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“Ask nicely,” she said, her breath teasing tortured, aching flesh.
“Octavia,” I growled.
“Theodora,” she replied innocently, crooking her fingers at the perfect angle. “You asked if I knew howweta woman can get from anticipation.” Her tongue flicked against me in time with a well-placed roll of her fingers, and I groaned. “You asked if I knew how delicious it was to sink my fingers into them.” She pushed deeper into me, and I bit my lip until I tasted blood to stop the cry threatening to rip from me. “You asked if I knew what a woman’s pleasure sounded like,” she murmured. This time I couldn’t stop the sounds she wrung from my body as shelowered her head and ran a firm tongue over my clit until I shattered around her hand.
“Yes.” Her voice filtered slowly through the ringing in my ears. “I do. But the only sounds I’m going to remember for the rest of my days are yours, Theo. And they were even better than I had imagined.”
19
OCTAVIA
Theo was asleep on my stomach, her long, dark hair unbound and fanned over my chest as I ran my fingers through it. We were laying on the floor in a mess of blankets and strewn pillows from the couch, and my arse had long since gone to sleep—but I wouldn’t have moved for anything. Not when her fingers were wrapped around my free wrist, holding onto me even in sleep.
I had lost count of the hours, my body deliciously sore from the attention she had lavished on me, and my jaw ached from how long I had spent between her thighs, dragging orgasm after orgasm from her until she had made me stop. I licked my lower lip, savoring her taste on it as I trailed my fingers along her hairline.
“What the fuck,” I whispered under my breath, gazing down at the face I had gone from hating, to?—
I cut myself off, unable to finish that line of thought.
“I agree entirely,” she murmured in a sleep-roughened voice as she cracked an eye open and surveyed me. “What time is it?”
“Just past four,” I said, leaning to peer at her discarded watch on the side table.
“How are you still awake?” she asked, nestling back against me. “I’m almost offended.”
Theo looked so different with her hair loose and her features softened by sleep. I dared to trail the backs of my knuckles down her cheek, committing the sight to memory.
“I think I’ll have trouble getting up, if it makes you feel better?” I said.
She huffed, a lopsided smile teasing the corner of her lips as she closed her eyes again. “Don’t stop.”
“Huh?” I asked.
“Hair,” she mumbled, turning her face into my bare stomach and mumbling something incoherent that sounded surprisingly like “Please baby.”
“Wow,” I said, chuckling softly. “All it took to turn you into a demanding, tamed puddle, was a few orgasms. I should have seduced you sooner.”
She grunted at me, grasped my hand and placed it back on her head while delivering truly diabolical side eye.
I snorted. “You know, you could have told me this is all it would take.”
“I didn’t know I liked it so much,” she mumbled, shivering delicately as I scraped my nails along her scalp. Her eyes fell on the brand at my hip, and she gently ran her thumb over the tender mark, her name clear within the rectangular outline.
The matching mark on her hand had cracked and bled during our frenzied attack on each other, streaks of dried blood decorating my skin. She had both figuratively and literally bled for me to brand me with her claim.
“Tell me about the company you work for,” I murmured, scratching my nails slowly up the back of her neck as my heart kicked up a few notches. This was it. The moment I found out what this was. Was it a fleeting moment that would cave under the trust I was asking for, or would it be real?
She stilled, her breath coming shallow, and in that moment, my stomach turned cold, my fingers stilling in her hair.
Shifting her body, she turned until she could look at me, her eyes searching mine.
“What do you want to know?”
“Everything,” I replied quickly.
Her lips thinned as she pressed them together, her eyes lingering on my brand as she thought for a long moment before sighing quietly.
“I had been deported back to the UK after being court-martialed and discharged from my US transfer,” she said, choosing her words carefully. “I floated for a while, but money ran out, and employment opportunities are limited for someone with my record. I was young, and when the opportunity came to make some fast cash fighting in an underground ring, I jumped at it.” She paused for a moment, her lips tilting in a smirk. “I was good. I made a name for myself fast. It got me noticed by the organizers…and from there I was taken on as private security for their less than morally clean corporation.”