I kept still, staring unseeing at the couch, feeling him around me, inside me, never thinking this would be good, never thinking I’d allow this, not again, not ever and there it was. Like everything with Creed, I gave him my trust, he gave me beauty.

Slowly and carefully, he slid out then I was up and turned, knees back in the back of the couch, facing Creed. I barely got my head tipped back to look up at him before the fingers of both his hands drove into the sides of my hair and back, fisting and his face dipped close so his nose nearly brushed mine and he was all I could see.

“Now I have all of you. I own every inch of you. Every centimeter. You gave it to me when you were six and it took me twenty-eight years to claim all of it but now it’s mine, Sylvie. Every…” his fingers gave my hair a gentle tug, “single…” another tug and his eyes burned into mine, “inch.”

Holy shit. How could he be turning me on mere minutes after I had the hugest multiple orgasm in the history of time?

“I take it you really like ass play,” I noted softly and watched his eyes flare.

Then his head shifted back, his hands slid down to the sides of my neck and he announced, “I’m gonna go deal with this condom. You’re gonna go to bed. Take the oil with you. We are far from done.”

Excellent.

That gave me a full body shiver.

I grinned before I reached up, grabbed his head, pulled it down to me and laid a hot, wet, long one on him.

I let him go, jumped to my feet on the couch, jumped from the couch to the floor, snatched up the oil and dashed out of the room, my hair flying out behind me, knowing, every second, Creed’s eyes watched.

* * * * *

“Oh my God. Oh my God!” I cried as my sixth orgasm of the night tore through me, my fingers clenched in Creed’s hair as his mouth devoured me.

Seriously, my man was the master of giving head.

Seriously.

As I came down, I felt him nuzzling my belly with his nose and lips. I lifted up on my elbows and saw while I was still in the throes of my cl**ax, he’d swung my legs off his shoulders and now he had his forearms in the bed on either side of me but my hands were still clenched in his hair.

I tugged gently and his head came up.

I drank him in.

Scar and all, he was beautiful.

To tell him this I slid the fingers of one of my hands to his face, running the tips along his cheekbone, down his nose to trail the path of the line of his lower lip. I trailed them over the scar on his upper lip then up again over the scar on his cheekbone, his temple and through the white streak in his hair. Once I’d accomplished this, my other hand slid the hank of hair that had fallen to his forehead to the side and, as expected, it fell right back to its original position.

I didn’t get to try again as Creed’s big body shifted up over me, settling in, covering me.

He pressed one hand under me so he was braced on one forearm in the bed but still holding me while his other hand curved against the side of my head, thumb sweeping out over my cheekbone and he spoke.

“To respond to your earlier comment, beautiful, yeah, like I mentioned before, I like ass play. But it’s not what you think. It’s tight, it feels good, absolutely, but that’s not it. It’s about trust. It’s about sharing. It’s about giving. For most people it’s about losing your inhibitions and opening yourself up to the next level of intimacy. And with you,” his face dipped closer as his voice dipped lower, “it’s about me giving back what was taken from you and you trusting me to do it. That wasn’t huge. That was something so big, there isn’t a word for it but the closest I can come to it is that it’s beautiful.”

He was not wrong so I agreed, “It was beautiful, baby.” My arms slid around him and held him tight. “And so are you.”

Creed’s eyes, already warm, warmed more, warming straight through me before he grinned and stated, “Glad you didn’t renege on your part of losin’ the challenge.”

I grinned back. “Me too.”

His thumb moved over my face, my cheekbone, down to my jaw and over my lips as his eyes watched and his grin faded.

Then his gaze came back to me.

“That month I was following you, watchin’ you, seein’ how you lived, dressed, what you did, I knew somethin’ had gone wrong. I didn’t know what. I thought you were with Dixon and he cheated on you, didn’t treat you right. The only thing I knew, your Daddy lied, you weren’t happy.”

I contradicted him gently, “Actually, I was happy, Creed.”

“Not the way you deserve to be happy,” he returned immediately.

I didn’t have a reply to that mostly because it didn’t need one. He was right.

He continued to hold my gaze and I knew he read what lay behind it when he whispered, “I’m glad you’re happy, my Sylvie.”

He gave it to me, kept giving it to me, open, honest, putting it right out there so I licked my lips and gave it back to him. “I have the only thing I ever wanted lying on top of me, so thanks for making me happy, Tucker Creed.”

Creed, being Creed, kept right on giving.

“Right back at ‘cha, baby.”

Okay, shit, God, shit!

I loved this man. I knew it but way back when, being young, I didn’t understand.

Now I did.

I so did.

It was time to steer us into waters that didn’t include me possibly bursting into tears and blubbering like a big girl.

“So, you’re the boss tonight, what’s the plan? Are we gonna sleep all oiled up or are we gonna shower before we go to sleep?”

“Sheets are f**ked up. We shower, we gotta change them or we’ll get oiled right back up again.”

This was true, so I gave him the info he needed to make his decision, “I know one thing, I’m not changing sheets tonight.”

Creed smiled. “Then we sleep oiled up.”

That worked for me.

He rolled to his light, I rolled to mine and I barely had it out before I was hauled back to the middle of the bed, tucked close to Creed.

My body, tired out, relaxed, loose, felt sleepy. My mind didn’t.

I was thinking of him following me for a month and wondering, if the roles were reversed and it was me who found him again, how I’d feel. What I’d do. How difficult it would be to stay remote and not approach, especially if I discovered he hadn’t left me of his own free will but had been coerced into it.

“How’d you do it?” I asked his throat in the dark.

“Do what?” Creed asked back.