Page 43 of A Stop in Time
I’m pretty sure of the reason why. I bet those scars are even worse along her upper body. Even masked by the inked artwork, she’s self-conscious as hell.
I lift up and move my hands to her jeans. “This okay?”
She nods with a soft, “Yeah.”
I unfasten her jeans and drag them down her legs before taking a moment to admire her.
“Goddamn.” I shake my head. “You’re hidin’”—I sweep my hands up her toned legs—“all this under those jeans…”
When my hands stop at her hips, I’m transfixed by the scrap of black cotton covering her pussy. A trace of dampness clings to the fabric, slightly molding over her lips.
But that isn’t what has oxygen leeching from my lungs. It’s the detailed, colorfully inked stopwatches and hourglasses that spill out from beneath the bottom of her T-shirt and all the way down her left leg, only stopping at her ankle.
She’s a fucking work of art.
I graze my palm down her left leg, skimming along the ridged flesh disguised by ink. A tremor rolls through me when I encounter more textured sections of skin, and my hands shake.
When my gaze darts up to collide with hers, I barely resist the urge to demand she tell me how she was hurt.
I’m compelled to ask her what these tattoos mean to her and why she chose them. Instead, I force myself to take a deep breath, because I don’t have the right to make demands when this is only one night.
“You’re a work of art, you know that?” She huffs out a breath, averting her eyes. “No. Don’t you look away from me.”
Defiance flashes across her face in an instant. That’s it. That’s what I wanna see. “You’re bossy, you know that, Danny?”
Holding her eyes, I lower my face to her left hip and place an openmouthed kiss over a broken clock. She sucks in a sharp breath when I dart my tongue out to trace the minute hand, a bold black ink with a golden outline.
“You’re a work of art. Not these tattoos.” I trace my tongue along the hour hand, then the circumference of the clock’s face. “You.”
Her fingers flex around my biceps. “This is just one night.” She says it like it’s a reminder for me, but underneath the quiver of her voice, I know she’s saying it for herself, too. To reaffirm that’s all this will ever be.
That all we’ll ever have is a brief moment of time in the odd hours of the night.
“Yeah.” It takes considerable effort to force out the affirmation through a bone-dry throat, but I chalk it up to this woman getting to me in a way no other has.
When I sweep the pad of my thumb along the damp fabric that clings to her pussy lips, I’m rewarded by her sharp inhale. There’s no disguising the need in my voice. “This for me?”
Her tongue sweeps over her bottom lip, and her eyes blaze with heat. But there’s a trace of brazenness there, too, and fuck if I don’t love the sight of it. “Maybe.”
“Maybe, huh?” I gauge her reaction as I drag a thumb along the crease of her folds before pressing against the fabric, nudging her opening. “Think I’ll get more than a maybe if I do this?”
Tugging the fabric aside, I fit my mouth over her and drive my tongue inside her pussy. Jesus Christ, she drenches my damn tongue, so hot and snug and perfect.
She digs her fingers into my scalp, her breaths coming out in sharp pants. Her hips jerk as if she’s trying to drive my tongue deeper. Sweeping one of her thighs up, I press it open wider to grant me more access.
I French kiss her pussy and revel in the way she tastes, the way she responds without a trace of inhibition.
When I start working her clit with my thumb, her whimpered cries have me pressing my dick against the mattress to stave off the urge to shoot my load. Intermittently, I suck on her puffy lips before driving my tongue in and out of her.
She has a death grip on my head, as if she doesn’t realize I don’t want to be anywhere else right now than buried face deep in her pussy. Her thighs grow tense, and I know she’s close.
I give her clit a little pinch and watch her writhe on the bed. Damn, she’s a sight. Dragging my tongue through her lips, I speak against her slick skin, and my breath has her shivering. “You gonna come on my tongue like a good girl?”
She peers at me with heavy-lidded eyes, chest rising and falling with labored breaths. I wait for it to appear, and it does something to me when I see it. Her lips firm, and even though she’s breathless, her words are filled with challenge.
“Don’t know. You gonna be good enough to make me?”
I hold her eyes for a beat while a smirk tugs at my lips. “Why don’t we find out?”