With my hands still in his grasp, all I could do was fall into his touch, lose myself in his kiss. I barely noticed when he pulled me up to stand—until his mouth forged a path of fire down my throat, over the neckline of my dress...and closed over the peaked tip of my breast.
I gasped, struggled to breathe, fresh moisture pooling between my thighs. His teeth grasping my nipple just so sent arrows of arousal straight down to my clit.
With a deft move, he brought both my arms around to my back, held them there with one hand. The position forced me to arch my spine, pushed my chest even closer to his torturously skilled mouth.
He sucked and nibbled, alternating between breasts. I squirmed in his hold. It was too much, not enough. I wanted to break free, press closer. I needed...needed…
Panting, I rubbed my thighs together, desperate for friction. My fingers flexed, my hands twisting in his grip, unable to help alleviate my suffering.
Ask me. His voice in my head, dark seduction on rumpled sheets.
My breath hitched. I burned.
Ask.
His teeth on my nipple, his other hand sliding over my hips, down the curve of my ass.
My inner muscles clenched in despair.
I closed my eyes. Please.
He grabbed my right knee, pulled my leg over his thigh, pushed against my back with the hand holding my wrists. With this single swift move, in the span of a frantic heartbeat, I now half-straddled him, and that poor, over-sensitive, aching spot between my legs met the unforgiving hardness of his thigh.
One shove, in time with his free hand grasping my breast, his mouth now on my neck, teeth nicking skin, and I came apart.
The pressure unraveled in a wave of ecstasy. I undulated in his hold, gasping in his ear until I collapsed against him. His scent surrounded me, potent like a drug where my nose lay buried in his neck.
He let go of my wrists, and I curled my arms in the space between us, still breathing fast.
“Beautiful,” Zaquiel said from somewhere behind me.
Reality intruded on icy feet, in the sounds coming back from outside the vacuum of lust I’d been in, in the returning of my awareness of other people—demons—in the room...the knowledge that Zaquiel sat just a few feet away, having witnessed everything.
Heat flared inside me, but this time for wholly different reasons than the desire that had short-circuited my brain before. My fingers curled in Azazel’s shirt. My face was still plastered against the curve of his neck, eyes closed, my hopeless attempt at hiding from the room and my own mortification.
Damn it, hadn’t I sworn not to be embarrassed?
Get yourself together, I sternly told myself. It was part of the show, all a front.
Except it wasn’t. The very genuineness of my experience just now made me so vulnerable, stripped down and laid bare far more effectively than if I’d actually been naked.
Azazel’s hand settled on my head, his fingers playing lightly with the strands of my hair. His other hand stroked down my spine, the move unexpectedly soothing despite the embarrassment searing my nerves.
He’d achieved what he wanted, hadn’t he? Well, partially, at least. The hardness nudging my thigh where it lay against his crotch was proof he hadn’t gotten off…but maybe that was part of his plan. Considering how stripped down I felt after coming all over him in front of a room full of people, perhaps his preference for control extended to this as well. An orgasm was a sort of loss of control, wasn’t it? And maybe this was a side of himself he carefully curated, like so much else in his demeanor.
I wondered what it would take to pierce that kind of armor.
Get up, I berated myself. Come on, the show’s not over yet.
Any second now Azazel could pull me back into our charade, demand even more of me, and I had to be ready. If he ordered me to sit at his feet again right now and face the room—face Zaquiel—my raw vulnerability would be there for all to see, my walls still cracked, any hint of my self-assured pretense still gone. And wouldn’t that be even more devastating than my public orgasm?
I had to get my game face back. I couldn’t fucking lie here with my nose buried in the crook of his neck for much longer, couldn’t hide from the room and my exposure indefinitely.