Ansel comes back with a damp cloth, wiping my cheek, my neck, my breasts. He tosses it into the bin in the corner before kissing me gently.
“Was that nice, Cerise?” he whispers, sucking on my lower lip, tongue probing gently into my mouth. He moans quietly, fingers dancing over the curve of my breast. “You were perfect. I love being with you that way.” His mouth moves over my cheek, to my ear, and he asks, “But can I be gentle now?”
I nod, cupping his face. He wrecks me with his play, with his command that so easily melts into adoration. I close my eyes, sinking my hands into his hair as he kisses down my neck, sucking my breasts, my navel, parting my legs with his hands.
I’m sore from his rough treatment only minutes ago, but he’s careful now, blowing a soft stream of air across me, whispering, “Let me see you.”
Ducking, he kisses my clit, licks slowly around. “I love to taste you, do you notice?”
I curl my hands into fists around the pillowcase.
“I think this sweetness is just for me. I pretend your desire has never been like this.” He dips a finger inside and brings it up to my lips. “For everyone else it was never so silky and sweet. Tell me it’s true.”
I let him slide his finger inside and suck, wanting to make this night last for days. I’m wild for him, hoping he stays here with me. Hoping he doesn’t retreat to the office and work until dawn.
“Isn’t it perfect?” he asks, watching me suck. “I’ve never loved a woman’s flavor as much as I love yours.” He climbs up my body, sucking at my lips, my tongue. He’s hard again, or maybe he’s hard still, and he grinds into my thigh. “I crave it. I crave you. I’m too wild for you. I want you too much, I think.”
I shake my head, wanting to tell him he could want me more and wilder but the words get stuck in my throat when he returns his lips to my *, licking and sucking so expertly now that I arch off the bed, crying out.
“Like this?” he purrs.
“Yes.” My hips press up from the mattress, greedy for his fingers, too.
“I’d be your slave,” he whispers, sliding two fingers into me. “Give me nothing but this and your mouth and your quiet words and I’d be your slave, Cerise.”
I don’t know how it happened, or when exactly, but he knows how to read my body, knows my tells. He teases me, pulling each sensation longer and tighter, making me wait for the orgasm I’ve wanted for what begins to feel like days. With his tongue, and his lips, his fingers, and his words he brings me to the edge over and over until I’m writhing beneath him, sweating, begging for it.
And just when I think he’ll finally let me come, he pulls away instead, wiping his mouth with his forearm as he climbs over me.
I push up onto my elbows, eyes wild. “Ansel—”
“Shh, I need to be inside when you come.” With quick hands, he rolls me onto my stomach, spreads my legs, and slides in so deep I gasp, bunching the pillowcase in my fists. His groan vibrates through my bones, along my skin, and I feel the continued buzz of it as he begins to move, his chest pressed to my back, breath hot on my ear.
“I’m lost in you.”
I gasp, nodding frantically. “Me, too.”
His hand slides underneath me and presses, circling against my clit. I’m right there
right there
right there
and I go off like a bomb the second he presses his lips to my ear and whispers, “What you feel, Cerise? I feel it, too. Fuck, Mia, I feel everything for you.”
Chapter SEVENTEEN
IT’S NOT THAT I don’t already think about Ansel a hefty proportion of the time, but after last night I haven’t been able to stop thinking about him. While I sit outside at the café the next evening with Simone, I’m tempted to see if I can get him to play hooky with me tomorrow, or maybe drop in and see him tonight for a change. Being an eternal tourist alone is growing dull, but keeping busy is the far preferable alternative to being home with my thoughts all day, with the increasingly loud countdown clock ticking away in the back of my mind.
“Today was so fucking long,” she groans, depositing the keys into her purse before rifling through it. Searching for her ever-present vapor cigarette, I suppose. Being around Gruesimone is a paradoxical comfort: she’s so unpleasant, but it makes me love Harlow and Lola even more, and seeing them is the one thing I’m looking forward to when I return home. Simone pauses, eyes lighting up when she finds the familiar black cylinder in one of the inner compartments.