Ha! She’d done it! And it wasn’t even that hard.

And best of all, it worked—it worked immediately. He lowered his head and looped his arms under and around her thighs so he could control them. He brought them in until they were brushing against his cheeks. Until his beard was brushing against them. Her skin was damp, and provided some drag as his hair slid across sensitive flesh. He stayed there for a while, kissing one inner thigh, then making a point of turning his head slowly to pay attention to the other. As he turned from one leg to the other, his beard would drag against her center. Every time he made a pass, she moaned. What was the point of holding them in? When you had a man’s face lodged between your legs, worrying about what you sounded like suddenly seemed beside the point.

Eventually he started drifting. His passes across her center would last longer. He would pause and swirl his tongue along her opening before heading back to a thigh.

It was so good. So, so good that she was pretty much continuously moaning now. Every nerve ending in her body strained toward her core, strained toward him. She didn’t want him to go back to her thighs. She wanted him to…

“Stay.”

Again, it was so easy! For once her renegade mouth and her body were working together. Her thighs closed tighter, clamping around his head as if to make him stay.

He growled again, and she laughed from the pure joy of it. Of this feeling. Of being about to come, but also of just saying what she wanted to have happen.

He shifted around a bit and grunted. Was that maybe not a manly sexual grunt but a grunt of discomfort? She glanced down. He’d been kneeling on hardwood for a while now. That couldn’t be comfortable.

“Move over there.” He nodded at the far end of the sofa.

And…there were the nerves again. “We don’t have to—”

“Move. Your ass. There.” He gently swatted her hip, which she supposed was as close as he could get to her butt.

She moved. He arranged her so she was sitting against one end of the couch, her legs spread along it. He let his hands linger, drag along the sensitized skin of her inner thighs. There were those calluses she’d thought about before. They were just as potent as she’d imagined.

Too soon—she was getting really into those calluses—he laid himself out on his stomach, so his head was back between her legs.

Her clit pulsed, but she’d lost some of her momentum.

“It usually takes me a while,” she warned.

He speared her with those blue eyes. They were doing his signature sparking thing, except…more of it. A lot more of it. “You got somewhere to be? I sure as hell don’t.”