Her eyes cut to his, and she shrugged. “You’re smart.”
The compliment curled through him, loosening his shoulders and thickening his tongue. He’d never considered himself smart. He researched anything and everything that interested him, but he certainly wasn’t educated in the traditional sense. “Mr. E taught me what I needed to know.” How to read expressions, lure the unsuspecting, calculate human reaction, and how to break the strongest will. “But I couldn’t tell you what the square root of sixteen is.”
She moved her mouth as if tasting her precious number. Then her eyes glimmered. “Liar.”
True, but that was the extent of his math skills. Feeling playful, he smirked. “You know what the square root of us is?”
She cocked her head and wrinkled her nose. Then her lips curved, dimpling her cheeks. “Fucked-up.” The strength of her brilliant smile hit him smack in the chest with a shimmering burst of warmth and connection.
He was so fucking tempted to grab his chest and trap the feeling there, that strange exuberant joy. Whatever his expression held made her lips soften. The seam of her mouth slowly separated, the rosy flesh clinging together then letting go. Something was inching its way into the air, energizing the space between them, and she was two chairs too far away.
Carefully, he slid back from the table. Her shoulders tightened, and her chest expanded on an inhale. He stood and covered the distance between them with lazy deliberate steps, marking her subtle breaths. When he reached her, he lowered to his knees.
Her gaze dipped to his mouth, and her tongue darted out to tap her upper lip. “What’s with the toothpicks?”
The question stiffened his back. He’d acquired the habit as a means to intimidate. Nothing conveyed scary motherfucker like removing something from his mouth, something he would’ve appeared to be concentrating on, to focus all of his attention on a frightened little slave.
No way would he remind her what he was and ruin the moment. “It used to be a tree trunk. I’m so badass I chewed it down to a toothpick.”
She shook her head, gifting him with another sweeping smile.
His dick swelled. He flexed his thighs but couldn’t shake the grip of his arousal. It surged blood down the length of his cock and lowered his voice to a gruff rumble. “Admit it. Ain’t nothing sexier than me on your ass, gnawing a toothpick.”
She reached up and flicked the protruding end, making it quiver like an arrow. Then she exploded with laughter. “Yeah, you’re soooo hot when you have wood in your mouth.”
Aw God, the husky rhythm of her laugh could light a fire in a cold dead heart. “I’d rather have you in my mouth. Specifically, your perfect, tight cunt.”
A flush crept across her cheeks, but her touch lingered, brushing against the toothpick and slipping to the corner of his lips. Her fingernails scraped the stubble on his cheek, and her eyes followed the movement, lashes heavy and dark against her glowing skin.
This tenderness...it was like nothing he’d ever experienced. It made his heart race and his fingers shake. It both alarmed and invigorated him. He didn’t want it to end.
He held still, aching for her kiss. Not to take her lips but to give her his, just to experience a moment of surrender, to be at her mercy. Throughout the toxic span of his sexual history, he’d only had one relationship, and Liv had fought him through every damned interaction. He’d never allowed another to initiate a kiss, not even when he was used as a boy or later as a whore. What would it feel like to receive genuine affection?
Her face neared, perhaps an unconscious movement, and her exhales caressed his chin. He knew what this was. Stockholm Syndrome was a foregone conclusion, a symptom of being captured. But that didn’t stop him from parting his mouth, hoping for something that couldn’t be explained away by a criminal psychologist. The toothpick dangled between his teeth, seconds from falling. She plucked it away and replaced it with her lips.
Every cell in his body zeroed in on the soft glide of her mouth, the gentle suckle of his lower lip, and the taste of spices and honey swirling over his tongue. His entire fucking world flipped inside out, everything he knew about intimacy crumbling away to be replaced by something softer, farther-reaching, and intensely terrifying.
He tried not to fall, told himself it was dangerous, but her kiss grew in confidence, demanding more, stretching so fucking deep she was swallowing him whole. If she reached his soul, he would’ve given it to her. If the cabin burned down around him, he wouldn’t have noticed. He was a goner.
Her jaw stretched wider, and he opened his, letting her explore his mouth with licks and nibbles. Her little bites stroked a feverish heat over his skin, and his brain melted into useless mush. Soon, he couldn’t feel his body at all, didn’t know where he was, as every sensation concentrated on the warmth of her lips, the dance of her tongue, the beat of her pulse beneath his palm.
Ah, there were his hands, wrapped around her neck, his fingers a restraint made of flesh and bone. He savored the acceleration of blood pumping through her carotid, the delicate sinews yielding to his will, his grip immovable yet soft and cherishing.
His experiment in surrender over, he moved on autopilot, reclining back and taking her with him. As he wrapped her legs around his waist, she tried to break the kiss, but he was in charge now. His mouth was insistent, his tongue holding hers down. His hands found her ass beneath the towel, and his fingers curled into hard, hot muscle.
No doubt she would fight him. Her muscles would go rigid, her jaw would stiffen, and—
Whoa. Her body liquefied against his chest, her arms folding around his shoulders. Her tongue followed his, and a quiet moan vibrated in her throat.
Fuck him, but her submissiveness was her most
