“Yes.” Nita untied the sash and shrugged it from her shoulders, willing her body to quiet.

“Oh,” Deo murmured, resting her hands on Nita’s shoulders. “So much more beautiful than I dreamed.” She traced her thumbs along Nita’s collarbones and then smoothed her palms over Nita’s chest until she cupped her breasts. Nita’s nipples were hard, dark shadows against her smooth light brown skin. Lifting Nita’s breasts in her palms as she had imagined so many times, she licked fi rst one nipple, then the other.

Nita grabbed Deo’s arms to steady herself as her thighs trembled.

“Suck,” she implored hoarsely. “Suck them.”

Deo wrapped one arm around Nita’s waist and pulled her backwards toward the bed, carrying her down with her as she settled onto her back.

Nita braced herself above Deo’s body as Deo continued to torment her breasts with her teeth and lips and tongue. It was too much, too good.

Nita straddled Deo’s thigh, riding her clitoris over the hard muscle.

“I’m going to come,” Nita warned, “I’m going to come. Oh God, Deo.”

“Wait,” Deo murmured, rolling Nita over and easing her leg from between Nita’s, breaking their contact. “Wait if you can. If you can’t, it’s okay.”

Nita’s breath sobbed in and out of her chest and her hips thrashed helplessly. “Touch me. Will you please touch me?”

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Deo leaned on one elbow and kissed her, caressing her breasts and her belly and lightly between her thighs, her fi ngertips gliding over Nita’s clitoris and then away, again and again. Nita dug her fi ngernails into Deo’s back, clinging to her as she struggled to hold back the feral need that beat at her for release. Deo’s tongue was soft and gentle, her callused hands everywhere, painting her body with exquisite tenderness.

Gradually, the fi re Deo kindled transformed into a deep consuming blaze that spread through her blood and muscles, obliterating everything in its path.

“I’m coming,” Nita sighed, surrendering as her orgasm rolled over her, leaving nothing behind but pure satisfaction. As she peaked, Deo fi lled her and she jolted into another, harder climax. Wild with unexpected pleasure, she screamed Deo’s name.

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CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

As Nita roused from sleep, she registered the totally foreign sensation of lying on her back with a warm body curved along her side. Before her still cloudy mind could decipher what that meant, she became aware of something even more extraordinary. Her skin tingled from her throat to her knees and three distinct points of pleasure beat in time to her heartbeat. Her nipples were painfully, delightfully hard, and her clitoris was disturbingly but quite wonderfully tense.

“I know you’re awake,” Deo murmured, circling Nita’s nipple with her tongue.

“What are you doing?” Nita breathed, keeping her eyes closed. She held very still. Whatever was happening, she didn’t want it to stop.

“Fulfi lling a fantasy.” Deo sucked the other nipple then trailed her tongue down the center of Nita’s body and dipped into her navel.

“I want to taste every part of your body. I’m about halfway there.” Deo kissed the top of the crisp, neatly trimmed black triangle at the base of Nita’s abdomen and smoothed her palm along the sleek length of Nita’s thigh. “You’re unspeakably beautiful.”

Nita lifted her hips, she couldn’t help it. “I’m unspeakably aroused.”

Deo inched lower, and Nita felt fi rst a teasing breath and then Deo’s lips slide smoothly down her clitoris. “Oh my God.”

“Mmm.” Deo lingered a second, sucking gently, before shifting her body between Nita’s legs. She licked the inside of her thighs, then kissed her way lower. “Very sexy knees.”

“Deo,” Nita moaned, pushing herself up on her elbows. She opened her eyes, and everything clenched at the sight of Deo reclining between her legs, naked and gorgeous in the misty dawn light. Her wide shoulders dipped down to a shallow valley below the rise of her round, fi rm ass. Nita had a swift vision of rubbing her sex over Deo’s

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ass until she came. Her clitoris twitched and she moaned again. “Just looking at you makes me wet.”

“Good. I want to make you as crazy as you make me.”

Deo’s gaze met hers, and the hunger in her eyes made Nita’s stomach twist. She pressed three fi ngers to her clitoris and felt it protrude. God, she was so excited. “Can you see what you’ve done?”

“I said you were beautiful.” Deo massaged the tops of Nita’s feet, then stroked upward over her calves and fi nally pushed her legs apart until her thighs were stretched tight. She lowered her head and opened Nita with her thumbs. “And you’re very ready.”

“Wait,” Nita said urgently, pressing her palm to Deo’s cheek just before Deo reached her with her mouth. “I won’t be able to keep from coming if you put your mouth on me now.”

“That’s okay.”

“No it’s not. I want you on top of me.” Nita tugged Deo’s hair. “I want you in my mouth while you lick me. Now. Come on.”

Deo’s expression turned ravenous, and her lips parted in a near growl. Swiftly she reversed her position and lowered herself above Nita’s face.

“Don’t touch me yet,” Nita murmured, wrapping her arms around the outside of Deo’s muscular thighs. Then she delicately licked her.

Deo jerked and Nita smiled. “Don’t touch me until I tell you that you can.”

“Nita,” Deo snarled, rubbing her cheek over Nita’s sex. “You’re so wet for me.”

“I’m not the only who’s wet,” Nita whispered. She stroked the fl at of her tongue between Deo’s lips and over the surface of her exposed clitoris. Deo’s thighs trembled. “You like that, don’t you?”

“You know I love it.” Deo kissed Nita’s clitoris.

“Deo, don’t.”

“I want to suck you.”

“No,” Nita gasped. “Not yet.” She fl uttered her tongue under Deo’s clitoris and Deo swelled and pulsed. “Tell me if you’re going to come.”

“A minute—not much longer. I’m getting close. Oh Jesus—I’m not kidding.”

Nita licked her again and teased the spot she had discovered the night before. Deo shivered and writhed and Nita felt another kiss brush

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over the top of her clitoris, harder this time. It felt so good. “Careful. I don’t want to come.”

“Yes you do,” Deo groaned. “Please. Let me suck you.”

“No.” Nita struggled to hold back the pleasure that threatened to burst free and concentrated on Deo, licking and kissing and teasing until Deo was so hard and so wet she knew Deo would come any second if she didn’t stop. She pulled her mouth away. “Quick. Come up here—I want to kiss you.”

Deo swung around and drove her thigh between Nita’s legs at the same time as she plunged her tongue into Nita’s mouth. Nita gripped Deo’s hair in both hands and arched to meet her thrusts. She sucked on Deo’s tongue as Deo pounded between her legs. The pressure of Deo’s leg hammering into her clitoris was too much.

“Oh, I can’t hold it any more!” Nita felt herself shattering and jerked Deo’s head back, frantically searching her face until she found her eyes. “I’m coming. Come with me. Please, oh please.”

“Yes, fuck, yes,” Deo cried.

Nita’s breath fl ed as Deo kissed her and her body erupted. Then there was nothing, nothing except pleasure and Deo.

❖

Nita stroked Deo’s hair as Deo slept on top of her, her face in the curve of Nita’s neck and her thigh still cradled against Nita’s center. The weight of her body was far from uncomfortable. Nita marveled at the strange sensation of contentment that came from holding a woman who had just orgasmed in her arms so thoroughly, so completely, that she had drifted off in the aftermath. She felt powerful, she felt protective, she felt humbled. Deo’s trust frightened her, but the intimacy terrifi ed her even more. She had learned to do without this kind of connection.

She had learned not to hope for it. She had almost succeeded in learning not to want…anything. With Deo, she had surrendered to the wanting, but that was all she was willing to risk.

“Deo,” Nita murmured. “Deo, hey. We have to get up.”

“Sure?” Deo kissed Nita’s neck and rolled her thigh suggestively between Nita’s legs. “You’re still wet.”

“And you’re insatiable.” Nita played her hands up and down Deo’s back, then squeezed the hard muscles in her ass. She wanted to wrap

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her legs around Deo’s thighs and pump her still engorged sex into Deo until she came again. She couldn’t, precisely because she wanted to so much. She had to get some distance before she was incapable of saying no. “We both need to go to work.”

“I hear rain.”

Nita watched rivulets of water stream across the skylight above their heads. The sky beyond was the color of ash, thick and foreboding.

“You won’t be going up on any roofs today.”

“No chance you can go in late?” Deo nudged her crotch into Nita’s leg. “I’m getting another hard on.”

“When aren’t you?” Nita laughed shakily. She wanted her. She wanted her in ways she hadn’t imagined possible. Wanting her inside her body was the easy part. That she understood. That she could even control, if she wasn’t touching her. The part she couldn’t, wouldn’t embrace, was the comfort, the peace she felt when they talked and Deo listened. When Deo understood. When Deo accepted. “Come on, rise and shine before you get too worked up.”

“Too late,” Deo muttered, pushing up on her arms. “Why do I feel like you’re running away?”

“I’m not,” Nita said fl atly, carefully keeping her voice level. She had to set the limits, and quickly, before the pull of Deo’s desire undid her. “There’s nothing to run away from. We agreed, remember? One night. One night to let the pressure out of the steam cooker we seem to have fallen into.”