Rhett paused. “Really?”
“I can’t help it!” She took a couple of deep breaths. “Okay, I’m good. Sorry. I’m fine now.”
But she really wasn’t, because when he stroked his thumb across her bottom lip, she squirmed from need. Not sexual need, but the hysterical urge to reach out and snap at him with her teeth. Suppressed laughter made her nostrils flare and she knew she was about to totally lose it.
She was in no shape for sex clearly.
Rhett sat back, giving her a dark look. When he retreated off the bed, she was disappointed and annoyed with herself. Why couldn’t she be normal and artfully pose and come on to him? Why did she have to act like a ginormous goofball and ruin her chances of actually having an orgasm?
Sighing, she rolled over and turned off her vibrator. No sense in wasting the batteries, and she didn’t think she could go back to it with the right attitude once he was gone. But Rhett didn’t leave her room like she thought he was going to. Instead, he yanked open her dresser drawer and started rooting around. Hello. Her panties and bras were in there.
“What are you doing?”
He turned back to her, a pair of her tights in his hand.
Wait a minute.
He wasn’t going to . . .
Oh, but he was. Rhett crawled on the bed and lifted her head so he could put the tights behind her and around her jaw. For a second, she felt a flash of anxiety, but before he gagged her, he kissed her softly. “Trust me.”
Unable to speak, her mouth thick with saliva, she nodded. She’d never been gagged before, but it had certainly robbed her of the obnoxious need to snort with laughter.
Rhett wasted no time in tying off the tights so that she couldn’t open her mouth. It was a strange sensation, not nearly as vulnerable as she would have thought. It was actually sort of . . . freeing. She didn’t have to say anything. She could focus on the pressure of the spandex pushing against her lips and breathing through her nose. It calmed her down, and when Rhett slid his hand up her thigh and under her T-shirt, his lips caressing her neck with soft, seductive kisses, she had no desire to laugh. Instead, she sighed, relaxing back against her mattress.
Rhett brushed over her thighs, her belly, the underside of her breast, his other hand pulling stray hairs gently free that had been caught under the tights. His callused thumb moved across her cheek, tracing her mouth under the tights, his eyes on her facial features, like he was studying each inch of her.
There was something almost worshipful about the way he touched her, like she was fragile. Or beautiful.
She suddenly remembered that legally he was her husband.
It was a very, very strange thought.
The pillow had fallen off her chest and he hovered over her, his bare chest tantalizingly close. He was muscular, like any man on a pit crew should be, free of tattoos and covered in a light dusting of caramel chest hair. Shawn wanted to touch him, both to explore that hard plane, and to keep a slight barrier between them. To hold on to control.
But he clearly sensed that because when her hands came up, he shook his head, cupping them to push them back down. “No. Lie still.”
The question was, did she do as he told her, or did she do what she wanted? Given that she would still be chortling like a donkey if he hadn’t taken charge of the situation, she realized that while it went totally against her every instinct as a competitor and an independent businesswoman, there might be some value in doing as he said. At least this once, to see if it brought her a different experience, if it allowed her to experience pleasure from a new perspective.
So she left her hands at her sides where he had placed them and waited further instruction. The very idea of that actually brought a rush of warm desire to her inner thighs, the heat pooling deep in her womb. His hard masculinity trapped her beneath him, and though she couldn’t feel it, she knew his erection was mere inches from her. Part of her expected him to shove her shirt up and push into her hard, claiming her before she changed her mind.
But that wasn’t what he did. Instead he ran his hand up her thighs, slowly and steadily, slipped under her shirt to brush over her breast, then descended again. He caressed her inner thigh, but never moved over the front of her panties, and after three passes up and down the length of her body, Shawn no longer felt the urge to laugh. His feathery touch was pulling goose bumps from her skin, and she quieted down, her body relaxing as he coaxed a simple awareness of her body from her. She wanted him to touch her more intimately, to push her panties back and bury his finger deep inside her wet body. That was what she expected, an aggressive dominant approach of going straight for the gold. He would use his finger, then his c**k to get her off, and it would be over and done in a hot burst of ten minutes of passion.
That wasn’t what he was doing, clearly.
He was taking his time.
And it was driving her nuts.
She couldn’t even complain because her mouth was covered.
“Your skin is very soft,” he told her, eyes trained on her.
It didn’t require an answer, though under usual circumstances, Shawn would have said something in response. She would have most likely made a crack about having a boyish figure or how winter brought on alligator-skin syndrome, both of which would have however unintentionally and however minutely altered the mood, never allowing either of them to fully surrender to pleasure.
It was an interesting realization. As she was forced to lie still, which was not her most coveted or easy position, there was no running commentary of words from her mouth to distract her. There was nothing but her skin and an awareness of her rising desire that she had never experienced before. She could feel the prickle of each goose bump rising on her flesh, hear the soft rush of her breathing out of her nostrils, smell his masculine scent as he lay over her, his knee wedged between her thighs. Rhett played a little with her nipple, just teasing his thumb and forefinger over its hardness, his lips brushing across the delicate flesh under her ear.
When he pinched her nipple, unexpectedly, Shawn was stunned at the sharp kick of desire that she felt acutely in her stillness, her body quiet, able to process in its entirety the sensation of pleasure through the sting. She had never kept her hands at her sides, had never understood that if she did, she would feel the distinct ache in her womb, feel the slow trickle of hot desire easing out of her to soak the front of her panties. Her breathing grew more anxious, and she reveled in the new experience at the same time she started to panic. Involuntarily, her hand came up to push against his chest, to pull off her tights.