The Best Next Thing

“Charity.” He didn’t know what he wanted to say, only that he needed to say it. “What—”

Her mouth closed over his, cutting him off, leaving him in no doubt as to what she wanted. He groaned when her tongue flitted along the seam of his lips, eroding his self-control. Before he could open for her, he needed to know that she was really fine. That this wasn’t her seeking comfort after a nightmare.

He reluctantly pulled his head back and opened his eyes. The only light in the room was spilling in from the hallway through the door that she had left ajar, and he could barely make out her features.

“Are you sure you want this?”

“Yes,” she moaned. “I want this. Please, Miles.”

Her hand slid between their bodies and found his straining length. He hissed at the contact and arched into her touch.

He claimed her lips with his own, inserting every ounce of passion and desire he felt for her into the caress. His tongue requested, and was permitted, entry into her soft, hot mouth and he groaned when her own tongue eagerly met his.

He fisted her unbound hair, glorying in the silken slipperiness of it, and pulled her closer to deepen the kiss. He wanted her to feel his desperation, his yearning, and the absolute pleasure he was taking in being with her like this.

His kiss was everything, it transported her higher than any of her thrill-seeking adventures had ever taken her, above the clouds and into the heavens. Charity was lost in it. Lost in his taste and scent…

His hands had left her hair to explore the bare, sensitive skin of her upper arms and shoulders. A stroke here and a caress there. Not enough to be satisfying but just enough to tease, torment, and titillate. He eased her onto her back and settled between her spread thighs, his thick shaft, riding the furrow between her legs. He lifted his head, relinquishing her lips to peer down at her, the gloom making it hard to gauge what he was thinking.

“Is this okay?” he asked gruffly.

Charity reached around to grab his tight butt with both her hands and ground herself against his hard cock, wanting him to know exactly how okay it was. Wanting to reassure him—and her—that she wouldn’t react the same way she had last time they had found themselves in this same position. Eager for him to know that she trusted him, and that she loved having his weight on top of her.

He groaned at the hot friction she generated between his shaft and her damp, eager womanhood.

“You’re killing me,” he said, on a gasp of pure pleasure.

“Only a little,” she promised him.

He laughed huskily and dipped his head to trace his lips to the cove of her neck, unerringly finding all her most sensitive spots. It was as if he had a map of all her erogenous zones because he found, and lingered at, each and every one of them. Flipping switches, turning dials and adjusting signals, until he had her humming at exactly the right frequency.

By the time he eventually got to her nipples, she was writhing in the best kind of agony, beyond ready to take that next step with him.

But he had other plans. Plans that did not yet involve taking next steps…plans that meant he would linger at the crests of her breasts forever. He suckled, licked, nibbled, came perilously close to biting…but would not move on from there.

“Oh please. Oh please, Miles. More. I need more.” Her words emerged on gasps as she fought for breath and writhed restlessly beneath him. She planted her feet on the mattress and unabashedly thrust against his hardness…eager for the column of flesh he was so selfishly withholding from her.

“Soon, sweetheart…” he whispered. His hot breath washed over one tightly furled nipple and sensitized the flesh beyond bearing. “I promise.”

No longer content with being the passive recipient of so much sensual torment, Charity decided to spur him into action by beginning her own erotic onslaught. She ran her hands over his back and chest, testing the firmness of those muscles beneath all that gloriously smooth skin. He was stronger than the last time they had been together like this. But it didn’t frighten her. Because she knew that he was keeping all of that strength leashed just for her. There was something so damned sexy about that.

She trusted that he would never do anything to hurt her and that knowledge, that trust that he had fought so hard to win, was so much hotter than anything else he had done in bed with her so far.

Her palms slid down his slick chest, exploring the hard points of his nipples, playing there for a moment, until he groaned and lifted his mouth from where he had been nibbling at the crease of one of her aureoles.