Revealing Us (Inside Out #3)(53)

I stand there and I wait. I’m not sure what I’m waiting for, but I wait. I don’t speak and neither does he. We’ve been good at this silent thing today. Too good. I can’t take it. I think I suck at waiting.

“Paint me,” I say. I’ve refused his request to do so in the past; I was afraid of what he would see. When I had secrets I didn’t want him to discover. “The real me, not the one from your memory.” I tug my tank top of, which leaves me naked from the waist up, and I toss it aside. It’s important that he knows I’m willing to be naked inside and out for him, and I quickly slide my pants and panties down and kick them aside. There’s a ledge that leads onto the wide windowsill, and I climb on top of it so that I’m inside the frame of the archway.

Chris moves toward me with a slow, sensuous stride, dominant but not predatory. The desire etching the hard lines of his face encourages me. He is coming for me, and I am his. I’ve held back until now, but no more. My personal demons just need to go to hell and stay there. They aren’t dragging us down with them.

I came to Paris for him, for this. Today was about his secrets, his past. His heartache and fears. Neither of us thought those things would be easy to face. And I don’t need easy. I need Chris.

Finally, he stops in front of me and my nostrils lare with his musky, wonderful scent. I want to wake up smelling like him every day of the rest of my life.

He looks down at me as the song loops and replays, echo-ing what I see in the dark depths of his stare. I catch a portion of the song, something about waves washing away scars. I want to be the waves that wash away Chris’s scars. I want that very much.



Slowly, his gaze lowers, lingering on my mouth, and then doing a lazy sweep downward over my breasts, my stomach, my sex, and I feel it like a caress. By the time he begins traveling upward again I am liquid ire and anticipation, slick between my thighs and tingling all over. I need him to touch me, but when he’s on edge, I know better than to touch him before he’s ready.

He reaches above me and my gaze follows as he hits a button on the archway. An electronic blind begins to slide down over the window. I almost laugh at the craziness of the moment.

I’m naked, standing in front of the glass, watching a blind lower, and I don’t care. I just want Chris to touch me. He hits the button again and seals the shade into place a full foot over my head.

Still exposed to the open glass, I wonder what the point of lowering the shade was. I ind out when he reaches for a cord connected to the center of it.

“Hands over your head,” he orders, and inally hearing his voice is sweet honey. It pours over me and into me, and my heart slows its pounding beat.

I willingly lift my arms, aware of how my breasts are now eye level and thrust closer to Chris. He steps onto the sill with me, in front of me, his big, perfect body cradling mine as he backs closer to the glass but not against it. His touch arouses me even more, and I’m already on ire. My nipples nestle in the crisp hair of his chest and I can’t stop the arch of my body into his, or the soft moan that escapes my lips. I’m so lost in how much I need him that I’m barely aware of him knotting the cord around my wrists.

He steps of the sill, leaving me aching from the loss of his body, and I’m certain he’s about to tease me and drive me wild.

Then an anxious thought takes over. How many women have been here like this for him? Has Amber?

Chris wraps his arms around me, molding me close. “No to what you’re thinking,” he says. “I don’t bring anyone else here.

Only you.”

My lips part. “You . . . you knew what I was thinking?”

“Yes.” He traces my jaw. “I knew.” His lips brush mine, a gentle whisper, before they caress over my cheek to my ear, then to my neck. The tenderness of his touch is unexpectedly erotic. Goose bumps gather on my skin, and my nipples tingle and tighten.

I thought this was about control—and it is; I’m tied up. But it’s a softer shade of dominance. He vibrates with desire, his lips traveling to my shoulder, his hand to my breast, my nipple, and back down my waist to my backside. He is touching me everywhere, kissing me everywhere. Tender, wonderful nips and bites and licks that travel lower and lower, until he’s on his knees pressing his mouth to my belly.

He lingers there and his eyes lift to mine, promising me delicious pleasure. His hands divide and conquer, the ingers of one tracing the intimate seam of my backside, the other stroking between my thighs where I’m slick and aching.

“Do you have any idea how wild it drives me, to know you get this wet so easily for me?” he asks, his voice laden with desire. For me. Because of me.

I try to laugh, but it comes out choked. “It drives me pretty wild, too.”

He smiles, and it’s as beautiful as watching him latten that room of stufy suits at the embassy. His tongue dips into my belly button, teasing me with where it will go next. I moan when his hand irmly cups my backside, before he lifts one of my legs, and then the next, over his shoulders. Caressing a path from one of my knees to my backside, he orders, “Hold them there.”

I nod and swallow hard as his thumb teases my clit, licking it gently before his ingers press inside me. Gasping, I squeeze my eyes shut. His mouth closes down over me, and aah—I can’t think. Everything seems to go into kind of a soft haze of pleasure.

My head drops back and I have a leeting out-of-body moment where I see myself in the window, my hands tied above my head with my legs wrapped around the neck of Chris Merit, while he does delicious things to my body. I laugh in disbelief that this is my life. His tongue is doing something incredibly perfect to me, and his ingers . . .