Forming the word tugged gently at her clamped nipples. She moaned and writhed under him, her whole body tensing beautifully around this new restraint. He kissed his way back down her arched neck, surveyed his handiwork, then stroked the soft undercurves of her breasts. “Are you listening, sweetheart?”
The garbled words were almost unintelligible as she tried not to torment her tender breasts, but he was pretty sure she’d gasped You bastard! as she squirmed under him again. To emphasize her resistance she crossed her legs, but he just smiled as he straddled her hips. Firelight danced across the curve of her breasts, undulating into the dip at her waist, then her soft thighs, tightly clamped together. He started with her breasts, gently squeezing the soft flesh, massaging sensation into the tips. A few not-quite-gentle pats to the soft fullness made her moan, shudder, and go limp. The trick was to make her want the heat, to dissolve her from the inside out. He kissed every quivering inch of her breasts, scraped his five o’clock shadow along the undersides, flicked his tongue around the clamps...and felt her thighs press against his knees briefly before she pressed her legs together again.
Natalie put up a good fight. Italian to the bone, she brought her best game to everything in life—work, their marriage, sex—and she’d brought her best game to fighting the heat between them. It was a fight she couldn’t win. At the first sign of weakness in her defenses he left her well-tended breasts and kissed his way down her torso to her belly button, then to her clasped thighs. Reaching under her body he withdrew the trailing end of the rope and began to draw the tassel along the seam between her legs.
Her wordless whimper marked the edge of surrender, the long muscles in her thighs trembling with each stroke of the tassel. He wasn’t fighting to beat her at a game. He was playing for their marriage and their future together, and he wasn’t going to lose.
Stroking the ends of the tassels against the tiny inverted triangle at the juncture of her thighs proved most devastating. Tightly held muscles shuddered, then eased open slightly. He took advantage, dipping his tongue into the very top of her pussy, tasting wet heat before she closed up again. With a grin he went back to teasing her, stroking the tassel to its furthest reach along her thighs, following its path with his tongue, then beginning again.
She held out longer than he thought she would, a clear sign of her inner turmoil. In earlier days this game would have turned mutual long before now, but the fire heated his right side almost uncomfortably and sweat gleamed on her torso before she subsided into surrender and opened her legs to him. He dropped the tassel and wedged his shoulders between her thighs, then curved one hand under her leg and over her stomach to the top of her sex. With his thumb and index finger he spread the glistening folds covered with delicately trimmed dark curls.
Her legs tightened against his shoulders, as if she didn’t want him to see what he did to her. Recrimination and possessiveness washed through him. She’d surrendered to him more reluctantly than she ever had because she no longer trusted him to take care of her. All she asked for was his attention. It was the bare minimum for a marriage to succeed, not to mention the lifetime love he’d pledged to her.
It wasn’t too much to ask. For now, his actions would speak for him.
One slick stroke of his tongue along her clit, another, and her hands twisted from flat under her ass to braced fists, lifting her pussy to his mouth, and this time he didn’t tease her. He focused all his attention on her wet, open body, used rhythmic, layering strokes to build the pleasure until her gasps turned to moans.
“God, Shane,” she gasped as she arched and writhed. He glanced up and saw the chain attached to her nipples pull taut but based on her moans the line between pleasure and pain had shifted some time in the last few minutes.
“I know what you like,” he murmured against her swelling clit. “You want me to fuck you, but not yet. Come first. You’ll be tight and juicy and extra sensitive when I fuck you. Think about how good it’s going to feel when I do slide inside.”
She wasn’t the only one suffering. From the moment she walked up to him after class nine years ago he’d been in the grips of long, slow tease. While the first time in the hotel had forged a connection beyond sex, the ache never truly went away. Never. Emotion swelled in his chest, prickled behind his eyes. He couldn’t lose this fight.
Her helpless, throaty moan and the tightly strained muscles told him she was riding the edge. He increased the pressure of his tongue against her clit and with a low cry her body shuddered into release. Her hips bucked before he flattened his palm against her mound and held her as wave after orgasmic wave rolled through her body. When she subsided he reached under her and loosened the ties binding her wrists together then stretched out beside her.