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He waits and stares me down, his patience far more terrifying than any force would be. If he grabbed me, if he took what he wanted, I could hate him cleanly for it. Instead, he kneels there and lets the choice sit between us, and his restraint unravels me in a way his hands never could.
“I don’t know,” I murmur demurely. My throat has gone dry.
“I will stop the second you tell me to,” he says, and maneuvers the hem of my skirt up over my thighs. “Hold this for me, my girl.”
My fingers close around the fabric, shaking. He nudges my knees apart. “Open your legs for me.”
I should refuse. Slowly, I part my thighs anyway, giving him access, and his hands clamp around them and hold them exactly where he wants them.
He presses his mouth against my center through my panties, and his tongue soaks the cotton until it clings. Then he drags the panties down my legs, and the cool air hits my bare skin, and every nerve ending in my body is lit up, and I bite back a whimper.
He teases the outer folds first with the tip of his tongue, slow and patient, and then he seals his mouth over me and sucks, swallowing everything I’m already leaking for him until my thighs are drenched.
Whatever shame I had left in me dissolves completely, scattering under the heat of it. I’m standing in his office with my skirt bunched in my own shaking hands and his mouth between my legs, and I’ve stopped caring about anything but the next stroke of his tongue. He licks me open by degrees and then pushes his tongue inside, and the rhythm of it promises something thicker that I’m aching for. My knees shake so hard I can barely stand.
My thighs tremble around his head, and the pressure winds tighter and tighter until there is nowhere left for it to go. I fist both hands in his hair and come apart, gasping his name into the quiet room, my whole body folding forward over him as a surge of pleasure rolls through me in waves.
He rises and lifts me off my feet unhurriedly, as though I’m nothing, and lays me back on the couch. He works the buttons of my blouse open one by one, then unhooks my bra and pushes it aside and fills his hands with my breasts, circling my nipples with his thumbs while a pink heat stains my chest.
“So fucking perfect,” he says, an impish twinkle lighting his face, and closes his mouth over one peak and sucks hard.
His fingers pinch and roll the other nipple, my back arching off the cushions as the sensation shoots straight down between my legs. He undoes his belt one-handed, frees himself, and pushes inside me, taking me in one swift motion.
He sinks into the hilt and then goes completely still. I’m soaked and aching around him, stretched to the edge of too much, and I squirm at the fullness, desperate for him to move even an inch. He holds himself there, watching my face, wringing the obedience from me, making me feel every place we are joined.
“Please,” I breathe. “Please, just move.”
“Are you still planning to leave me?” he growls against my neck, holding himself buried and unmoving inside me.
I hesitate for one fatal second, and he feels it.
He pulls out slow, dragging every inch, and then slams back in with one hard, deep thrust that punches a cry out of me. The torture of it is exquisite.
“I will not quit,” I gasp. “I promise you. I’m not leaving.”
“Good girl,” he coos, and starts to move for real, his hands kneading my hips, my waist, my breasts as he goes.
I cannot hold back the broken little sounds that turn into moans against his shoulder. He grinds deep and slow, filling me completely on every stroke, drawing each one out until I think I might lose my mind from it. My hips lift to meet him without my permission, and I give him the reins.
“Look how well you take me,” he rasps. “I’ll have you begging for me before I’m done.” The wet sounds of us fill the whole room.
Underneath all the pleasure, a small hollow thing twists in me, and the old jealousy shadows me like death itself. I picture him doing this with Yelena, gentler, softer, saving the careful version of himself for her the way he always has. The thought lands wrong in my chest, because envy is a real bitch, and my mood sinks even as my body keeps climbing toward the edge.
Lev doesn’t slow. He seems to feel the exact moment I falter, and he speeds up instead, pounding into me over and over, and his mouth finds my ear.
“Only you make me feel like this,” he murmurs, his thumb circling where we are joined. “No one else has ever come close. I’m obsessed with you. You are perfect.”
The two words only you undo something knotted deep inside me, the soft spot for him I never wanted. The hollow place floods with warmth and want, and I finally stop fighting it.
My pleasure climbs sharp with every thrust now. I cling to his shoulders and dig my nails into them, and for once I let myself believe the steady stream of praise falling out of him. Maybe it is a lie. Maybe by tomorrow he will be cold again and I will hate myself for this. Right now I don’t care, because his rhythm never once falters as he keeps plowing through every inch of me, squeezing and stroking and claiming me as his own until there is no room left in my head for Yelena or the wedding or any of it.
We go until we’re both wrecked and shaking, in varying stages of falling apart, until neither of us can move another muscle. He sinks down over me, and I wrap myself around him, entwined, and our slick skin presses close in the sudden quiet with both our hearts still hammering.
Neither of us says a word. Because for right now, holding on to each other is the only thing either of us can manage.
21
LEV
