SOPHIE

My heart thumped, close to his. He put a fingertip under my chin, a touch I normally dislike. “Perhaps we should talk about your impersonation of the vicomte.” I was unaccountably nervous.

“You did not bring me,” he murmured, leaning close. “To this enormous bed.” He breathed on my forehead. “To coach me.” Shivers ran up and down my side.

I pulled back so I could see him. Street light from the window cast a pallor on his face. He looked younger with his tattooed cheekbone in shadow. His mistrustful gaze softened.

He likes me!

My thumping heartbeat doubled. “True.”

I had brought him here for un plan cul, but now, watching his eyes open to me, I regretted the location. We needed many hours—

He bent his head and his lips parted.

Many hours—

I lifted my face.

I waited for him to ravish me. But no, this was a slower, sweeter exploration between our mouths. All around us beat an ocean of want, demanding, demanding in waves, but he was so gentle that I was tempted to do the ravishing myself.

I expected to be taken by a badass tattooed gangsta. But he came to me carefully, more like a schoolboy.

The next kisses were hotter. I began to unbutton his shirt, but he stopped me and did it himself, kissing me all the while, playing tongue games to distract me from tearing the shirt off his shoulders.

He pulled back. “It’s a nice shirt,” he explained, as if he knew precisely what I wanted to do.

I panted, “It is.” It was linen, custom-made. He slid out of it and laid it over a chair. I was impatient. “So. The trousers?” I was sweating all over. My pulse gonged in my throat and in my delta.

He showed his teeth in a not-smile. And voila, his trousers lay across his shirt.

He wore no undershorts.

“I think I love you,” I said.

But he was against me, sliding my long-sleeved tee shirt up and over my head, heating my breasts with his bare chest, lapping at my lips with his tongue in little cat-licks, sliding his hands down into my gear-loaded climbing shorts and releasing the front snap so that they fell to the floor with a clink and a clonk. I felt more naked than I had with a man in a long time. His cock lay warm against my side. I would have to climb him to get onto it.

“Let’s get level,” he said. He picked me up as if I were a baby and laid me on the bed.

Satin sheets. Very nice. I would have to come here again.

I thought he would climb onto me at once, but he stood by the bed, leaning over me, looking. I felt very naked.

“Never seen a white woman with her clothes off?” I asked, and then I could have bitten my tongue out.

He only nodded absently. “Oh, yes.” But he didn’t stop looking.

I wanted to pull him to me. His self-possession bothered me.

“You look as if it’s your first time.”

“I look,” he said, turning his eyes from my vulnerable bare body to my face, “because it arouses you.”

My awareness of his nakedness, dense with color and weight and smooth muscle, made me stammer, “You want me aroused. What a gentleman.”

His gaze traveled over me again, down, lingering there, and up to my face. He shook his head again, as if to say, No, no gentleman.

I thought if he did not touch me soon I would—I couldn’t think what to do—but thank heaven he put one hand on my upper thigh and leaned, leaned hard, rolling my thigh open. His other hand went to my shoulder, also leaning firmly, pressing me into the bed with all his weight. And then, having opened me like a tin of sardines, he bent slowly and took my throat in his hot jaws.

I was so shocked, I stiffened. Shivers ran over me from head to foot and back up, making my scalp tingle. I melted to liquid inside. My back arched. For some reason I didn’t reach for him. My hands gripped the bedclothes under me. As he descended slowly, slowly over me, a wall of heat and smooth skin warming my crazed limbs, I remembered my dream.

Wasn’t there a cock?

Indeed there was. He had already put it to my vulva. Both of us were warm and slick already. He barely touched me and stayed there, as if he were too gentlemanly to come in. And meanwhile he was devouring my throat, chewing at it, licking, licking up my cheek, biting my earlobe, my lips, diving ruthlessly into my mouth with a plundering tongue, possessing me so satisfyingly that I could only sigh and squeak and moan and squeeze the sheets, waiting for him.

But his cock stayed there, against my opening, not entering.

Apparently it was my turn to be seduced, not his.

With that thought I remembered the rest of my dream. I bucked my hips against him and his cock bumped my clit and I shattered absurdly quickly. Just like my dream.

As I climaxed, he descended fully onto me, resting his face on my hair, plastering our chests together.

His cock throbbed between my thighs. He wanted more. Why didn’t he take it? I was throbbing too, already about to fall over the edge again. I squirmed under him.

“Will you let me touch you?” I said plaintively. I squirmed again, pinching his erection between my legs, begging for penetration. I was wet for him.

He shook his head, rubbing his face in my hair. His soft voice tickled my ear, sending quivers all down one side of my body. My breath quickened—shortened—

He murmured, “You are too rough. I might break.”

I laughed, and my hips moved again, and he entered me a fraction of an inch, and climax threw me down from a height onto something soft that penetrated me everywhere and sent me into convulsions of echoing pleasure.

When I could breathe again, very carefully I put my arms around his back.

“How can you do this? You’ve barely touched me.” My eyelids were sweating from coming so hard.

“It’s what I do.”

I made a little quoi? noise on his sweat-salty shoulder.

“Sex demon, remember?” He lifted his head and looked at me. “I have touched you. I am touching you. But I make you aware of it.”

Dizzy with rising lust again again oh no I haven’t recovered from the last one I was sure there was profundity énorme in this statement but he had me going again, was that his cock inside me?—wait, how had he got all the way inside?—oh, no, it was only his thumb, making the faintest movement inside me like a snake uncoiling lazily in the sun.

His cock burned against my thigh.

“Don’t you want to come inside?” I said helplessly.

He lifted himself off me and looked at me. Then he smiled. I think it was the first real smile I ever had from him. “Well. Just for you.”