Exposure by McKenna, Cara (the beach read .TXT) 📕

powerful fact is the one I uttered only seconds ago—I’ve never, ever felt so close to anyone. I want to slip inside her body, far beyond the mechanics of penetration. I want to feel what she does, see what she does. It seems I nearly can.

I slide my arms under her back and press our cheeks together, she breathing in my ear, I in hers, and I begin to thrust. Her thighs hug my waist tighter, her hips mirroring mine, deepening each thrust, lengthening every withdrawal.

Barely realizing it, I’ve begun moaning. Deep, needy sounds, set to the rhythm of our sex. I hear my name between her labored exhalations. Those same breaths warmed my neck the very first night we did this, steeped in this same awe. I can never give her what she’s given me—exclusive custody of her sexual experiences—but I can give her this moment, this virtual first.

I speed my thrusts and let every shock of pleasure I feel escape from my mouth in grunts and sighs and groans. Take what you want, her hands tell me, urging my hips. And for a glorious minute, I do just that. Let the fire rage until I feel so good, so close, it frightens me that I haven’t come yet. That I can burn this hot and not lose myself. Not go insane from the sheer intensity of this pleasure.

Then all at once, the hands on my sides stop begging.

“Wait,” she says.

Panting, I pause, as easily as I might stop the Earth from spinning. “Yes?”

She pulls away, and my throbbing cock is closed in cold, dry air. I gasp and shiver, so primed it hurts. She twists around in my arms so we’re on our sides, and I understand. I slide my leg between hers, angle my cock and slip back inside her heat from behind. Her moan is soft and tight, excitement sharpening. I wrap her in my arms, chest flush to her back, mouth just behind her ear. I shove my own pleasure into the shadows and concentrate on hers. The breast in my palm is hot from the fire.

“You like me this way,” I murmur. “Behind you.”

“Yes.”

So often I wonder why, when her feelings for me sprouted from a purely visual attraction. Because it feels animalistic somehow, she told me once. Because she likes to hear me losing my mind behind her, all my poise gone. We do enjoy demolishing our lovers, I muse, slipping my hand down her belly, settling it on the soft curls of her mound. We want to see our shy partners turn brazen from what we can do to them. We want to bring our domineering ones to their knees, if only for a moment, if only evidenced by a helpless look in their eyes, a shudder, a whispered plea. If Caroly wants her elegant servant torn to bits by a desire he can’t control, I won’t deny her.

I slip my fingertips to her lips, glancing my own sliding flesh, stealing her slickness. Her clit is already hard, a throbbing knot of nerves begging for my touch. I could circle with exquisite precision, stroke with the lightest, most excruciating pressure. But I won’t. Instead, I let myself feel my own arousal. My cock, wrapped in her. I shut my eyes. My fingers twitch against her clit, unbidden. Whatever I feel, I let it spill from my mouth and into her ear. I bump her thighs with every thrust, and she reaches behind to grasp my flexing hip.

“Didier.”

That alone is a sharp shove, ushering me away from reason and toward the crash. I take her harder, holding my fingers still and letting the motion of the sex dictate the strokes they give. I feel wild and reckless. Bossy. I’ve been crowding her body, and now she’s nearly pinned to the bed but for the elbow propping her up. I drive my leg deeper between her thighs and move the other to join it.

“I’ve wanted this so badly,” I whisper.

“Me too.”

“I’m close.” Saying it spurs my need, edging me closer. For ages I’ve had to be told when it’s my turn to release. It’s my job to know when a woman’s taken everything she needs from me. To read the signals and seek permission. Tonight, though. Tonight I’m holding back not out of duty, but out of desperation. I don’t want this to be over. But every stroke blazes with sensation, burning hotter, hotter…

She doesn’t urge me. She knows some switch in my head wants her attention, needs to be flipped to inform me it’s okay to be selfish, but I can sense she’s denying me. I’m not a whore anymore. I’m just a man. Her equal and her lover, mortal and allowed to lose control. And how good it always feels to me, watching her come apart from our sex. She must want the same. To watch me succumb to the pleasure like most any man can.

Come, she usually says, with her voice or her gaze, with urging hands on my hips. Not now.

I feel the shapes of words forming on my tongue—I’m so close. I swallow them. I sink into my body, into the excitement humming in my cock, into the fire. A groan rises from my throat, erupts from my mouth, an Ahh harsh with need.

She whispers, “Take what you need.”

Take. Not an easy order. Not when I’ve spent all these years only giving. Even alone, just myself and my hand, I don’t come until the woman in my mind tells me to.

But tonight. Come, a voice inside me says. Come, just as you’ve fantasized all this time. Stripped. Bare. Selfish and sinful, come like an animal in heat.

The pleasure’s sharpening, deepening. Beyond friction. Beyond taboo. It cuts like a blade; my body is begging for mercy, my cock hot and hard and screaming for relief. A gleaming knife’s edge sliding along some tendon of self-control, until—

I snap.

“Oh.”

It rushes through me, swallows me up, pulls me under in a crush of