Not because I wanted to punish her.
Because I wanted more.
I wanted to stretch this need until it rewired her. I wanted to hold her on the edge so long she forgot there’d ever been a world without me in it. I wanted to be the only thing her body remembered how to want.
So I stilled my hand.
Her breath caught. Her hips jerked once—then locked down hard.
She didn’t cry out. Didn’t beg. Sheheld it. All of it. Even now.
And that did more to me than her orgasm ever could have.
I dragged my hand up her stomach, slow, fingers light enough to make her flinch. Her nipples were tight, flushed, begging to be bitten—and they’d get it, but not yet. I wasn’t going to rush. I wasn’t going to lose my grip now. She’d given me her stillness, her silence, her absolute, terrifying willingness.
Now I was going to give her worship.
The kind thathurt.
I leaned in and licked a single, lazy stripe across one nipple, then blew cool air across it and watched her entire body shudder beneath me. Her hands curled tighter against the sheets, butthey didn’t move. Her back arched—then settled. She was trying. Fuck, she wastrying so hard.
I pinched.
Just enough to make her cry out.
Then soothed it with my tongue, slow and wet and full.
Her breath was a prayer I hadn’t earned yet.
I moved to the other side and gave it the same treatment—pinch, tease, suck, lick—and then slid my hand between her legs again, palm to lace, feeling how much wetter she was than before. And still I didn’t push under. Still I didn’t give her skin-to-skin.
Because when I finally did, I wanted her tobreak.
Not from force.
From the unbearable weight ofbeing wanted like this.
I kissed down her stomach, tongue dragging slow over silk-slick skin, and when I reached the edge of the lace again, I paused.
Her breathing was ragged. Her thighs trembling.
Still holding.
Still mine.
So I looked up at her, lips just brushing the heat at the center of her.
And said, voice low and hungry?—
“Now you’re ready.”
The scent of her—wet, feral, intoxicating—hit me like blood in the water. Her thighs trembled on either side of my shoulders, and I watched them flex, watched the muscles twitch, her body trying to hold its shape when all it wanted to do was collapse. I let my lips skim just above her clit, not touching. Not fully. Just enough heat to make her sob.
“Rafe,” she gasped, voice cracked open, throat raw from silence.
I didn’t answer. I didn’t need to. She wasn’t speaking for me. She was speaking because it was all she could do to keep from screaming. Every inch of her was begging—and I hadn’t even touched her properly. Her palms were still pressed flat to the sheets, obedient and open and still. And that stillness? That willpower? That absolute devotion to my control?
It undid me.
