Page 75 of Phantom

When he looks up at me, the candlelight dances on his white mask. His midnight eye is hungry with need, and I stroke his hair back from the right side of his face, uncovering the pink tissue of the bare socket.

“Am I hideous?” he asks in a hoarse whisper, and my heart skips an aching beat.

This huge, strong man—the Phantom of the French Quarter, a King in New Orleans, and my demon of music—iskneelingbefore me,trustingme with the pain of his past.

“Outside of your family… how many people have seen you this way?”

He shakes his head. “Only you.”

My breath expands in my lungs even as I bend down to meet his eyes. Gratitude over this moment pumps through my veins, and I cup both of his cheeks.

“A sight so precious could never be anything less than exquisite.”

His lips lift on both sides, and the genuine appreciation there fills me up like his smile does his face. My demon loves to be praised, it seems.

He reaches up to grab the back of my neck and takes my mouth in a scorching kiss. My curls fall over him like a curtain, hiding us from the world. While his lips move furiously against mine, he slides his other hand up the sensitive skin of my inner thigh, making me shiver. As he moves closer and closer to my center, it’s hard for me to concentrate. It’s only seconds before those skilled fingers tease my thong-covered entrance, seducing a moan from my lungs.

“So wet for me, pretty muse. Do you want my cock to fill you up?”

“Yes, please, Sol.”

“Say it.”

Shyness makes me hesitate before I repeat his words back to him. “I… I need your cock to fill me up,please.”

“You’ve never been filled before, have you,belle muse?”

“No. Never. You’re the one I want first.”

He growls against my lips. “This is your only warning, Scarlett. I won’t settle for ‘first.’ I’ll be your only. Nothing less.”

My stomach flips at the gravity of his promise. When he pulls away from our kiss and spreads my legs, his gaze challenges me to stop him, but I don’t.

“Your words don’t scare me, Sol. Neither doyou.”

He smirks as he drapes my legs over his shoulders and fits between my thighs. “Then you won’t mind if I make you scream.”

He swipes his tongue up my panty-clad center. I moan and clutch the edge of the piano, depressing the keys and making an angry, passionate chord before tilting my head back.

He nips my clit through my panties, sparking a yelp from me and my eyes flash to his.

“Watch me. Tell me how good I make you feel.”

“So good, Sol—”

He growls against my thong before hooking his finger in a strap and snapping it off. I cry out at the way it abrades my skin but I forget all about the sting when he blows cool air on my bare pussy. Without wasting another moment, he sits up on his knees, forcing my legs higher over his shoulders.

My heels dig into his shoulder blades as he wraps one arm around my thigh. He spreads me open, revealing my clit for his tongue, and takes one long taste. I watch, trembling with pleasure and mesmerized by that long muscle escaping his lips and swirling around my tiny bundle of nerves, making me tingle inside and out.

He snakes one hand up and probes my opening with his finger, soaking my desire all the way up each knuckle before watching me as he pushes the whole thing inside my channel. I cry out his name and free the piano keys under one hand to pull his thick black hair.

“Sol, I’m so full already. This is so good. So…amazing.Your tongue—oh god!” I’m trying to tell him how it feels, but I’m so intoxicated by the rising orgasm his tongue and finger are coaxing from me that my words are a slurred, lust-drunk mess.

His middle finger plays in my arousal too, and just when I think I’m about to come, he pulls out all the way. I groan at the emptiness but he soon fills it with both fingers, making my inner muscles stretch to accommodate his long digits.

“You need to relax, baby. I’m trying to get you used to the feeling, but I’m bigger than just my fingers.”

“I… I love it. I just want you.”