Tease (Take It Off #2)(48)
Author: Cambria Hebert

The water eventually cooled, and I pulled away to wash my hair as he stood there in dripping wet clothes and watched me with hooded eyes. I couldn’t really decipher his expression and I was partially glad for it.

My skin was still splotchy and red when I shut off the water, and Cam wrapped a giant towel around my body. He ran his hands up and down my arms, drying as he went. Once I was dry, I combed out my hair and put some moisturizer on my skin.

“You’re dripping all over the floor,” I observed.

“I’ll change when you’re finished.”

“Why not now?”

“I wasn’t sure if you’d want to see me naked.”

“Why?”

He let out a breath. “Because of what happened. I have no idea what you need.”

I turned and leaned against the sink, pinning him with a stare. “Why don’t you ask me?”

“What do you need, Harlow?”

“Don’t treat me like I’m broken. Don’t tiptoe around because you think you might scare me or make me think of something bad. I’m already scared. My thoughts are already dark. But I’m not broken Cam.” I reached up and opened the towel wrapped around my body, letting it drift to the floor. “I’m safe in your arms. I don’t think at all when I’m in your arms. Make it go away. Erase everything he did to me with the power of your touch.”

“Are you sure that’s what you want? I don’t expect you—”

“It’s what I want.”

His eyes traveled over my naked body, turning into molten chocolate sauce. “Wait here,” he murmured and brushed past me, disappearing out the bathroom door.

Not exactly the reaction I was hoping for.

I used the towel to wipe up the puddles on the floor and then hung it up as the door opened and Cam stood in the frame. He wasn’t wearing his wet clothes anymore. He was wearing a pair of basketball shorts and nothing else. His hair was damp and disheveled, falling across his forehead.

“Roxie and Adam aren’t here yet,” he said and then swept me up into his arms, cradling me against his chest, and walked back through the apartment, using his foot to push the bedroom door open and then moving inside. He laid me across the bed, which had already been turned down, and then went to shut the door and lock it.

Delicious anticipation began in my toes and climbed up me like a vine growing in a field.

He prowled over to the side of the bed. He made me feel hunted—but he was the kind of hunter you would lie down just to let him catch you. He was the kind of killer that you would beg to kill you just so he would put his hands any place on your skin.

“This isn’t going to be like the other times,” he said, his voice low. “This isn’t going to be aggressive; this isn’t going to be in a public place.”

He lay down beside me, stretching out along my side. His hand hovered over me. I could feel the heat in his palm. I wanted him to touch me—I needed him to—but still he resisted.

“It’s just me and you right now. I’m going to take my time with you tonight. I’m going to touch you gently, not because I think you’re broken, but because to me you’re something to be cherished. And because the only way to completely chase away the dark from your mind is to fill you up so completely with light that the darkness has nowhere to hide.”

If words could give a girl an orgasm, those words would totally do it.

“If you change your mind, all you have to say is stop. I’ll stop. I won’t leave, and I won’t be mad.”

I wasn’t going to ask him to stop.

I ran my hand through his hair, loving the way the thick strands curled around my fingers, and then spread out my fingers, cupping the back of his neck and pulling his head down.

His lips had their own idea.

Instead of meeting my mouth, he ran his tongue over the nipple closest to him, swirling over the top like I was some kind of ice cream cone and he was hungry for a snack. My back arched upward and he tucked his arm between me and the mattress, supporting my weight and lifting me farther off the bed and into his hungry and waiting mouth.

He licked me with slow, deliberate strokes, suckling parts of my flesh into his mouth, gently tugging and igniting all my senses. His teeth lightly grazed over one nipple and then the other, and then he pressed soft and tender kisses in the center of my breasts. His mouth trailed downward, across my belly, kissing around my navel and flirting with the short curls just above my core.

His arm slid out from under me and I lowered to the bed. He rose over me, completely blocking everything else from sight. I was shivering lightly, likely from passion, but he pulled the covers up over us both, further cocooning us together, the weight of the blankets pressing our skin just a little bit closer.

Cam moved over me, kissing every inch. I noticed the way his skin was a different texture than mine. He felt coarser, not quite as smooth, while mine was like silk that glided right across his roughness.

Careful to keep his weight off of me, he lowered only enough that his barely there touch drove me mad. His hands and fingers never stopped; he found places on my body that I hadn’t even discovered. There was a spot behind my ear that whenever he kissed it, I purred. There were three freckles on the side of my right breast—I knew that’s how many there were because Cam whispered as he counted them.

He kissed my eyelids, my nose, and all the places in between, but he had yet to kiss my lips.

Cam disappeared beneath the blanket, slowly looping my legs around his neck and settling between my thighs like there was no place he would rather be.

I knew there wasn’t. Because he whispered that too.

His tongue was thorough and undemanding as he explored the folds, gently suckling them with his mouth and then smoothing it over with his tongue. He teased my clit by pulling it into his mouth and flicking his tongue over it, and when my body would begin to shudder, he would pull back and repeat the whole thing over again.

It was torture at its sweetest.

It was prolonged agony at its best.

I was so saturated with want for him that the insides of my thighs were moist with my juices. He licked that too. Two fingers slipped into my entrance, delving inside me with easy grace. He moved them this way and that way, leaning down to take the swollen bud into his mouth to suckle some more.

A delicious pressure began to build. My body felt heavy with it, but it was far from uncomfortable. Then he slipped his fingers out of me and reached up, swirling his damp fingers over my nipple, drawing it into a fine point.