lust.
How?
“What did I tell you about fear?” he asked quietly.
“To learn to love it.”
“And what did I say about me being here?”
“That you’ll leave, if I tell you to go.”
“Do you care to hear what I want, Viktoria?”
She swallowed the knot in her throat, unsteady but still grasping to find stability in the war that was her mind and body. She looked up to find he was still staring at her. He was still there, and she was still a fucking mess.
“Yes,” she whispered, “I think I would like to hear that.”
Pav grinned, then, and she swore the world stopped spinning for a split second as she focused in on his smile. How he managed to look dangerous and sinful at the same time, she couldn’t understand. She dragged in a quick breath when he leaned in closer, enough that there was only a very small breath of space between them, and she could see the tiny scar that split the right side of his upper lip.
“What I want, yeah, is to hear the different sounds you’ll make when I’m learning what your body will do for me,” he told her, his gaze slipping down her throat as he spoke. “I want to know what your skin tastes like when you’re hot and begging for me. I want to know what your cunt tastes like when my fingers are buried in your ass and you’re high on it. I want to find out how hard your pussy will squeeze my dick when I’m soaked with you and I’ve got you on your knees.”
She blinked, her mouth feeling dry but her thighs aching. She was quite sure the spot between her legs was anything but dry, and that shocked her a bit. It had been far too long since she’d willingly laid down with a man.
And this man?
He terrified her.
“I don’t think you understand how much that—”
“Scares you a bit,” he returned, his grin deepening a bit. “I know; I can tell.”
“You like that, I think.”
Pav arched a brow. “I like that you fight it for what you want. You want more than you fear, and that gets me off.”
Jesus Christ.
She swallowed the knot in her throat, because he wasn’t wrong. She was all too willing to fight the constant war of her fear for the chance at feeling something—a taste of the kind of freedom only sex could provide.
Far more than willing.
“If you tell me no, or it feels like too much; if you need to stop, then you say so, and it’s done.”
“Not all of my cues are verbal.”
Pav nodded. “I can tell.”
“Can you?”
“Better than you know, Viktoria.”
That was the thing, wasn’t it?
She needed to trust him.
Yeah, terrifying.
And yet, she still wanted to try. She wanted to let him learn all those things he told her, and more. So much fucking more.
Pav lifted a brow high. “And if you tell me yes—”
“Yes,” she breathed instantly.
That was all he needed.
In a blink, he was up from that chair, and closing the space between them. She heard the chair legs scrape loudly against the tile, which was enough to make her jump in her own seat. Her attention quickly went back to the man looming over her. Yet another thing that made her tense and hesitate.
But he saw that.
The flash in her eyes.
The draw back when he leaned down.
He saw it all.
Viktoria watched the recognition in his eyes when he cupped her jaw in his hands and lowered down in front of her chair so that he wasn’t above her like that. So that he didn’t loom over her like that. He didn’t ask for a kiss, but she didn’t mind. Instead, he pulled her in for one that she swore lit up fireworks inside her stomach.
His lips worked hard against hers, and she answered him back with the same. At first, she just wanted to feel the kiss, but then, she wanted to taste him, too. It was her tongue that struck out against the seam of his lips first—her that asked for more without saying a thing. She was quite aware of that, and she didn’t miss how he let her do it, too.
The second his mouth opened for her, and their tongues met, a dance began. That kiss turned into something far hotter, a lot like the way her body felt in those seconds. She knew that she needed air—needed to breathe, but she didn’t care.
In his eyes, she found anticipation.
Lust.
Appreciation.
She worried she might find something else, something