Page 43 of The Call of Azure (Unexpected Love #3)

Liam is silent as I slip my fingers between his and lead him to my bedroom.

He’s silent as he stands next to my bed while I move around, closing the blinds, turning on the bedside lamp, rearranging the pillows on the bed, and collecting my soft blue ropes from the closet.

It doesn’t matter that he’s silent; I can hear the want and need and lust emanating from him as intensely as if he were screaming at the top of his lungs.

When everything is ready and I step close enough to feel the warmth radiating from his body, he trembles.

He trembles like he’s been waiting his entire life for this.

I haven’t even touched him yet, and he’s already falling apart.

I shouldn’t let myself admit how much I want him, how perfect he is for me in this moment, just like he seems to be in all moments.

I shouldn’t have let myself agree to this.

I should keep my feelings all packed up in a tight little locked box where they can’t hurt either of us, but I already said yes.

So I’m going to take my time and make this good.

I’m going to drag tonight out and enjoy every scent and touch and whimper and shudder.

When this is all over, I want him to remember the way his muscles straining hard against my ropes contrast with the lightest flick of my tongue along his skin.

I want him to feel safe and free and overwhelmed.

I never want him to forget my touch. Never want him to forget me.

“Are you okay to kneel for a while again?”

His pale-blue eyes seem to flash in the dim light as he nods, and it would be so easy to lose myself in those azure depths for the rest of time.

“Can I strip you?”

His entire body vibrates even harder, and his hands are balled into tight fists at his sides, his knuckles whitening under the strain, the anticipation almost too much for him to bear as he nods once more. His voice cracks, already rough and desperate as he manages a single strained “Yes.”

When I step close, his hands move instantly, settling on my hips briefly before he shakes his head and pulls them away.

I want them back. He needs to touch me to feel grounded and safe in this moment, and I want that for him.

It’s more than that though. I want to feel him too.

Once he’s kneeling for me and I’m in control, I won’t get to know what it’s like to have his fingers clutch at me tightly enough to leave bruises behind.

To feel him clinging to me like he never wants to let go.

I reach for his wrists, quickly guiding his hands back to my hips before leaning in to brush my lips over his.

I kiss him and kiss him and kiss him. I learn how to make him whimper by nipping at his plump lower lip and memorize the way his breath stutters in his chest as I press my tongue to his skin and suck my way down the front of his throat.

I kiss him until there is nothing but the sound of our ragged breaths and fingertips clutching and hips grinding together.

I kiss him until I remember that this is our only night, and we both want more.

His mouth tries to follow when I step slowly back and remove his hands from my skin so I can pull his T-shirt over his head.

His old, worn jeans and simple navy briefs follow quickly, and then he’s bare for me.

Tall and strong and beautiful. His normally pale skin is flushed.

Shades of bright pink and peach spread down his throat and across his broad chest. The lightest dusting of golden hair, so pale it’s hard to see, decorates his lower belly before shifting to short curls the color of pale-brown sugar at the base of his cock.

A cock that’s thick and flushed, a deep burgundy red that stands out almost harshly in contrast as it stands tall against his pale belly, already leaking and throbbing with each heartbeat.

He stands unmoving as I strip myself quickly.

His eyes flashing, chest rising and falling faster and faster with each new piece of skin I bare, and when I step close once again, pressing skin to skin, leaking cock sliding along leaking cock, I never want to leave this moment.

He’s asked me for more, though, so I step away all too quickly, struggling to keep my voice calm.

“Kneel on the bed for me.”

He scrambles so quickly that I barely get a glance of his perfectly round, muscular ass before it’s settled onto his heels.

“I’m going to touch you as I tie you this time.

” It’s not really a warning since my lips are already pressing tender kisses across the back of his shoulders as I shift to kneel behind him on the bed.

I settle with my ropes in my hands, leaning close as I tie.

Binding him as skin brushes skin and my lips linger against his neck.

His long blond hair is loose and disheveled against my cheeks and nose as I brush it out of the rope’s path.

I tie slowly. Each move intentional, each flick of my tongue designed to drive him higher and higher until he’s overwhelmed by the sensations.

My fingertips dig into the skin of his shoulders, tracing the curves of his back and snaking across his belly.

I suck blood to the surface of his skin until he trembles and moans at the scrape of my teeth and the flick of my tongue.

I whimper into his hair, letting him hear the ragged quickness of my breath, and feel my chest rise and fall as I press my body against his back.

I want him to know that I’m with him. That I feel what he feels in this moment.

That, however high I manage to take him with ropes and touch and whispers, I’ll be right here at his side.

“Please,” Liam begs in a voice that barely sounds like his own. “Please, it’s too much…or…it’s not enough. I’m going to float away or come, and I don’t want to come yet. I need more. Anything. Just more.”

His words are a panted, whimpering, barely coherent mess, and everything about the way he’s let himself go is breathtaking.

I shift around to kneel in front of him, not offering him a warning or time to adjust before dropping to the bed on my belly and wrapping my arms around his knees.

I need to taste him, to feel him inside me before he can stop me the way he did that night in the club.

Before I can even tighten my arms to tug him closer, I slip my lips over his dripping cock and let him sink deep into my throat.

His hips buck and shudder as I swallow around him and I have to use my weight on his thighs to hold him tightly in place.

“Please.”

“God.”

“Please.”

His words shift from half-formed sentences to singular pleas to nothing more than moans and choked-out sobs as I swallow all of him again and again, but as much as I want to know what he tastes like and how it feels to have him fill my throat when he comes, I want to hold him when he does.

I want him to know that he’s safe and cared for and that I’ll never let him down.

I know what he needs because I need it, too, and I clamor to my knees and straddle his lap, settling my ass on his thighs as I shift as close to him as I can, taking our cocks together in my hand.

His tongue meets mine thrust for thrust as I lick and taste and explore the inside of his mouth, learning every curve and plane, absorbing the way his moans feel as they vibrate through my chest to join my own.

I want this to last for hours and years, but he’s so warm and hard and overwhelming as our foreheads press together while I thrust hard and fast into my hand.

The sound of us sliding together and our desperate panting fills the room and I tighten my arm around his back, clutching him to me.

I need him closer. I need to feel every tremble of his breath and every stutter of his hips toward mine.

He’s tied and at my mercy, but holding him is like clinging to a storm.

Everything about him is wild and frantic in a way I’ve never seen or felt before.

He’s not worried about the world around him or his place in it or what might go wrong; he’s simply free and existing and flying and lost in the pleasure of lips and tongues and slick skin sliding against slick skin.

I’m so close. So close to the edge of oblivion, but I don’t want to fall alone.

I need him with me. I need his body shuddering and his eyes rolling back and his shoulders straining against the rope that still binds them.

I thrust harder, my hips moving fast and desperate as my hand crushes us together, hot and slippery, and then he’s screaming, harsh, guttural cries as his body convulses and heat drips over my knuckles, and I want all of it.

I want the sound of him falling apart and the way he tenses in my arms and thrusts against me to stay with me always.

I want this moment burned into my soul until it becomes such an integral part of my being that it can never fade away.

I cling to it. To every scent and sensation, to the warmth of his skin and the brush of his hair against my cheek and the near-animal sound of his growling cries that fill the room and the taste of his sweat on my tongue.

I cling to his unfiltered and magnificent beauty in this moment until my vision fades to black, and my own drawn-out moans join his as pleasure pulls me under.

We’re both still trembling once the room has cooled and my knuckles are more sticky than slick, and I force myself to wipe them on the sheets and shift from Liam’s lap.

I take my time untying his bonds, letting the tip of my tongue explore every newly uncovered inch of salty, reddened skin as he lets me manipulate his position again and again.

He is perfection. He’s calm and kind and caring and doesn’t seem to mind when I ramble or the way I’m almost always too loud or too perky or too colorful.

He enjoys my ropes as much as I do, and wants me to take control in bed, and I have never in my life known that sex could feel like this.

I never knew it could be connection and freedom and joy all at once.

That I could be more than just a compilation of thoughts and body parts and movements.

That I could let go of everything I’m supposed to be and lose myself in watching my partner do the same.

I know that I can’t let myself want him.

I can’t try to make him mine because he’ll only break my heart when he goes.

I have to keep it locked up tight so that it can’t hurt me.

But god help me, I want him, and for a single moment, once we’re clean and sated and curled up in my bed together, I let myself drift off with his weight pinning me down, dreaming about what it would be like if he could be mine.