Page 80 of Coerced

Paxton had started stripping out of his clothes, and I found I no longer had anything else that seemed quite so important to say.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

My eyes had been focused on his flawless torso, but at his question, I lifted my gaze to his face. “Just enjoying the view.”

His attention dropped to my robe. “And yet I don’t get the same privilege.”

My hands flew to the sash around the robe and unfastened it. By the time Paxton had stripped down to his boxer briefs, I pulled the robe open. And once I pulled it off and tossed it aside, Paxton slid into the bed beside me.

I had expected he was going to curl me into his body and tuck me close for the rest of the night, but that’s not what he did. Instead, he buried his face in my neck and allowed his hands to start roaming.

The moment his thumb swiped over my nipple and his lips began moving along the side of my neck, I was unable to resist. I parted my legs, and Paxton settled himself between them.

Then he commenced round two, and things got far more adventurous the second time around.

TWENTY-TWO

Paxton

I liked to think I was a simple guy.

It didn’t take much to make me happy, and it was only ever on rare occasions that I even got upset or agitated.

But I wasn’t quite sure I’d ever felt the level of contentment I felt now in any other instance in my life. Sure, I’d dated women and enjoyed myself from time to time. It was always nice enough.

Never was it like it had been with Aria. Never had anyone consumed my attention like she did.

Maybe my instincts were just that good, because I’d felt this way from the start when it came to her. And the more I was around her, the more I was learning my instincts hadn’t been wrong.

She was everything I could have hoped for and more.

The way she asked for what she wanted last night—the way she didn’t care about extending our time out togetherand simply wanted to get back here to her place to be with me—felt like a fantasy come to life.

Now, I wondered if perhaps I’d made it all up and was still dreaming. Because I was in Aria’s bed with her, morning sunlight was filtering into the room, and her warm, naked body was squirming beside mine as her lips and hands explored.

It seemed impossible that a man like me, one who could be happy with the little pleasures in life, could get this lucky.

Because if I had to take a guess as to what was going through Aria’s mind, it seemed she was keen on initiating something between us. Part of me had believed her request to come back here last night had been a fluke, the result of needing a connection, finding it, and acting upon it.

Evidently, I was wrong.

As her lips blazed a path across my chest, one of her hands drifted lightly across my abdomen. I kept my arm wrapped around her, unwilling to lose our closeness.

Whether she had the ability to read minds, or we were simply on the same wavelength, I didn’t know. But a moment later, she found a way to move closer by shifting her body over mine, her knees dropping to either side of one of my thighs.

Suddenly, I had both of her hands moving across my skin at the same time as her mouth sought out new places to kiss and lick and nip.

I’d been doing my best to restrain myself, but with her in this position, doing all that she was, keeping my hands off her became an impossible feat. The second I drove one of my hands into her hair, she released a soft moanand lifted her gaze only slightly to make eye contact with me.

“Good morning,” I whispered.

She pressed a soft kiss to my chest. “Good morning.”

“This is quite the wake-up call,” I noted.

Aria slid her hands up my sides, over my pecs, and stroked her fingertips over my nipples. There was a mischievous look in her eyes, a promise that we were both in for a morning of fun.

“Do you not like it?” she asked, her tone playful.