21. Dessert

21

Dessert

NICOLE LAMB

Nicole toddled along with Kingston, holding his hand again, for the last few yards until they got to a ground-floor suite in a two-story, four-plex villa, where he used his phone to activate a keypad beside the door and let them in.

Inside was a house.

On the other side of the wide living room was a dining room and a small kitchen, and then a door to a bedroom stood ajar.

Nicole was attuned to floor plans and square footage, having just moved apartments. This part of the hotel suite was definitely half the footprint of the entire house she’d grown up in. Depending on the bedroom, she guessed the suite was at least fifteen hundred square feet.

For a hotel room.

For one person.

Yeah, Kingston was used to nice things.

Their open bottle of wine was sitting on the coffee table with two fresh glasses, plus one slice of apple pie and a tri-striped serving of the triple chocolate mousses she’d mentioned while they looked at the menu. “When did you order this?”

“I wrote it on the bill.”

“Sneaky,” she said, grinning.

“I’ve been called worse.”

He locked the door and slid her backpack down a chair back to its seat. He fiddled with his phone, and soft music began playing from speakers.

“Neat trick,” she said.

He tossed his phone on the chair by her backpack. “Dessert?”

“Sure.”

Silverware had been folded into white napkins beside their desserts.

The cream-colored couch was a nest of softness she sank into, a velvet-covered hug.

Yeah, the La Quinta paled by comparison at every turn. Nicole wasn’t even staying here, and she was getting spoiled.

Kingston landed beside her on the couch and reached for the two desserts, holding them out to her. “You mentioned the mousses, or you can trade me for the apple pie.”

“You don’t have a preference?” she asked him.

He shrugged. “I like dessert.”

She took the crystal cup of triple chocolate mousses and, following his lead, dug in.

They were smooth, heavenly, and rich, kind of like Kingston.

After his first bite of pie, Kingston raised his eyebrows and seemed pleasantly surprised, and he forked off a bite and held it out to her. “Want to try this one?”

Nicole leaned over and, rather than taking his fork out of his hand or maneuvering her spoon to somehow take the bite off his fork, she wrapped her lips around the bite of apple pie.

Which was kind of familiar for two people just getting to know each other, last Wednesday night notwithstanding.

She looked up and saw the darkness expand in his blue eyes like secret thoughts taking over his mind.

Looked like she hadn’t made a faux pas.

She slid her lips slowly backwards off the fork, taking the apple pie with her, and chewed.

It was a really impressive apple pie—tart, juicy apples in a perfectly crisp and flaky crust.

Again, something about the La Quinta, and she could get used to this.

She scooped up a bite containing some of each of the dark rainbow in her cup and held her spoon out to him, looking him straight in the eyes. “Trade?”

Instead of leaning over to take the bite from her hand like she’d done, he set his pie plate aside and slid her spoon from between her fingers. Closing his eyes, he sipped the mousses off the spoon, his lips precise to not smear the chocolate foam all over himself.

Some guys would have been gross and tongued the spoon like an audition, but not Kingston.

Besides, he didn’t need to audition. She’d already seen his work, and he was totally hired any time he wanted.

He handed the spoon back to her and looked her directly in the eyes. “Spectacular.”

Nicole’s breath quivered in her chest, and she didn’t look away from his intense gaze. “I’m glad you—I’m glad you liked it. Do you want more?”

His word was almost a gasp. “ Yes.”

Nicole got the dessert cup out of her lap and onto the coffee table as Kingston launched himself at her.

He scrambled across the couch, grabbing her wrist and pulling her toward him, his mouth crashing down on hers in a deep, insatiable kiss.

Finally!

Nicole kissed him and wound her arms around his neck, dragging herself up to stand on her knees.

But he pressed her backward while still kissing her, crawling over her, until she was lying with her back was pressed against the couch.

Kingston straddled her and curved one arm under her back to drag her body up to meet his. His other arm was braced on the arm of the couch above her head, caging her while he kissed her. She was a prisoner of his body and helpless and a hundred percent there for it.

He broke off, and his eyes were unfocused with the wine or passion. “I have been restraining myself all evening. For days , really. I am obsessed with you in a manner I didn’t know I could be. I need you. “

The choke in his voice sounded desperate.

Hunger for him cramped her arms and legs as she wiggled, trying to press her body more tightly against him. “I have a Plan B with me,” she said. “And a condom. Must be a condom.”

“Yes.” He ducked his head. His mouth warmed her throat under her jaw. “Look, if I’m doing something you don’t like—if you want me to stop or slow down—Fuck, we should have had this conversation earlier. I can’t even think. I can’t even form words. Just—use traffic light colors, okay? Red for stop. I’ll stop. I will. Yellow for not-that or slow down or something. And it’s all fine. Just tell me. Got it?”

Passion raged through her head like a hurricane, but his ominous tone got through. “What do you want to do to me?”

His growl was feral. “I want to fuck you until you’re mine. I want to twist your body and take you every way. I want to own every part of you until you can’t even think of anyone else. I want.”

The thick muscles of his back under her hands, his warmth surrounding her, and the caress of his mouth on her neck short-circuited her brain so hard that she could barely use her tongue and her mouth to make words. She wanted to taste him, feel him in her mouth and the back of her throat, grab handfuls of him with her palms.

“Green,” Nicole panted. “Please, green.”

His kiss on her shoulder where he’d shoved her neckline aside turned into a bite, raking his teeth over her skin. It didn’t hurt. It was just more intense.

Intense was the word. Everything about Kingston was suddenly intense. His fingers curving and digging into her waist. His breath rasping in his throat. The wildness in his eyes as he pushed himself up to shove her dress up her body and over her head.

Kingston glanced down her body, seeing the black lace bra and panties she’d chosen for him, too. He bit one side of his lower lip, looking at her like he couldn’t stop, and with a deep breath that bowed his back like a bull, he dived to press his mouth to her throat again.

She raised her arms, but he didn’t finish pulling it off her. Instead, he twisted one side of it, pulling the stretchy knit fabric tight like a tourniquet around her wrists, locking them together.

Nicole was getting an idea about what Kingston was into in the very small part of her brain that wasn’t drowning in the flood of sensations, which was telling her to keep a lid on everything, but to heck with that. She was along for the ride. She’d never done anything like that, but she’d never felt anything like this. The hunger escaped her with a moan.

Kingston raised his head a little, glaring at her from where he’d been mouthing her neck, but with a half-smile. He twisted his wrist, tightening her dress around her wrists. “You like it?”

She nodded, even if her eyes stretched a little wide.

He hovered over her, staring right into her eyes. “Are you afraid?”

A lot could go wrong in situations like this. Nicole nodded again.

“But you aren’t saying stop,” he said. “You aren’t saying red.”

She shook her head.

“Good girl,” he said, his voice low, and he held her dress wrapped around her wrists as he dipped back to kiss down her throat toward her bra.

A wisp of coolness floated through the storm in her body, soothing that rasp of fear.

He dragged his arm out from under her and caressed her curves up her body, holding the swell of her breast as he dragged his thumb over the top of her bra.

Passion blanked her again, raging through her as she wanted more, more.

When she was arching into his hand, he flipped her bra cup aside, pinched her nipple in a tweak of pain that lanced through the storming pleasure, and then covered her with his hot mouth, running his tongue around her and sucking hard.

She was a wiggling mess, writhing under where he’d pinned her arms down with his hand and her legs together with his thighs. Every time she twisted, her thighs rubbed together, almost stimulating that part of her that ached with need.

He did the same thing to her other breast, the hard pinch of pain before his mouth, and she cried out this time.

His mischievous smile at her cry terrified her, but his mouth covered her, soothing and sucking, and the pleasure swamped her in a wave.

Kingston sat up, still watching her like he was hunting her, and moved one of his thighs to part hers before swooping down to ravage her mouth again.

His muscular thigh pressed between her legs, a rough push, and her hips lifted to ride the pressure that only tightened, tormenting her more. It was closer, she was closer, but still not deep enough, not hard enough. The lack, the hunger, was driving her out of her mind.

“Please,” she whispered.

His voice was lower than she’d ever heard him. “Tell me green.”

“Green!” she whimpered. “Green, I told you green, please green.”

“Good girl,” he growled again.

This time, the soothing was stronger, that her wanting had pleased him, that her surrender was what he really wanted.

He reared back, still holding her hands twisted up in her dress on the arm of the couch because he was so tall that he could reach all of her, and lifted her thigh to bend her knee beside his hips. Slowly, as he watched her like a wolf and she watched him back through her eyelashes of her nearly closed eyelids, he ran his hand down the inside of her leg and under the lace leg band of her panties, gently swiping over her swollen clit.

Exquisite pleasure attacked her, compressing her inside, but it was one touch, barely a stroke, then too long and she was falling, and then another.

It was too little and too much, keeping her from riding over the crest but not allowing her to breathe. Her breath choked in her throat as she tried to push down on him, but his hand pinning her wrists prevented her from bearing down on him.

“Please!” she cried out.

“Oh, no. Not yet,” he said. “I have barely started with you.”

“Then—then— please!”

Her brain wasn’t making words.

He flicked her clit again, another wave of sensation through her that verged on pain except that she craved more-more- more.

His fingers slipped lower, pushing inside her, a deeper rub that she tried to arch against, but his touch was just a little too slow, withholding what she was craving.

“So wet,” he whispered, dragging his finger out and circling her clit with slipperiness.

A thicker fullness invaded her, a stretch.

“That’s it. Take my fingers,” he said.

A deep movement inside her, and the pleasure inside her amplified like a tornado.

“You like it when I curl them, when I stroke you inside.”

He wasn’t asking her. He knew.

The weight left her wrists and the pressure withdrew, and she was empty and cold and crazed lying on the couch. She almost sobbed.

Kingston was standing beside her, stripping his shirts off over his head, and he was ripped, swollen muscles braided under his skin that flexed as he threw his shirt and undershirt on the floor and unbuckled his belt.

Nicole didn’t move her arms from above her head where he’d tied them, but she watched him because getting an eyeful of that hard, muscular manflesh was electrifying.

Yeah, that man was the man who wanted her.

He shoved his trousers off with his shoes and socks and was on her again, lying on her, crushing her with his weight and the heat of his skin against hers.

More. She needed more. Not just on her but in her.

His knee shoved between her legs again, parting her thighs, and he reached beyond where her hands were to the side table drawer.

A ribbon of condoms floated over her head as he sat up, and he ripped open the top one and slapped it over himself. “Say yes again. Say it.”

“Yes,” she said, wiggling to move down as if that would help. “Green. Yes.”

He grabbed her knee with one hand and crammed her leg up against her stomach, holding her open.

The vulnerability scared her like he was holding a knife to her stomach, but he crawled backward and pressed his mouth to her again, his wet tongue circling her clit and then penetrating her.

Her whole body came off the couch, reaching for that orgasm that he was withholding and they both knew it, and then he did it again.

Kingston crawled up her and held himself while his body pressed her leg against her stomach, and he began to push into her.

She’d known. She’d had his thick and long erection in her mouth and throat, and she’d run her hands up and down it, and yet she squirmed as he slowly pumped into her, filling and stretching her until she thought he was going to tear her in half, and yet there was more of him.

He kept going, withdrawing and invading, filling her harder and deeper with himself as she whimpered, squirmed, trying to reach for the orgasm she was hanging over the precipice of, and yet there was more of him.

And then he finally pressed his hips against her, the ache of fullness and need consuming her.

“Fuck, yes,” he ground out, throwing her dress to the floor and freeing her hands. He braced himself on his elbows around her head and moved inside her, friction inside and against her clit. “Take it all. Good girl. Take it all.”

She was a butterfly pinned to a board, helpless but to writhe as he took her.

Every stroke was a higher shove, the intensity crushing her as he moved in her, and then with a few rough shoves against her, the pressure detonated. The wave of pleasure charged up her spine to her head, and she bucked as he stroked into her, each pulse grabbing her and tossing her higher, again and another one, another crest of ecstasy under she was exploding and throbbing with each deep thrust and she was gone in the void.

His arms were around her, holding her, keeping her from dying, she thought.

Holding her climax at bay for so long had nearly destroyed her, and she wanted him to do that again.

“You’re okay,” he told her.

“Oh, God. Yeah, I’m better than okay,” she gasped, sucking air into her lungs because she’d forgotten how to breathe. “Wow.”

“Good.”

His low tone didn’t suggest exhaustion. Indeed, it sounded more like a confirmation.

“Did you—?” she asked.

“No. I’m just getting started.”