It was obvious at the front of those jeans.
And seeing that… no, she wasn’t stopping this time. The thing was, this wasn’t a one-night stand. She’d been looking for magic, and even with all the shadows between them, she’d found some with him. Sure, they would only have right now, but she was going to remember him for a very, very long time.
Besides, hadn’t the last couple of nights—hell, the last month with hergranmahmen—proved that there were no guarantees about anything? Even if they tried to date, who knew what would happen.
“You are so going to stay,” she repeated.
In response, Dev nodded and put his arms over his head, letting her do the work as she shucked the jacket off of him. Tossing the thing on the nearest armchair, she immediately put her hands back where they’d been, on his pecs. They were warm, and his muscles flexed under her palms like her touch was resonating through his body.
Lyric did not look at the strong column of his throat. She focused on his mouth, especially as she leaned into him.
“I can see how much you want to kiss me,” she breathed.
His hands slipped into her own coat and peeled it off her shoulders. “Yeah. It’s bad.”
“Good.”
She had no idea where he threw what he removed from her, and she didn’t care as he dropped his head. With his mouth just an inch above her own, she ran her hands up his back. The muscles along his spine rippled as he put his arms around her, and God, she loved the power in him. The hardness of him. So very different from herself.
With an easy shift, he picked her up and carried her to the sofa.
Laying her out on the soft cushions, he knelt beside her. “How far do you want this to go?”
“I don’t know. I’m not thinking too much ahead right now.”
“Good.”
Dev loomed over her, and then melded their mouths. With a moan, she arched into him as he kissed her, his lips stroking, seducing, none of that hard, hot passion from before—as if he was giving her a little time to consider what they were doing. And she had a feeling he was also giving her physical space because she could scent his arousal: He was ready to mount her and orgasm inside of her already, the mating instinct clearly not so different in humans.
But he was holding his body back, keeping things in check…
Even as he started to explore. With tantalizing deliberation, his touch drifted across her stomach, and she felt a tugging as he pulled the bottom of her blue sweater up from the slacks she’d worn. Then came a little skin-on-skin, his warm, calloused palm moving over her belly, going around to her ribs… moving up to right below the cup of her bra. Meanwhile, his tongue licked into her, and when she felt a moan rise up in her throat, she didn’t hold back.
His chuckle was very self-satisfied, the vibration on her mouth making her wonder what it was going to feel like when he was at her breasts—
On a quick shift, Lyric sat up and ripped the sweater off herself. Underneath, she had a button-down shirt on, and as she lay backdown, Dev’s eyes raked over the next layer he was clearly going to take off her.
“Yes,” she whispered, answering the question in his hot stare.
Easing back on his heels, he went to work on the fastenings of her shirt, starting with the one at the bottom first. Then the next. And the next… the next. His eyes were hooded and volcanic as he looked at what he was revealing, inch by inch, the two halves of the shirt falling free as if the damn thing was complicit.
As he got to the last button, the one right in front of her bra, he growled, “It’s gonna be hard to put the brakes on if this goes much further.”
“Let me help you with that.”
Lyric reached up and unfastened the final one.
He hissed as she pulled the shirt away from herself, and then without missing a beat, she freed the clasp of her bra. As the cups snapped back and her bare breasts hit the cooler air, she felt her nipples tighten.
Dev’s jaw worked as he stared at her, the muscles in his thick neck flexing. “Fuck…”
“We’re not stopping,” she said with a boldness that would have shocked her the night before.
As he rose up fully on his knees, he towered over her, and she speared her fingers into the hair at his nape, pulling him down so that his mouth was on her sternum. He took things from there, kissing his way over to one of her nipples, brushing his lips over the peak before sucking her into his mouth. The subtle pull made her cry out again, one knee coming up on the sofa cushions, her pelvis rolling with hunger.
Lifting her head, she looked down at him, the sight of his lips on her flesh and the hollow of his cheek moving as he worked her, shooting pleasure directly into her core. And as if he knew exactly what she was hungry for, one of his hands traveled down to skate her hip and stroke the outside of her thigh.
And then the inside of it.
