My palms sweat as I look her over, taking in our height difference and her trusting expression. Her hard nipples, windblown hair and flushed cheeks. I’m a split-second from backing her onto the bed, hiking up her skirt and just ringing myself dry between her legs. But a quickie is not what we’re doing here, is it? She asked me for something.
Help me learn exactly what I want. And how to ask for it.
There is a purpose here. If I forget about it…
That’s too much proof that she’s getting to me.
She’s not, I reassure myself, while removing my weapon. Engaging the safety and setting it on the dresser. “Here’s the thing, Taylor,” I say, my voice sounding like a buzzsaw. “You won’t know what you like until you’ve had it. You might not even like it…”
Her lashes momentarily shield her eyes, like she’s shy. Fuck me for being so turned on by that. “Rough?” she asks.
The saliva in my mouth dries up. “Yeah. Rough.” I take a step in her direction, my pulse going from a gallop to a sprint. “I’ll show you a little. You tell me if and when I go too far.”
“Do we like…designate a safe word?”
“We don’t need a safe word. You just say stop.” The urge to comfort her wins before I have the chance to arrange a battle. Tugging her close by the front of her tank top, I keep pulling until my lips meet her forehead and I kiss her there. “I know what stop means, sweetheart.”
She nods. Trusting me.
My heart knocks faster.
This is getting too personal already. That’s not what she asked from me and I don’t have it to give anyway. With a lot more rigor than intended, I unzip her skirt and shove it down past her hips. The soft denim has barely pooled around her ankles when I grip two tight handfuls of her ass and yank her up onto her toes. The gasp she lets out against my throat burns me alive. Once again, I am this close to pinning her beneath me on the bed and fucking the tension out of us both, fast and furious, but somehow, even with my dick harder than iron, I restrain myself.
“Still think you want to be manhandled?”
Halfway through my question, she’s already nodding eagerly.
Sweetly.
Sweetly? I wouldn’t know sweet if it bit me in the ass.
Teeth gritted, I spin her around to face the full-length mirror standing in the corner of the room. I watch her eyes connect with us. The study in contrasts we make together. Her in a tank top and panties. Pretty. Wide-eyed. And then me behind her. A jaded motherfucker with three days’ worth of beard growth damn near twice her size. This is what she asked for, though. Isn’t it? She’s still on her toes, her sexy backside flush to my lap right now, gently grinding left to right, for a reason. She’s been hungering for something and not being fed. How is it possible to be relieved by that and find it unacceptable at the same time?
I pinch the hem of her tank top between my fingers, taking a few seconds to graze her belly with my thumb, because goddamn, she is so soft. Her ass stills in my lap at the action, her eyelids fluttering. She likes it. As much as she wants a taste of hard and fast, she likes being touched gently, too, and knowing I shouldn’t, I file that away for later. Later? Yup. Can’t help it. Can’t help cataloging the acceleration of the pulse at the bottom of her neck when I peel the tank top over her head, leaving her in cream-colored panties and a matching…
“What is this?” I ask, running my index finger back and forth under the thin shoulder strap, looking down over the top of her at those two full, ripe tits, cupped in lace. How they plump when I tug on the strap. Fuck. I can barely keep from growling. “It’s not a bra, but it’s not fit for public, either.”
“Oh, um. Yes,” she murmurs, chest rising and falling. “It’s a bralette.”
Never heard of one. “Cute.”
Her eyes flash to mine in the mirror. “I don’t want to be cute.”
“Guess we better take it off then.”
I watch her toes curl into the rug. Nervous but excited. “Good.”
Instead of working it up and over her head, I surprise her by drawing the straps down her arms, then slowly dragging the dainty lace garment down her ribcage, belly, hips. And then I stop, settling my mouth against her ear. “You pull it the rest of the way. All the way to your ankles.”
She’s breathing harder now.
She knows something is coming—and she’s right.
I’m not operating some kind of game here, though. I’m moving on distinct reflexes that come directly from this woman. How she moves, how she breathes, what it means when she swallows harder than usual. It’s like I tune into her channel and some untapped source inside of me knows how fast to move, how slow, when she’s ready for more. I’m too mesmerized by the sight of her sexy, tan-lined body in the mirror to worry again about the fact that these blind reflexes have never existed in me before. That they’re specific to her.