Page 38 of Ace of Hearts

I take my cue from the excitement growing inside me and increase the speed, my hands holding his buttocks. Suddenly, he grasps my hair with both hands and begins to move back and forth more quickly. He fucks my mouth, looking me right in the eyes, as though he can’t believe what’s happening.

“You’re so beautiful ... I’m going to come.”

I feel him tense, and I suck in my cheeks to grip him tighter, pushing him over the edge at last. He swears again and comes with a groan. His hands grab my shoulders and pull me up to him, his mouth claiming mine in an urgent kiss.

“I need to calm down,” he gasps, “or I’ll make a fool of myself by coming again as soon as I’m inside you.”

Oh God . I pull away reluctantly and tell him to go get a condom. While he’s out of the room, I try to pull myself together, in vain. I’m about to have sex with Levi. Levi Ivanovich. My worst enemy. My best friend. My fake fiancé.

This has to be a mistake, but I plunge in headfirst anyway.

The paint on my body has almost dried now. He returns wearing only a pair of black boxers.

“Can I paint you now?” I ask.

He raises an eyebrow and nods.

“I want to leave my mark on you too.”

I dip my fingers in the paint and set to work. His arms grow covered in goose bumps, and I let my fingers wander all over him, mixing the colors into a chaotic mass that, strangely, makes total sense.

A bit like us.

He grabs my wrists and kisses me before I can finish, the whole length of his body touching mine. The wet paint transfers itself onto my breasts, a detail that makes me shiver.

His hands, which he must have rinsed before he came back in, catch hold of my thighs and lift me up effortlessly.

I can’t help devouring his mouth as though we were running out of time as he lays me down on the sofa and kneels over me.

He kisses the few parts of my body still untouched by his brush and slips my panties down my legs.

His boxers soon meet the same fate, and he throws them across the room.

“How do you like it? Slow and gentle? Fast and wild? Should I make love to you like a husband to his wife? Or fuck you until we’re both breathless? Tell me and I’ll do it.”

Dear God . I want to say, All of them . But the way I want him here, now, has nothing to do with slow patience or devoted sentiments.

“The last one,” I breathe as he opens my thighs and caresses my clitoris with his fingers.

“Fast and wild, then. Perfect.”

His fingers continue their stroking as he kisses me lingeringly on the lips. My chest burns almost unbearably. I tense and move my hips against his hand. The more I moan, the faster his fingers move.

I’m in a state of being unlike anything I’ve known before.

I bite his lip and beg him to enter me. He puts on a condom, and I catch hold of the back of his neck to draw him close. Our noses touch, and his eyes connect with mine as he penetrates me in one swift movement.

He groans without opening his mouth, his fingers pressing into the flesh of my hips. I wrap my legs around his waist, my feet pushing against his buttocks. It’s ...

“Unbelievable,” he whispers, his face nestling against my neck. “It’s so good. I’m never going to be able to do without it.”

Me neither . That’s just what I’m afraid of. He moves back and forth inside me, harder and harder, his fingers entwined with mine on the sofa near my head. His body is amazing. The feeling of him deep inside me blows a few more of my neurons.

“Lift up your bottom, lyubimaya .”

I’m only too happy to obey. He puts his hands under me and draws me toward him to the cadence of his thrusts. I moan, my arm covering my closed eyes. My pulse grows faster by the second as I grow more and more excited by the sound of his skin hitting mine.

Suddenly, he withdraws, leaving me panting.

“Are you joking?” I cry. “Why did you stop?”

Levi sits on the sofa, legs apart, seizes my chin, and kisses me languorously.

“Get on top of me.”

My heart leaps. I remember having wanted to climb onto his knee in the back seat of his car in Macau. This was only a matter of time, in the end.

I crouch over his bare thighs, and he lies still as I lower myself onto him. It’s an utterly divine sensation. I’ve never felt anything like it. He throws his head back against the arm of the sofa and lets out a gasping sigh. Can he feel how deep it is in this position?

I feel as though I’m going to burst.

I straddle him without breaking eye contact.

He looks at me with almost disconcerting intensity.

As though he has something to tell me but doesn’t dare.

I wrap my hands around his neck, stroking the hair at the back of his neck.

His hands find the sensitive skin of my breasts, and he spreads the paint with his palms.

I move against him more and more quickly, and he starts to lift his hips in response. Suddenly he places his hand low down on my stomach, over my belly button.

“Can you feel me? Just here?”

I nod, moaning, and quicken the pace. Nobody has ever been so deeply inside me before. It’s driving me wild. He quickly loses patience and penetrates me harder, making us both come at the same time. In the space of that one second, his mask falls away.

I lean my forehead into his shoulder, spent. My skin is damp with sweat and paint, just like his. He stays inside me a few seconds longer, breathing hard, his arms wrapped around my back. I close my eyes, savoring the feeling of his fingers stroking my hair.

“Show me your face,” he says softly. “Please.”

I draw back to look at him. He must like what he sees because he pulls away and tells me not to move. I stay sitting on the sofa, my face burning and my muscles throbbing, while he disappears into the kitchen. I hear water running.

When he comes back, I’m holding a cushion over my belly.

“Don’t move,” he says again. “Don’t change a thing.”

I look at the camera, my skin electrified at the realization that he’ll have a photo of me naked and covered in paint, my cheeks pink and my pupils dilated after our first time. Then again, that was my one and only condition.

For a souvenir .

He looks in the camera screen at the photo he’s taken, his face expressionless.

His smile is strangely melancholy as he sighs and utters one word.

“Breathtaking.”