Shirtless and pantless.
Wicked as sin.
His arms unfolded from his chest, his pecs and abs twitching as he straightened. “So glad you could make it.”
Struggling to keep my eyes from his charcoal briefs, his very tight briefs, I blinked and cleared my throat. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
He chuckled, the sound quiet and whispering over my skin like a warm evening breeze. “You’re too much fun.” I frowned, but he stepped back, gesturing to the dimly lit room behind him. “Do come inside.”
I bit my lips, but he could still read the smile in my eyes and returned it with that devastating grin. As I walked past, every muscle stiffened in preparation for an attack. But besides the brushing of his fingers over mine before he closed the door, nothing happened.
I couldn’t decide whether I was disappointed or relieved.
Standing on the edge of a dark brown low-pile rug, I absorbed my fascination’s lair. His bed was dark, almost as black as the floor-to-ceiling shelving lining two of the walls. Inside them lived so many books it was not so much a bedroom but half a library.
I swore I had a mini orgasm. My feet carried me across the rug, bypassing the monstrous four-poster bed with its luscious-looking inky black bedding to a set of glittering spines.
I reached out to trail my finger over them, but a warm burst of air, coupled with the firm heat meeting my hip, stopped me.
My hand fell to my side, my body softening and stiffening under his touch, yet my eyes wouldn’t unglue themselves from the books.
His hand trembled when a weird noise escaped, traveling with my next exhale. “Like what you see?” A finger on his other hand gave the loose strap over my shoulder a nudge, and it slipped down my upper arm. “I know I do,” he said.
At the same time, I said on a stuttered breath, “So much.”
He paused, another chuckle filling my ear. The dark, caustic rasp evoked a shiver that elicited a rumbling groan, goose bumps pebbling every exposed piece of my skin. “A book lover, I presume.”
“Yes,” I whispered, falling back into him.
His lips ghosted over my shoulder, featherlight. I felt my knees buckle. As if he could, too, his large hand squeezed my hip, the other trailing fingers down my arm. “Can I touch you?”
The question both shocked and thrilled me. Shocked because I expected him to take, wanted him to, and thrilled because, well… duh. “Please do,” I said, thinking I might perish on the spot when his hand crawled under the worn cotton of my tank, sliding across my stomach.
“Did you purposely come over here without a bra?”
His voice was hypnotic and low, heating my flesh and searing my ability to think. “Um.” I swallowed thickly. “Well, yeah.”
His hand crawled up, up, up until it was wrapped firmly around my breast. A harsh squeeze accompanied a harsher rush of expelled breath. “Christ,” he muttered. “It fills my hand completely.”
Then I felt him. He shifted closer, aligning the bottom half of his body with mine.
He was so hard, and I was beyond terrified. What if he asked me… “On the bed,” he said, interrupting my panic. “And worry not, I won’t be fucking you.”
I tried not to scowl as he released me, suddenly freezing in his absence. If only for mere seconds before I was lying on silken sheets, and he was crawling over me.
He sleeps here. I took a moment to let that sink in. Every night, he laid this close to me.
“I’m guessing you’ve never made out with someone, let alone found yourself in someone else’s bed, have you, Red?”
I snapped out of my imaginings as the real thing, flesh and bone and moonlit muscle hovered above me, staring. I couldn’t talk, didn’t trust myself to. So I shook my head, the sliding of my hair over his soft pillowcase too loud in my ears, just like my heartbeat.
His lips parted slightly, green eyes glowing as they flitted over my features. “How about another first?”
I was going to die. I was sure of it. “You tripped me.”
What.
The.
Fuck.
Of course, I would screw up what could be the only chance I had to make out with Jude Delouxe in his bedroom. This could be the only time I ever stepped foot in his room or laid beneath him on a bed, hoping he’d kiss the life from my lungs, and I just had to go and blurt something stupid.
But it wasn’t stupid. I knew that, and so did he.
Still, I laid as still as soon-to-be roadkill, hoping the truck wouldn’t squash me all the while knowing it would.
“I thought you were someone else,” he finally said, though he was smiling.
Why was he smiling? Ugh, his face looked so delicious as it was, but when he smiled, I wanted to lick its perfectness.
“Liar,” I hissed, about ready to squeeze my eyes closed forever or punch myself.
Across my lips, his whispering laughter traveled as his head lowered to mine. “Let me catch you,” he murmured, nudging my chin back with his nose to kiss my neck. “Albeit, rather belatedly…” He parted my legs, his hand slipping inside my sleep shorts and panties.
Oxygen fled my lungs on a hoarse breath. Fingers. Thick, gentle fingers were touching me, parting me. My thighs both widened and clenched on impulse, and I heard him mutter something that sounded like, “Holy mother of sweet hell,” before his mouth latched onto my neck and sucked, hard.
Sweet hell was right. Anxious, I laid there, wanting to coast along the pleasure he was wringing from my body. He introduced me to feelings and sensations I’d never felt before, and all he was doing was touching me.
Yet terror at what he might think of me being all wet, of my innocence, and wondering what it was I should be doing, kept me stiff as a board.
“Relax,” he whispered, releasing my neck and pressing soft kisses to the curve of my shoulder. “You feel so good, Little Red. Breathe and allow me to make you feel just how good.”
At hearing those words, feeling their honesty with every touch of his fingers and lips, I was a pile of goo within seconds. My stomach tightened, and an odd buzzing erupted from somewhere far, far away. Heat gathered low, my legs twitching.
Jude’s lips roamed up my neck, teeth nipping at my chin, and then he was staring down at me, watching me with different eyes. Those bottle-green eyes were heated and hooded. His nostrils flared a little. His hair sprinkled down over his forehead.
Tentatively, I reached up to push it back, and he groaned.
He wanted me.
Not only did he want me, but I could feel the tension coiling inside him, the hunger he was keeping leashed.
He wanted to devour me.
And so he did. He kissed me, hard and deep, and then he was between my legs, his hand leaving to rid me of my shorts and panties.
“Jude,” I said or tried to say. For it was so choked, I didn’t think he heard me over the sound of his throaty groan when he spread my thighs apart.
I stiffened again, about to sit up, but then his mouth was on me, his tongue doing exactly what his fingers had been just moments ago.
I melted and mewled, stars bursting among the shadows on the molded ceiling. “Shit.”
His laughter rumbled against my skin, his hands wrapped around my thighs, and then I started to shake. I’d given myself enough orgasms to know what was happening, but that still didn’t prepare me for the onslaught of pleasure that ransacked my body from head to toe.