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Warm, wet heat from his mouth.

Hot pressure from his tongue.

The scrape and prickle of his beard.

The rasp of his thumbs on her flesh.

Even the rise and fall of his chest beneath her stomach made her insides melt and leak onto that questing tongue until it felt like everything she was belonged to him.

Her good hand sought his cock, idly stroking the length of him from root to tip as her mind flicked from insane pleasure to guilt that she wasn’t giving back as good as she got.

It didn’t take long for her to work out that the faster she stimulated him, the quicker his tongue lashed against her pussy. Because it fascinated her in some dim recess of her brain, she experimented with him—how did he react when she moved her hand fast or slow? Did he like it when her fingers barely skimmed his shaft or was he a man who preferred a strong, firm grip pulling up and down on his cock? Was it painful or pleasurable if she twisted gently, if she used her nails lightly down the underside?

The thrust of a thick finger brought her head up with a silent cry. The burn was there, the stretch, but not as keenly as before. She was wetter than she’d ever been, arousal lubricating the penetration, but it was the continuing ministrations of his tongue that brought her so, so close to the edge.

She willed herself to find her voice, to say just one word to end the torment.

Please.

Instead, all that came out was a garbled jumble of sounds.

Another finger joined the first, prying her open. They curled against her upper wall, rubbing in firm circles as his thumb massaged her other hole lightly.

A vaguely concealed threat… or a promise?

Either way, it made her nervous. She already had questions over whether he would fit inside her in the traditional sense; logic said yes, with repercussions. Trying to distract him from the much smaller, tighter orifice, she stiffened her hand around him and dragged it to the base of his shaft, closing her mouth over the crown.

Merrick’s body lifted beneath her; she didn’t know what was more surprising—the buck of his chest as he felt her lips push down or the kick of his hips unexpectedly filling her mouth with smooth, warm, velvet-clad steel.

She felt her jaw expand to accommodate him, fighting the urge to panic and gag at the same time as her ability to breathe seemed to die. Part of her wanted to bite down in protest, but her tongue was already fluttering against his shaft, tasting salt and musk, exploring the cord running beneath his skin.

Pained, panicked whimpers rippled up her throat when something else tried to squeeze in next to the two digits already occupying her. “Mmmph!”

“Breathe, little owl.”

Oh, he was licking her again, the flat of his tongue gliding over wet flesh, circling her clit. When she clamped down on his curled fingers, she realized he was encouraging her to grind her hips down, to find her own pleasure.

To push past her limits and accept the new intrusion of her own accord.

It was a test. How far would she go to make him happy? How much pain could her body take before her mind vetoed it all, or transcended above it? She feared it because she’d been taught to honor obedience or face dire consequences—which her father gave her a taste of more than once.

Yet Merrick asked her to take it, to embrace it. All while offering her the promise of pleasure if she just trusted him to help her find her limits.

Trusting him with her heart was easy; it was already in his hands, lost to her.

Trusting him with her body, with the breakable pieces of her, was still up in the air.

His shaft throbbed in her mouth when she moaned, and that weird tang of salty musk became a flood. Tightening her lips around him as drool threatened to trickle down her chin, she swallowed instinctively, inadvertently sucking on his cock.

Merrick made a harshhahsound, then patted her ass. “Might want to get your mouth off me, little owl.” His fingertips bit into her flesh when she shook her head; his hips jerked, sliding his length over the cradle of her tongue. “Darlin’, you got about ten seconds before you get the surprise of your life.”

One of them was trembling—she just didn’t know if it was him or her. Maybe it was both of them, because she felt as though there were fiery sparks tingling through her bloodstream with every breath, her body tensing and preparing for the inferno.

The veins against her tongue pulsed faster, matching the shallow rock of her hips. He was being more insistent now, easing that third finger deeper, determined to open her further.

He was her undoing.

As his fingers, all three of them, shoved into her, Tamsyn swore there would never be another who touched her this way, who would ever have power over her like this when she was naked and vulnerable.