Deciding to ditch her Mistress Scarlett duds before tossing together a salad to go along with the steak, she abandoned the couch and padded toward her room. She passed the bathroom, and the distinct husky murmur of her name floated through the crack between the door and the frame. Pausing, she put her hand to the wood panel, intending to ask Jerrick if he needed anything. The door glided open, revealing him standing buck naked at the sink, his thick cock in his hand.
Wide-eyed, she watched him stroke his length from root to bulbous crown. His other fist gripped the basin, the veins rigid in stark relief while a shiver quavered through him. He whispered her name again, this time with a hint of desperation.
“Jer.” It spilled from her mouth before she could halt it.
His gaze whipped to her, the desire and vulnerability residing there reaching deep inside her. He struggled to collect himself, the shutters zipping in place. He grabbed the nearby towel and fumbled it around his waist. “Shit. Didn’t know you were there.”
Her tongue remained glued to the roof of her mouth. He’d been caressing himself…and thinking about her. Gods. She would chisel this moment into her memory for a lifetime of safekeeping.
Wetting her lips, she scooted into the room. He made an aggrieved sound, but his stare remained fused to the motion of her tongue. Her mind journeyed to the arousing image of the man being orally pleasured in the glass room at the club. A fierce compulsion seized her. She hungered to know the taste of Jerrick’s cock. To feel his delicious hardness easing past her lips and sweeping over her tongue, no frustrating leather in the way this time.
A needy whimper breaking free, she closed the door with her hip and stepped closer.
“Avi, you can’t be in here.” Anxiety strained his voice to the consistency of a rasp.
She grazed her nails over the ridged expanse of his rib cage, reveling in the responding ripple of his muscles. “It’s my mouth you want. Not your hand. Don’t settle for that this time.”
He hissed another agonized breath between his teeth. She slid her palms lower, until her fingers brushed the soft nap of the towel. He stubbornly resisted her effort to free the knot from his grasp. Standing on her tiptoes, she nipped his bottom lip before teasing him with the tip of her tongue.
Moaning, he relinquished his hold on the cloth and tunneled his fingers through her hair. His mouth wonderfully greedy, he took over the kiss, his tongue curling around hers in a way that stirred wicked tingles throughout her body. As always, he made her feel alive. Drunk with pleasure and heavy with need.
His mouth rediscovered the arch of her neck, and she sighed as he effortlessly zeroed in on the sensitive spots that brought such sweet torture.
“Please, just let me do this for you. For me. One time, if that’s all I can have.” She tucked her fingers beneath the towel, loosening it. His eyes were hot, watchful upon her face. Tension rode his features and thrummed through every square inch of him, but he didn’t hinder the progress of her hands and the steady descent of the towel. It puddled around his feet, and she pinned her focus to the shaft jutting so invitingly against her belly.
A wanton noise tearing from her throat, she dropped to her knees and stroked him once—exactly in the same manner he’d employed—before she charted the luscious curve of his cock with her tongue. She reached the plum-shaped cap and slowly glazed it with a lingering lick. The shaky exhalation of her name caressed her ears, a heady appetizer to the groan that followed.
Encouraged by his response, she swirled her tongue along the groove where his cockhead met the shaft. That proved to do the trick for him, if the desperate grip on her hair was any indication. She bobbed down his length, taking him as deep as possible into her throat before her gag reflex set in. Backing off, she licked him in a reverse motion, increasing the suction of her mouth the nearer she came to his crown. By the time her lips encompassed the swollen head of his cock in a vacuum seal, his fingers clamped her skull and harsh breaths ripped from his lungs.
“Avi.” The strangled plea of her name drew her focus upward. Sweat mottled his strained features. He looked on the edge, ready to lose it any second.
A feminine rush consuming her, she slackened her grip on him, just enough to let him slip down her throat. And then she swallowed him. Over and over again, until his eyes rolled back and he jerked, his hands tightening in her hair. He throbbed, hot, slick and pulsing, his seed bursting over her tongue. Shimmers of red sparkled and glistened in the air—a visual manifestation of his magic. The glittery residue dusted her skin, and suddenly an intense wave of ecstasy crashed over her, stealing her breath. She clutched at him, trembling, the pleasure swell spiraling in an unending climax. It wasn’t until she noted the odd synchronicity of their groans that she realized what was happening.
Somehow, she was experiencing his orgasm as if it were her own.
Once the last quake ebbed through them both, she let him pull from her mouth and help her to her feet. Stroking her hair, he kissed her tenderly.
She smiled against his mouth, the warm glow still purling within her. “Well, I’d ask if that was amazing for you, but I already know the answer.”
He chuckled. “Now who’s the one with the big ego?”
“No ego, I felt it inside me.”
Leaning back, he offered a frown. “How do you mean?”
“When your magic touched me, I was a part of you, sharing your climax.”
He blinked. “That’s impossible.”
“Try telling that to the orgasm I just had.”
His stare remained unwavering. “It has to be something else. Maybe you were aroused and came as a result.”
“No, it was like no orgasm I’ve experienced before. It was mine…but not, at the same time, if that makes any sense.”
“It doesn’t.”
She shrugged before grinning. “Whatever caused it, I’m not complaining. I’ll gladly suffer being tied to your orgasms.”
Rather than smile at her quip, a new wash of tension stamped his features. “Don’t joke about that.”
She mentally rewound her words, trying to decipher what she’d said to spook him. “I’m only playing with you. Why are you so upset?”
He snatched the towel and secured it around his waist. “I’m not. It’s nothing.” Avoiding her gaze, he planted a kiss on her forehead that was far too chaste for the intimacy they’d recently shared. “Why don’t you change and I’ll go check on our dinner?”
Perplexed and boasting an awful heaviness anchored in her chest, she watched him exit the room. It wasn’t until she loosened the lacings on her dress that the answer came to her, loud and painfully clear.
She’d used the word tied. That’s what had him as white as a sheet. The prospect that a bond—even a sexual one—might be forged between them terrified him.
Nothing had changed. He still ran from the idea of a forever with her.
She would never have the whole of his heart. Despite the continual evidence she faced regarding that fact, it still felt like a sucker punch to her soul.
Chapter Eighteen
Jerrick glanced at the time readout on his micro com and hauled in a deep breath in an attempt to rein in his impatience. “Avi, we need to hit the road soon if we’re going to make it to the club by seven thirty.”
A shuffling noise floated from the other side of her bedroom door. “I’m almost done.”
“I’ve never understood why it takes you females so bloody blasted long to get ready. Surely it can’t take more than a second or two to drag a comb through your hair.”