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The teasing hand changed direction, tracing the lines of my body back upith deliberate slowness When it reached my breast, I held , and I ed

"Surrender," he said

The thuht explode

I turned , "Haven’t I already?"

The hand left my breast to catch my face there, and hisand ravenous I had never kissed anyone like that, reckless andHe released my wrists and spun me back to face hiainst hi to rub every inch of ainst whatever I could reach

My ue was slow, deliberate I was getting desperate He was holding back, teasingout the torture now that he’d gotten the surrender he wanted He was treating ain

I’d show hirew htly trailed my nails up and down his skin They were still blood red from Mrs Cleavers’s paint, still filed to points to ily into the kiss, and I le nail ever so gently up his spine

And then I made my hand into a claw and ripped my talons down his back

He drew back froly

"Meow," I whispered

"Indeed," he growled, his voice dripping with ferocity

For just a second, I registered that I could smell the blood on his back, and I was filled with a wild desire to run ue up the wounds I had made And then the full force of his body droveme down into the cool sheets

The studied tension of his kiss was gone, all veils of playfulness dissolved in the blood on my hands When he kissed me this time, heI’d ever wanted inhi me for even a second So off his boots and stockings with one hand, but his tongue kept lapping at round, and then he pressed back overthe heavy fabric of his breeches still there, between us Between me and what I needed

I didn’t want to wait another second to feel the full, hot length of his skin along my body, to find his around hi, all pride and edly in my ear, "It takes two hands to do this, love," and I understood

My hands fumbled for the ties on his breeches as he licked down my throat and between my breasts, and I mumbled, "Don’t they have kilts in your world?"

Finally, the laces were loose, and I tried to push down the cloth with clu a breast with his tongue, and I dropped the laces to clutch the sheet underneathas he took my nipple into hisers in his hair

He kissed me as he shucked his breeches, and the kiss built in intensity until the full weight of hi skin until there was nothing left between us I could hear , but still he held back

"Are you s apart His gloved hand teasedI was so close So close

His finger worked faster, and he licked the hollow behind my ear I threw back my head and looked up at the mirror then, at the dark fall of his hair and the pale, powerful ripples of his back I saw the four straight red lines where I had clawed hi It was only a second that one, and he was pushing againstfor , a beast of e that couldn’t be denied And he wanted words from me, wanted me to think Wanted me to make a choice

"Sometimes," I whispered back in his ear

Then, so quietly, "Now"

And with a chuckle of fierce triuain, and I was already there, so behindinside ain, and I kept waiting for hi definitively inhuue tasting every inch of my mouth with the sa," I said Insidefelt swollen, loud, overtouched, sensitive beyond belief "Please"

But he rolled to his side, taking me with hi Forehead pressed to mine, he said, "You don’t mean that You don’t want me to stop"

"I can’t take any ood for This is toofaster again

And then I felt it, deep inside ht flower in the darkness, so it, consumed by it, the pleasure sweet and sharp as a violin note, rocking ether before collapsing in a heap, laughing

24

Soainst him under the red velvet coverlet, my head on his chest And quite surprised at love absents he was still wearing I, of course, wore nothing

"Good rin