Speak Low (Speak Easy 2)

“No. I want to see you.” He moved backward on his knees and stepped off the end of the bed. “Come here.”

I crawled to the edge.

He reached for me. “Stand up.”

I did as I was told, feeling the damp heat between my legs as I stood.

Taking me by the shoulders, he turned me around, and I felt his hands at the back of my neck and then working their way down the row of buttons to the sash at my hips. When the dress was loose, I slipped my arms from the sleeves and let it drop to the floor. I turned to face him wearing just my chemise, step-in, and black stockings rolled thigh-high.

The sight of him shirtless and hungry-eyed was too much for me to bear. I reached for his trousers. “Wait,” he said, grabbing my wrists. “I want to look at you.”

“I want you to do more than look.”

“I promise you, baby, I will. Raise your arms.” Reaching for the bottom of my chemise, he lifted the simple white garment over my head and set it aside. Then he crouched in front of me and pulled down my step-in. I held his shoulders and lifted one foot from them, then the other. But when I went to remove my stockings, he took my hands again. “Leave them on.”

I stood before him, naked except for my stockings and shoes. I’d worn less in front of another man, but somehow this felt like the most naked moment of my life. Every inch of my skin was sizzling as he swept his ravenous eyes over my body. The tension inside me pulled tighter. My nipples grew harder under his stare, and when he licked his lips, I felt a flutter between my legs as if he had licked me there.

“You’re so beautiful,” he whispered, bringing his hands to my hips and guiding them to the bed. Then he dropped to his knees and slid his hands down my thighs, pushing them apart.

My mouth fell open.

Moving his hands to the small of my back, he pulled me toward him, closing his mouth over one breast. I inhaled deeply when he dragged his tongue around my nipple in lazy circles and flicked it with tiny strokes. When his teeth closed on it, I grabbed his head, filling both hands with his thick, wavy hair. Heat rushed my center, which was cradled against his stomach. “Now, Joey. Please.”

He switched his mouth to the other breast and ran a hand up my ribcage to the first, torturing me with his thumb and fingers in a way that made me pant.

Jesus, does he want me to beg?

Because I would.

“You’re making me crazy,” I whined, looking down at his lips closing over my nipple. Leaving the drapes open made everything he did even more arousing because I could see it.

“I’m just getting started.” His breath tickled my wet skin. I shivered at the cool tingle on my breast and the nearly unbearable hum between my legs. He moved a hand to the top of my thigh, his thumb brushing my sensitive outer folds, and then softly circling over my clitoris.

“Yes,” I whispered. “Yes, yes.”

“Now lie back.” He brought his hands to my shoulders and gently laid me back. Standing for a moment, he leaned over me and kissed my neck, a moan rumbling from his throat. “Mmmmm, I can’t get enough of the way you smell.” He kissed his way down my chest, stopping to take each breast in his mouth again before continuing down my stomach. “Or the way you taste.” Planting a kiss on each of my hips, he licked a circle around my belly button before trailing his hot, wet tongue in a line straight south. “I want to taste you everywhere.”

He took a moment to slip my heels off my feet. Then he dropped to his knees between my legs again, hooked his arms beneath my thighs and pulled me to him.

When he put my knees over his shoulders, I flung my arms over my head.

At first, I felt only cool air at my center, and then warm air as he exhaled. My body was coiled so tight as I waited for his mouth on me I thought I might explode the moment I actually felt it.

I nearly did.

Slowly he licked his way up the silky wet seam at my center, and my legs trembled. When he reached the top, he lingered there and swirled circles with the flat of his tongue before flicking lightly with the tip. Then he did it again, and I felt the telltale tightening of my muscles in my lower body. I’d never fought an orgasm before, but now I knew the exquisite torture Joey had experienced in the pantry. Soft, tender strokes every which way, barely-there flicks that left me panting, loops and lines and curves…Jesus, he could write poetry with his tongue.

“Joey,” I whispered. “Please…” But then I couldn’t even form a coherent sentence, because he chose that moment to take the tiny bud, tingling with heat, into his mouth and suck, and at the same time he slipped his fingers inside me. My heels dug into his back. My toes pointed like a ballerina’s. My hands flew to the bedcovers next to my hips, clawing them in tight fists. He pushed his fingers deep inside me and somehow twisted them to press upward on some magnificent spot I never even knew existed. Working me with both fingers and mouth, he brought me to a peak so high, so hot, so deliciously fraught with tension that I thrashed my head from side to side, my mouth open in a silent scream. When he moaned against my throbbing center, I couldn’t hold on any longer. Letting go completely, I was rewarded with an orgasm so powerful, my body went completely stiff with ecstasy as I yelled his name between gasps.

For a moment afterward, I didn’t move or speak or even breathe. Joey kissed each of my inner thighs before standing and removing the rest of his clothes. When I propped myself up on shaky elbows and saw him naked before me, I nearly cried with need to feel that body on mine. In the light of the setting sun that crept in through the open drapes, his skin was golden, and every muscle was etched in line and shadow. He had the kind of body immortalized in marble by Italian sculptors four hundred years ago.

Plus an erection that would rival the leaning tower of Pisa.

He picked up one of my legs, set my foot on his chest and removed my stocking. Then he kissed each of my toes, my instep, the inside of my ankle, the back of my knee.

Oh, dear God—how had I never imagined how good his lips would feel at the back of my knee?

He picked up my other leg and repeated the process.