“This isn’t a lie, Pippa. This is truth. Wicked, undeniable truth.”
She clutched his arm, moving against him, not knowing what to do.
But he knew. It had been six years, but he had been waiting for this moment.
For her.
“Take your skirts, darling.”
She did as she was told, holding them high as he sank to his knees before her once more, as he had several nights earlier, only this time, he allowed himself access to her, to her heat and her scent and the magnificence of her body.
He lifted one of her legs, pressing a kiss to the inside of her knee, swirling his tongue against the finely spun silk there before hooking her knee over his shoulder and leaning forward to place a kiss against her beautiful mound. He stroked deep, first with one finger, then two as he blew a long stream of air over the spot where his thumb had been swirling. She sucked in a deep breath. “Cross,” she whispered. “Please—”
And in that plea, he lost himself. “Yes, love,” he said, inhaling her heady, glorious scent. “I’ll give you everything you want. Everything you need.”
He stroked into her softness again, and he wondered at the way she wept for him, not knowing what he would give her . . . what he could do to her . . . and wanting it nonetheless. “Do you feel it? The truth of it? How much you want me?”
“I want . . .” she started, then stopped.
He turned his head, nipping at the soft skin of her inner thigh, reveling in the softness there—that untouched, uncharted, silken spread. “Say it.” He would give it to her. Anything in his power. Anything beyond it.
She looked down at him, blue eyes fairly glowing with desire. “I want you to want me.”
He closed his eyes at that; trust Pippa to be forthright even here, even now, even as she bared herself to his eyes and mouth and hands. Trust her to strip this moment of all remaining shrouds, leaving it raw and bare and honest.
God help him, he told her the truth. He wasn’t certain he could do anything but. “I do, love. I want you more than you could ever know. More than I could have ever dreamed. I want you enough for two men. For ten.”
She laughed at that, the sound coming on a wicked movement of strong hips and soft stomach. “I don’t require ten. Just you.”
Even as he knew he would never be worthy enough for her, the words went straight to the hard, straining length of him, and he knew he would never be able to resist her—not when she asked with truth in her big blue eyes and passion on her soft, lyric voice.
He leaned in, and spoke to the heart of her. “And you shall have me.”
And then he was where he had wanted to be for a week. For longer. He removed his hand from where it had been working its irresistible rhythm, retreating slowly, killing them both until she moved to seek his touch. He couldn’t stop the wicked grin that spread across his face at the proof that she wanted him. “Easy.”
“No.” The word came out on a near desperate whine. “Now, Cross.”
“So demanding,” he teased, his blood running hot at her insistence. “Now, it is.” And he spread her gently, revealing the core of her, willing and wet and perfect.
He kissed her then, the way he’d promised he would that night in his office, the way he’d dreamed late at night as he lay in the darkness and imagined this vision of a woman rising above him, open and available for worship.
Just as she was now, standing above him, one hand holding her sapphire skirts, the other thrust into his hair, holding him against her as he pressed his tongue into her softness, savoring her taste, making love to her with slow, languid strokes that made her sigh and writhe and push against him. She was pleasure and heat and passion—the first, fresh drink of water after years in the desert.
He found the heart of her desire, working it first slowly, then longer and faster until time faded and he was wrapped in her sound and her feel and her taste, with no desire to move or stray from her. He’d promised her hours, and he could make good on it—he could worship her from here, on his knees, for an eternity.
She lost her grip on her skirts, and her thighs trembled against him as she arched away from the wall, a wicked, wonderful offering. He took it without question, reaching up to hold her, returning his fingers to the heat of her in one long, deep thrust.
She came apart then, against his hands and his mouth, crying her pleasure beneath his tongue and teeth, and he carried her over the edge, through her passion, working her with his touch and his kiss and every bit of desire and depravity he’d resisted over the last six years . . . over longer than that. He reveled in her softness and her sounds, not wanting to leave her. Wanting the experience with her.
She called out his name, her fingers tight in his hair, and he came with her, hard and hot and unavoidable. And in that moment, his own pleasure startled from him by hers, he should have felt embarrassment or shame or something infinitely more base. But instead he felt as though he’d been waiting for that moment.