Chapter 23

CIARA

My body is singing. I can feel it crackle with energy, spark with each breath of Red's that caresses my skin. Theirs is a frisson of excitement deep in my belly, and down—further—in my cunt, and I want to savor it for as long as I possibly can.

Everything shrinks down until I'm aware of nothing in the world, but Red.

She leans into me, nudging my legs apart with her thigh and then doesn't have the decency to press herself against me, and I realize what this is.

She's making me choose.

Making me complicit in my own pleasure.

The tension reverberates through my body and I need her touch. I need her touch or I might shatter, and not in the way that I'm hoping for.

I slide my hands up until they are nestled in her hair, and then pull her mouth down hard upon my neck.

Red bites instantly, then sucks and I keen, the sound shocking in the quiet of the woods. She groans at the sound, and goes at my neck harder. The sensation rides the line between pleasure and pain, the sharpness of her teeth blending with the intense pull of suction. I'm going to have the mother of all love bites on my neck.

And I want it.

I want her to bite me all over, mark me all over, so that I can never be mistaken for belonging to anyone but her.

"Red," I gasp out, and she lifts her head.

"More?"

"More."

She growls and my pussy clenches, and oh gods do I need her between my legs. I reach out, grasping for her, to pull her tight against me, and when her thigh slides between my legs, the sigh I let out is one of relief.

I'm slick already, I can tell that, but when I ride her thigh she swears into my neck, and Red's as tightly wound as I am in this moment. The idea that my desire, my desperateness for her only heightens her own desperation is enough to make me fist her hair and pull her mouth up to kiss me.

"Good girl," she mutters, low and throaty, and the praise hits me somewhere I didn't expect it to. She senses it and lifts her head to look at me. "Ciara, you are the best of girls."

I almost cry then, and pull her mouth back down to join with mine, to kiss away all the doubts I've ever had about my worth.

Somehow, this woman seems to adore me. And it's what I've wanted for so, so long.