He pushed my shirt up and over my head, leaving it bunched around my left arm. It would have to stay there, because I was still connected to the IV. He drew his hands down, hovering just above my skin, not touching as he swept his eyes over me. It reminded me of a pianist poised just before beginning to play a piece. It was beautiful to watch him.

He bowed over me, starting at the hollow of my throat, and drew downward with his tongue as far as he could go. He dragged it achingly slow over my sternum, down my stomach and to my navel, where he gave some special attention to the indentation. He never got near my br**sts and the obvious evasion got me undulating for him, my body already on fire, craving his touch.

He looked up from my navel just before reaching for the waistband of my leggings. He drew down with his tongue as his hands drew down the leggings, right over the center of me, to lick at my sex. His tongue pushed between the folds and found my clit swollen and aching for him. I bowed off the bed and moaned as he devoured me to the brink of orgasm with his lips and tongue.

“Not yet, my beauty,” he rasped against my pu**y, slowing down the flick of his tongue to keep me on the edge of climax without crashing over. He pressed a palm over my stomach and with the other hand managed to pull the leggings straight down and off my legs completely with a little lifting help from my raised hips.

He opened one of my legs wide and high and growled a sound of pure carnal lust, staring down at me spread for him, his other palm still planted on my belly. Ethan had me totally exposed and bared, pinned by his hands when he descended again and inserted his tongue, penetrating me as far as he could go. He worked magic with that tongue of his, and I felt myself falling as everything within my body was pulled toward a release. I might die if he didn’t give it to me.

“Say it to me now,” he commanded with a harsh breath at my center.

Again, I understood him. I knew precisely what he wanted to hear.

“I love you, Ethan! I love you. I love you so much . . .” I sobbed my declaration, barely able to form audible words.

He heard me, though.

Ethan wrapped his perfect tongue around my pearl and sucked it hard. I went off like a nuclear explosion, slow at first, and then a rolling pause just before the incendiary blast that broke me apart into countless fragments. Pieces of me that could only be collected and reassembled by one man. Only Ethan could do that. This truth I understood implicitly. The one who had the power to take me apart was also the only one with the power to put me back together again.

Ethan’s blue eyes were hovering over me when I opened mine. He’d moved back up my body, his hand where his mouth had just been, long fingers sliding slowly up inside me, his thumb just pressing on the bundle of nerves in a decadent sensation of pleasure.

I floated there, still breathing hard, looking up at him, accepting his kiss and his intimate touches. The taste of me on his lips always made me feel cherished for some reason. Like he wanted to share his experience with me. He brought his fingers up from where they’d been buried deep and pressed them, curved, into my mouth, sliding them in and out along my tongue. It was intimacy on top of more intimacy. Ethan whispered erotic things to me about how I felt and looked and tasted and smelled, and what he was going to do to me next.

I was impatient for more, though, especially feeling his c**k hard and huge against my leg, realizing he had pulled off his boxers at some point. I tried to get closer by circling my hips against his stiff length. He chuckled and whispered something about giving it to me in his own sweet time.

I returned to the thought that I might be dead by then.

“My Ethan . . .” I tried to touch him with my hand, but he just dragged my arm back up over my head and gave me a look that needed no translation. I rolled my head from side to side, needing more and feeling desperate.

“Tell me what you want,” he crooned against my neck.

I arched again, trying to meld us together, but Ethan controlled the speed. “I want—I want to feel you inside me,” I begged him.

“Mmmm . . . you will, baby,” he chanted huskily. “Now you will. I’m going to give you my cock—very . . . very . . . slowly. So slow and so far up in you you’ll feel every molecule of me . . . inside you.”

I would die.

I felt him shift into position between my legs, widening me, his hard length tipped already and slowly rocking against my soaked flesh, but he didn’t enter me yet. I knew what he was doing. He was savoring, drawing out the anticipation, treating me to every small sensation of touch and pleasure, so slowly, as if we had forever. I had a gentle and very patient Ethan loving me tonight.

He propped up on his hands and rocked his hips a little more each time, still slow and controlled as he moved in infinitesimal strokes with just the tip of his penis kissing the hot flesh of my pu**y over and over and over again. His body pulsed above me, our eyes locked and burning at each other, when he dipped his head down to touch his forehead to mine. Only once that connection was made did he thrust into me all the way, finally giving in to the completion of the act, burying himself to his balls as the most erotic wheeze came out of his throat.

I cried out from the glory of it.

Ethan found my lips again and thrust his tongue into me in tandem with the elegant sliding thrusts of his cock, taking his time to bring me along. I knew he would hold off until either I came again or was about to.

His pace increased steadily and I squeezed my inner walls as hard as I could around him, trying to get every bit of him I could. I knew it was working when he swelled even tighter and began to make those harsh breaths with every thrust. The sounds he made were beautiful to me, building in my head along with the gripping pulses at my core barreling me toward another climax.

When he covered one nipple with his mouth and tugged on the other one in a gentle pinch I was suddenly there, crashing uncontrollably along like a tidal wave does, bringing everything with it. Ethan stared me down as he blew apart with a shuddering roar and filled me up with hot bursts, the last few strokes furiously fast before slowing to gentle rotations that drew the last bit of pleasure out between us until falling into a hovering stillness.

I was full of him now and I didn’t want the feeling to go. I wanted to stay like this with him forever. In this moment, it felt like forever was a glorious possibility.

But he rolled onto his back and took me along with him until I was on top, my left wrist completely unbothered by all that we’d just accomplished. Now he allowed me to use my hands to touch him. I brought them to his chest and splayed them there, feeling the pounding of his heart against my palms.