That he liked it rough.
That he would tear me apart if I ever got the chance.
But that didn’t mean I was equipped for it. That I could keep up.
That I wasn’t letting go of the most mortifying sound when I complied and hooked my heels on the edge of the table. The tulle of my dress was fully bunched around my waist, and my knees dropped wide and exposed me in a way I’d never been exposed before.
Ryder’s teeth snapped, and the words grated as he sat down in a chair in front of me. “Perfect, Dakota. Just like I knew you would be.”
He ran both hands up the insides of my thighs, spreading me even farther as he watched me with that unrelenting gaze.
Like he was watching for any sign of discomfort.
For any reservation to show.
If there had been any, he’d eradicated them in the path of flames he left behind, his palms inciting a fire as they rose higher and higher.
I lifted my hips toward him, urging him into the same fantasy I’d had about him two nights ago.
He didn’t hesitate.
He wrapped his arms under my legs and dragged me to the edge of the table and dove right in.
He suckled each of my lips before he drove his tongue deep. I shivered and shook as he angled up and swirled his tongue around my clit.
Pleasure sparked.
Tiny fireworks in the black-night sky.
“Is this what you needed, Cookie?” The reverberation of his words rolled through me. “You needed my mouth on you? Needed me to taste this sweet cunt?”
I barely wheezed a desperate, “Yes.”
“Good girl,” he mumbled against my engorged flesh.
He ate me like I was dessert, humming in rapture the way he always did when he ate something I’d baked for him.
Those sounds had always gotten me off, and tonight, they glided through me, that pleasure growing brighter and higher as he devoured me.
As he consumed me.
Drove me toward an ecstasy unlike anything else.
Because I might want to pretend like this was only physical, but I felt him like a life-beat speeding through my veins.
Like purpose.
Like reason.
All of it gathered and strengthened, and I began whimpering and jutting my hips, one hand holding me up on the table and the other going to the back of his head to keep him close, my nails digging into his scalp.
And if it was just one time, then I wanted it all, and the plea was raking up my throat as I yanked at his hair. “I want you to fuck me, Ryder. I want to feel you. All of you.”
He groaned as he stalled for a fraction of a moment before he turned that intense gaze on me. Remorse or maybe it was guilt filled his eyes. “No. You don’t want to go there. Not with me.”
I wanted to tell him that he didn’t get to tell me what I wanted, that I was tired of him protecting me, but he slowly drove two fingers into my body, cutting off my ability to speak.
He never looked away as he did.
My mouth parted and a helpless whine slid up my throat. I felt the warnings of an impending orgasm throb around his fingers.
“Fuck me, Cookie. You’re going to kill me, sweetheart. Your cunt is so tight,” he rumbled before he dipped back in. He swirled his tongue over my sensitive nub, thrusting his fingers deep and in sync.
Two pumps was all it took and I was going off. My walls spasming around his big fingers as an orgasm blew through my body.
Pleasure split me in two.
The blinding kind.
Splintering out.
Obliterating every cell.
Knocking through all the reservations that warned that I was setting myself up to get hurt.
But loving him had always hurt, and there was no stopping the surge of it right then.
The way it got carried on the rapture.
The way it was still rolling through me when I pushed him back, slid off the table, and got onto my knees.
And he was groaning the deepest sound. A sound that banged against the walls and reverberated back, amplifying the thunder that beat between us. His expression twisted in shame and gluttony, his words dragging like blades through the dense air. “What I would do to be good enough for you.”
“You’re wrong. Whatever you’re thinking right now, you’re wrong, Ryder Nash.”
Because I saw it. That same sadness that he fell into sometimes. The grief that he covered with those easy smiles and that casual demeanor.
But the thing about me and Ryder was I thought I knew him best, too.
Was sure I was the only one who recognized those things.
The one who felt the darkness that poured out of him.
I wondered how I’d never fully noticed this, the lust that radiated from his body, or if I had just let my fears and insecurities cloud it, because there was no mistaking the desire that flooded from him now.
The way the designs inscribed on his flesh writhed over the corded muscle that flexed with restraint.
The way the gunmetal of his eyes had turned to pitch.
The way he strained at his jeans and his chest jutted with coarse, choppy pants.
“What I’m thinking right now is I have a goddess kneeling in front of me.”
“I’ve always been here, Ryder. On my knees for you.”
“No, Cookie. It’s always been me. A beggar at your feet.”
More questions flew through my mind, but I couldn’t waste this time asking them. I leaned forward and yanked at the buttons of his fly, watching the way his face darkened with greed when I did.
Still, he was grating, “You don’t have to do this, Dakota.”
“No one implied that I did. I want to. I want to see you. I want to touch you. I want to taste you, too.”
A tortured groan left him when I tugged at his jeans. He stood then, knocking the chair over as the man rose to tower over me.
A fortress of shadows.
I gulped when Ryder started shoving his jeans down until he was kicking them off his feet and pulling his tee over his head at the same time.
He straightened.
Completely bare.
A shudder rocked through me, and I wasn’t even sure how I remained kneeling as I rushed to take in every inch of him.
Every carved, muscled edge, his skin covered in a canvas of ink. The strength that rippled and his dark beauty that bled from his pores.
My fingertips brushed over the chocolate chip cookie he had tattooed on his hip. Wondering if I’d been wrong. If he had thought about me like this.
I did my best to ignore the clock in the middle of his chest, not to contemplate it, refusing to allow it to rip open a wound.
Not when his penis was bobbing in front of my face, thick and long and hard, the veins visible this close. The head was fat, so heavy with need that I could almost see it throb, a metal rod running vertically through the middle of it.
My mouth watered, and my head spun, and I was vibrating like crazy when I reached out to gently run my hand along his shaft.
Ryder jolted, and his hips rocked forward. “Dakota.”
I glanced up at him.
The man a shroud.
Midnight.
I tightened my hold around him before I lightly licked around his crown, the tip of my tongue flicking over the precum leaking out of his slit before I ran it up to do the same over the little metal ball.
He lurched, a harsh rasp raking from his lungs. “Who’s teasing who now? Are you going to fuck me with that sweet mouth, Cookie?”
“Only if you want me to.” It was the shakiest breath of a tease, and he choked out a sound that I wasn’t even sure was a laugh or a threat, and he reached down to trace his thumb over the little divot at the side of my chin.
“Do I want you to? I’ve been dying to feel that sweet mouth around my cock for years. You don’t have the first idea how fucking bad I want you, do you, Dakota? How many times I’ve imagined you just like this, getting ready to wrap those perfect pink lips around my dick?”
Lust tumbled through my being, and I leaned in and licked him again before I pulled only the head into my mouth. I rolled my tongue around it while Ryder wound my ponytail in his hand.