His hands roamed over the silk encasing my body, smoothing over it, the light material catching on the calluses on his palms from millennia of sword work and battle. He grazed his fingertips across my collarbone, exposed by the low neckline of the dress, exploring the sweep of them, starting at my suprasternal notch to glide along the line of them out to my shoulders.
My mind raced and all I could think was suprasternal notch, jugular notch. What a weird thing to remember! The actual, anatomically correct name for such an obscure body part. I can’t remember where I learned that… did Iaoel tell me? No… no, I remember now! It was that antique, super early twentieth-century medical text that came through the shop. The one Piorre had me put in the case by the…
Tab’s eyes locked on mine as his fingertips hooked into the straps of my dress at the back of my shoulders. My breath stilled, and I swallowed so hard it gave a very audible click. I was nervous, incredibly nervous all of a sudden about Tab seeing me nude. I went very, very, still and made no move to stop him as he drew the airy fabric, weighted with its amethyst accents, away from my chest and down my arms.
I dropped my hands from his shoulders as he gazed up at me, disrobing me sure, but his eyes never left mine, and I realized… Tab was just as nervous as I was about taking this last step. This wasn’t about sex; not for either of us. If it were, it would be easier somehow, I thought. No, this held the weight of intimacy, and that was so much more than insert Tab into slot A.
Wow, I can’t believe my mind went there. It made me smile, and I had to fight down a giggle. The smile brought a reflexive one to Tab’s lips, and I was delighted to realize that when he smiled at me, it reached all the way down to his soul, lighting up those beautiful gray eyes I loved so much with joy from deep, deep, inside.
My breath caught when the material tumbled from my chest cascading down my body, whispering against my skin to the floor, the weight of the natural crystals dragging it along from the top. Tab’s gaze remained affixed to my face, the smile lost and replaced with something I couldn’t define immediately. I groped for a name to what I saw on his face and finally, the closest thing I could come to was wonder.
The rustle of his expensive dress shirt as he moved his hands to my hips was suddenly very loud in the almost deafening silence that had preceded it, and I jumped slightly. His lips twitched in an almost shy, boyish grin and I slid my fingers along his arms, from his wrists, all the way to his shoulders, relishing the feel of hard muscle beneath the crisp cotton.
As my fingertips moved up his arms, they closed around the back of my waist and drew me in. He kept his knees together, which forced me to part mine and straddle his lap if I were to give him the degree of closeness his hands pulling me in demanded. He scooted a little further to the edge of the bed, and just as my body pressed against his, his head craned back to maintain eye contact with me—not that his eyes hadn’t wandered at all in the intervening seconds. They’d flicked from my gaze a time or two, and each time they had, when they returned to mine, they broadcasted volumes about how much he liked what he saw when they’d strayed.
He gathered me close, his arms wrapping tightly around my lower back and guiding me to his lap. I stepped out of the puddle of silk. Right now, with his head tipped back, his chin was even with the notch in my ribs, just between and below my breasts. When I took the invitation and settled myself on top of the very nice slacks covering his thighs, it put me at the unusual vantage point of being a head taller than Tab. It was a strangely powerful feeling, gazing down at him like this, with him looking up at me. It was clearly my move, and so I smoothed my hands over his deltoids.
I loved a good set of shoulders on a man, and Tab had a delicious physique under his typical, unrelieved black clothes. I smoothed my fingers along them, and touched the side of his neck, letting my fingers go to the back of his head, burying them in the satin of his raven dark hair. I pulled myself closer, lowering my mouth slowly, drawing out the anticipation between us both, letting my breath gently fog warm between our lips, the blush of it reflecting back on my own from the scant space I kept between them.
Tab was stalk still, letting me take the lead, letting me show him that yes… I wanted this. That I had wanted this for so long.
“Adelaide… my Addy,” he breathed and a surge of joy, so bright, so perfect, pure, and clean exploded inside of me and filled me up. I closed the millimeter of space between our lips and kissed him hungrily, like I’d never kissed him before. His arms crushed me to his chest and suddenly, the material of his clothing was just gone and it was my skin on his.
The room was cool, but Tabbris was so very warm, so I hardly noticed. His lips traveled from my mouth, along my jaw. One hand migrated from my back to the side of my neck to move my long hair out of his way. He swept it back over my shoulder and my back was suddenly warmer than it had been, the long weight of my hair making it so.
He kissed along my jaw, and I gasped, tipping my head back and arching, not to be provocative, but to place skin that he hadn’t yet touched closer to his mouth. He nipped my collarbone and dragged me tight against his body and I moaned, saying, “I certainly hope Gabriel isn’t watching and wasting divine power on this.”
Tab pulled his mouth from my body with the rich sound only a man’s lips leaving your skin can make and he growled passionately, “That was me.”
It surprised me. Tab had ever been conservative with his divine power. That he would use it to disappear the clothes, a last barrier however simple, barring us from being skin on skin blew my mind and made me realize that yes, he deeply, deeply, loved me.
Our mouths met and when they parted, it was to a soundtrack of heavy, impassioned breathing. The sounds drawing us both deeper and deeper into our mutual arousal for each other. I could feel the hot length of him pressing against my inner thigh and I wanted to make him feel good. I curled one hand around the back of his neck to anchor myself, adjusting my weight on my knees to either side of his hips so I could raise myself up.
With my other hand, I curled fingers around his scorching, straining length. Tab exhaled, a feral sound of want escaping his lips, and I felt my own body clench with need in answer to it. I stroked him between us, stroking down to bring his foreskin back from his swollen head so that I could tease it with the pad of my thumb.
He bowed his head, at first I thought to watch, but his eyes were squeezed shut, one arm bracing me around the back of my waist so I wouldn’t slide off his lap, the other clutching the quilt in a mottled grip at his hip.
Most people would let out a breathy Oh God, at the sight, but there wasn’t any faster way to kill a man’s boner than to call out his dad’s name in bed, so I refrained. Instead, I pressed my lips together, biting them gently closed so I wouldn’t make the mistake. At the same time, I rose a little higher on my knees.
I wanted him so badly, and I think the both of us had waited long enough. I pressed the head of his cock at the gathering wetness at the juncture of my thighs, lowering myself slowly over the top of him, taking him in carefully so I wouldn’t overdo things in my eagerness and hurt either of us. Tab threw back his head, locking his gaze with mine as he filled me and it was the most amazing, intimate, and beautiful sharing of something I had ever experienced.
Our bodies met flush, and we simply stared into one another’s souls for who knew how long, basking in the love radiating between us.