once a month. As soon as the meal is served, you walk out of the room.”
“I’ve forgotten my table manners.”
He didn’t even flinch when he said it. He didn’t break eye contact, and he kept a totally straight face. Either he was a hell of a liar or he truly believed that he was the savage beast he claimed to be. A part of her heart broke for him.
Another part wanted to slap him and tell him to get over himself already, that she was immune to his act. Except that would make her an even bigger liar than he.
Another few silent moments passed, moments she spent wondering what his three years of captivity had been like, if he’d had friends, if he’d had lovers, how many he’d had. If they’d appreciated his intensity in bed the way she did. If one of them had taught him the skills he so expertly plied.
Funny, the jealousy sparked by that thought. Not so funny that she recognized the full grip of the unhealthy emotion.
“And it seems you’ve forgotten that it’s impolite to stare,” he finally said, interrupting her fruitless musings.
When she realized she was doing exactly that, she forced herself to pull away. “Your facial bone structure fascinates me.”
“If that’s a come-on, it’s the lousiest one I’ve ever heard.”
“It’s not a come-on,” she said, even as her pulse quickened. “I was simply visualizing your skull’s interocular and bizygomatic breadth.”
He knew as well as she did that craniofacial anthropometry was the last thing on her mind. Yet she couldn’t find the strength to turn away when he whispered, “Show me.”
Letting the comforter fall, she moved toward him, enjoying the flare of his nostrils as he took in her nudity and her complete comfort in baring her body. She crawled up to straddle him, dislodging the sheet so that she sat atop his thighs, settling over the softness of his scrotum, his penis tucked close to her sex.
She placed her hands on the smooth skin of his torso, sliding her palms upward until making contact with his jaw. Her fingers explored the structure of his face, moving from one point to another.
“This is the bizygomatic breadth,” she said, measuring from the most lateral point on one cheekbone’s zygomatic arch to the matching point on the other. “And this is the biocular width,” she added, moving her left hand to span the space between the far corners of his eyelids. “A forensic sculptor would use these measurements as well as others in reconstructing your face.”
She pressed her fingertips to each spot until Patrick closed his eyes and moaned from the pleasure of her touch. She wanted to moan, as well, because his cock had stirred against her belly, his shaft thickening and rubbing over her sex.
“I can see why you liked studying this stuff. Who knew the human skull could be such an erogenous zone?”
“Our study subjects didn’t feel a thing,” she countered. “They were dead, and quite unconcerned with eros.”
Patrick lay still for several moments more, allowing her to explore the fit of the skin on his face, the structure of his skull, until the room seemed to echo with their dueling heartbeats and their husky breathing.
She stopped the exploration of his jawline, her thumbs pressed to his cheekbones, as his erection began to firmly make its presence known there where her belly tingled. When he opened his eyes to catch her staring, she moved her hands to her thighs.
Strange, this nervousness making her uneasy. Yes, he constantly surprised her, but she wasn’t used to being caught off guard. “It’s like you’re someone I don’t know. You look so different without all that hair.”
“A good different?”
“An effective different.”
“So consider me the variety spicing up your life.” He said it with a wiggle of both brows, which stood out against his perpetually bronzed skin.
That, he certainly had done, she admitted, moving her palms from her thighs to his abdomen, pressing lightly the taut muscles there. When he groaned, she felt the hum from her fingertips to her elbows.
Yet oddly enough, she wasn’t wanting sex as much as she wanted to explore his body. Considering that he was quite the randy young man, she wouldn’t be having her way completely, she mused without complaint. She had never known such intense satisfaction, and in reality would hate seeing him go.
But she had long since learned the importance of cutting free dead weight.
And behind those uncanny beautiful eyes and wickedly sparkling wit, she feared that was exactly what she would find instead of the artist’s soul her foolish heart insisted he hid. Better to die not knowing, than to know…and die a little more inside.
The older, wiser Annabel approached relationships anticipating their inevitable end. An end that was all too near for her and Patrick, giving her the freedom to enjoy his body without the guilt of self-betrayal.
Or so she worked to convince herself as she leaned forward to grab a condom from the bedside table. Patrick opened his mouth over her breast, but she pulled back before he could do more than wet her skin with his tongue.
Tearing open the condom packet, she moved from straddling Patrick’s thighs to kneeling between them, caught by the fire that stirred in her belly simply by looking at him. Yet it was nothing compared to the fire of taking him into her mouth.
Leaning forward, she parted her lips over the head of his cock and sucked him between her lips, holding him there while running her tongue along the sensitive underside seam. Her mouth burned from his heat; her pulse raced in response to the visceral sounds he made.
He thrust upward. She took him to the back of her throat before drawing her lips firmly from the base of his shaft back to the head. Once there, she teased him again, her tongue circling and swirling around his glans until, in a sharp panting breath, he begged her to stop.
She did stop, but she didn’t remove her mouth. She left her lips pressed beneath the ridge of the head and slipped a hand between his legs to fondle his balls. Then the soft skin of his sac, the weight of his testicles, the swollen extension of his erection that formed a ridge all the way back to his anal opening.
She loved all of it, loved the feel, loved learning where to press, where to stroke, where to tickle, where to squeeze. He was an incredible canvas of tactile sensation, and he aroused her beyond belief simply by being.
When he drew up his knees and opened his legs wider, she knew he was ready, just as she knew she could no longer wait. Their accord as lovers couldn’t possibly be more perfect, and she wondered over it yet again while rolling the condom down the length of his shaft.
Catching her lower lip between her teeth, she crawled up his body, lifting onto her knees, then lowering herself over his erection. For as long as she was able to manage, she remained unmoving, staring into Patrick’s eyes, which glittered with all that he felt, and with a promise to give her exactly what she wanted.
It was that unspoken vow that choked her up, that way he had of telling her he would always be there, would never let her down. That he was the real deal, as real as it got. Not the polished perfect product of wistful fantasy.
And
