Page 59 of Until You

She holds my gaze and reaches behind her for the zipper of the green dress. It slides down with a sound that rewires something in my brain.

I unbutton my shirt and toss it on the floor, then pull my undershirt over my head. Strip off my boots, my jeans, my boxers, until I’m standing in front of her with nothing to hide behind. I wrap a hand around myself because looking at her is doing things to me that require intervention.

“I want to take my time with you,” I say. “Make love to you.”

The green dress pools at her feet. She’s standing in a dark bra and underwear, and then those are gone too, and she’s naked in the lamplight of the room she’s been sleeping in—the good guest room. The one she deserved.

I look at her. Really look.

The ink I’ve been cataloging since the night we met is laid out in full now. The vine that curves around one breast and under the other. The flowers climbing her right leg from ankle to thigh. There’s a hummingbird on her other thigh.

I walk around her to see the rest. There’s an outline of a curvy woman’s body on her left shoulder. The outline is built of flowers. Just line art, find detail with black ink. It’s beautiful in its simplicity. I trace around the edge of it.

“I got that one a year after I finished radiation. When I was cancer-free, a legal adult. I had spent a lot of time being angry. At myself, at my body, at the world. This was a way for me to love myself, accept my body with all its beautiful imperfections.”

I lean forward and kiss her shoulder, right over the tattoo. “It’s perfect.”

Her body is slightly different than it was three months ago. I only notice because she feels a little different in my hands. Her breasts are fuller. Her hips have a rounder curve. The soft, roundedness of her belly is still there, but low on her pelvis, it’s firmer now.

She swallows. “I know I look different than⁠—”

“You look incredible.” I close the distance between us. Cup both breasts in my hands, weighing them, feeling the new fullness. “These,” I say, running my thumbs across the barbells through her nipples, “have been occupying approximately forty percent of my thoughts since the night I met you.”

She shivers. Arches into my touch. “Only forty?”

“The other sixty is split between your mouth and the sound you make when you’re about to come.”

“Oliver.” Her voice is breathless.

“Yeah?”

“Lie down.”

I don’t have to be told twice.

I move to the center of her bed and stretch out. She stands at the foot of it and looks at me with an expression—heavy-lidded and hungry.

I hold out my hand. “Come here, Mischief.”

She crawls onto the bed. Starts at my feet and works her way up, her hands sliding along my legs, her palms warm and certain. She traces the lines of muscle through my thighs, across my hips, over my stomach. Learning me. Mapping me with her fingers and lips.

When she reaches my cock, she wraps her hand around me and strokes upward.

I hiss through my teeth. “Whatever you want to do, I’m yours.”

Her head dips. Her tongue traces a slow line up my length, and the sound that comes out of me is not something I’m proud of.

“Fuck, Cora.”

Her lips close around me. She takes me as deep as she can, one hand wrapped around the base, the other braced on my thigh. And she is not tentative about it. She is thorough, focused, and devastating.

I grip the sheets. My hips fight to stay still. “I need—” I reach for her. “Come here. I have a better idea.”

She lifts her head. “I wasn’t finished.”

“I know. But turn around. Let me taste your pretty pussy while you choke on my cock.”

Her eyes darken. “Your mouth is filthy, Cowboy.”