“Just a hand job?” Wow. Way to sound insultingly relieved, Caspian.
I pouted. “Hey now. There’s nothing just about a hand job when it’s from me.”
“It’s really what you want?”
Well. No. It was a sneaky piece of icing from the spectacular, multi-tiered cake of my wanting. But, dammit, I would take it. “Yes.”
He let me go and rolled onto his back. “As long as you don’t—”
“Put my weight on you. And I’ll stop straightaway if you tell me.”
“All right.” He sounded perfectly calm, even bored, but his eyes—which held mine like a drowning man might clutch me—told a different story.
“I promise,” I whispered. “And thank you.”
He gave a shaky laugh. “I’m not sure I’ve done anything to merit gratitude.”
“Oh my God.” I turned and ran palm down the frankly ridiculous contours of his abdomen. “You’re trusting me. And you’re giving me…you. That’s the most incredible gift.”
“I very much doubt it.”
“Don’t say that stuff. You’ll make me cross with you.”
My caress became a well-deserved a poke. Which made him…I didn’t quite know. From anyone else it would have been a yelp. From Caspian it was probably a much more dignified sound. “I’m very sorry.”
“I’ll forgive you. Can I take your clothes off?”
“I presume you’re intending to follow suit?”
He’d had me naked and in compromising positions pretty much constantly. But nothing—not even the threat of torture, well, okay, the threat of torture, let’s keep a sense of perspective here—would have made me point it out to him.
“Course.” I whipped my top over my head and wriggled out of my pj bottoms.
And, yep, there I was again: slightly cold and extremely undressed in front of the most gorgeous man I’d ever met.
But, God, it was nothing.
Barely a fraction of what I would have done to please him. To make him feel safe. Sure of his power and my so-willing supplication.
He sat up and I caught the hem of his T-shirt, drawing it up and off. A ribbon of heat spiraled down my spine toward my increasingly perky cock. He’d never let me do anything like this before. With other people, I’d dragged them out of their clothes and hardly given a second’s thought. With Caspian, it was intimacy beyond anything I’d dreamed of: no longer just a recipient of his desires, I was part of them.
And there was no way I was goofing this up. No catching his ear or messing his hair or getting his arm stuck. Oh no. I divested him of his T-shirt like it was fucking cloth of gold. He emerged blinking, his freshly bared chest heaving with his quickened breath.
“See.” I leaned in and brushed my mouth over the stark crests of his collarbones, remembering the way he’d responded in Kinlochbervie. He trembled now, my gorgeous man, felled by the gentlest of touches. “You can imagine you’re Alexander and I’m Bagoas and I’m disrobing you after some great battle.”
He cupped a hand beneath my jaw and drew me up for a brief kiss. “I think I’d rather you were Arden.”
“I can definitely live with that. I’m still yours, though.”
“Is that so? How’s your dancing?”
“I’ve got some moves. How’s your global conquest?”
“Largely financial.”
He was stalling. It was cute stalling, but stalling nevertheless. Shuffling lower on the bed, I slipped my fingers gently under the waist of his lounge trousers and slid them all the way down. Swear to God, if I’d attempted a sexy move like that on myself, I’d have got them tangled in my knob. Or around my knees. But, for Caspian, I found grace.
And there he was: my own private centerfold. I actually groaned at the sight of him. Like when you’re super hungry and somebody makes you bacon for breakfast. That kind of groan.