Page 55 of Desperate Victory
“I love you,” I whispered, the emotion demanding to be let out. His soft chuckle was like a feather dusting over my senses. Then he pressed a kiss to my bare shoulder.
“I didn’t even bring you shoes this time.” The lightness in his statement was so at odds with the emotion drenching his tone that I was torn between laughter and tears.
“You brought me you—” I never finished the full thought because he swooped in to capture my mouth with his. The slow massage of his lips to mine sent a frisson of delight to splinter my thoughts.
He framed my face with his fingertips, the stroke of his thumb beneath my chin nudging my head back. The silkiness of the mask struck me as my eyes closed. Yet, the stroke of his tongue dipping in to tease mine deepened the sensuous nature of the kiss.
The fragile intensity in the kiss wasn’t usually Bodhi’s style. He’d always been so bold in our interactions. Normally, he seemed to take a near savage delight with how he could tease me right up to the edge before plunging us both over.
Keeping the contact light, he glided his hand down to my throat. The firmness of the way he collared me triggered me on such an erotic level, I had to gasp for a breath.
Dampness coated my thighs, but Bodhi didn’t release my mouth. Every breath he allowed me to take came from him and the world fell away until all that remained was the two of us. He was my anchor in the darkness, his touch keeping me from drowning utterly even as he stroked his thumb over my pulse.
“Sweet Lainey B,” he whispered against my mouth, every syllable punctuated with another hot caress of his tongue. “My sweet Lainey B…”
The possession in those words looped around me even more firmly than his hand on my throat. “Bodhi,” I whispered back. “My Phillip.”
A laugh bubbled out of me at the nip of his teeth to my lower lip. He really didn’t like his given name and on some level, I understood. Yet, it was his name and he should be allowed to claim it for him and no one else.
“For you,” he promised. “But only.”
I smiled, then bit him back and his groan rolled along my spine like the tide coming in. “The perfect Trouble for me.”
That earned me both, another searing kiss, as well as a stinging slap against my hip. The dichotomy between the dueling connections lit me up. Particularly when he flexed his hand around my throat and massaged the heat into my skin.
Pain had never been a kink of mine, or at least one I had been aware of, but these men… They brought out all the dark desires within me, both imagined and not.
I drifted as he devoured my mouth, content to meet his demanding kisses with the ferocity of my own hunger. Yet, even as he seemed to sate my need, he struck a match to a fresh fire within me.
I wanted everything.
I wanted to give him everything.
One by one, these men of mine had awoken a side of me that I never could have imagined. Now, I refused to live without them. They sharpened my protective instincts yet also provoked my need to surrender. Not because I had to, but because I could.
They didn’t want to control me. They complemented me. They didn’t want to own me, yet I would give myself to them body and soul. They did the same.
Bodhi was perfect for me and in this moment, suspended in this darkly sensual world, he was my everything.
Gradually, he pulled away and took my breath with him. A low sound escaped me. I couldn’t really tell if it was a moan or a whimper. It was needy though.
“Shhh,” he hummed the sound as he released my throat to trace a finger across my chest, drawing a line from one shoulder to the other. He didn’t quite touch my breasts and yet my neck seemed almost painfully naked and too cold.
A shiver raced over my skin, pulling my nipples taut. He didn’t dip his hand lower, just drawing lazy patterns down toward my breasts and up again until the tension locking up my shoulders released.
“That’s my beautiful, sweet Lainey B,” he murmured, the drift of his words adding another layer of fire to the path he drew particularly when he teased a new design around one of my nipples.
It puckered tighter and my cunt clenched. The lightness of his touch, coupled with the absence of his hand on my throat, left me vibrating with awareness of him.
When he extended to the torture to my other nipple, I pressed my shoulders back and leaned into the contact. All it succeeded in doing was making him chuckle and he lightened his touch to that of a ghost.
So. Frustrating.
Another sound escaped me, but his laughter was infectious. Because he was enjoying my reactions. Truth be told, as much as I ached for more, I savored every nuance of this—his fantasy.
Just when I’d grown accustomed to the feather light soft touches, he suddenly traced his tongue over one turgid tip. The unexpected contact sent a jolt through that only magnified when he blew a breath over the damp nipple. Heat flushed my chest and my face.
With my eyes hidden, I could almost imagine that I lit up like a blazing neon sign. Then he bit that nipple. The scrape of his teeth an erotic promise that had me swaying. Another nuzzling kiss, this one to the neglected nipple and he pulled it taut to his teeth.