“You want to know why the biting feels good?” he asked, his hands flexing where they held onto my legs, right above my knees.
I mumbled an affirmative, though my question had actually been a little more specific. I had wanted to know why pain felt good. I wasn’t na?ve, I knew that some people liked pain just as much as they enjoyed pleasure, but I hadn’t been prepared to call myself one of them. I had been grabbed by too many strangers, molested too often by my own father, and had encountered too many abused prostitutes in my own living room to possibly be unaware of this sexual niche—and yet, here I was, trembling simply from the implied threat in Silas’s voice.
Noah seemed to release a breath that I hadn’t even been aware of him holding, and his hands finally pushed higher, skimming my hips and settling into a hold around my rib cage.
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of or embarrassed about,” he whispered. “It can engage more of the senses at once; some people enjoy it.”
“Do you enjoy it?”
“I’m not sure,” he admittedly, slowly.
“Some people like to give it more than they like to receive it,” Cabe spoke up, his voice low. He seemed to know exactly what I was talking about.
“Do you give it or receive it?” I asked, not even sure which one of them I was questioning.
“Both,” Cabe replied.
“Oh.” I tried to think about whether I was both, like Cabe, but couldn’t seem to come to a conclusion.
Noah still hadn’t answered, but his hands had tightened where he held me. “Give,” he finally ground out, shifting uncomfortably beneath me.
I thought I was becoming heavy on his legs, so I pulled up a little bit. His fingers flexed as though the movement had surprised him, and he pulled, probably thinking that I was trying to move away from him. I slid forward, my hips landing flush against his. He sucked in a deep breath and I had a moment of panic where I wondered if I had hurt him as I started to pull off again, but his hands dropped to my hips, keeping me where I was.
“Just… crap. Stop moving.”
I nodded, even though he couldn’t see me, and attempted to stay as still as possible. Unfortunately, that required me to pay a lot of attention to my body, which in turn, directed all of my attention to what was pushing against my body, directly between my legs. I squeezed him with my thighs curiously, since it couldn’t really be considered moving, and Noah swore roughly. He pressed up, his hands grinding me downward at the same time, drawing a whimper to my throat that I half-swallowed. A shiver passed right through me and into Noah, forcing a tremble into his hands as his grip flexed and tightened. The constricting vice of his hands seemed to stem from the tremble of restraint that still marked his limbs, and I knew that he was redirecting his attention to his grip so that he wouldn’t move me again. I touched my fingers to the side of his face, feeling the taut vice of his jaw.
“Noah?” I whispered.
He released his hold on me immediately, instead filling his fingers with my hair as he yanked my mouth to his. His rumbling sound of defeat vibrated against my lips as he slanted his mouth over mine. He didn’t start slowly, or ease me into it… but I wouldn’t have expected that from him. He was intense in everything that he did, and it seemed that kissing was no different. His mouth was a driving, drugging demand that completely unraveled me. I responded to him because I had no other choice; he had chased away all rational thought in a bare fraction of a second, reducing my reality to the direction he lent me. When he pressed against me, I pushed closer. When he squeezed the back of my neck, I parted my lips to allow him deeper access to my mouth. He wanted and I gave, somehow understanding exactly what he was asking for. We kissed as though we had been kissing each other for years, though the overwhelming rush of feeling that flooded into me was enough to remind me that my body still considered this a new experience. He broke away too quickly, his hands on my shoulders, pushing me back.
“I didn’t deserve that,” he ground out, his body vibrating with emotion. “You shouldn’t kiss me. I don’t deserve it.”
I didn’t know what to say because I was still reeling from the kiss itself, and Cabe seemed to know the exact moment that he was required to swoop in and draw me away. I shivered on the other side of the closet as Noah released a litany of whispered curses that somehow managed to spill another round of tremors through me.
“How much longer do we have to be in here?” he asked, the ragged timbre of his voice making my chest feel tight.