“Do you want me to fill you, sweetheart?”
She clenched her eyes shut tight. “Yes.”
The glass felt even colder as it pressed inside, and her body opened, welcoming it, and she moaned aloud. The emptiness was gone, even though it wasn’t what she really wanted. Cold and fake, and she longed for hot flesh. For his weight on top of her, pushing her into the mattress. Making her take it.
His voice was liquid sin against her ear. “Someday. Before you go. Before I have to give you up.” She whined, that sharp edge of a pang cutting into her again at the thought. But he kept her close, his own breath catching as if it pained him as much as her. He clutched her tight. “After I’ve made you come a hundred times with my tongue, I’m going to lay you out. And I’m going to be so hard for you. Just aching for this sweet little cunt.”
He flexed his hips against her backside, sliding roughly against her skin, and letting out a shaking groan of his own.
“Just the way you’re fucking yourself with this,” he said, thrusting the toy inside. “I’m going to fuck you. I’m going to get so deep inside you.”
“Please—”
He pressed something else into her other hand, and she was so far gone it took her a second to recognize the vibrator they’d bought. Breathing hard, she curled her fingers around the handle. With a flick of his wrist he turned it on, helping her to get it right against her clit.
Everything in her leapt to life. It was perfect, hard and rumbly and turning the sweet pulses of pleasure into something overwhelming in their intensity. Together, they bore down, to the point where she wasn’t sure who was doing what, only that she was so close and needed to get there. Needed—
He thrust the toy into her harder. His voice needy and rough, “I can’t wait to come inside you.”
She held her breath. Tensed every muscle and pressed her face into his neck. Pushed down harder with the toy, and—
Her climax tore through her, dark and vibrant all at once, sweeping her along into a cocoon of ecstasy she’d never imagined before. Her throat hurt, and there was screaming, his name and God’s, and her whole body sang as she arched, head dropping back. Wave after wave, and he held her through it all.
After what felt like eternity, the pulses started to dim. She fumbled, trying to turn the toy off, and eventually she managed. His hands had shifted, one still keeping the glass held deep within her, while with the other he grasped her hip, and— Oh.
His breath was still coming in harsh rasps as he pulled her more tightly against him. His hot length slipped and skidded over her skin, and her belly dipped. Maybe he’d take her like this someday, her on his lap. He’d be buried deep inside of her, helping her ride him, touching her clit and her breasts, and she wanted that.
She reached a hand back, grabbing his hair as she twisted, pulling him down into a fiery kiss.
“I’m going to—” he panted.
Against her mouth, he groaned, and everything went slick against her spine. Deep within, she throbbed, aftershocks trembling their way through her as he came on her skin, painting it with his release.
For a long moment, he stayed there, trembling and tense, pulsing weakly as he clutched her close. Finally, he sighed, lips going slack. He pulled away, kissed her temple and eased the body-warm glass from her sex.
It left her feeling empty, but not unpleasantly so. How could it, after what he had given her?
After what he had shown her how to do?
And yet, as he held her, wrapping both arms around her chest, he was the one to murmur, “Thank you.”
Shaking, she curled her hands around his forearms. Wonder pounded through her, the way arousal had moments before.
“No,” she said, the words choked. “Thank you.”
chapter TWELVE
Another day, another museum.
Rylan gazed at the painting in front of him, trying to come up with something insightful to say about it. His mother had given him some of the language to talk about art, but he was drawing a blank now. Of course. If only he’d known back when he was a kid that he was actually going to need that kind of stuff someday.
He snuck a glance to the side. After more than a little cajoling, Kate had consented to spend the day with him again. It burned him that he’d had to dangle a visit to the Musée d’Orsay in front of her to get her to agree. He was pretty sure he’d paid for the pleasure of her company in orgasms the night before, but apparently, that wasn’t valuable enough of currency for her. What she really wanted was Monet and Van Gogh.
He didn’t mind, exactly, but there was still something petty niggling at the edges of his thoughts. Like he was torn between loving how she got so into all this modern art stuff and being annoyed that she was scarcely paying attention to him. He frowned. Even more annoying was that her preoccupation bothered him at all.
She was staring at a different piece, her head tilted to the side, and he could just about see all the art history knowledge running through her head. She took a small step back and into a beam of light streaming in from the window. It made her hair glow, and God. He really really wished he had something intelligent to say.
He straightened his shoulders, shaking off the plaintive, insufferable tone to his own internal monologue. Ridiculous. His mother wasn’t the only one who’d taught him anything, and there was more than one way to get a conversation going. His father had instilled in him that much.
People loved to talk about the subjects that interested them—whether or not the people they were talking at knew a goddamn thing.
Biting the bullet, he sidled over to stand beside her, and nudged her with his elbow. “So. Teach me about art.”
Tearing her gaze from the painting she’d been staring at, she raised an eyebrow at him.
Right. Because she always saw through him.
Speaking slowly, voice colored by both distraction and skepticism, she asked, “What do you want to know?”
He shrugged. He had to do better if he wanted her to actually talk to him. “Everything. Teach me about . . .” He squinted at the placard on the wall. “Eugène Boudin.”
The thing that killed him was, he did actually want to know. Maybe not about Eugène Boudin in particular, but about why she looked at the picture the way she did. What drew her in about all this Impressionism and Cubism and Fauvism?
“Funny.” Her tone was desert dry. “The man who paraded me around the Louvre showing off his favorite painting is looking for an art lesson now?”
“I’m serious.” More serious than he’d realized a couple of minutes ago. And besides . . . “I may know the Louvre pretty well, but—” The next words took him by surprise. He cleared his throat to hide his pause. “Mother never really cared all that much for this place.”
If she caught his hesitation, she ignored it in favor of her incredulity. She flung her arm out as if to encompass the museum as a whole. “Who doesn’t care for this?”
She had a point. The building was gorgeous, with warm light pouring in from all the windows, and the statuary and paintings were undeniably masterpieces.
He shrugged, sorry he’d brought it up. “It was still the ‘new museum’ when I was a child. Mother was more interested in showing us the classics.”
She’d appreciated modern art as much as any cultured woman of her social status should. Hell, she’d let that interior designer fill her apartment with the stuff. But it was the work of the old masters that made her seem alive.
Made her eyes light up, the way her husband and children so rarely seemed to manage to.
Of course, what Kate latched onto after all of that was “‘Us’?”
“Me and my brother and sister.” The Bellamy children. Something in the back of his throat tasted sour.