And yet something feels different tonight. There’s an intensity in the air, electric and alive, and the look in his eyes is nothing short of brooding. He wants me, that much is sure. Wants me so badly that he drove back to see me in the middle of the night.
For once, I feel like what we’re doing is slipping beyond casual fucking.
This is becoming something so much bigger than that.
Fear flits through me again and I nearly clutch my chest, as if I could protect my heart from being squashed by him. How will he not break me when this is all over? The path to destruction is inevitable.
But I raise my arms as he lifts the shirt over my head, my breasts bare, and then he works down my underwear, until I’m lying on the bed completely naked.
My mind is racing as I watch him, wondering what he’s going to do, his gaze raking over my skin.
He lowers his head and his mouth licks over my breasts, his fingers pinching my nipples until I let out a cry of sweet pain, my face growing hot. My spine seems to buzz with each suck of his hot mouth over my cooler skin.
How can I leave this? How can this all be over one day? I don’t want this to end and yet I know there is no alternative. We simply can’t be together, so it’s casual sex or nothing, but at the same time, this isn’t casual. Not even a little. I want to be with him so badly that it scares me, makes my bones shake, makes my heart feel pinched and tight. If the yearning and the pining is already like this and he’s here, what will it be like when he’s not?
“You’re thinking too much,” he murmurs, and I look down to see his face moving down my stomach and back up, licking a path with a wide sweep of his tongue. His hands are at my thighs, digging into them, spreading them wide.
But he stops, tilting his head as he studies my face.
“W-what?” I manage to say, my throat feeling incredibly dry.
He wags a finger at me. “That brain of yours. The writer brain. What are you doing? Narrating? Or are you worrying?”
I close my eyes. It’s so hard to turn it off sometimes. To be in the moment, no matter how beautiful the moment is.
“I know how to help you,” he says after a beat. I feel him move off the bed.
He’s gotten up, and he’s going over to my wardrobe, flipping through the dresses. He finds a wide sash around one and whips the sash away from the dress, then he goes to the yellow and white dress I’ve been wearing while modeling for him, and removes the tie that goes around the waist.
He comes back to the bed, the tie and the sash in each hand.
“You like it when I spank you,” he says to me, keeping his voice low. A comment, not a question. “You like the pain because it feels good, but also because it makes you focus. It brings you to the present. It quiets your mind. I can’t get away with spanking you here — it will be too loud. But this should help do the same thing.”
I don’t know what he has in mind until he walks over to the side of the bed and nods at me. “Raise your arms, above your head.”
I do as he says and watch him as he leans over and ties the yellow waist tie around my wrists, holding them above my head, bent against the headboard.
“There,” he says, satisfied, his eyes sweeping over my body, leaving sparks in their wake. I’ve never been so exposed before.
I like it.
“That will help,” he says. “And so will this.”
He leans over me and places the sash over my eyes until I can’t see.
Oh my god, he’s blindfolding me.
“Lift your head,” he murmurs, and I do so. He quickly ties the ends of the sash at the back, then slips his hand to the back of my neck and lowers my head to the pillow.
“There,” he says. “Now your senses won’t be so overwhelmed. You can’t see me, and you won’t need to think about what to do with your hands. You’ll just focus on me, on me touching, licking, tasting every part of your body.”
Oh Grace. You poor naïve romance novelist. Your first