The chuckle he gives me in reaction spurs me on, tells me he likes a woman to react, and good thing because I’m not one to take my passion quietly. Then his lips press lightly to the curve of my shoulder in an unexpected action that feels surprisingly intimate and coaxes a soft moan from my lips.

The heat of his body against my back disappears as he takes a step away but his hands command me to stay still when I try to turn toward him. His calloused fingertips begin to trace over my body: up my rib cage, skimming the underside of my breasts before heading up the midline of my chest, and then tracing the line of my collarbone out to my shoulders.

There’s something about the way that he’s touching me, almost as if he’s learning the lines of my body like he would an instrument. It’s intimate, sensual, and languorous, like he wants to take the time getting to know me before he claims me. It’s surprisingly erotic and not what I’ve ever experienced in a first-time encounter with someone who hasn’t already professed his love for me.

I push the thought from my head, ignore the questions his actions evoke: Is he always like this? Is he like this because he wants more? Parts of my psyche hold on to the hope that I know I’ll need after tonight is over and decide to focus on the fact that he needs to fuck me soon. My body’s on fire and so attuned to his touch that when he finally does I’m going to come in a matter of seconds.

The scrape of strong fingers up the curves of my shoulders, featherlight touches up the base of my neck and into my hair, quiet my thoughts, tell me to shut it down and enjoy the moment. My head falls forward and I moan in ecstasy as he kneads my muscles softly. His hands begin a seductive descent down my shoulder blades to the swell above my butt before slipping his fingers into the fabric at my hips. He pushes my panties down the length of my legs—slow and purposeful—smooth and rough in a devastating one-two punch to my nerves. I lift my feet as they fall and then stand motionless, our excited breathing the only sound in the room.

I’m not sure at what point he silently requested that I not speak and I decided to comply, but the combination only adds to the sexual tension snapping through the air. The notion that I am at his every whim heightens the sensations.

I stand motionless, Hawkin still behind me, and yet he’s not touching me. Curiosity and desire wage a feudal war within me as I debate whether to turn around and take what I want or to play out this little game that has me willing to beg if he doesn’t touch me soon.

And I don’t beg.

His fingertips begin again, whispering a trail up my inseam, gentle pressure urging my legs farther apart. I suck in a breath as the cool air of the room bathes the heated skin between my thighs. He brushes his hands ever so slightly over me before they once again leave my body.

I close my eyes, wondering where to next, while goose bumps race over my skin in expectancy as I hear him move behind me. And I find out quick enough when I feel the warmth of his mouth on the nape of my neck again. Desire mainlines from everywhere within me as his fingertips touch the apex of my thighs, causing that sweet, pleasurable ache to burn with a heightened intensity.

He presses close against my back again, his erection thick against me. “Open your mouth,” he commands, his voice sending chills down my spine.

I part my lips without hesitancy and he murmurs in approval before slipping two fingers between my lips.

“Suck.”

How can that single word evoke such a visceral reaction from my body? Nipples hardening to the point of pain, my sex swelling, my mouth reacting. I respond, body vibrating with the desire that increases with each passing moment.

“Do you have any idea how bad I want you right now? I’m hard as a rock and it’s taking everything I have to not lay you down on your bed and fuck you into oblivion,” he says in a pained voice that only turns me on more knowing he’s suffering as desperately as I am. “You deserve better than that, Quinlan, and fuck if it’s not taking everything I have to give that to you…. I’ve never wanted to be more selfish than I do right now.”

His teeth nip my shoulder, which causes me to open my mouth where his fingers still remain. His words stoke the flames of desire even brighter knowing that I matter enough to him in whatever this is to try to give me what I deserve.

I begin to respond, to tell him Thanks but right now all I want is you in me, on me, pleasuring me, but he stops me. “Uh-uh, don’t talk.” His mouth brushes against my ear, that raspy rhythm an audible pheromone. “Right now I’m going to take these fingers and fuck you with them. I’m going to lick your clit and finger fuck you into a frenzy until you’re just about to climax. I’ll hold you there. Make you ride that fine line between frustration and desire. Make you beg, make you moan, make you scream my name. And then I’ll stop because I want to be in you when you come.”

I close my eyes and let his words sink in, allow my body the visceral reaction—the sudden tensing up and then slow release of muscles—as I wait in that suspended state of hazy desire for him to begin. He crosses his free arm over my chest, lower rib cage to opposite shoulder, and pulls me roughly against the front of him so that there is no mistaking his want of me. His chuckle reverberates against my back and into me. “Oh, believe me. I know you think you’ll come even if I stop but, sweetness, I assure you, you won’t until I’m in you. You’ll hate me, then love me and fuck if when you come it won’t be the strongest orgasm you’ll ever have.” He runs the tip of his tongue along the side of my neck, making me forget my thoughts of how he knew what I was thinking. “Now bend over and get ready to beg.”

He withdraws his fingers from my mouth, murmuring an approval as I obediently lean forward and place my chest onto the top of the mattress. And the funny thing is most of the time I’d tell a guy to screw off if he was going to give me orders, deny me my orgasm, and not let me touch—this girl likes to give just as good as she gets—but there is something about Hawkin that makes me want to earn the orgasm he gives me.

“Damn, woman,” he murmurs the moment the finger I’ve just wet with my mouth slides between the already slick lips of my sex. My body is so on edge from this foreplay that there is no way he’ll be able to stop my orgasm because the beginning of it is already bearing down on me like a freight train and he’s barely touched me.

I feel him against my knees and it takes me a minute and a glance down to realize that he sat down on the floor, his back against the foot of the bed I’m bent over so that his face is right where it needs to be. He positions his hands so that when he grabs the roundness of my ass and pulls gently, the tips of his fingers skim over the backside of my cleft. The sensation is strangely arousing but it’s taken to all new heights when his mouth closes over my pleasure. His tongue splits me and slides down to where his fingers have now pressed their way inside me.

The cry falls from my lips, my hands fist, and I work the tank top that’s still holding my arms hostage up some so that I can bend my arms and fist them in the top of his hair. Pleasure swamps me, owns me, and has me begging for more. “Oh God Hawke.” They’re the first words that I speak in I don’t know how long but they’re all I need to say because I’m swamped with sensations.

I’m an it takes time for me to come girl but hell if he just hasn’t blown that all to smithereens because the way his mouth is working my clit mixed with the slow slide of his fingers in and out has me climbing that peak faster than ever before. I can’t catch my thoughts when usually I’m having to push them away as his tongue owns every inch of sensitized flesh between my folds.

The room fills with the commands he vocalizes, the vibration of his voice only adding to his delicious torment, my labored breathing and the slick sound of my wetness being expertly manipulated. My body begins to tense, that slow flush of heat beginning to bathe my body in its warm glow as my orgasm rises from the depths of my body. I start moving my hips, grinding back and forth onto his fingers and tongue, his previous decree of edging me out lost in my quest for release, so just as I can feel it wash over me, all movement from him ceases.

I gasp out and squeeze my eyes shut to try to will my orgasm to fruition, but without my hands or his, nothing’s going to happen.

“Hawkin!” I say his name like a curse into the sexed-up air and it earns me a taunting laugh from him.

I clench my muscles, desperate for so much more of him than just this orgasm. The thought scares me momentarily but I can’t think about it right now. I need to focus on the here and now and not the mess my heart will inevitably be in after he casts me aside.

I step back from where he’s positioned between the confines of my legs and his hands slide up the outside of my thighs to my hips to my waist as he stands. He reaches my neck, and I look up and meet his gaze for the first time in what feels like forever since we arrived at my house.

The look in his eyes—burning desire and the wild need to sate it—makes me feel like he wants to take every single part of me, memorize me, use me, and then start all over again, and hell if I’m not down with this game. I want his kiss, his body on top of mine, his hands braced on either side of my head while he’s driving into me.

And I want it now.

I step forward this time, my flanks into his, his legs pressed against the edge of the bed, and we just stand there. Our torsos are touching chests to thighs, our breaths mingle, and our eyes speak a language exclusively our own. I want you. Take me now. Fuck me. Wreck me. Make me yours.

A mutual exchange of needs and desires that I initiate when I lean into him and brush my lips to his. His hands slide around my back and pull me into him harder as our mouths part and tongues unite. I feel my heart slip a little toward the edge of no return and lose myself in the taste of my pleasure on his tongue and how there’s something so strangely arousing about it that I just want more of what he’s offering me. His hands move over my bared skin like his tongue does—skillful, urgent, a little rough, and a lot needy—and hell if the mixture of motions isn’t a potent cocktail of desire that we’re getting drunk on.

He groans my name into my mouth. I want to pull away, strip off his boxer briefs, and taste him, but right now he’s savoring me and there’s something endearing about it. As much as I want to order him to give me what I want like he has me, it’s not possible because my independent streak is out the damn window right along with my control.

I’m all for equality between a man and a woman but right now this woman doesn’t care about being equal, she just wants to come.

I know without a doubt that Hawkin owns the keys to that toe-curling orgasm I’ve been without for some time and hell if I’m not going to submit so he can find the lock and use his key to unleash it.

Our kiss grows possessive. I writhe against him, trying to tell him that I need him to push me off that ledge I’m walking precariously on just like he said I would be. His hands slide down my biceps and remove my tank top from my elbows.

And the minute my arms are released from their cotton confines, it’s on.

My hands go immediately to the back of his neck, fingers tugging in his hair, pulling him into me. My hands match the urgency of his and yet we still stand there and express our desire with our hands and mouths when so many other men would have already been in, out, and done by now.

I snake one of my hands down his abdomen and slip it inside his underwear. I find his dick immediately, it’s hard to miss it really, and the minute my fingers encircle his girth, a pained groan falls from his mouth. His hands leave my skin momentarily as he pushes the fabric down to grant me unhindered access to pleasure him.

My fingers dance over the length of his shaft, causing our lips to part and his head to fall back as he absorbs my reciprocal foreplay. I lean forward and kiss the underside of his jaw. He tastes of salt and soap and the scent sears itself into my memory as my tongue licks and hand slides back and forth over his cock.

“Quin.” I love the grate of his voice over my name, desperate and defiant.

“Get ready to beg,” I murmur against his skin, rough with his five o’clock shadow, tossing his comment back to him. His body falters a moment, a strained but amused laugh falling from his lips that turns into a groan of desire when I gently scrape my nails over the underside of his dick.