So I just yank. A few get through the holes. A couple ping against the floor.
Oops. His shirt swooshes against the hardwood on impact.
I pull away from him to take in Orion in all his glory. That dip between his pecs still looks like a perfect fit for my hand.
So I lay it flat, wedged between those throbbing muscles, marveling. “I’ve wanted to do that since the first time I saw you shirtless.”
“What? Touch me?”
I nod slowly.
A throaty chuckle spills out of him and he holds me tighter, planting fresh kisses on my forehead. I smile up at him and put my fingers on the lace of my corset.
“Wait,” he clips, a one-word order that halts me in place.
“Ward?”
We’re moving, I think, and the next thing I know we’re upstairs and he’s laying me down on a bed bigger than a sultan’s. I giggle because it’s either that or choke in awe.
I don’t remember moving through the penthouse.
“I’m pulling that bow and unwrapping you right now,” he insists. “Hold still, sweetheart.”
He loosens it just like he promised, kissing the spot between my breasts where it rested. He unlaces the corset like he’s unwinding the Gordian knot, one thread at a time, peeling the cloth away with his brow pulled low as a thunderhead.
Holy hell.
His tongue traces circles over the top of my cleavage before plunging lower. He takes my breast into his mouth, flicking his tongue against my nipple, marking me with his teeth.
“Oh!” Somehow, I have the poise for my arms to flail at his belt until I find it.
He goes still, letting me move it through the loops, his eyes completely animalistic.
I unbutton his pants and slide them down, raking my hands under his boxers, pushing them away.
In one brisk tug of his arm, my dress is gone.
His head falls between my breasts. His lips paint my skin in soft, quick, sweet strokes. And he trails those soft, quick, sweet kisses down to my silk panties, the last barrier between us.
Ward’s teeth nip at my waist, and the cloth moves, but barely.
Oh, God. This is it.
My legs tremble. My eyelids quiver. The waistband moves a little bit more, inch by agonizing inch, baring me to this brute of a boss I can’t believe I’m getting naked with.
This sculpture of a man removes my panties with his teeth and a lingering shudder of thunder in his throat.
“I’ve lived like a monk and I’m clean,” he says, gazing into my eyes as he stands again. “Tell me I can feel you, Paige.”
I know what he’s asking, and I answer with a nod that turns my cheeks into cherries. “I’m on the pill. Ward, I need you.”
And his kiss tells me how flipping bad that need is as he pushes me back on the bed and climbs between my legs.
I feel like a total goddess.
I think it can’t get better.
But then he slides into me.
I forget how to breathe. My pussy molds to the enormous thrust filling me, hell-bent on conquest.
He anchors himself deep enough to rest his balls against my skin, his pubic bone grazing my clit, and—
And holy Warden.
We fuse together too perfectly.
His hips pull back and crash forward again, a wave of a man, pleasure made tsunami, everything wild in the slash of his hips that says he means to carve his name in my body with pure ecstasy.
His mouth smothers mine, ripping the air from my lungs.
Soft, lavish strokes of his tongue announce his greed, and a full body caress grinds on.
I wrap my arms around him, desperate to have him closer, even when we’re joined in a primal rhythm that keeps coming faster, harder, beautifully.
“Paige, fuck,” he groans, eyes flashing deep in his head, twin blue fires.
His hands grab mine, throwing them over my head and pinning me to the mattress, pressing me down so tight it’s hard to tell where I end and he begins. The sinful slash of his tongue and pelvis don’t miss a beat, and shit, I’m close.
My legs hook around his hips, shaking, an O the size of a California earthquake pounding through me.
I cinch my legs around him and surrender to the ride.
And I can’t withstand much more, knowing I’m about to come on every seething inch of him, every hammer of his thrusts and match-strike of my clit.
Every freaking glory that makes Ward Brandt the only constellation I’ll ever want in my sky.
He breaks our kiss with a ragged groan, a rough tension in his wall of a body, and a glance that carves me up.
The tempo of his hips rises from slow and gentle to ruthless. Impatient.
I squeeze my legs tighter, holding on for dear life.
He kisses my eyebrow and returns his tongue to my mouth, a kiss that leaves no doubt what he’s demanding.
Thank God, because I’ll die if we don’t come together.