And then Ethan’s dropping to his knees in front of me. Shoving my skirt up to my waist and pushing my panties aside. Before I can even imagine what he’s going to do, let alone give my permission, his mouth is on me. His tongue delving inside me even as his hands move to rest on the line where my thigh connects to my body. He lifts my leg—the same one that was wrapped around his waist a short time ago—and drapes it over his shoulder.
I’m totally open to him now, totally vulnerable. My cheeks flame, and I squirm—no one has ever done anything this intimate to my body before, and I’m traumatized even as I love it. Even as I crave more. Crave everything, including the release that has been just out of reach.
I whimper, moan, beg, and plead, words falling out of my mouth with no conscious thought or organization on my part. All I know is that I need. For this one moment, the fear has disappeared. The worry, the pain, the memories. Everything is gone and my whole body, my whole consciousness and existence, has shrunk to this one moment out of time. To the pleasure, and release, that I am chasing as relentlessly as any junkie has ever chased a high.
Ethan quiets me with a low growl, and then his tongue is there—right there—at the epicenter of my pleasure. He circles my clit, flicks at it, before sucking for one second, two. Combined with the rubbing, twisting motion of his fingers inside me, that’s all it takes. With a shudder and a shout, I tumble over the edge and into an orgasm so intense, so pleasurable that I forget everything. Who he is. Who I am. Who I was. Why we shouldn’t be doing this. Why I care.
In those moments, all I know is him. All I feel is him. And the warmth, the pleasure, the tenderness—absolute and indescribable—that he’s given me.
Chapter Seven
But nothing lasts forever—no matter how much I might wish it would. As the shudders finally stop and thought returns, so do all those things I’d banished in the moments before release.
Ethan is still kneeling on the floor in front of me, his fingers inside me and his mouth brushing glancing kisses across my hip and abdomen. There’s a part of me that wants nothing more than to stay here, right here, in this moment. To let him pet and touch and cuddle me until his heart is content…or mine is.
But it’ll take a lot more than a few gentle kisses and an out-of-this-world orgasm to make me forget the darkness that yawns inside of me. I was able to bury it earlier, to ignore it, but right now—as the world creeps in—it’s just there, waiting to swallow me whole.
I’m too raw, too open. My defenses have been shattered by the pleasure Ethan brought me—and the care he?
?s showing me even now. Tears bloom in my eyes, and I close my eyes, look away, before he can see them. It’s an odd feeling, having a man dress me. Having this man dress me. It smacks of gentleness, of care and concern, and isn’t at all what I expected of him.
Then again, I don’t know why I’m surprised. Nothing about this meeting is turning out as I expected. Why should Ethan’s actions be any different? Unexpected tears clog my throat, but I’m not going to cry.
Not here, not now. And certainly not in front of Ethan.
But somehow he sees. The hand on my hip slides up to my lower back, rubs soothingly. “You okay?” he asks softly, standing up so his face is close to mine.
I can smell myself on his lips, and for one wild second I think about leaning forward and kissing him. Finding out not what I taste like but what we taste like, together. But just the idea is so strange, so appalling, so embarrassing that I take a step back.
Those bright blue eyes of his darken and I know he’s not happy. He doesn’t like the distance I’ve just put between us. But how can I not distance myself when the whole house of cards I’ve spent the last five years constructing threatens to crash down around me at any second?
“That was…” I break off. What’s the appropriate adjective to use here? Mind-blowing? Body-numbing? Amazing? “Nice. ”
As soon as the word leaves my tongue, I want to grab it back. Nice? A hot bath is nice. A warm chocolate chip cookie. A pedicure. What just happened between us was a lot of things, but nice is not one of them.
Ethan stiffens, and I’m afraid I’ve offended him. Not that I blame him—he gives me an earth-shattering orgasm and I call it nice? But he looks more amused than insulted. “Nice?” he asks, lifting that one damn eyebrow of his again. It gets to me, has me aching all over again. Which—judging from the gleam in his eyes—is exactly what he intended.
“You know what I mean. ” I reach down, grab my briefcase from where I put it next to the couch. I don’t drop my gaze from him as I do, because at this moment he looks far too much like a predator for me to ever be so stupid.
“Actually, I do. ” He brings his hand to his mouth, runs his fingers—the same fingers that were just inside me—directly under his nose. As he breathes me in, my knees go loose and shaky. I lock them to make sure I don’t end up tumbling to the ground.
“Thank you,” he tells me, his voice deep and drugged with arousal. “For letting me touch you. ”
“I think I should be the one thanking you. I’m the one who…” I trail off. It’s one thing to think the word, but it’s another thing entirely to say it, even to the man who made it happen.
He grins. “You don’t ever need to thank me for giving you pleasure, Chloe. ”
The way he says it makes me think he plans on this happening again. Which it can’t. No matter how much I’m aching for it to.
“I should go. ”
“Why?” He steps closer, and all the oxygen in the room seems to disappear again. “Let me take you to dinner. ”
“I can’t. I already have dinner plans. ”
For the first time, I see a flash of displeasure cross his face. “Break them. ”
My spine stiffens at the autocratic bent in his tone. “No. ”