“Charlotte would killme.”
“It’s for safety,” Gabriel intones. “I need to be well-supported when I lick your sweet, perfect cunt.”
“Gabriel!”
He leans down and nips my other earlobe. “Are you too innocent for me to talk about your cunt?”
“No. But if you’re going to say those things, we should go to bed.”
Gabriel clicks his tongue. “Patience, sweetness.”
He insists on drying me off. Running a brush through my hair. Rubbing lotion into my skin.
“Are you stalling?” I whisper to him in the mirror. “Are you teasing me?”
He locks eyes with me in the mirror, his irises a heartbreaking green, then parts his lips and licks the side of my neck all the way to the point of my jaw.
“This is what I meant when I said I’d take care of you. I’m not going to skip steps. You’re going to have everything, and that includes soft towels and lotion and someone to brush your hair.”
My face flushes. I’ve just had my hand wrapped around this man’s cock, and the heat in his voice when he talks about the things he’ll do for me sounds just as intimate.
“Everything,” he says into my ear. “Say it so I know you understand.”
Repeat after me.“Everything.”
“You deserve all of it and then some, Elise Bettencourt.”
I turn in his arms and drop the towel. Strong arms wrap around me, and I breathe him in, chest aching with how much I love him. Bruises or no bruises. Scars or no scars. The Gabriel Hill who cornered me that day in Mason’s office would never have let me see past the armor of his perfect clothes.
This Gabriel Hill, though?MyGabriel Hill?
He lets me see everything.
I drop kisses over his bruises. Up to his neck. His jaw. He takes my face in a firm, confident grip and kisses me, deep and hot. He’s here for it. Present. I can feel it in the quick beat of his heart and the way he uses lips and tongue and teeth to explore me with intense curiosity. I’m the only one he wants to know like this.
A sugar-rush of joy surges across my chest. Sex was a tool for Gabriel before. An obligation. This…doesn’t feel like an obligation at all.I’mwhat he wants.
That’s convenient, because I want him so much I can’t breathe.
Gabriel walks us out of the bathroom, nudging a switch as we go so that the lights dim to almost nothing. The residual glow is all that goes with us to the bedroom.
“Leave them off,” I say into his mouth.
“You don’t want to look at me?” A joke.
“I don’t want you to get a concussion headache during sex. That would suck.”
“You’re too good to me.” Gabriel helps me onto the bed. Guides my head to the pillows. He crawls between my thighs with careful movements, testing to see if his ribs can handle it. “Let me see you.”
He rests a hand on my thigh and I part them, watching his face change in the low, ambient light from outside.
“God. You’re perfect.” Gabriel bends his head and licks over my clit. I gasp at the contact. His smile is a satisfied shadow. He eases himself down, balances himself with his arms under my thighs, and lowers his head. “What a sweet, perfect cunt.”
The heat of his breath is nothing compared to the heat of his mouth. Gabriel throws himself into licking me. He has to keep his body relatively still because of his ribs, but that just means he holds me tighter. He pins my hips and sucks on my clit and circles my opening with the tip of his tongue, and being held down for it intensifies every touch.
I thread my fingers through his hair and he hums over my clit. A wave of pleasure washes over me, light as a dusting of powdered sugar.
“Gabriel—”