Eight Ways to Ecstasy by Jeanette Grey

the height her head hit on his chest.
    He sank to his knees. He’d been on them for her before, prepared to put his mouth on her or to beg her for another chance. Tonight, he slid the flats of his palms down the outsides of her thighs, curled his hands around her knees before dragging them lower. With his brow pressed to the back of her leg, he grasped her ankle. She got his hint when he fit his grip around her shoe. She lifted one foot and then the other for him.
    When he rose again, it was to kiss every vertebra on his way up her spine. He stepped his bare feet to either side of hers and took her in his arms, pressing all of him to all of her. A wall in his mind collapsed, letting him really feel her, the curves and the edges, the smooth softness of her skin. The hard line of his cock met the small of her back, and just like that it was arousal. It was sex.
    And it was so, so much more.
    He turned her in his arms. Her makeup around her eyes was smudged, the edges damp, and she was so beautiful, it nearly brought him right back to his knees.
    “Better?” he asked, the sound too raw.
    She nodded, averting her gaze, staring at his chest instead of at his eyes, and that was wrong. He put a hand to her chin to lift it, only for her to reach up, to wrap her fingers around his own. She brought them to her lips, and it was fire, was a punch to the gut as she touched him.
    He’d been so deliberate, every motion to peel away their clothes an act of sheer restraint, but all of that was gone now. With heat and a sudden need so bright it seared him to his bones, he let the hesitancy, the distance, fall away.
    When he tilted her head up this time, it was to take her mouth, to possess it. She met him with a desperation he wasn’t sure he understood, except that it resonated with his own.
    “I’ll do better,” he mumbled, working to breathe past the slick glide of her tongue, the plush of her lips against his. “I promise.” He cupped her neck, fit his thumb to the hollow of her jaw and held on. “But you have to let me.”
    He kissed her again until the stiffness in her limbs began to ease, then took a step toward her bed, guiding her along. When they reached the mattress, he shoved the other, discarded dresses to the floor. They fell in a clatter, and he didn’t care. She didn’t seem to, either.
    At his prompting, she lay down in the center of the bed, a vision of creamy flesh and soft curves, dark hair in a cloud about her shoulders, and he could gaze at her all night, except that he was dying to touch, his hands shaking and cock screaming for it. Predatory, he settled above her with his knees caging her thighs, spine straight, arms braced. He gazed down at her. At her hands to either side of her head.
    He paused. She’d put them there the last time, too, and he’d encouraged it, wanting her helpless to the pleasure his body could bring hers. But now it was different. Passive, like she had been all night, except to tell him she was mad at him.
    Now, it felt wrong.
    He shook his head, the words to explain too far away, too slippery. So instead of trying, he flipped them, getting himself flat on his back. Making it so he stared up at her.
    Confusion marred her features, and his heart clenched. This was that skittishness he’d seen too many times before. He grabbed her by the arms before she could retreat or protest. He wanted to shake her.
    “You have to let me do better.” His throat chafed. “You have to make me do better.”
    He’d been the one to come to her, all right. Had crossed an ocean because she had shown him the holes in his own life. Because he knew he had to fill them but didn’t know how to without her.
    She’d agreed to give him another chance. But that was all she had done.
    In another world, another life, she’d challenged him at every turn, calling him out on his bullshit and making fun of his terrible lines. He wanted that Kate. He wanted more limits than a refusal to let him spend the night.