Page 35 of Cognac Secrets

Texturally, there was something… different about the skin on her back. A strip of slick, slightly raised but flat… I pulled her face into my chest and looked down her back and my blood ran cold.

She had three or four crisscrossing scars over her back, and I knew the thin, wicked edge of a belt when I saw one. Someone had whipped the shit out of her, likely as a child, and I felt such an incandescentrageover that, but I didn’t let on. I tugged at her bra and said nothing about the marks, complaining, “Goddamn hooks are sticking.”

She giggled and it held an edge of nervousness, but she distracted me by kissing and lightly biting along my chest.

“Mm,” I hummed in pleasure and pulled her bra from her arms and dropped it behind me.

I went to my knees, and captured her mouth with mine as I worked off the rest of her clothes, slowly but surely, a piece at a time. Letting the desire and the passion build between us, and she seemed all too happy to soak the attention up.

I wondered when the last time anyone doted on her was… if she’d honestly ever had that experience. I had to wonder if that may be the reason why she was all too eager to do that for me just a few nights ago.

Her words about treating people with kindness tickled the back of my brain, and with the scars on her back, I was beginning to put the pieces together and they painted a grim picture.

I didn’t like that.

She was pure goodness, and deserved better.

Certainly, better than me...

CHAPTERTEN

Sandrine…

He fumbled with my bra and I knew he was honestly too smooth for that, so I knew what it was that he’d seen. I felt a fission of anxiety about what he would say or what he would ask but he neither said nor asked anything. Just gave a broken little chuckle and made an excuse about the hooks catching.

I was grateful for the reprieve in having to explain.

His lips touched mine and the bad memories were ripped away. I was grateful to let them go.

He worked off the rest of my clothes, a piece at a time, and followed the removal of each with his hands, touching every inch of me like he couldn’t get enough. I knew I couldn’t. God, with every touch, I just got that much more worked up and into things, and I wanted him like never before.

With every press of his lips against my skin, it became harder to breathe, harder to think, and drove me and my hormoneswild.

His kiss was fire, his mouth so warm against mine, and his body hard and unyielding despite his light and careful touch against my skin.

He handled me like I was made of glass, and there was a certain… a certain sensuality to it. I appreciated it, even if it wasn’t necessary. I liked rough sex, but there was something undeniably nice about this too.

He laid me back in the bed and kissed down my body, showering me in kisses. It was lovely, even if I couldn’t quite understand it. I hadn’t had many lovers go to the trouble, and it just wasn’t how sex worked to my knowledge. Usually, it was all about his pleasure, and sometimes, if I was lucky, I got mine, but Bennie was different. So very different, and Ilikedit.

He took his time with me, and by the time he kissed his way back up from my toes, I was hoping and praying he would either stop at the juncture of my thighs and touch me far more intimately, or that he would make it back to my mouth and would slide inside me.

Iachedfor that deeper touch to the point my hips lifted from the bed unbidden, silently begging for more from him, but he seemed determined to do things in his own time, in his own way.

“Bennie,please,” I finally moaned and he chuckled darkly, kissing my stomach.

“Please what, baby?” he asked me.

“Touch me,” I whimpered.

His smile grew. “Iamtouching you,” he said.

“You know what I mean.” I gasped as he took one of my nipples into his mouth, stretching it, clasping it gently, then a little harder between his teeth, teasing it with the tip of his tongue.

“Gonna have to tell me,” he said, after letting my nipple go with a wet pop.

“Fuck me.” I gasped the plea and he laughed then, a short thing that was almost,almost, sadistic, but in the best way.

“What if I don’t want to fuck you?” he asked and I made a noise of complaint akin to a mock whine.

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