His mouth is on my neck.
Slow. Deliberate. Tracing a line from my jaw to my collarbone that leaves a trail of heat on my skin like a lit fuse burning toward something inevitable. His lips find the hollow of my throat where my pulse is hammering so hard he must be able to taste it — the rhythm of a woman who stopped pretending ten seconds ago and hasn't figured out who she is without the pretense.
"Mia." My name against my skin. Not the mocking way, not the contractual way, not the way he says it when he's performing for cameras or putting me in my place. The other way — the one I've been pretending I don't want to hear, the one that sounds like a man coming apart at the seams and using my name to hold himself together. Reverent. Broken. A prayer aimed at the place where my bra strap meets my shoulder.
His hands slide the dress off my shoulders — unhurried, not fumbling, the hands of a man who knows exactly what he's unwrapping and has decided to take his time with it. The fabric pools around my waist and the air hits my bare skin and I shiver, not from cold but from the way his eyes follow the fabric down, tracking the new territory like he's memorizing it. His thumb traces my collarbone from one end to the other, so light it barely qualifies as touch, and my whole body arches toward his hand like a plant toward light.
"Tell me to stop," he says against my shoulder. His teeth catch my bra strap and drag it down, and the sound that leaves my mouth is one I've never heard myself make — low, involuntary, scraped from somewhere deep.
"Don't stop."
His mouth closes over my breast through the thin fabric and my back bows off the couch cushion, my hand fisting in his hair, pulling him harder against me. He groans — the vibration traveling through the lace into my skin, setting off a chain reaction that runs from my chest to the base of my spine. His other hand is at my back, finding the clasp, and the bra falls away and his mouth finds bare skin and the sensation is so sharp I gasp, my fingers twisting tighter in his hair, my hips pressing upward into his.
He shifts his weight and settles between my thighs. The friction of his body against mine sends a current through me that whites out every rational thought I've ever had — every contract clause, every PR schedule, every reason this is a catastrophic idea dissolving like sugar in boiling water. I pull him closer, my fingers digging into the muscles of his back, feeling them shift and tighten under my hands as he moves against me. His mouth travels from my breast to the space between my ribs, kissing a slow line down my sternum, and every place his lips land leaves a mark I'll feel for days.
His hand slides down my ribs. Over my hip. Fingers hooking into the waistband of my underwear with a question his mouth is too busy to ask — his lips on my stomach now, moving lower, his breath hot against the skin below my navel.
"Yes." The word is out before my brain clears it, my voice unrecognizable, raw. "Yes."
He peels them down my thighs with both hands, his mouth following the path of his fingers, kissing a line down my hip bone, my outer thigh, the sensitive skin behind my knee. My legs fall open and his shoulders press between my knees and the vulnerability of it should terrify me but instead it feels like the first honest position I've been in since I signed his contract — no performance, no costume, nothing between his mouth and the truth of me.
His breath is hot against my inner thigh. He holds there — one second, two — his lips barely grazing the skin, close enough that I can feel the warmth of his mouth but not the contact, and the anticipation coils so tight in my stomach that I make a sound that's halfway between a plea and a threat. My fingers twist in his hair. My hips lift toward him.
When his mouth finds me the world drops away. I make a sound that doesn't have a consonant in it — just vowels, just heat, just the helpless, desperate noise of a woman whose body has been running on adrenaline and caffeine and fear for weeks and is finally, finally being touched by someone who is paying attention to every reaction, every shudder, every sharp inhale. His tongue moves in slow, devastating circles that build something at the base of my spine — a pressure that starts low and spreads upward through my hips, my ribs, my chest, coiling tighter with every pass.
My thighs are shaking around his head. My hand grips the couch arm above me so hard the leather creaks. His hands hold my hips in place — firm, steady, the grip of a man who knows exactly what he's doing and has no intention of stopping until he's finished. I'm saying his name. Not Morgan. Not the quarterback. Just Jared — the two syllables repeated like a language I'm inventing in real time, each iteration more broken than the last. His rhythm changes — faster, more focused, his tongue finding the exact center of the building pressure and pressing against it with a precision that makes my vision blur.
He slides two fingers inside me without breaking rhythm and the addition of fullness to friction is more than my body can process. My spine lifts off the cushion. My hand in his hair pulls hard enough to hurt and he groans against me and the vibration adds a third sensation to the two already dismantling me. His fingers curl upward, finding a place that sends a bolt of white light from my pelvis to my skull, and the coil that's been tightening snaps.
I come apart. My back arches off the couch and my thighs lock around his head and the sound that tears out of me fills the room — his name, fractured, repeated, meaningless, the syllables dissolving into pure sound as the wave rolls through me in pulses that start at his mouth and radiate outward through every nerve I own. His hands hold my hips steady while I shake. His mouth stays gentle, slowing, easing me through it, and the tenderness of the deceleration is almost worse than the climax — the care of it, the attention, the fact that he's still there, still present, still saying my name against my skin as I come down.
My body goes liquid. Every muscle that's been clenched for weeks releases at once and I'm boneless against the cushions, my hand still in his hair, my chest heaving, my eyes closed. He presses a kiss to my inner thigh. Another to my hip. Works his way up my stomach, my ribs, the valley between my breasts, my collarbone, my neck, my jaw, and when his mouth finally reaches mine I taste myself on his lips and the intimacy of it is so raw and so real that something inside my chest cracks open that I'll never be able to close.
He pulls back. Looks at me. His eyes in the dark are greener than I've ever seen them and his breathing is ragged and his hand is cradling my face and he opens his mouth to say something and—
Sunlight. Wrong sunlight — too bright, too warm, slicing through the living room curtains at an angle that has no business existing inside a dream. My eyes snap open and the ceiling is wrong and the couch is wrong and the dream shatters around me like a window hit by a stone, every fragment still glowing, his mouth still a phantom between my thighs, and I'm awake and the morning is pouring in.