Chapter 52: Decadent
** Harper **
Harper thought her heart was beating so fast that it might leap out of her throat.
She had felt a bit self-conscious when Eli slipped her bra free. Granted, he had already touched every inch of her body by now, but to bare herself like this in front of his eyes ... was something completely new, and she had felt both excited and frightened by the thought. But now, after the relentless onslaught of his lips and tongue and fingertips, her brain had stopped being able to process any more of those silly doubts and insecurities. All she could feel was the heat coursing through her blood, threatening to burn her alive.
And now, even as he looked up at her from between her legs, even as she knew that the thing he was about to do next was far more intimate, far more embarrassing than what she had felt self-conscious about earlier ... She didn’t care anymore. At that moment, she wanted nothing more than him to kiss her, touch her ... devour her.
Yet he always liked to take his time. Ever so slowly, he pulled on the hem of her shorts and slid them little by little down her hips. The elastic gave, and she heard the soft breath of a smile as her panty was finally revealed to his eyes.
"Pink embroidery," he corrected his prediction. "Lovely."
Harper was just opening her mouth to make a comment when, without warning, he dropped a kiss on the crotch of the garment. Her words turned into a shocked gasp.
"Lovely and sexy," he continued, his mouth just a thread of distance away from where that kiss landed, "especially considering how drenched it is."
Oh God.
Embarrassment struck again, and Harper wiggled a bit nervously between the hold of Eli’s hands. "You can’t expect it to ... not be ... when you—" when you suck my nipples with your mouth like that, she wanted to say, but she couldn’t bring herself to utter the words.
"Oh, trust me that I haven’t the slightest complaint about this." Another kiss landed, this time at the edge of the lace where it met the top of her thigh. "You smell divine, Harper. When I take this thing soaked with your scent off of you, I’m never going to give it back."
Her heart did a wild slam against her chest. After all this time, it still felt so unreal to hear Eli say things like that in such a husky, sultry voice. She shuddered as the warmth of his words brushed against her skin, and the mental image of what he must be seeing in front of his eyes flooded her with a mix of mortification and desire.