Notorious Pleasures (Maiden Lane #2)(97)

But he drew his head back. “Do you understand how much you mean to me? What we are together?”

She shook her head. “Don’t you see how much you’re asking of me? To leap into an abyss on just your words. I can’t see how—”

“Then let me show you.”

The bed curtains were shoved aside, and he was in bed with her. He pulled the curtains closed, and suddenly her bed was small, intimate, and dark. They were enclosed in their own tiny world, just the two of them, outside of time and space.

He drew the covers from her grasp, and she let him without even token protest. The fabric made a shushing sound as it slid down her legs, and she swallowed, her body beginning to throb with want for him. She knew him now—knew what he could do to her. What he could make her feel.

His hands touched her ankles, encircling them, warm and firm. “Hero.” His voice was gritty, deep and threaded with intense emotion.

She felt his hands smooth up her calves, his touch almost too tender here in the dark. He was only a shadow, so she closed her eyes and concentrated on his fingertips, trailing over her thighs, trying to forget that this would surely be their last time together. He traced swirls on her skin, and when her breath hitched, it sounded loud in her ears. He reached the tops of her thighs, and she moved her legs restlessly, but his touch left her as he drew her chemise off over her head. She lay nude, her skin prickling with the chill of the night air.

Then his fingertips descended again, lightly skimming circles on her sides, almost tickling. Her skin seemed to tune itself to him, coming alive with tingling sensation.

She reached for him impatiently. “Griffin…”

“Hush,” he whispered. “Just let me show you.”

His fingers trailed from her sides to her belly, meeting over her navel. She sucked in a breath, unable to keep completely still under his touch. He breathed a laugh and scraped his nails lightly up to just under her breasts. Her nipples were tightly drawn already, pricking with anticipated pleasure. He traced the tender curve of the underside of her breast, tickling, faintly scratching, and she had to squeeze her thighs together to contain her own excitement.

When his mouth descended on one trembling nipple, hot and wide open, she jumped. She clutched at his hair as he traced around her nipple with his wet tongue, then sucked strongly. He was pinching at her other nipple, nearly painfully, his entire mouth over her breast, devouring her flesh in erotic hunger.

“Griffin,” she sobbed.

He nipped at her in punishment. She gasped and raised her legs, shocked to feel his breeches against her inner thighs. He was still dressed, but at this moment she no longer cared. She raised her hips and ground desperately against him. She found him, hard and big inside the fabric of his breeches, and she widened her thighs still farther to press her aching flesh against him.

But he dropped his weight on her, pinning her open and vulnerable beneath him.

“Not yet,” he murmured, and moved his mouth to her other nipple.

She tried to shift her hips, to rub against him somehow, but he lay, large and male and implacable, upon her. He held his upper body off her with his arms as he leisurely ravished her breasts, but his hips pinned her completely.

She grasped at his hair, trying to tug his head up. But his locks were shorn too short, and he merely chuckled against her nipple.

He was pulling strongly on her oversensitive nipples, and she was close—so close! If he’d just let her—

“Griffin!” she hissed in frustrated exasperation.

She felt herself heating from within, the entire surface of her body alert and ready for him. She could feel him, hard and long, against her clitoris, but he would not move.

“Shhh.” He raised his head and licked lazily at a nipple, his breath caressing her wet skin as he whispered merely another torment. “Easy, sweetheart.”

He spoke as if she were a mare in need of gentling, and at any other time, she would’ve made him aware of his insult. But at this moment she was entirely at his mercy.

“Griffin, please,” she whispered.

“Do you want me?” he asked.

“Yes!” She tossed her head restlessly. She’d explode if he didn’t give her release soon.

“Do you need me?” He kissed her nipple too gently.

“Please, please, please.”

“Do you love me?”

And somehow, despite her extremis, she saw the gaping hole of the trap. She peered up at him blindly in the dark. She couldn’t see his face, his expression.

“Griffin,” she sighed hopelessly.

“You can’t say it, can you?” he whispered. “Can’t admit it either.”

He rubbed his face against her breasts, and she thought his cheek might be wet.