Page 45

"What can I say? They're award-winning."

He moves lower, kissing down my stomach, and his rough, callused hands slide up the outside of my thighs while his mouth stays soft and slow.

The contrast is incredible. Hard hands, gentle mouth, a man built like a barn treating my body like it's breakable and priceless at the same time.

He hooks his fingers into my underwear and drags it down my legs, and then he settles between my thighs, shoulders forcing them wide before he looks up at me.

My old programming kicks in immediately.

"You don't have to," I say, shifting my hips helpfully. "Like, whatever's easiest. I'm pretty quick if you just—"

Miles goes still and understanding moves across his face.

It's not pity. It's something closer to quiet fury at a man who isn't in this room.

"Audrey. What do you want?"

"I just said—"

"No, you gave me an efficiency report on how to get this over with quickly." He presses a slow kiss to the inside of my thigh, close enough that his breath moves warm over me and my hips lift on their own. "I'm not here to rush. So tell me what you want. Exactly. Or I stay right here and breathe on your clit until New Year's."

He blows a soft breath over my pussy and wow. That's more pleasure than I've felt in months.

"That's blackmail."

"That's foreplay." Another blow and then a kiss, higher. His stubble scrapes my thigh. "Now use your words, sweetheart."

I stare at the ceiling, cheeks burning, while a man with his face an inch from my pussy waits for verbal instructions like the world's most patient contractor.

"I want your mouth," I whisper.

"Louder."

"I want your mouth on me. Your tongue. Your fingers." The words come faster once they start, tumbling out of some locked room I forgot I owned. "I want you to make me come, Miles. I want—" I swallow. "Everything except sex. Not tonight. I can't—not yet. I'm sorry."

I brace for the negotiation. The sigh. The are you serious that Brett perfected into an art form.

Miles just nods from between my legs and smiles up at me.

No disappointment. No sulking.

He shifts his grip on my thighs, looks up at me one more time, and asks, "This okay?"

"Yes."

He eats me like he's starving.

There's no warm-up, no polite exploration. His control evaporates the second he tastes me and he groans into me, this deep, wrecked sound like I'm the best thing on the twenty-four-hour menu.

His tongue works my clit, then flattens as he sucks it between his lips. I grab his hair with both hands and grind against his mouth, moaning into the sheets.

"That's it," he growls against me. "Let me hear you. Every sound."

"Miles—fuck—"

"Louder." Two thick fingers slide inside me, curling exactly where I need them while his mouth stays on my clit. "You have any idea how wet you are? How good you taste? I could do this all fucking night."

"Don't stop—right there—don't you dare stop—"