It Must Be Your Love (The Sullivans #11)(73)

He’d never been more tempted by a woman, but after the way he’d taken her the previous night, he needed to savor. To linger. To adore.

And, he thought with a slow grin, to tease.

“Soon,” he promised her. But not until he’d given her another taste of the wicked and naughty future they were going to have together.

“Tell me what you want,” she urged him as she moved her hand from his hip to surround his erection. “Tell me and I’ll give it to you.”

“I know you will,” he said on a low, dark chuckle against her soft hair. Just as he would always give her anything she wanted. He moved his hand away from her breast, and she made a soft sound of protest, one he intended to quickly turn into a gasp of pleasure. “Roll over onto your back.”

Moving with innate sensuality, she slowly shifted her weight on the bed so that she was lying flat on her back, her hands gripping the sheets at her sides, her eyes big and full of anticipation as she waited for him to say what he wanted next.

But instead of speaking, he simply took her hands in his and lifted them up above her body, so that she could reach the headboard. He curled her fingers over the cool iron bars.

“No matter what I do to you, I want you to keep holding on.”

He loved the way her eyes dilated even further and her chest rose and fell in faster and faster beats. Her skin flushed a deeper rose as he let his gaze slowly roam over her perfect br**sts to her waist and then back out to the gorgeous flare of her hips. He pushed the covers completely out of the way so that he could admire the damp, already aroused flesh between her thighs.

“What are you going to do to me?”

Her breathless question had him nearly giving in to the urge to kiss her full lips, shiny and wet where she was licking them in heady anticipation. But he knew what that one kiss would lead to...way the hell faster than he wanted it to.

“I’m going to make you feel good.”

“How good?” He loved the challenge in her eyes just as much as he knew he was going to enjoy rising to meet it.

“Better than you’ve ever felt before.”

She shivered at his promise, her fingers tightening on the iron bars as if to show him just how closely she was planning on following instructions.

“Close your eyes, baby.”

This time she didn’t hesitate, didn’t question him. She simply trusted him...and it meant the entire goddamned world to him that she did. Every minute of every day that they’d been together this past week, his goal had been to earn her trust. Now that he had it, he vowed never, ever to break it. No matter what he had to do to prove himself worthy of her.

Every last inch of her body was so beautiful that he could hardly decide where to start. As if in answer to his silent question, she shimmied her upper body, and watching her full, natural br**sts move made his mouth water. And yet, while he wanted nothing more than to cup the oh-so-soft flesh in his hands and lave her ni**les with his tongue, he knew it would be even better for her if he took his time to get there.

Leaning forward, he slowly licked between her two lowest ribs, first on one side of her chest and then the other. “You taste so good,” he told her before he moved up her ribcage. He wanted to savor every inch of her, but he was enough of a realist to know he wouldn’t last nearly that long this morning. Not when being this close to her naked, gorgeous body already had him hovering on the verge of madness.

At least, he thought as he pressed a kiss to the sweet patch of skin directly below her left breast, he wasn’t the only one having a hard time restraining his need. Because from nothing more than a few wet swipes of his tongue, Mia was already gripping the iron bedpost so hard her knuckles were turning white.

Especially, he noted a moment later, when instead of moving all the way up over her br**sts to take the taut peaks into his mouth, he shifted his attention down from her ribcage to her hip bones. He came closer and closer with each flick of his tongue and brush of his lips to the parts of her that were begging for his attention...but deliberately never quite made it all the way there. But though she continued to hold on to the bed frame, that didn’t stop her from shifting her torso and lower body to try to get his mouth to go where she wanted it to.

Another time, he’d take the game to the next level by making her stay still, too, but this morning he knew that wouldn’t be fair to either of them. Not when they’d both waited so long to be together again like this. In fact, Ford suddenly decided, it was long past time to reward them both.

Without giving her any warning, he slid his hands up and over her br**sts at the exact moment that he covered her sex with his mouth. His name erupted from her lips on a scream of pleasure as he opened her wide for his tongue and slid inside her clenching heat. Her skin was damp beneath his palms, her ni**les hard beneath his fingertips, her arousal sweet against his tongue.

No doubt about it, lifting his mouth and hands from her a moment later was one of the hardest things he’d ever done. Even harder than it had been for him to stop at goodnight kisses all week.

“Ford?” His name was more gasp than word. “Why did you stop?”

“Shh,” he whispered as he moved up over her to press a soft kiss against her neck. Her mouth was still a no-go zone if he wanted to have even the slightest prayer of prolonging their pleasure. “We’re almost there.”

With her eyes still closed, she didn’t see that his hands were shaking as he sat up to slip on a condom. Or that it took every last ounce of his self-control to position himself between her legs without thrusting into her gorgeously slick heat.