The Road to Rose Bend by Naima Simone (best book club books of all time txt) 📕

under her bottom lip, applying pressure to open her mouth wider to him. Give him more of her. Always more with this woman. Never enough.

She rose on her toes, offering him all that he demanded. And then she took in return. Curled her tongue around his, sucked hard so he felt the pull of it in his dick. Licked the roof of his mouth so the wet, luxuriant caress resulted in a twin, phantom stroke over his abdomen. Lightly bit his lip, and his nipples tingled with that hint of pain and so much pleasure.

Wrenching his mouth away from hers, he circled her wrist and yanked it away from his shirt. His chest heaving on his ragged breaths, he led her out of the kitchen.

Or started to.

She tugged on his hold, and dismay punched a hole in his gut. But before he could ask her what was wrong, she flung her arms around his neck, crushed her body to his and opened her mouth against the base of his throat. He shuddered, his arms automatically wrapping around her.

“No,” she panted. “Don’t stop kissing me.”

Unable to resist that request, he dipped his head and parted her lips with his tongue. Tasting her again. And like before, he became lost in it, devouring her in a raw, explicit demonstration of what he wanted from her, wanted to do to her. Grabbing a hold of the scraps of his control, he moaned, tearing his mouth away from her.

“Baby girl, if we don’t stop right now, we won’t make it to the bedroom.” He delivered the warning against her cheek.

“That’s fine.” She tried to capture his mouth again, but he lifted his head, meeting her pleasure-darkened eyes. But glimpsing uncertainty in their depths.

“What’s wrong?” He cupped the back of her neck. “What’s going on in that head of yours?”

She sank her teeth into her bottom lip, and he barely restrained himself from licking the curve.

“Sydney,” he urged, squeezing her nape.

She huffed out a breath, and he would’ve smiled at the irritated sound if her lashes hadn’t lowered, hiding. “I just don’t want you to change your mind,” she admitted. “In the time it takes for us to get from the kitchen to the bedroom, if you start to think...”

She trailed off, but he caught her meaning. He released a rough chuckle. When her brow wrinkled in a frown, he planted a kiss in the middle of the vee.

“I’m not going to change my mind,” he assured her. When she still didn’t meet his eyes, he clasped one of her hands and drew it down between them. Pressed it over the thick, throbbing length of his cock. Her gaze crashed to his, the heat there like an incinerator to his skin. Without breaking their visual showdown, she curled her fingers around him, squeezing. His hips punched forward, grinding his erection into her grip. This time, it was him who closed his eyes and muttered a soft curse. “No damn way I’m changing my mind,” he repeated. “But you’re pregnant and this is our first time together. I’m not fucking you on the kitchen table. At least not the first time,” he rumbled, removing her hand and circling her wrist.

Not giving her time to object again, he guided her from the room, not stopping until they reached his bedroom.

Where she belongs.

The words ricocheted off his skull, but he mercilessly smothered them. Being married, having access to one another, wasn’t the same as belonging, he reminded himself. Even as he reclaimed her mouth and plundered it.

She whimpered, surrendering to him. Trusting him with her body. No, she might not have said the words, but the way she tilted her head back, opened for him, melted against him... He didn’t need the words when her body did all the talking. She didn’t—and shouldn’t—entrust her heart to him, but her pleasure, her inhibitions? There was no safer place than with him.

And it was that thought that forced his hands to gentle, his mouth to slow. Each thrust and lick and twist of his tongue was a lesson in savoring, in teasing, in worshipping. He might not have acknowledged it until this moment, but he’d been yearning for this since the moment she’d turned to him on that hill behind the church. Weeks. He’d been alive for weeks, brought to life by hunger, by desire for this woman.

So yeah, he would savor.

He stroked his hands down her neck, pausing to cradle her throat and rub his thumbs up and down the front of the elegant column. Her pulse galloped under his touch, and he lowered his head, pressing his lips there, soothing her heartbeat, assuring it that he was only there to give pleasure, not cause harm.

Or maybe he was projecting. Maybe a part of him yearned to ask Sydney for that same assurance.

He shook his head, attempting to dislodge the foolish and terrifying thought.

“What?” Sydney murmured, trailing the backs of her fingers down his cheek. “What’s wrong, Cole?”

He lifted his head, met the warm concern that mingled with the desire in her eyes. “You’re so beautiful,” he whispered. Not a lie. Slowly, he skimmed his hands down her torso and gripped the hem of her top. “Let me see all of you.”

He’d seen and touched her breasts the week before, but this was different. Then, they could still turn around and walk away. Now, with this step taken, there would be no going back. It wasn’t a step he would take without her permission. Without her being fully in.

She nodded, her gaze unwavering. “Yes.”

Only then did he drag the shirt up and toss it aside. Only then did he go to his knees, placing a reverent kiss in the middle of her chest and one on her rounded belly. He slipped fingers under the waist of her shorts and drew them down her thighs, leaving her completely naked before him. Sitting back on his heels, he stared at her, his heart thundering, the raucous beat filling his head.

Exquisite.

She was