Total pages in book: 60
Estimated words: 57044 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 285(@200wpm)___ 228(@250wpm)___ 190(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 57044 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 285(@200wpm)___ 228(@250wpm)___ 190(@300wpm)
He leans close and presses a kiss to my cheek. “I know I joked about getting you a collar, but this isn’t a joke. I wanted to show you that I was serious. That I want you to be mine and only mine.”
Smiling, I pour it from one palm into the other. “Do I have to put it on myself?”
“No,” he said. “But I want to put it on you at home.”
“Am I welcome there?”
He whispers. “It’s not home without you, Juno.”
I feel like he means those words. He kisses me, and I wrap my arms around him, pulling him closer. The way our lips are connecting swiftly becomes too much for where we are, and Malcolm sweeps me up into his arms and carries me across the quad toward Granite House while I’m laughing.
This is a perfect representation of what I loved—love—about him. He didn’t need to ask me if I wanted to be carried, he’s just doing it because he knows that I need it. I rest my head against his chest, somehow more exhausted than when I was without him, because all the stress is melting away.
He carries me all the way up to his bedroom and lays me down on the bed, only pausing to strip me out of my clothes and shed his own. Taking the chain from my hands, he loops it around my neck and fastens it.
The choker is just snug enough for me to be reminded of it. A representation of us. The rules that we’ve chosen together and the fact that we’re choosing again. The smile on my face is real, but so is the exhaustion.
“I’ve barely slept,” I admit. “Since that night.”
“Neither have I.” He pulls me to him, letting me use his chest as a pillow as he pulls the blanket over us both. And we cling to each other as we fall asleep.
* * *
Pleasure lifts me to the surface and out of sleep. Sweet, deep, and slow. I don’t know where it’s coming from, but it’s welcome.
I take a deep breath and open my eyes. This is Malcolm’s room. For a second, I think that the last week has just been a horrible dream. But then I feel the choker around my neck and Malcolm’s tongue between my legs and it all comes rushing back.
“Ohhh,” I say as he slowly licks my clit. His movements are long and lazy. Languorous pleasure.
“I’ve missed the way you taste,” he says, sealing his mouth over me and sucking deep. “So good.”
I reach down under the blanket and grip his hair, pulling his mouth more firmly against my skin. He takes the hint, sucking harder and licking faster. Malcolm has learned exactly how to make me come. Before everything went wrong with us, it was one of his favorite things to do. Especially if he knew that I wasn’t going to be able to come at the end of it.
Light, swirling strokes that curl under my clit in a perfectly steady rhythm. It’s a pattern that works, always able to lift me into sheer pleasure, and soon I’m moving my hips upward to meet is mouth. I sigh with it, not bothering to ask as he licks me directly into an orgasm that’s equally long and slow.
My body doesn’t know how to do this anymore. I’m out of practice being aroused, and it’s amazing how quickly you can forget. But Mal keeps going with his tongue until the climax is wrung out of me and I’m completely finished.
He licks up my body, emerging from the covers to hover over me. Leaning down, he kisses my mouth and then my neck where the new necklace lies. My collarbone and cheeks. “I missed you,” he says. “You have no idea.”
I look up into his eyes, and I know that I’m here with him. “I forgive you, Mal. That doesn’t mean that it’s going to go away overnight.”
“I know,” he says. “One day at a time. I swear I’ll do whatever I have to to make you mine. Including tying you down to my bed and giving you orders, if that’s still what you want.”
That familiar heat and longing pools in my gut. “It is,” I say. “But not today. Today I just want you.”
He reaches over to the nightstand for a condom and I stop him. “Only you.”
Mal is stock still as he looks down at me. “Are you sure?”
“Yes,” I breathe.
Lips crash against mine and he fits his cock into my entrance. He sinks into me in one long stroke. This isn’t fast or frenzied. We move with each other, sharing breath and every sensation. It feels like coming home.
Without the condom, it’s delicious friction that I’ve only felt once before. Deliciously intimate and binding us together more deeply than we already were.