Page 79 of Give & Take

She sucks in a breath. “Raph,” she breathes. But her eyelids flutter.

“I’m not going anywhere, Lana.”

“You have a PhD to finish.”

“So I’ll quit.”

She shakes her head. I glide my fingers down the arms of the chair, onto her waist. “I’ll finish it then.”

She feels so fucking good in my hands I have to suppress a groan.

“You have a life to live,” she moans. She’s trying so hard to test me.

I fucking love it. “I’m living it right now,” I say.

Lana’s breathing hard, like she’s running a marathon. “Raph, this is such a bad idea.”

“So stop wanting me so bad.”

She laughs, kind of breathlessly. “Fuck you.”

“Okay.”

She groans, tossing her head back, and I lean over her, pressing my lips to her throat, tasting the soft salt of her skin.

“You really wantme, Raph?” Lana whispers. “Of all the women you could have?”

I laugh softly, without humor, and take her hand.

Lana swallows, her throat bobbing.

I lower her palm to my jeans, pressing her fingers around the hardness there. “What do you think? Do I? I’ve never been this fucking hard before, Sunshine. Never.”

Lana swallows. Her eyes are at half-mast when she looks up at me. “Jesus.”

I told myself I’d wait. But I don’t know if I can when she’s holding me like this. I’m on a razor’s edge of no longer knowing how to possibly resist, not when she feels this good.

I’ve never,everstruggled like this.

“There are a thousand things I’ve dreamed of doing to you,” I tell her as she trails her fingers over the zipper of my jeans, making me grit my teeth.

I kiss the apex of her collarbone, focusing hard on her so I don’t lose it at her touch down low. She’s so perfect here in this little hollow. So delicate, like a piece of china.

“Tell me,” she says.

“I don’t know if you want to hear it,” I say. “I’ll scare you off.” The fire in my body is fucking molten now, touching her while thinking about some of those things.

“Try me.” She pulls me closer, hooking her ankles around my knees.

I let out a low, barely audible groan as she pulls me close enough that my engorged cock brushes between her legs.

Then I say, “No.” My hands still on her ribs, I lift her up, sitting her on the counter.

She sucks in a breath at the rapidity of that movement. “No? You don’t want to do that?”

I give a low laugh. “You know what I want to do with you, Sunshine?” I lower my hands to her thighs, my thumbs making kneading circles on the soft flesh there. It works to keep me focused. “With you, I want a long, hard, lengthy…” I bite my bottom lip, watching her breathe hard. “…Discussion on Tolstoy.”

That ridiculous line does what it’s supposed to, it makes Lana tip her head back and laugh. Hard. My chest fills with the sound, and it’s like a star’s just exploded inside my chest.

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