Chapter 41: I Need Your Mouth On Me

The arousal was shameful and involuntary and made absolutely no logical sense, and it was there regardless, coiled low in her stomach alongside the shock, the two things existing in completely contradictory parallel the way they had since the warehouse.

She heard the shower run.

She heard it stop.

She heard his footsteps in the hallway.....unhurried, measured....and then the bedroom door opened and Dimitri came in.

He’d changed his shirt. His hair was damp. The blade was gone. But there was still a faint darkness at his jawline that might have been shadow and might not, and his eyes when they found her on the edge of the bed were sharp and assessing and already knew everything.

He crossed the room and crouched in front of her, bringing himself to her eye level, his forearms resting on his knees.

"Look at me," he said.

She looked at him.

"Tell me where you are."

"I’m...." Her voice came out smaller than she intended. She cleared her throat. "I’m okay."

"That’s not what I asked."

She held his gaze. "I’m shaking," she said honestly. "And I’m...." She stopped.

His eyes moved down her body with slow, complete attention, and she watched the moment he understood. Something shifted in his expression, not softness exactly, but a deepening. An awareness.

"I know," he said quietly.

"It doesn’t make sense."

"It makes perfect sense." He reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, his fingertips trailing along her jaw with a gentleness that felt almost violent given what she’d just seen his hands do. "You’re not broken for responding to me, cara. You’re just honest."

"I saw a...."

"I know what you saw."

"Who was he?"

A pause. "The person who sent the threat about you."

The shaking in her hands got worse, for different reasons.

"Is he...."

"Alive. For now." His thumb moved along her cheekbone. "He had information I needed. I needed it quickly. And I needed him to understand that threatening what belongs to me has consequences."

What belongs to me.

Six weeks ago those words would have made her furious. Now they moved through her like heat.

"You were supposed to be asleep," he said.

"I was thirsty."

"And now?"

She searched his face....the cold lines of it, the storm-grey eyes, the faint mark of Mike’s punch still yellowing along his jaw. The Devil who made coffee before she woke up and learned the names of birds from his dying mother and stood still for a punch he’d decided he deserved.

"Now I want you to touch me," she said. "And I don’t want to think about anything else."

Something ignited in his eyes.

He stood, slowly, and looked down at her with an expression that made her breath go shallow.

"Lie back," he said. "And don’t move until I tell you to."

****

POV: DIMITRI

She was still trembling when he reached for her.

He could feel it.....the fine, barely-there shaking in her skin when he ran his hands down her arms, the slight catch in her breathing when he pulled his shirt over her head and laid her bare against the sheets. Shock and arousal wound together in her body, indistinguishable from each other, and he understood both with complete clarity.

He’d seen it in her since the warehouse. The way her body responded to his darkness the same way it responded to his touch.....involuntary, helpless, furious with itself. She hadn’t asked for this particular wiring. But it was there, and it was real, and it was his.

All of her was his.

He went to the drawer. Came back with the silk restraints and watched her eyes track them....wide, dark, her lip caught between her teeth.

"Wrists," he said.

She raised them.

He bound her slowly, deliberately, making sure the silk was smooth against her skin, no friction, no discomfort. Then he threaded the restraints through the iron headboard slats and watched her test them once....a reflex, not a real attempt....and go still.

Perfect.

He reached back to the drawer. The blindfold was deep burgundy silk, cool and smooth, and he held it up so she could see it before he put it on her.

"This okay?"

"Yes," she breathed.

He settled it over her eyes, tied it gently at the back, and watched her face shift as her other senses sharpened to compensate. Her lips parted slightly. Her chin tilted up. Every nerve ending she had was now oriented toward him, toward sound and touch and his specific gravity in the room.

Good.

He was still fully dressed.

He sat on the edge of the bed and did nothing for thirty seconds.

"Dimitri...."

"Quiet."

She went quiet. But he could see the effort it cost her....the slight tension in her jaw, the way her fingers curled against the restraints.

He trailed one finger from her collarbone to her navel. Nothing more. Just that one line of contact, and her stomach contracted sharply.

"You walked into a room you weren’t supposed to see," he said, conversationally, continuing that single finger’s path back upward.

"I know."

"What did I tell you? About moving around the penthouse at night?"

"You didn’t....you never said...."

"I’m saying it now." His finger traced her collarbone, drifted to her breast, circled without touching the nipple. "At night, you don’t leave the bedroom without waking me first. Say it back."

She exhaled sharply. "At night I don’t leave the bedroom without waking you first."

"Good girl."

She made a sound that was almost a whimper.

He rewarded her with his mouth....closed over her nipple, pulled slowly, felt her arch off the bed as far as the restraints allowed. He took his time with both, unhurried, listening to every sound she made, cataloging what made her gasp versus what made her cry out, what made her beg versus what made her go completely silent with overwhelm.

He knew her body better than she did by now. He’d been studying it for five weeks with the focus he gave everything that mattered to him....complete, obsessive, encyclopedic.

By the time he moved down her stomach she was already shaking again, but differently. The fear-trembling had burned away. This was pure need.

"Please," she managed. "Dimitri, please...."

"Please what, cara?" He pressed a kiss to her hip bone. "Use your words."

"Your mouth. I need your mouth on me."

"Where?"

"You know where...."

"Say it."

A pause in which she clearly debated her dignity and lost. "On my pussy. Please."