“Don’t,” he said again.
Though he didn’t let go. Didn’t step away. If anything, his fingers tightened.
His breath came harshly through the silence.
It was only when I felt cold stone beneath me that I realized I’d gone to my knees, my hand slipping from his grip. I barely knew how I got there, let alone understood why I’d done it, but it seemed…right somehow. That it would be good for him to have me there. Something I could give that he could accept. Easier, for him, than comfort.
A different sort of understanding.
I gazed up at him. He looked sharp and stern, harshly etched by the moonlight, brows pulled tight in anger or confusion or something he was trying to conceal.
“What are you doing?” Whatever he might have wanted me think, his voice betrayed him. It wasn’t quite steady.
And gave me the courage to tell him, “You know what I’m doing, Mr. Hart.”
“No, I mean yes—” It was the first time—no, the second time—I’d ever heard him flustered. Maybe there was a bit of the other side of the coin in me because I liked it. I liked it a lot. Not flustering him precisely. But affecting him. “Stand up. This isn’t right.”
Maybe it wasn’t. But it sure as hell felt awesome. Peaceful in some strange way and powerful in another. “Fuck right.” I drew in a deep breath. Held his eyes. “I want to…” Which was, of course, when I ran out of bravado. How was I supposed to finish that sentence? Help you? Save you? Take care of you? I couldn’t say any of those things. They’d sound weird and embarrassing and way too much. But I had to finish somehow. I was already at his feet. Already committed to doing something stupid. “Suck your cock,” I finished.
And oh fuck. How had I ever thought that might be better?
Chapter 6
I cringed, anticipating bemused rejection, but instead his fingers brushed my cheek—the touch as hesitant and as fleeting as his confidences had been. I turned my face into his palm and kissed it, embarrassment drowned in a rush of pleasure.
“We shouldn’t,” he said. “You don’t know what you’re doing—”
“Oi.” I nipped his thumb. “I think you’ll find I do.”
He made a shaky sound, a sigh or a laugh or a little bit of both. “You don’t know what you’re doing to me.”
“Then let me. Please.”
“Arden, I—”
“Please.”
Silence. And I was trembling with urgency. Whatever I’d apparently done to him, I’d managed to wind myself up into a right state. I couldn’t remember ever being so aroused on so little.
Except it wasn’t little, not really.
It was him, and kneeling for him, and begging him, and knowing he wanted me too. And it was better than any everyday fucking or sucking I’d ever done.
I couldn’t tell which of us he shocked more when he gave this—God—this groan, this deep, lovely, slightly helpless groan. And his hands moved to undo the button of his trousers. The scrape of the zip sounded so ridiculously loud that I half expected the balcony doors to fly open and the guests to come pouring out in fear of the machine gun.
But, no, it was just him and me and…and this.
Waiting with the cold seeping into my already-aching knees. Watching the faint trembling in his fingers as he pushed down…oh my…I was glad for the semidarkness because otherwise I’d probably have been completely overwhelmed by the sheer classiness of his silk modal boxer briefs. I only got a glimpse, but the way they clung to him—sleek and gorgeous and far too explicit—I would have given anything to be the one peeling them off him. Revealing him. Worshipping him. His flanks beneath my hands, tight with anticipation and flush with heat, the skin ivory smooth.
Although in all honesty, and greedy fantasies aside, what was happening now was almost on the brink of being too much. It was like some weird semi-pornographic fairy tale. A spell I was going to break at any moment when he saw my finery was nothing but ashes and my carriage a pumpkin. Not that this was the sort of thing that happened in the Brothers Grimm. Even taking into account all the Oh no, real fairy tales are dark, man, dark bullshit.
And then I saw his cock and the nervous babbling in my brain snapped off as if he’d hit a switch.
Just.
Um.
Wow.
It looked like marble in the moonlight and it was beautiful, sculpted almost, a cock that Rodin would have dreamed up. I’d seen my fair share of knob in my life—I’m sure some would say more than my fair share—but this was cream of the crop. Platonic ideal. Sizeable and proportional and tantalizing with a graceful curve to it. It made my stomach knot with yearning, empty places waking up inside me, aching for him to fill them and take possession of me.
I leaned forward and licked all the way up the underside of the shaft.
He tasted good. Heat and salt and skin. And, at the top like a prize, a glistening drop of pure desire. It zinged on my tongue. For me.
Caspian gasped. Such a rough sound, a little bit grudging, as though he’d tried to keep it trapped in his throat.
I pressed in closer, wanting more—more of his sounds, more of his pleasure, more of everything—and slid my hands up his thighs. The muscles drew tight under my palms. He was so unexpectedly responsive, this cold man, so very full of hidden fires.
But then he seized my wrists again—one in each hand, this time—and pulled me away. At first I thought he intended to stop me (and, of course, I would have stopped) but he just trapped me there, kneeling at his feet with my arms outstretched in this pose of peculiar surrender—a little bit crucified, a little bit “don’t shoot me.”
I’d been pretty much making a beeline for his cock, but I felt odd without my hands. Exposed. Also—as much as I hated to admit it—I was a trifle lazy in the gamahuching department. Well, maybe not lazy, because I was certainly enthusiastic about it, but I usually cheated a bit. The ol’ hand round the base technique.
And I know it made me something of a failgay but I was scared of deep throating. Scared in a good way in principle, but in practice…well, it didn’t tend to quite work out. There’d be moments of rough hands and breathlessness that would flush me with hectic heat—leaving me feeling helpless, feeling thrillingly used. But then all that promise of something dark and sweet and dirty would be lost in worrying I was about to throw up on some guy’s dick. And, just like when I was a teenager, going on fairground rides that scared me to stop my mates calling me a sissy, I’d be left feeling sick and hurt, asking myself, Why are you doing this? What are you getting out of it? What are you supposed to get out of it?
But then I’d never wanted anyone the way I wanted Caspian Hart.
And I trusted him. As he had trusted me.
I let him keep my hands, fingers curling as I yielded to his grip. And, with less finesse than I might have hoped, I opened my mouth over the head of his cock, pulling it clumsily inside like a stick of Blackpool rock.
Only, y’know, thicker and harder and hotter and oh God. Oh God.
Caspian Hart’s cock. In me. Well, about half in me. Enough to flood me with the taste of him: salty, masculine, and clean. So exciting, the intimacy of that, along with the heat of palms, pressing into me like shackles. I angled myself, trying to take more of him, feeling him stretch my lips and rub against the interior spaces of my mouth. He wasn’t pushing, but it wasn’t hard—um, difficult—to imagine what it would be like if…when…he did. How powerless I would be. At his feet, with my hands in his, my body given over to his will and the violence of his passion.