Chapter 177 Anchor In the Storm
Chapter 177 Anchor In the Storm
Lily
His tongue worked in tight circles while his teeth grazed the sensitive peak, and my back bowed off the mattress. One of his hands clamped my hip, pinning me down, thumb pressing into the bruise there with just enough pressure to blur the line between pain and pleasure. His other hand found my free breast, palm rough and calloused, fingers kneading with a rhythm that matched the pull of his mouth.
He switched sides without warning, and the brief absence of heat made me whimper. Then his lips sealed around the other nipple, teeth scraping, and the sound he drew from me this time was closer to a sob.
He pulled back just enough to breathe, "Good?"
My voice came out broken. "Don't stop."
Something flickered across his face, relief, maybe, or the first crack in the wall of devastation he'd built around himself. He lowered his head again, mouth tracing down my sternum, over my belly, teeth catching the waistband of my underwear. His eyes lifted to mine, still wet, still red-rimmed, but burning now with an intensity that made my stomach flip.
He tugged.
The fabric ripped at the seam, and the last barrier between us fell away. His palms slid up my inner thighs, spreading me open, and when his thumb found the slick heat at my center, I was already trembling.
His breath ghosted over my hip. "Tell me if it's too much."
I shook my head, fingers twisting in the blanket beneath me. "Just—"
The word dissolved into a moan as his mouth descended.
His tongue moved in slow, deliberate strokes that sent my thoughts scattering like glass shards across concrete.
A moan tore from my throat—unfiltered, desperate, the kind of sound I didn't recognize as my own. My fingers fisted in the blanket, knuckles white, and my hips tried to lift but his hands pinned me flat, thumbs digging into the jut of my hipbones with just enough pressure to hold me still.
"Said you couldn't go slow."
The words came out slurred, barely English. His only answer was a hum against my clit that vibrated through every nerve ending I possessed. My head thrashed sideways, eyes squeezing shut, and another sound escaped—higher this time, closer to a plea.
He was doing this on purpose. He had to be. The man who'd thrown chairs through drywall an hour ago, who'd punched the floor until his knuckles bled, who'd told me flat-out he'd hurt me... that man was nowhere in sight. Instead, Jinx worked me with a patience that bordered on cruelty, his tongue tracing patterns I couldn't predict, alternating broad flat strokes with sharp flicks of the tip that made my vision spark white.
"You're—" A gasp cut off whatever I'd been about to say as his mouth sealed over my clit and sucked. Soft. Gentle. Deliberate. "—fucking killing me."
The corner of his mouth curved against my skin. I felt it more than saw it, the bastard almost-smile that told me he knew exactly what he was doing.
His tongue dipped lower, tasting, and my back arched off the mattress. The stitches in my side screamed protest but the sound was distant, irrelevant, drowned out by the wet heat of his mouth and the scrape of stubble against my inner thighs. He traced my entrance, teasing, never quite pushing inside, and my hips bucked despite his grip.
"Please." The word fell out of me without permission. "Jinx, please."
No response. Just that same unhurried rhythm, up and down, around and back, tongue flat one moment and pointed the next. My thighs trembled on either side of his head. The blanket twisted in my grip, seams popping under the strain.
Then his finger slid inside me.
One knuckle. Two. Curling upward with an accuracy that ripped a sob from my chest.
My body clenched around him, involuntary and immediate, and I was suddenly teetering on an edge I hadn't even seen coming. The pressure built with terrifying speed, pleasure coiling at the base of my spine like a spring wound too tight. Every stroke of his tongue pushed me closer. Every curl of his finger sent another jolt through my nervous system.
"Jinx, I'm—" I couldn't finish. Didn't need to.
He felt it. Of course he felt it. The flutter of my walls around his finger, the way my thighs started to shake, the broken keening sound that leaked from my throat. And he stopped.
Just stopped.
His tongue pulled away. His finger withdrew. The sudden absence of sensation was so abrupt that my hips lifted off the bed, chasing his mouth, a whimper of protest escaping before I could stop it.
I pushed up onto my elbows, vision swimming, and looked down the length of my body.
Jinx knelt between my legs, chest heaving, shoulders rising and falling with breaths that sounded like they'd been dragged through broken glass. His lips glistened. His chin was wet. But it was his eyes that stopped my heart.
The grey was gone.
What stared back at me was something older, something primal, pupils blown so wide they'd swallowed the iris entirely. The tears that had streaked his face were drying, leaving salty tracks through the grime, but he wasn't crying now. He wasn't grieving. He wasn't even thinking, as far as I could tell.
This was a man reduced to instinct.
His hands moved to my jeans, still bunched around my knees, forgotten in the chaos of his mouth. He worked them down with excruciating care, lifting my left leg to ease the denim over the bandaged wound, his touch gentle in a way that contradicted everything burning in his expression. The fabric hit the floor with a wet slap.
Then his hand closed around my ankle.
One yank. Hard and fast and without warning. My body slid down the mattress, the blanket bunching beneath my back, until my ass hung off the edge of the bed and my legs draped over his shoulders.
The position was obscene. Vulnerable. My thighs spread wide, knees hooked over the muscled curve of his traps, nothing between his cock and my entrance but a few inches of charged air.
He didn't make me wait.