through, then tugged the zipper slow, teeth kissing apart. Cool air slipped beneath the panel and touched my lower belly, and some taut little knot inside me unraveled into slick need. My throat went dry.

“Breathe,” he said against my hair.

“I’m trying.” I had to laugh at the squeak in my voice.

He smiled. I felt it more than saw it, a small curve against my temple. “You’re doing very well.”

He tugged me back fully into him. I fit there too easily, body finding body like it remembered a pattern I couldn’t have practiced. The suit he wore had a dense, expensive hand—smooth under my palms, with a whisper of texture when my fingertips dragged. Beneath the fabric, he felt impossibly solid. He shifted, and I spread for him without thinking, thighs opening across his lap. The hem of my pants caught at the bend of my knees; he nudged them wider with a gentle pressure that was somehow more convincing than force.

“I want you open,” he said. “Here, with me. No secrets.”

Heat crawled up my neck. Open in his empty lounge where echoes of awe and fear still clung to the lights. I should have protested. I didn’t. I held the edges of my unbuttoned pants for him, as if I could be useful to my own undoing.

The pads of his fingers dipped beneath cotton. The first light stroke startled a breath out of me, quick and high; he paused as if calibrating me like a delicate instrument. His view over my shoulder. My body had been an unruly animal for weeks—months—since I woke in that park with no story to go with my skin. Under his hands it behaved like something tamed by kindness rather than compulsion. He brushed again, slower. I went wet enough to slick his fingertips, and shame tried to open its mouth. He cut it off with a sound I could have mistaken for a prayer.

“Beautiful,” he said against my ear, and the word made something inside me break open. “So ready for me. My clever girl.”

I didn’t know why clever made my chest ache more than beautiful, but it did. I nodded because words were skittish things around him, and he took it like I’d confessed a lifetime.

“I have waited,” he said softly, each syllable unhurried as if too much speed might shatter me. “Longer than I wish on an enemy. I will not waste your firsts.”

He parted me with his hand, knowing exactly how to expose the softest part of me to the air. I could’ve sworn the room tilted. My head fell back onto his shoulder, and I stared up into the washed amethyst of the ceiling lights. His mouth brushed the vulnerable place beneath my ear in a patient pattern, not distracting—aligning. The tip of his finger circled just where I needed it, light, then lighter, then not light at all, pressure making sparks roll under my skin.

I made a sound I’d never heard out of my own mouth, and then I clapped a hand over my lips, horror and habit landing together. Don’t be loud. Don’t invite attention. Don’t show them anything they can use against you. I didn’t know where those rules came from. I knew how deep they were buried.

He stilled. For a heartbeat, I thought I’d broken something sacred. Then his other palm swatted my thigh, a sharp, clean sting that cracked along my nerves and left a flowering heat that was more grounding than pain.

“Do not hide your pleasure from me.” His voice dropped into that dangerous calm I’d seen freeze men twice my size. I went very still. Not afraid. Aware. “You may quiet yourself for the world. You will never do it for me. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” I said, fast and breathless. “I—yes.” I swallowed. “I’m… learning.”

“That is allowed,” he said, and his hand cupped the sting on my thigh in apology or ownership—I didn’t know; I didn’t want to know, because both felt like home.

His fingers returned to the wet heat, and I could have cried from the relief of it. No taunting this time. He found my clit again and pressed until I arched, then he slid lower and slipped inside with a care that unraveled the last of my embarrassment into need. He was big there too—long fingers filling me without hurry, one knuckle, then the second, and when he pushed deeper my walls clamped down like my body had been holding its breath for him. The sounds I made didn’t belong to any language I remembered.

“Look at how you take me,” he said, wonder threaded through iron. “So greedy, my heart.”

“I can’t—” The lie fell apart as he curled his fingers and found a spot that sent a white-hot stripe up my spine. I grabbed at his wrist and his forearm, not to stop him, to anchor myself. His skin was cool and unreal, the veins beneath flexing as he moved. I felt the give in his knuckles when I fluttered around them. Power coiled in my belly like a storm turned inward.

“Let me,” he breathed. “Let me give this to you, and more.”

“More,” I agreed blindly.

He set a rhythm that was both tender and merciless, fingers stroking inside in a way that made my legs shake where they hung over his. The heel of his hand slid against my clit with each pass, teasing the edge of too much. I couldn’t sit still. I rubbed, small desperate motions, trying to chase the friction, which only made him murmur rough praises that climbed into my ear and down my throat. His palm marked an answer on my thigh where he’d swatted me, thumb stroking that hot place lazily as if to remind me I was his to hear.