Page 37 of Second Position (Astor Hill #2)

He releases a shaky breath as his hand brushes against my hair, cups the back of my head, and I know we’re okay.

“I just…want you to know how much you’re worth. How much you deserve.” The words skate across my skin, coil inside me.

“You could show me.” I feel the need for him like a drum beating steadily inside me, know the throbbing feeling between my legs won’t be satisfied by anything but all of him.

“Gen.” Restraint coats my name, and I watch as he goes to war with himself.

“We’re not acquaintances anymore. I’ve gotten to know you. You’ve taken me out. You brought me home to meet your parents,” I huff a nervous laugh, wanting him to want me. “What excuse could you possibly have?” I ask him, my voice hushed.

He’s still hesitating, worry lodged in the back of his gaze, but I inch forward anyway, barely brushing my lips against his. He maintains the distance, and the longer he does, the more I want him. The more I need him.

Chest heaving, I almost wonder if I’ve made a mistake, pushing him to do something I shouldn’t have, but then something flickers in his gaze.

“Fuck it,” he whispers against my mouth and the breath I release is part laugh, part awe.

Every inch of my body hums with need as he claims my mouth, his tongue brushing past my lips to plunder mine.

I touch his face, his beard rasping against my palm, and hear him exhale against me.

Dipping his head, he hungrily kisses my neck as his hands explore me and I turn in his hold, desperately wanting him to touch me everywhere.

My head tips back, landing on his hard chest, and I’m an electrical current—buzzing and zapping and intensifying with each stroke, each brush, each caress.

Pleasure pools between my thighs, and the force of this feeling is going to swallow me whole and I’ll let it.

I drag his hand to my leg and barely suggest he let it travel further before he’s raking his fingers against the sensitive flesh of my inner thigh.

He slips under my skirt, beneath the seam of my underwear, tugs them downward, his touch exactly what I need.

I fail to contain my whimper as he strokes me there, two of his fingers driving into me as his palm brushes against my clit.

“Is this what you wanted?” The desperate edge of his voice has me clenching around his fingers.

“More,” I manage to say. “I want more.”

His quiet curse drives the pressure building between my thighs further, and I pull myself away for just a moment but it feels like an eternity.

Every inch of me pulses with need as I loop my arms around his neck and he braces his arms under me, lifting me .

He’s strong and capable beneath my legs wrapped around him.

His lips devour mine and relief twines with pleasure as I’m overwhelmed in the best way, the masculine notes of him sending shivers down my spine as I breathe him in—dark and rugged, woodsmoke at the end of the night.

He lays me against the bed, his powerful arms bracketing me, before he kisses his way down the taut lines of my body.

I feel his touch everywhere, and when his fingers brush beneath the waistband of my skirt, the current has pleasure pulsing everywhere.

Hot, wet kisses tease the sensitive skin on my lower stomach as he tugs the skirt down, his tongue swirling against my skin.

And suddenly I’m bared to him, the sight of him watching me maybe the hottest thing I’ll ever witness.

He swipes a finger up my slit, then down it, watching the motion, before sliding his fingers into me. His eyes lock with mine and take me in as I moan and gasp, feeling overexposed in this impossibly addictive way.

“I dream about tasting you. Do you know that?” he tells me, adding a finger before pressing down on my clit, and it’s whine that escapes me.

He dips his head and his tongue licks up my slit and I think I die.

He does it again, more slowly, his groans of pleasure indicative of how much he’s enjoying this, and it pulls me that much closer to the release I’m so desperately chasing.

My hands fist the sheets beside me as I watch the delicious twitch and strain of his neck and shoulders.

He presses his tongue in just the right place, swirls his tongue around it and sucks it into his mouth.

“Oh my god,” I can’t help but say, and I couldn’t have died.

I’m more alive than I’ve ever been. When he drives a finger into me, and then another, I feel that familiar pressure build and finally unravel beneath his touch.

I’m spasming and falling and clawing and being swept away by a tsunami of pleasure.

The calluses on his hands roam my skin, skate across my breasts under my top as he kisses his way back up my body .

I lift the hem of his shirt, wanting to feel him against me, the motion forcing him to sit up.

He peels the shirt off, never taking his eyes off me, the half naked sight of him feeling unreal.

I want to feel my way up and down the rippling expanse of it, run my fingers through the perfect smattering of hair I didn’t know I’d find so sexy.

And he’s watching me, watching me process him, with this sensual glint in his gaze.

I push up on my forearms, leaning back, biting my lip out of nervousness, my growing smile pulling my lip from my teeth.

“Come here,” he tells me with authority so reverent, I feel my nipples harden against the fabric of my bra.

When I do, he pulls my shirt off me with ease and dispenses with my bra before I can even think to help him.

Cool air washes across my skin and it sharpens everything into a fine point.

Self-consciousness drapes itself over the need still pulsing under my skin, and I swallow hard.

“Fuck,” he says under his breath, but I hear it, the word itself winding that coil of heat inside me tighter. His hands find my waist, as they always do, but this time it’s his fingertips against my bare, sensitive skin, and I want them everywhere.

“I’ve never been naked in front of anyone…

except I guess my ballet company,” I admit, letting him take his fill.

A part of me thought I wouldn’t like this feeling, baring myself so completely, so up close ; instead, my heart rate slows into a steady stream of energy, all sensual excitement and anticipation, and the thought of Grant knowing me like this is exhilarating.

“Is it fucked up that I like that?” he asks, his voice a low rumble.

“Yes,” I say, stepping closer to him, letting my fingers skip through the soft brown curls of his chest, and resting them there. “But I like it, too.”

He descends on me with thinly veiled restraint, but once our lips touch it’s an explosion of desire, carnal and intense and demanding.

He grips my ass with both hands and an unwitting gasp is pulled from my throat and into his as we kiss.

I’m just a feeling; one big feeling with a million nerve endings, and every brush and scrape and grip and stroke has me falling deeper and deeper into this endless pit of desire with him.

It seems like there’s no end, each coming together feeling more and better than the last one.

He picks me up with ease and I coast through the air, his arms bracing me behind my back and beneath my knees, before he gently lays me back on the green comforter.

When his hands go to his waistband, my stomach bottoms out, adrenaline rocketing through me.

His jeans fall to the floor, then his underwear, and it’s just him, taking my breath away.

I crawl my way to the edge of the bed, wanting so badly to make him feel the way he’s made me feel.

He catches my chin between his fingers, lifts my face so that I’m looking up at him.

“Lay back, sweetheart.” The endearment does something to me and I bite my lip to stop my grin from spreading too wide.

I do as he says and watch as he rolls a condom down his length, wondering if it really is painful that first time. He catches the contemplative glint in my gaze.

“If you want me to stop, you say stop. Okay?”

“What if I don’t want you to stop?” I say, my grin winning out.

“You’re impossible,” he says, the ghost of a smile peaking through the single-mindedness of his expression, the mattress dipping slightly as he comes to hover above me. And it has my breathing harder, has my heart beating at an impossible rate, almost having him like this.

I press my hands into the muscled terrain of his back, feeling the tendons twitch under my touch, and urge him near me, just as he dips his head to my neck.

And suddenly, I feel him everywhere—between my thighs, against my chest—and the restrained weight of him has me arching into him, leaning into the way he’s worshipping my neck.

He curves his hand under me, sliding up my thigh, and hoists my leg up and around his back.

There’s renewed distance between us as he rests on a forearm and gazes so deeply into my eyes before pulling us on our side. He caresses the length of my thigh, reaffirming the way it’s still wrapped around him, and I squeeze him tighter.

“Just like that,” he tells me, kissing me with searing intensity. I use my leg to pull us closer, my naked, sensitive center brushing against the hard heat of him, and I swallow hard. “Take a breath for me, okay?”

I pull in an exhilarated breath and feel it immediately: the stretch and the burn.

I pull the breath in deeper, seek his lips, feel them claim mine, inch myself toward him, and then: the stretch becomes a tingle, transforms into this itch.

The pressure and heat coiling around itself like before, but different.

Because there’s him, pressing into me so slowly it’s driving me crazy.

“Tell me you’re okay, Gen,” he says, and I’m unable to look away. Everything about this feels raw, feels too much, feels over exposed. And somehow, I want it to be more.