Page 69

His fingers, rough and worked, trace the lines of the flowers that cover my chest. I don’t have the sensitivity of my breasts like I once did, but in this moment I don’t need it. His finger on my skin sends pleasure, want, and need across every cell in my body.

He sits on the bed, pulling my hips so I’m standing—quivering—between his denim-clad legs.

“You’re beautiful, Birdie,” he whispers.

Fingers gripping into back of my thighs, he leans toward me, mouth landing on my sternum. A trail of kisses, scratchy and warm, drag across my chest. He covers every scar, every dot of ink, with lips and tongue. Somewhere between being so scared I might die and him familiarizing himself with every mark on me, my hands slip around his neck until my fingers tangle into his hair.

My head drops back, and there’s a moan that escapes my lips that’s as unfamiliar as it is lust-filled.

When his mouth has marked every part of my chest, he moves deliberately.

Wrapping one hand around my hip, he grabs the book with the other.

Stands.

Positions himselfso he’s behind me, fully pressed against me.

He rounds slightly so his mouth is at my ear. I close my eyes, trying to keep myself standing upright from the intensity of it all.

I hear him work his way to the dog-eared page, and my breath stops. I know what comes next. I’ve read those pagesmanytimes.

“She wondered what he was going to feel like, this stranger named Bo,” he starts, gravelly voice against my skin, Bo Mountain Breeze making me drunk. “Would he work her body the way he worked the timber—with rough hands and jaw set—or would it be something different? Wild even? She imagined his hands, no matter how callused, would feel like velvet on her skin. Expensive silk.”

His hand moves from my hip and drags up the line of my waist, ribs, chest. He stops at my neck, where he slips his fingers into my hair, twisting it around his fist, before kissing the spot where my neck slopes to shoulder. Slow.

Then, “She’d known men, but never one like this. Seeing him—naked and hard—made her want things she’d never imagined. She wanted him in her mouth, in her body—just in her.”Bo pauses, and he hardens more against me.“There was a pressure building, a wetness forming, just by seeing him this way. She couldn’t stop it any more than she could stop the way she was looking into his dark eyes.”

Another pause. Another audible, tension-filled swallow that slides down my own throat.

I lean into him, knowing what comes next will likely cause my bones to disappear.

He continues.

“‘Bo, I want you to use me howyou please. Wreck me. Worship me. I don’t care which, but I’ll take either one,’ she said, breathy and desperate.”

Another pause, but this time he doesn’t read. “Which one do you want, Birdie—to be wrecked or worshiped?” he asks.

I nearly choke on my own thoughts. Somehow, I manage a, “Both,” and I mean it. Worship or wreck, they seem one and the same in this very moment.

He turns the page, but before he continues, his mouth is on me, tongue swirling circles up and down the side of my neck. I don’t know if it’s possible, but I’m about to orgasm from the reading and the kissing alone. Like instead of feeling his mouth on my neck, I feel itthereand another needy moan escapes my lips.

Then his mouth pulls away and my skin tingles where his lips just were as he starts reading again.“Bo looks at her, eyes somehow going even darker as he drinks in her voluptuous nakedness. ‘I’ll wreck you then worship you,’ he says, growling. Without letting her respond, he hooks an arm around her waist, pulling the softness of her ass against his own hardness and bends her over. Finding her wetness, he growls again, then fills her without warning. They both cry out in pleasure. His first thrust comes slow, a stretching, but the next comes without reservation. And the next. And the next.”

Bo’s own hardness twitches against my lower back, and my body is a powder keg ready to explode. I’m trembling, tense, and so turned on I wonder if this is what death by desire would be like.

The book drops on the floor, and both of his hands grip my hips. Tightly. An undercurrent of restraintin the way he touches me.

“What do you do now?” he asks, voice low and husky.

“I—I—” I can’t form words, at least not the honest ones.

He brings a hand to my throat, slowly dragging his fingers down.

Down my chest.

Down my belly.

Down to the waistband of my underwear.