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Chapter 12

Owen

Dinner was excruciating.

The two other interns joined us before we could speak to each other, and that seemed to suit Tanith just fine. She chose a seat as far away from me as possible, and then fucking Felix ambled in—ten minutes late—and sat next to her, clearly making her uncomfortable.

She mostly ate in silence, only talking to my parents or the other interns, and so I ate in silence, too, since I had no interest in talking to anybody but her. And the minute my mother pushed her chair back and we were free to go, I was on my feet to get to my elusive goddess.

But as fast as I was, she was faster. By the time I left the dining room, she was already gone.

No matter. I knew she must be in the guest wing, and I had zero fucking qualms about pounding down her door.

But my father grabbed me on my way out. “Your mother expects you to help greet the guests as they come in,” he said in that cool, hard your mother’s career comes before all else voice. Unlike my mother, my father was American, but they both had a deeply inculcated sense of class, ambition, and familial duty. “Be at the front door in fifteen minutes.”

I closed my eyes for a brief second, wanting to scream.

Tanith was one of my mother’s interns; Tanith was here. There was no way I deserved this stroke of good fortune, but I didn’t care. If she was here, then I had a chance, but I had to get to her first. Find her and explain to her how it was going to be.

But I also knew the rules of the game. I knew what was expected in my role.

“Yes,” I said, opening my eyes. “I’ll be there.”

*     *     *

“Well done,” my mother said to me nearly two hours later. Guests had mostly all arrived and had been duly shepherded into Bay House’s ballroom. They were now sipping champagne and nibbling on luxurious treats from the buffet as they began their usual social ballet of flattery and gossip. “You may go mingle.”

I knew that wasn’t a suggestion, but my marching orders for the night. It rankled beyond measure; Felix had fucked off after only twenty minutes of greeting duty, and if I didn’t go find Tanith right this fucking minute, I was going to crawl out of my skin. But there was no point in arguing with my mother. The same cold drive that guided her career decisions underpinned her parenting style. I didn’t exist to her unless I was serving a purpose, and I’d rather exist to her than not, I guessed.

And anyway, there was a way around this.

“Yes, Mum,” I said, kissing her cheek before I went to the ballroom. She hadn’t specified how long I should mingle, and with whom, specifically, I should mingle. I’d make some polite small talk until I found a certain bespectacled blonde, and then I’d mingle very hard. Hopefully for the rest of the night.

It took me longer than I thought it would to find her—long enough that I began to worry that she hadn’t come out for the party at all and instead had holed herself up in her room to hide from me. I’d had to chat with enough editors, photographers—and worst of all—ad executives to last me a fucking lifetime. It wasn’t until near eleven that I saw a glimpse of blond hair moving toward the ballroom doors.

“Excuse me,” I said abruptly to the newspaper publisher I’d been charming on behalf of my mother. “I’ve just seen something needing my attention.”

“Such a good host,” he said, with enough jolliness to indicate he hadn’t waited until midnight to dip into the champagne. I nodded and gave him as much of a smile as I was capable of, and then I stalked after my obsession, chasing her into the dark recesses of my house.

The noise of the party faded behind me as I strode across the large central hall outside the ballroom. There was a chance she’d gone to the guest wing, but for some reason I doubted it. I had a feeling she was escaping in a way that would allow her to make an easy reentry when it was time to ring in the New Year, and so she’d pick one of the rooms that was nearby. The library or the den, perhaps. Maybe my mother’s office.

I tried the library first, equal thrums of victory and terror pulsing through me as I saw her at the far end, staring out the window to the bay. The snowy world outside filled the room with a faint, silver-white glow, and Tanith glowed along with it, her blond hair and ivory skin all agleam. When she turned to look at me, her eyes shimmered in the darkness, reflecting the firelight from the front of the room.

“Leave me alone,” she said, although there was no heat in her words.

I came close behind her. I wanted nothing more than to sweep her hair from her shoulder and kiss her neck until she melted. I wanted to pin her against the glass and fingerfuck her as we both watched the snow fall silently into the sea.

I wanted her to understand that what we had between us wasn’t normal, couldn’t be ignored. This shit was undeniable and unfixable. Our only hope was to let it consume us and pray we survived. I wanted her to understand that I was sorry. That I knew I’d fucked up and that I was going to do better with her.

“Did you read my letter?”

She shivered as the warmth of my words moved across the shell of her ear.

“No,” she said after a minute. Her voice was quiet in the dark, book-filled room.

“No?”

The snow hissed against the glass as it fell, filling the silence before she spoke. “I haven’t read it yet because there’s nothing you can say to make it better.”

Her words sliced through me like knives, cutting clean and deep.

But she was right. There was no way to sew up the wound I’d made because the wound shouldn’t exist in the first place. There was no way to justify believing someone was beneath you.

And how could I explain that I knew better anyway? That I knew she actually had earned the Everston Fellowship? That I knew she was smart and funny and talented as hell? That once I’d thought about it—really thought about it—I became disgusted with myself for even caring about someone’s money and family? So what if my mother would hate me dating someone outside our social circle? Mum would never have to know.

Yes, Tanith was right, and no amount of chasing her into libraries could ever change that.

I leaned forward enough to press my nose into her hair and breathe her in for the last time, that faint paper-and-ink smell of hers, fresh and crisp and the tiniest bit sweet.

She froze in front of me, giving a shiver as I inhaled, and then made a soft noise when I pressed my lips to the corner of her jaw.

“Be well, Tanith,” I murmured, pulling away to leave.

“Wait,” she said, spinning around and grabbing my hand. “Just—just. Wait.”

I stopped, looking down at our linked hands, and then up to her face. She was always beautiful. Beautiful sunburnt and beautiful with a bright red nose as she ice-skated; beautiful when she laughed with her friends and beautiful as she stared out at a lonely sea.

But she was the most beautiful like this, flushed and panting, her lips parted and her eyes sparkling. It stirred more than my eager cock; it awakened something deep in my chest as well.

“Just tonight,” she said, swallowing.

I didn’t follow. “What?”

“You’re under my skin, Owen, and I hate it. I hate what you said, what you think about me, that I was invisible to you for years—but what I hate the most is that I can’t stop wanting you. I see you, and I feel like—” She was breathing hard now, the flush spreading down her chest and between her breasts. I wanted to taste those flushed tits so badly my mouth was watering.

“You’re under my skin,” she repeated. “You’re under my skin and I want to claw you out, but I can’t. And so I’m just left with this—this—need. Like if I don’t touch you, I won’t be able to breathe.”

When I spoke, it sounded like a croak. “That’s how I’ve felt since this summer.” I found her other hand and pressed it to my chest. “Like I’ll burst into flames if I’m not tasting you. Kissing you. Fucking you.”

Her eyes went half-lidded, as if my words had triggered a new wave of arousal inside her. She had to drag in a long breath to speak again. “You don’t want to want me—”

“That’s not true anym—”

She went on as if I hadn’t said anything. “And I hate myself for wanting someone who feels that way, for wanting you when I know better. I’ve known better since we were first years! But still, here it is.”

Fuck, I wished she would read my letter. “Tanith—”

“But maybe if we had tonight,” she said, not looking at me now, but at the floor, “we could get it out of our systems. You don’t want this, I don’t want this, but maybe if we scratch the itch, it will stop.”

I didn’t want it to stop. “Tanith—”

“And I have to make it stop, Owen, I have to, because I can’t stand it, I can’t stand it—

I pulled her into me, sliding a hand into her soft, thick hair and sealing my mouth over hers, stealing her words and giving her a hot, urgent kiss instead.

She made that noise again, that tiny one in the back of her throat that simply slew me, and all semblance of control fled. My discipline, my cool, my calm—it all became nothing but a raw inferno of need. Maybe I could make her see this was not something we could just work out of our systems.

“Open for me,” I breathed against her mouth, licking impatiently at the seam of her lips. She parted them with a slow sigh, allowing me inside.

Her kiss was pure silk, warm and tasting faintly of berry lip gloss. I reveled in it, groaning as I found her tongue and stroked it with mine, as I kissed her the same way I’d kiss her cunt later. My cock surged with each sweet little flicker of her tongue, my balls grew heavier and heavier with each little whimper she gave, and, somehow, we ended up near one of the oversized sofas. I pushed her onto it, crawling over her and pinning her in place with my hips, with my hands on her wrists. She squirmed wildly underneath me, her pelvis rocking up into mine, seeking friction. The hidden slit in her skirt parted around a single shapely thigh, and the heave of her chest made her tits so juicy and tempting.

“Fuck, you’re a gorgeous thing,” I muttered. “Can you feel how hard you make me? Do you know how hard it was to sit at the same dinner table as you, knowing how pretty you look when you come? How beautiful your skin looks with my orgasm decorating it?”

“All I know is that when you’re like this, I can’t fight it,” she confessed, her legs wrapping around me. Her high heels dug into my back, and I loved it, fucking loved it. “I can fight your ice, but I can’t fight your heat.”

“This is more than heat,” I muttered, ducking my head to suck on a nipple through her dress. It was already hard and jutting through the fabric for me. Like my dick, it was pouting to be played with. “This is pure filth, and you love it.”

“God help me, I do,” she murmured. “But it’ll be out of my system after tonight.”

Not if I have anything to say about it. I didn’t say that out loud, however.

“I want to fuck you into this sofa,” I growled instead. “I want to get so deep inside you that I’m part of you.”

She slid her hands through my hair and yanked my face up to hers, pressing her lips to mine. “I want you to try,” she said between hungry kisses. “Close the door. I don’t want anything stopping this.”

Fuck, neither did I. I gave her a quick, hard kiss and then pushed off the sofa, wincing a little at the jagged throbbing in my dick. I was hard enough to pound nails, my balls full and heavy, and I needed out. I needed to be unzipped and into Tanith’s snug little cunt.

I closed the door and locked it for good measure, then I returned to her, shucking my suit jacket as I went. I unknotted my tie and tugged it free of my collar, and then I draped both jacket and tie carefully over a chair. I didn’t want them to wrinkle in case I had to wear them again later tonight—although if I had my way, anything I’d be doing later tonight wouldn’t require clothes at all.

She looked like a wet dream right now, lit only by firelight, her silky hair spilling everywhere and her party dress falling open to reveal the lithe expanse of her upper thighs. She still wore her cute heels and her brainy glasses, but her jutting nipples and flushed chest made a lewd little liar out of her. She wasn’t just a clever intern or an ambitious future editor. She was a girl who needed to come more than she needed her next breath.

She was a girl who was burning alive for me.

Tanith stroked up her thigh as I approached, her eyes tracing greedily up my body. “I want to see you,” she murmured, her fingers tracing higher and higher, reaching the top of the dress’s slit and pushing it up. “I want to see your cock.”

Fuuuck me. “It wants that too,” I grunted, unzipping my trousers. But I didn’t pull myself free yet. I set to unbuttoning my shirt first. I wanted to feel those slender hands all over my skin, tracing up my abdomen and pressing against my chest. “Show me what’s between your legs, Tanith. Show me where I’m about to be.”

I was expecting pretty little knickers, or another thong maybe. But she stunned me . . . giving me a saucy smile and spreading her legs to reveal her naked pussy. I froze. I couldn’t breathe at the sight of it.

And when she trailed her fingers over the soft slit, I had to clench my entire body to keep from spurting into my boxer briefs.

“Bloody Christ,” I rasped, stepping forward. I dropped to my knees by the sofa like a man at worship, totally entranced, utterly devoted. My cock throbbed and throbbed as I studied her perfect pussy. Bare, with a tight seam and a little pink pearl of a clit at the top.

“Wider. Show me more. The inside of it,” I demanded. I didn’t care that I’d never asked this of a girl before—that I’d never needed it like I needed it now. It didn’t matter. My days of polite, efficient sex were over.

I now lived and breathed Tanith Bradford, and I would know her every secret, her every hidden place, and I would claim each one for myself.

She was as far gone as I was because she didn’t argue at all. She merely nodded and bit her lip, using both hands to pet over her pretty mound. Then she reached lower and slowly spread herself open for me, revealing a furrow of pink and then a tight, glistening opening.

A guttural noise tore from my throat as she showed me the small, velvet place I was about to fuck. I’d needed to see this for months, fantasized about nothing else as I’d jerked off alone in my room at Pembroke, and still the sight of it was almost more than I could take. This was the kind of pussy that made people start wars.

“Oh, love,” I said hoarsely. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”

Her lip still caught in her teeth, she spread herself even wider, moving her legs so everything was illuminated by the low light of the fire. Her ripe berry of a clit, her slick hole, the tight rosebud of her arse underneath.

“Got to smell you,” I said, and I ducked down to run the tip of my nose along her petals.

She gasped, nearly letting go of herself. “Owen, you can’t—”

“Can’t what?” I asked, breathing her in and then fighting off another wave of pleasure. I was dangerously close to coming before even taking my cock out, but I couldn’t help it. I’d never needed a shag like this. I’d never been confronted with someone who destroyed my control like she did. I became a brute around her, for her—a ravenous animal intent on scenting and marking my mate. Claiming her and filling her with my seed.

“You can’t smell me,” she protested, clearly horrified, and my hands came up to trap hers, forcing her to keep herself spread.

“I can, Tanith, and I will. And do you know why? Because you smell like you need to be fucked. You smell sweet and earthy and like you need to come.” I inhaled her again, committing the scent to memory. I wanted to start every day of the rest of my life with my face pressed to her sex.

“I do need to come,” she said, panting hard. “Owen, please. I can’t wait much longer.”

You can’t wait much longer?” I replied. “I’ve been jerking myself raw for months because of you. Fucking my fist in the shower, fucking my pillows, using up bottle after bottle of lotion. I’ve been a man possessed, consumed with you.”

She went still as I spoke, only shivering when I traced the slippery entrance to her channel with my thumb. “You haven’t been . . . you know . . . scratching the itch with other girls?”

I looked up her silk-covered body to find those bright eyes. “I couldn’t,” I admitted hoarsely. “Tried once and I couldn’t even stand kissing her. Her lips weren’t like yours; she didn’t flush like you or whimper like you; she didn’t smell like opening a brand-new book. It must be you, Tanith. You broke me that night on the yacht, and now it must be you.”

She swallowed, still looking down at me and breathing hard. “It’s the same.” She shook her head as if trying to clear it. “For me. It has to be you. But maybe this will fix us. If we do this tonight, we’ll be . . . cured.”

Not fucking likely, goddess.

I’d known from the first innocent brush of her lips over mine that this would take more than one night to cure. It might take years, years of nothing but this—her pretty pink cunt exposed to me and that fucking flush making her cheeks and tits all rosy for me.

But I didn’t tell her that. “Keep yourself spread open,” I said instead. “I need to lick you.”

“Oh my God . . .” Her words trailed off as I did what I’d been needing to do since Ibiza and sank my tongue right into the hot, wet heart of her. She gasped as I laved my way up to her clit, and then nearly shrieked as I moved my way down to the tight little button below.

“Owen! You can’t!”

I lifted my head to look at her, but only after treating myself to another long lick. “Oh, I can. And I will. I want to lick that hole until it’s all soft and wet, until you’re begging and crying for me to fuck it. Until you can’t look anybody in the eye ever again because of how much you love having your little asshole serviced.”

“F-f-fuck,” she whimpered, her head falling back. “I can’t take it when you talk like that.”

“Only to you,” I said, dipping my mouth for another taste of her. “Only you make me like this.”

“Good,” she whispered. “Good.”

The side of my hip was slick from all the precome I was leaking into my boxer briefs, and I wanted to snarl with frustration against her sex because I couldn’t do everything I needed to at once. I needed to eat her, fuck her, get her slick with lube, and push inside her ass. I needed to fingerfuck her cunt, mark her breasts with love bites, and watch her plush, pink mouth stretch around my erection. I needed to do everything with her, but I couldn’t do it all at once, and it was killing me.

“I have to fuck you now,” I said huskily. “But I promise to lick this pussy better the minute I’m done, okay, baby?”

“Yes,” she said on an exhale. “God, yes.”

She reached for me, but I was already standing, licking her greedily from my lips as I dug in my pocket for protection.

She lifted an eyebrow. “You have a condom? I thought you said you haven’t been fucking anyone else since you met me.”

“I haven’t, and I haven’t planned to,” I said, pulling the foil square free and toeing off my dress shoes. “But after Christmas Eve, there is not a snowflake’s chance in hell that I’ll be caught without protection around you ever again.”

“Even with the way we fought then?”

I gave her a quick grin. “Hope springs eternal, goddess.”

She snorted, but she didn’t seem that upset by it. In fact, going by the way she was already rubbing herself as she watched me pull off my trousers, she seemed pleased nothing was stopping us this time.

“I have an IUD,” she said as I draped my trousers and socks over a chair. “So even if you hadn’t had a condom, I mean, if you knew you were clean . . .”

I returned to her, still in my boxer briefs. The head of my cock was trapped underneath the waistband. I ran an idle hand over the plump head, watching her fingers in her pussy. “I’ve always used a condom, Tanith. Always. I don’t want you to think that just because I’ve been—”

“A whore?” she supplied.

I smiled at her. “Right. I don’t want you to think that just because I’ve been a whore, I’ve neglected being safe.”

“No,” she said, her eyes moving to my face. “You wouldn’t be unsafe, would you? That’s not who you are.”

“I’ve always kept my head when it comes to sex. That’s why I barely recognize myself anymore. I’ve never needed to fuck someone against a wall because I wanted them so badly. I’ve never needed to leave one of my mother’s official functions so I could bury myself to the hilt in a girl and make her scream.”

“I don’t know whether to be flattered, frightened, or turned on,” she said, a smile blooming over her face. Only someone named after a goddess could look so delighted by those options.

I hooked my thumbs into the waistband of my boxer briefs and pulled them down enough to free my swollen organ. “Maybe all three,” I told her seriously, giving myself a quick, rough stroke before I tore open the packet and sheathed myself in latex. The hand between her legs moved faster and faster as her eyes seared my thick length.

“I want to break you the same way you’ve broken me,” I growled, coming to the sofa and putting one knee on the edge, “but I’ll make it feel so good while you shatter. I’ll make it feel so good that you’ll never want to be whole again. Show me your tits now, love. I need to see them.”

She kept one hand working between her legs but used her other to obey me, tugging the neckline of her bodice to the sides so her pert breasts were exposed to the air. They were perfect, flushed curves, their peaks furled and erect, rosy-dark in the firelight. I bent my head to suckle at them as I climbed between her legs. Her free hand went to the back of my head, holding me there, forcing me to give her pleasure.

As I toyed with her peak, fluttering my tongue and then laving her, I reached down and found her fingers, which were currently sliding in and out of her slick pussy.

“Do you trust me?” I asked.

“With my body? Yes.”

The unsaid part of her answer was loud and clear—she didn’t trust me with anything else. Her mind or her heart or her future.

No matter. I would have it all in the end to slake this need in me, but this was a good start. I could start proving to her now that we’d need more than one night to free ourselves from this curse we’d cast on each other, and I’d begin by making her come so hard on my cock that she’d wake up tomorrow begging for me to put it inside her again.

I nodded and angled my head to kiss her. “Keep your fingers there,” I said against her mouth, and then I pushed in one of my own fingers. She tensed underneath me, breathing hard. “I know it’s a stretch, baby,” I told her, slowly moving my finger in and out. Her cunt was slippery, and her fingers were slippery. Every time I moved my hand, I could feel her quivering response. “Want you ready to come on my cock.”

“I’m ready,” she said, sliding her own fingers free. “I’ve wanted this since the yacht. I’ve wanted this for years.”

Years?

But then she raised her wet fingers to my mouth, distracting me like I was a dog panting after a bone, and I caught them between my lips and sucked, relishing the sweet taste of her on my tongue, all other thoughts forgotten.

She spread her legs underneath me, and the feel of my bare hips against the soft, naked skin of her thighs was like coming home. I never wanted to be anywhere but right here between her legs with her taste on my tongue. I took hold of my cock and guided the round head to her sex. We both stilled as I pushed against the wet cove waiting inside her folds.

I bent my head to brush my lips against hers. “Tell me if it hurts,” I said, and then I slowly but inexorably speared her virgin body on myself.

Her fingers found my bare shoulders and she dug in, leaving marks that would almost certainly bruise, but I loved it. I loved that what she was feeling right now was pain and pleasure both because that was how she made me feel too. Like I was being burned alive but with something so wonderful that I’d rather tie myself to the stake than ever leave it behind.

“Keep going,” she said, wrapping her legs around my waist. Her shoes dug into my back as I spread her, stretched her, until I was completely sunk into her soft glove of a pussy. The tight silk of her channel rippled around me every time I so much as breathed.

“You’re shaking again,” she observed, panting.

I was. I was shaking so hard that I felt fevered. Sick.

“It’s that good,” I said. Even my voice trembled now. “It’s that fucking good.”

She ran a hand up my chest and pressed it over my left pectoral muscle. “I can feel your heart,” she murmured. “It’s pounding.”

“Because this is life or death, Tanith. I’m going to die if I don’t get to fuck you forever. I might die even if I do. That’s how good you feel.” I dropped my head into her neck. “Tell me how you feel. Does it hurt? Is it too much?”

“It is too much,” she said, nipping at my earlobe. “Give me more.”

She was a fucking goddess. I withdrew a few inches and then pushed in, giving her a short stroke, and then another, sinking all the way in and then rutting with my pelvis pressed to hers so there’d be hard, grinding friction against her clit.

The first time I did this, her back arched right off the sofa; the second time, she started scratching at my shoulders.

“I want you to come on my cock so badly,” I mumbled against her neck. “I want you to use me like a sex toy, like your own personal cock to ride whenever you want. I want you to own me. I want you to do with me what you will.”

She made that noise again, the one at the back of her throat, the one that drove me fucking wild. I slipped my hand between us and pressed my fingers to her clit, all while I started sucking ravenously at her neck.

“I want you to do everything with me,” I kept going, my erection servicing her inside while my fingers worked her needy flesh outside. “I want you to be embarrassed by how much you need to fuck me. I want you shocked by the filthy things you want me to do. I want even the mention of my name to make you flush because you want my tongue in places you can never admit, because you need to ride my dick so often that you’re worried something is wrong with you.”

I could feel the tension in her body ratcheting higher and higher, and the quivering of her channel around my organ was nearly unbearable now, so tight and squeezing that I had to grit my teeth so I wouldn’t blow inside the condom. She had to come first, and she had to come so hard that she would be hungry for more before she’d even gone limp.

“God, the things you fucking say,” she whimpered. “I can’t—I can’t stand it—I’m going to—”

With a sharp cry, she came underneath me, her cunt pulsing in soft, rhythmic contractions, her heels digging into my back and her nails scratching my shoulders. I kept working her clit as she orgasmed, kept kissing at her neck, and I kept her pinned hard to the cushions because she seemed to like my weight on her.

I breathed in deep to keep from ejaculating—I couldn’t yet, I couldn’t, I had so much more I wanted to do . . .

With a final, abrupt shudder, she went loose underneath me, her hands slowly easing their assault on my shoulders. I lifted my head to kiss her, and she kissed me back with a dazed sort of hunger.

“Good?” I purred, licking the edge of her mouth and nipping at her jaw. Then I braced myself on my hands above her, smugly surveying the deep flush all over her chest. I reached down and pushed her skirt all the way to her stomach, pleased beyond measure to see that blush stretching all the way down to her navel.

“Good,” she confirmed with a belated shiver. “Better than I ever could have thought. Owen, that was—I didn’t know.”

“There’s a lot more I can show you, my filthy little goddess,” I promised, palming a tit and squeezing until her eyes fluttered.

“I know but—but just for tonight,” she murmured. She looked up at me with dangerously pretty eyes. “Tonight, then we have to be done.”

No.

No, that wasn’t happening.

“I’m not agreeing to that, sweetheart,” I said, giving her an experimental little thrust, and when her back arched again, I started fucking her cunt in earnest.

“Why?—why not?—oh God, oh God,” she chanted, her hands going straight to my hair and pulling so hard I hissed. I fucking loved it.

“Because we both know we’ll need more tomorrow,” I growled, plunging deep as I did. “Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me that once I’m done fucking you into this sofa, you’re going to stand up and walk out of here without wanting to feel my tongue in your pussy again. That you’re not at least a little curious about me licking you in places you never thought of until tonight. Tell me that the next time you make yourself come, you won’t be wishing it were me crawling all over you like a starving beast needing to fuck his mate.”

Her flush deepened. She parted her lips to speak and then paused. “I can’t say you’re wrong,” she said, and then gasped as I rewarded her by bearing down and toiling hard between her thighs. Churning my hips until she was moaning, whimpering, begging softly for more.

Until she was coming all over again.

This time, I made sure I could watch, bracing myself above her as I fucked her as hard as I could. Savoring the way her arousal slicked the base of my dick above the condom, relishing the sweat running down my back. Devouring the sight of my obsession coming apart underneath me.

I watched her eyelids flutter and a tiny, surprised smile grace her lips.

Owen.”

That was all she said, just my name.

I couldn’t hold back any longer. I was some kind of saint for lasting even this long, given her hot cunt and her sweet, flushed tits and her eyes like the same sea we kissed next to that very first time. The release landed like a cannonball in my groin, a heavy, near-fatal blow, and then exploded up the length of my cock, filling the condom with hard, thick pumps of seed. I was snarling through it, growling like an animal, still stabbing savagely at the pussy that was giving me such unbearable pleasure. My body emptied itself out for her as if the survival of the species were on the line. Every muscle in my thighs, arse, and stomach clenched and seized to squeeze every last drop of seed from my body into hers.

By the time I was done, I could barely feel my own face.

My lips tingled; my toes were numb. My heart was racing as if I’d run a marathon and then fucked a hundred women right after. When I finally went still, I saw Tanith staring up at me like she’d never seen anything more arousing in her life.

“I made you feel that,” she said in wonder, almost like she was saying it to herself. She ran her fingertips over my half-numb lips and then down to my heaving chest. “That was the sexiest fucking thing I’ve ever seen.”

“You can see more tomorrow,” I said silkily, realizing now how I could lay my trap. “And if you don’t want any more after then, then you can tell me tomorrow night.”

Her pupils dilated, and she bit her lip. “Yes,” she finally said. “I need more tomorrow. But I’ll be leaving tomorrow, anyway, so I’m sure I won’t need more after that.”

“Mm-hmm,” I said, giving her nipple a quick suck before I carefully slid free of her sex. The condom was embarrassingly full, but understandably so. Tanith could turn a monk into a serial sperm donor with that pussy. I threw the condom away and made sure to cover it up with several tissues and pieces of paper, and then walked back to the chair where I’d draped my clothes.

“In that case, I suppose we should start on tomorrow tonight. You know, in the interest of time.”

“That seems logical,” she said with a grin, adjusting her dress and hopping to her feet. She started quickly handing me clothes to put on, and I laughed.

“Excited to get back to my bedroom, are we?”

She tossed her sex-tousled hair over her shoulder and lifted an eyebrow. “I seem to recall someone promising to lick my pussy better.”

Heat flooded back to my groin and I nearly dragged her back down to the sofa right then and there. “That’s right, goddess.”

“Well then. In the interest of time . . .”

In the interest of time, indeed. I dressed in record speed, and we slipped out of the library and ran up the stairs as the party exploded with cheers of Happy New Year!