Page 36 of In Her Blood
She drew a quiet breath, the old memory receding, and trailed her fingers along the side of Otto’s face while he leaned over her. In the oppressively quiet room, she imagined he could hear her racing heart as clearly as she could before she finally pushed out the question that had come to her. “Am I yours, Otto?”
She was. She knew she was. Or she desperately wanted to be, at least.
His nostrils flared with a sharp breath and his chest heaved. “Damn right you are.” His hand fell away from her jaw, tangling again in her hair as he slammed his mouth back to hers. The kiss was wet, almost sloppy, and it was mere seconds before she felt him tugging at her shirt and slipping his fingers beneath the fabric.
It shouldn’t have felt so good when his calloused hands stretched up across her abdomen.
Otto made another deep, rumbly sound and broke from her lips. “Show me what’s mine, baby. Show me all the places you want my touch.”
Bozhe moy.She ran her hands over his shoulders and willed herself to let go of the fears and uncertainties that might have ordinarily kept her mouth firmly shut—those same things would also have usually kept her from the taste of his kiss, and that was working out fabulously. “If you want me to show you,” she said on a whisper, “I’ll have to get up.” She licked her lips, but managed to hold his gaze. “So I can strip.”
He swallowed hard, then slid both his hands higher up so that her shirt was gathered almost awkwardly over her chest. “Let me.”
Her mouth popped open, but he was already moving. Or perhaps he’d never stopped.
Otto took a fistful of her shirt and whisked it over her head, pulling her arms up and away from him in the process. His movements were just controlled enough not to yank on her still healing forearm, which she only even gave thought to as the arm itself fell onto the mattress. By then her shirt was gone, and Otto had slipped a hand beneath her in search of the clasp for her bra. That came free seconds later and disappeared somewhere out of sight to the tune of another of his thrilling, guttural groans.
Evelina watched his eyes rove over her, her skin catching fire beneath his heated stare.
Otto pushed up, until his torso was entirely off her, and reached behind him. In the span of another heartbeat, he’d tugged his own set of shirts over his head and tossed them aside carelessly, finally revealing his perfectly cut muscles and all the contrastingly dark ink that painted his skin. His arms were mostly covered in it, with designs spilling across his chest and over his shoulders. More carried over his back, she knew. It wasn’t as if she’d never seen him shirtless. She’d just neverexperiencedhim shirtless.
He wasted no time leaning over her again, head dipped too low for a kiss and all that freshly exposed skin brushing up against hers. It was scintillating. His tongue trailed the length of her collarbone and her arms curled around his shoulders.
“Otto…”
He didn’t linger as he left a trail of wet, open-mouthed kisses down and across her breasts. He angled his head and caughteach nipple with his tongue in turn, making sure to suck them into his mouth and lavish them with attention before moving on. Only when he’d finished with the second one did he sit up enough to exhale roughly and say, “Goddamn, I can’t wait to feel these tits wrapped around my dick.” He shifted his weight and caught one breast in his large hand, squeezing as he worked his fingers toward her nipple. But his eyes were latched again onto hers. “I want to see you covered in my cum and too fuckin’ tired to wash it off.” He leaned forward and bit at her collar, his breath hot on her skin. “I want it drippin’ from you, caked into your skin, dribbling from those pretty lips”—he moved his mouth to her ear—“do you understand how thoroughly I want to claim you, baby?”
She almost laughed. Not because his words were funny in the traditional sense, but because she was beginning to think she was hallucinating. Perhaps she’d fallen off that table and hit her head, or perhaps she’d never left her room that morning at all. All of which would be a shame, because she was so proud of herself for this progress she’d made, but she wasn’t about to squander what might be the best sex dream of her life, either.
Evelina skated her fingers over his bare sides, reveling in his warm skin and tight muscle. “Then now’s your chance,” she said. “Stake your claim. Teach me who I belong to, Otto.” She almost couldn’t believe the words coming out of her mouth. But it was Otto. If she could surrender herself to anyone, he’d always been that person.
Otto growled, caught her lips in another hard, demanding kiss, and his hands swept down to her pants. He worked them loose without breaking the kiss, sucking her tongue into hismouth as he eased the zipper down and trailed his fingers around the curve of her hips.
Having his touch on the inside of the fabric at her waist, against her practically bare hips, was somehow more scandalizing and thrilling than the way he’d lavished her breasts.
Then he ripped away from her lips, disappeared from over her, and dropped to a crouch between her legs.
“Otto, what—”
“Need you all the way naked,” he said with a grunt at the same time as she felt him wiggling a boot off her foot. “If I’m gonna fuck you with shoes on, these aren’t the shoes.”
He said it so matter-of-factly, she couldn’t help but giggle. “You say that like you’ve thought it out.”
“Strappy heels you wear to fancy dinner parties,” he said, already working on her second boot. “Takes you like five minutes to put ‘em on and you damn near rip ‘em off as soon as you get home after. But fuck do they look good on your legs.” He finished the brain-numbing declaration by pressing a kiss to the top of the foot in his hand. “And your legs don’t even need the help.”
Her laughter, and all the other breath, had thoroughly rushed from her lungs.
Hehadthought it out.
He’s really thought about this—about me, about us—before…Her throat swelled and she replayed the words he’d said only minutes earlier in her mind.
Otto’s fingers hooked over the loosened waist of her pants, catching the barely there strap of her panties, and tugged. Her body moved with him to help him slide the material free whileher mind continued to process the depth of the situation. His hands stroked up her calves and his thumbs curved, touch suddenly feather-light, over the also-still-healing wounds on her knees. She could at least get away with wearing Band-Aids on them, but wearing multiple Band-Aids on her knees made her feel like a child so she was trying to keep them covered.
Except, under Otto’s light touch, she only felt like a treasure.
“Fuck, I wish I could’ve kept you from hurtin’ yourself like this,” he said, almost as if he were thinking out loud. He bent his head and pressed light kisses to the skin between the bandages on each knee, careful not to aggravate the wounds themselves.
Her heart fluttered. “Otto,” she whispered. Then she swallowed, because she didn’t know how to tell the man who’d just stripped her and was touching her so gingerly that she didn’t care about those injuries. Let alone that she’d do it again if it kept him alive. So, she settled on a truth that better matched the moment and stretched out her arms. “I need you.”
