Chapter 279: Chapter 279 – Marinating the Beauty

Her tongue moved against his anyway. The helpless quality of a body that had stopped taking instructions and started taking something else. She felt the low, slow sound that came out of him then — felt it against her teeth, the warm vibration of it — before she heard it.

“Mmngh…”

Low. Deliberate. The sound of a man who had found what he came looking for and had no plans to hurry past it.

Her cane fell.

She registered it distantly — the slow, gravity-assisted angle of the dark wood tilting, the silver handle describing its arc, the small sound of it finding the alley floor. She didn’t look at it.

The gun left her hand the same way. The palm-opening quality of fingers releasing because the hands had been given something more immediate to do.

She heard it hit the alley floor.

She heard it distantly. Through the sound-narrowing quality of a mouth that had been claimed and was staying claimed.

And then his hands moved.

The jaw hand — it did not stay at her jaw. It slid. The broad, slow quality of a large palm tracing down the line of her neck, thumb dragging the underside of her chin as it went — the unhurried ownership of a touch that was mapping rather than rushing. Down the bare column of her throat. Onto the exposed skin of her shoulder. Her collarbone.

’He is touching me like he has done this before.’

He had not done this before.

’He is touching me like he owns the geography.’

His palm flattened against her clavicle, fingers spreading wide, the warmth of it — the full-hand warmth of a man laying his hand against the exposed skin of a woman’s chest and not moving it yet, just resting there with the flat, attending pressure of something staking claim — and she felt her breath stutter against his mouth. “Hmnf—”

He swallowed the sound.

His tongue pulled hers deeper. The wet, warm, obscene slick of it — the quality of a French kiss with no politeness left in it, the full, open-mouthed, tongue-against-tongue drag of two mouths that had stopped performing restraint.

“Nhhm—” she said against him.

She had not meant to say it.

His other hand.

The one at the back of her head — it did not stay at her coil of hair. It drew it loose first. The deliberate quality of fingers finding the pin, pulling it, the dark fall of her hair releasing against his hand as he worked his fingers through it — the slow, root-to-end drag of a fist closing in her hair, not roughly, with the informed pressure of a man who understood the difference between holding and taking hold.

He used it.

The tilt of her head — backward, the slow, owned quality of a woman whose neck was being exposed because his fist in her hair had decided to expose it — his mouth breaking from hers with the wet, dragging sound of it — shlk — the thin thread of shared saliva catching the alley light one half-second before it broke — and then his mouth was at her jaw.

Her throat.

The open, hot, wet drag of his lips down the side of her neck.

“Hhh—”

The sound came from her before she found it. “Hh — mm—” The double-sound of breath and something that was not quite breath and was not quite voice, muffled against her own lips, which were still open from the kiss.

He bit.

Not hard. The deliberate quality of teeth closing on the side of her neck with the slow, informational pressure of a man who wanted her to register the fact of his mouth on her skin, wanted the impression of it in her, and did not care whether she had decided to allow it or not.

’I have not said yes to this.’

Her head fell back.

’I have not said yes to any of this.’

Her hand found the front of his shirt.

His mouth came back to hers.

The full, returned, consuming quality of it — the deep, open, wet pull of a kiss that had been interrupted and was resuming from the exact depth it had left off, his tongue finding hers immediately, no re-introduction, the familiarity of a mouth that had already decided it knew this one.

“Mmph — nnh—”

Both sounds hers. Neither sound intentional.

His hand — the one that had been at her collarbone — moved.

Down.

The flat, deliberate quality of a palm sliding along her silk-covered side — the slow, friction-warm drag of his hand against the dress, against the curve of her ribcage, the attending quality of fingers that were learning her by feel and were in no hurry to reach the end of the lesson.

She felt every inch.

The silk was thin. She was suddenly, acutely aware of how thin the silk was — the nerve-lit awareness of a woman whose skin had suddenly become interested in the distinction between ’covered’ and ’protected.’

He was not protecting her from his hand. The hand moved through the silk like the silk was not the point.

Down.

The curve of her waist. The flare of her hip. His palm spreading wide there — the full, broad, possessive quality of a large hand settling at her hip with the gravity of something deciding where it lives.

Then lower.

His hand found her ass.

The full, open-palmed, unhurried quality of it — the enormous warmth of a man’s hand cupping and holding her, not squeezing for impact but gripping with the deep, slow, informed pressure of someone who had been thinking about this particular thing and had now arrived at it without apology.

He pulled.

Her body came forward. The unasked quality of being drawn flush against him — chest to chest, hip to hip, the full, warm, structural reality of his body pressed into hers — and she made a sound against his mouth that she did not have a name for and could not have produced on purpose.

“Hmmgh—”

Low. Broken. The involuntary quality of a woman whose composure had been an impressive structure for many years and was currently architecture in a strong wind.

His hand moved.

Not away from her ass. On it — the slow, deep, kneading quality of fingers working the silk against her, the filthy intimacy of a man’s hand learning the shape of her through fabric with the flat, thorough attention of someone who was not going to be rushed and who wanted her to understand that he was not going to be rushed.

Her fingers tightened in his shirt.

’He is gripping me in a back alley at two in the morning with a dead man six feet away and I am—’

His tongue.

The long, deep, slow drag of it against hers — the wet, warm, ’shlk—’ of the seal, the obscene intimacy of it, of two mouths open and working against each other with no pretense and no performance and no space between them for a thought to move.

’—I am not stopping him.’

His other hand — the fist in her hair — released.

Not dropped. Opened slowly, fingers spreading through the fall of her loose hair with the attending quality of a hand that had been gripping and was now exploring — the flat, wide drag of his palm from the back of her skull down the column of her spine, slow, vertebra by vertebra, the warmth of it through the silk like a line being drawn directly on her skin.

She arched.

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