Page 189

He spins me around and finds the zipper at my spine. It hisses down in one pull. The dress slides off my shoulders and drops around my heels, and the cool air of the room hits my bare back a second before his mouth does.

He unhooks my bra with one hand. It falls away. His palms close over my breasts from behind, rough, squeezing, his thumbs dragging over my nipples until they ache. I arch back against him and feel how hard he is through his trousers.

Then he turns me around and lifts me onto the long table. The wood is cold beneath my thighs. My folio slides somewhere behind me. He steps between my knees, and I watch him pull his tie loose, slowly, the silk sliding from his collar.

“Give me your hands.”

I don’t. He waits. His eyes never leave mine.

Seven years ago, I would never have made him wait. Tonight, I let him stand there, his chest rising beneath his open shirt, my pulse hammering, before I finally hold my wrists out between us.

He wraps the tie around them twice and knots it. Not tight, but tight enough.

Then he pushes me down onto my back and presses my bound wrists above my head against the table.

“Leave them there.”

He hooks my panties, drags them down my legs, and tosses them somewhere into the dark. He spreads my knees wide with his palms and looks at me in the lamplight. All of me. Taking his time.

Heat climbs my throat. I pull against the tie.

“Don’t,” he says.

He runs two fingers through me. I’m soaked, and I hear the breath leave him when he feels it. He circles my clit with his thumb, slowly, then pushes both fingers inside me and curls them.

My back comes off the table. He works me with steady, deliberate strokes, fingers thrusting, thumb circling, and watches my face the entire time. The pressure builds fast, far too fast after years without him. My thighs start to shake. I’m right there—

He stops. His fingers go still inside me. His thumb lifts away.

A sound escapes me that I don’t recognize.

“Ross.”

“Tell me you missed this.”

“Go to hell.”

A slow smile. He pulls his fingers out, leans down, and drags his tongue through me in one long, flat stroke. My hips jerk off the table. He does it again. Then he closes his lips around my clit and sucks, pushes his fingers back inside me, and builds me up all over again—

And stops.

I’m panting. My wrists strain against the silk. My whole body is one raw nerve.

“Say it,” he says against my inner thigh.

“I hate you.”

“I know.” He presses a kiss where my thigh meets my hip.

“Say it anyway.”

His tongue flicks my clit once. Barely.

It breaks me.

“Yes,” I gasp. “I missed this—”

He doesn’t make me wait again. His mouth seals over my clit and his fingers drive into me hard, curling, and the orgasm he has denied me twice tears through me all at once. I cry out, my back bowing, my thighs clamping around his head. He holds me open and licks me through every spasm, greedy, until I’m twitching and oversensitive and can’t catch my breath.