“I can’t come? Ever?”

“Not until I tell you. It doesn’t matter how close you are, you wait for my permission. Okay?”

“Doesn’t sound too hard. Not having orgasms with a man is something in which I have plenty of experience.”

He muttered something that sounded a lot like mouthy, and then bent down to kiss me in the way I’d become accustomed to, at once restrained and absolutely filthy.

So new for me, recognizing someone’s kiss fingerprint. Being familiar with Eli’s fresh, woodsy scent. “This is a recurring dream of mine,” he said against one of my nipples before biting it softly.

I sighed in pleasure. “What is?”

“You. Naked. Doing as you’re told.” His thumb pressed against my lower lip. “I’ve always liked being in charge, but with you it’s something else altogether. Because you’re so slippery, maybe. It’s a powerful fantasy, having the right to order you to stay put.” He sounded like he was working through a math problem. When our eyes met, his smile was self-effacing. “Let’s get started, shall we?”

He did what he always did: kiss my breasts, trace the edge of my hip bone, inhale the skin of my throat. It turned me on, but I couldn’t see the destination, and it made me restless.

Which amused him. “Relax.” He examined the white shadow of my appendectomy scar.

“But what should I—”

“I just told you.” His hand slid between my thighs. Teased them apart. “Relax.”

“Don’t you—” Air rushed out of my lungs when he parted me with his thumb. His breath hitched, too.

“You’re always soaked when I first touch you, Rue.” His thumb moved unhurriedly from my entrance to my clit, and then down again. I arched into his touch, heat radiating through my nerve endings. “I like to think that it’s my doing.”

“It’s my doing,” I bit back. Laughter rose from deep in his chest, making me even wetter.

“I might like your tits even more than your lips. And I definitely like your honesty even more than your tits. Believe me, that’s saying something.”

I’d expected him to go down on me, because he seemed to truly enjoy it, and because if the game was to push me to the edge as quickly as possible, it would have been the cost-effective way. But he took his time: he rubbed me leisurely, lightly, just the tip of his fingers over my cunt, and little by little I melted into his touch. I closed my eyes, lay back, and it could have been three or twenty minutes later when I noticed how close I was.

Trembling.

Gripping the sheets.

Chewing on my lower lip and arching into every stroke.

The climb had been so gradual I’d barely noticed, and when I looked at Eli with a disbelieving expression, he smiled, almost sweetly, and eased the tip of his middle finger inside me. “You’re already right there, aren’t you? Clenching around my finger.”

“Because you—” I groaned. His calm was destabilizing. I was more worked up than I could remember being, and he was unaffected.

“You know I’m not going to let you come for a long, long while, don’t you?”

I squeezed my muscles around his thick finger and reveled in his sharp exhale. His cock was still hard, impossibly larger. “What about y-you?”

“Me?” He took his hand away, and I bit back a whimper. I watched him stroke himself from above his sweats, then take his cock out for a few more pumps. “I can come whenever and wherever I choose, Rue. Now. Later. Now and later. Isn’t that fun?”

I closed my eyes, trying to push his entertained tone out of my head, asking my body to wind down. This felt like a joke, a joke I wasn’t in on. All I wanted was—

“Let’s try again, okay?” His voice was soft and patient, and I instantly felt more at ease. But the way his palm spread my thighs was feral, and his mouth on my cunt reminded me that he was in control.

It was agony. Or the best thing I’d ever felt. After what felt like hours, I still couldn’t make up my mind. All I knew was that Eli spared no quarter, and brought me up and up and up with his mouth and his fingers and sometimes with his deep, filthy voice, and then, when I felt like I was going to explode from the tension dilating inside me, he stepped away and left me bereft. Once, I almost came, and he punished me with a soft bite at the edge of my cunt that had me shivering, ready to promise him anything for one more second of contact. I was willing to get myself off with my own fingers. To hump his leg. To be his fucking servant—and then he decided that I was fidgeting too much, and did what he’d promised: he restrained me, both my wrists in his hand, and pinned my arms to my stomach. Opening my legs wider, arching into his mouth and his touch, were the only possible ways to prolong contact with him. And that’s what I did, holding back my pleas until I had no choice but to beg.

“Please.”

“Please, what? What do you need, Rue?”

“I can’t. Please, please, please, make me come. Or let me make myself come. Please.”

He clucked his tongue against my clit, not quite hard enough. I was going to die. “I thought you were an expert. I thought it was easy for you, not coming.”

“You have to—please. You have to.”

“Is this too much, Rue? Would you like me to just finish you off ?” He kissed my belly button, jarringly chaste after the places his mouth had been for the past hour. “Broccoli, Rue?”

I let out hysterical laughter. “No. Not broccoli,” I panted, not sure where the answer came from. Sheer stubbornness. That underlying suspicion that this was doing as much for him as it was for me. There was power that came from giving him something he so clearly wanted. I was miserable and soaring like never before. “I can take it.”

“Are you sure?” His long finger arched inside me. He really did know how to use his hands. Bastard. “You’re really tight right now. Are you sure you can give me a few more minutes?”

I wasn’t, but I nodded vehemently. Overcompensating.

“I’ve wanted to do this to you since I saw you at that hotel bar. I went home afterward and lay in this bed and thought about how serious you were, how self-possessed and solemn, and I imagined how nicely you’d come apart.” He bit softly at the top of my pelvic bone. “I’m fifteen again, Rue. You wouldn’t believe it, how much I jerk off, thinking of you.”

I was unglued. He was ungluing me. “How much longer?”

“You’ve done so well, baby. It’s your first time, and you’ve made me so happy.” He rewarded me with another open-mouthed kiss, and pride burst inside me at his words. “Can you give me five more minutes? Five more, and then I’ll let you come.”

His tone was patronizing. Insulting, really, but it wound me up even harder, cramming more pleasure inside me. “Okay.”

“That’s my girl. And then you can come however many times you want.”

Just once was going to be enough. It was going to rip me apart and wreck me forever. “Okay.”

“But I’m not going to make it easy.” I opened my eyes and met his. Dread mixed with the heat in my belly. I hate you, I thought, loving every second, every touch, every fragment of this. “One last sprint, Rue. Five more minutes, but I get to . . .”

He didn’t say what, but his tongue licked up my slit again—this time with purpose.

I gasped and arched almost completely off the bed.

“Don’t come,” he reminded me, and I nodded blindly, kept nodding as he told me to remember my promise. “Be good, Rue,” he repeated, but the flat of his tongue was pressing against my clit and I couldn’t—just couldn’t.

My legs began shaking, then my arms, and the tingling pressure in my abdomen exploded into shock waves that crashed through my body.

I couldn’t help it, so I screamed, sure that this was the most severe, unyielding pleasure anyone had ever felt at once. Too big for my body and too intense for this world. I was grateful for Eli’s hands holding me, keeping me tethered to something as my vision narrowed, as everything but the splendor of it receded.