Trust Me (Paris Nights #3)(25)

She started to shake her head and then stopped, keeping her eyes shut hard. Her head bent. “Make me come,” she whispered.

Because she didn’t know how these things went, exactly, but maybe in a using-someone-for-sex situation, the guy didn’t think he needed to pay attention to the woman’s pleasure. And she definitely, definitely didn’t want to add another traumatic shitty male * experience to the other trauma she’d survived in these kitchens.

“Got it.” He had a voice that was like his skin, golden and textured, hiding layers and layers of possibility. But right now it was as expressionless as it was possible for a voice to be. He was touching her so intimately. And yet she had no idea what he was feeling.

A brush of his cheek against her hair. His breath against her ear. The command a low murmur: “Take off your chef’s jacket, then.”

Her heart hammered, her nipples peaking intensely. Oh, thank God, this was going to work. She’d been afraid it might not, once she actually shifted from fantasy to reality, and then she’d get stuck in the encounter anyway, like a very bad cruise trip.

Because when you had sex with a complete stranger who was way the hell stronger than you were, you put a lot on the line.

But arousal pooled eagerly, between her thighs, in her breasts. At the nape of her neck. In the flush down from the ear his lips brushed, across her cheek. Her lips felt soft and hungry.

This was going to work.

She had to get her apron off before she could remove the jacket. She fumbled for the ties.

His hand rubbed hers away, rubbing against her belly, sure and warm even through the layers meant to protect her from heat. “I’ve got this.” The hand at her nape dropped to join his other hand at her waist, and he pulled her back until she rested against his chest and against his arousal at the small of her back.

He was aroused, too, then. That was fast. That was good, though, right? This is going to work.

His hands moved deftly on her apron ties. The apron fell away. His hand came back to push up under her chef’s whites and rest on her belly, firm now, through only her knit T. “Now you,” he ordered softly.

It was almost like entering into a dream—the very best of dreams, shutting out all nightmares—to lift her hands to the top button of her jacket. Thick, sturdy material meant to protect her from all the dangers a kitchen should usually hold—hot oil, liquid nitrogen.

And fragile as a spider web against bullets and bombs.

She unbuttoned the first button. If she was going to be all exposed, then she might as well do it her way on her terms.

His hand rubbed her belly with each button, not edging lower. Just warmth, through her middle, and warmth through her back, and the promise of his own arousal. Don’t worry, that erection said. I’ll make you oblivious to anything else but me.

She hoped he could keep it up a long time.

Yes. Just…forever. That long.

Never come down and think again.

She could become a woman in erotica, her entire existence consumed by sex and the need for more of it.

That would be lovely.

Her fingers didn’t even fumble as she undid the last button and peeled the panels of her chef’s jacket apart. She was completely dressed under it, and yet the gesture still felt like stripping.

He pulled the jacket off her shoulders and tossed it on the counter.

Her heart thumped so hard. Her thin knit T and jeans would have felt perfectly fine for street wear. And yet standing in her kitchens without her protective layers, she felt naked.

Warm hands rubbed up her ribs to just beneath her breasts and back down, shifting the knit against her skin. Her eyes closed, all her focus going to the sensation. The possibilities. She could not believe in much right now, but this future, the next five, ten, fifteen minutes here, seemed like it might be within her reach.

“You’re gentler than I thought,” she whispered, not sure if that was good. She liked it, though. No matter how different it was from what she thought she needed.

So gentle. So warm. So there.

“Thanks. I think.” His hand moved in her hair. A tug and the sting of a couple of hairs caught wrong, and then her hair fell free from its ponytail. It grazed to just a little below her shoulders. He drew his fingers through it, resettling the curls after their time caught high up on the back of her head.

Stirring the roots of her hair in that faintly achy freedom of a fresh escape from a ponytail.

Both his hands threaded up through her hair and massaged her scalp.

She drew a little scared breath. This was way too gentle. It felt so good. “I don’t—I don’t think—I thought we were just going to—”

One hand left her head to dip a finger into the bowl of cream and then slide the finger full deep and slow into her mouth.

She stopped talking, her eyes widening at the deep invasion of his finger, at the way her mouth automatically started to suck the pistachio-flavored cream from him.

“Let’s make a rule,” he said. “Since I’m the boss.” He drew his finger out and ran it over her lips. “You get to open your mouth if I want to put something in it.”

She drew a little gasp as that ran heat all through her body.

“But otherwise, you only get to say yes and please. And more. You can say, ‘More, please, more.’”

She opened her mouth and closed it.

“There you go,” he said, his tone so soothing. His voice in his chest vibrated against her back like its own caress. “You'll relax in a minute.”