“Stop. Please.” He panted. “I can’t hold off.”

“Yes, you can. Two more minutes. Count the seconds off in your head.”

Definitely was the fastest he’d ever counted to one hundred twenty. But it’d worked.

She let his shaft slip from her mouth. “Good.”

Her hand worked his cock, slippery with her saliva. Then she bent her head, and holy fuck his balls were in her mouth as she rubbed her thumb over the strip of skin behind his sac and his anus.

The sensations were so intense Knox couldn’t control the shaking in his legs.

But he kept his eyes closed.

His balls were wet and tight when she pulled away. He thought she’d finish him with a hand job, but she said, “Come now,” and all that delicious heat enveloped his dick again.

Four sucking glides and he was done. He groaned with relief when that first spurt shot out and she swallowed it down. He pulled the damn sheets off the bed when she caught the rhythm of his release and sucked in tandem with every spasm.

Add in the way her nails scored the insides of his thighs brought even more sensation. It was the mother lode of blow jobs.

At some point his consciousness might’ve left his head and spun around the room because he lost any sense of reality.

This? This was a true fucking Zen moment.

Her soft body moved up to lie next to him. Smooth lips brushed his. “Now you can open your eyes.”

He lifted his lashes a little at a time, so he could drink in her beautiful face slowly from her stubborn chin, over her full mouth, her nose, to those golden eyes. “Thank you.”

“My pleasure.”

Knox twisted a section of her hair into a spiral, watching as it uncurled and straightened. “Not that I’m not happy to see you, but why are you really here?”

“Because I missed you.”

“We saw each other on Saturday night,” he pointed out. That’d easily been one of the hottest nights of his life. But it had gotten weird. After he’d come so hard he worried he’d ruptured brain cells, it seemed she hadn’t cared about his inner struggle because she’d basically left him with his dick hanging out. “Then I didn’t hear from you or see you until today.”

Shiori tucked herself along the left side of his body and positioned his left hand on her lower back—a subtle reminder that she needed his touch. “My departure Saturday night was rude. I’m sorry.”

“Why did you leave like that?”

“Because I wanted to invite you to spend the night with me. Then we could have had a repeat of last Sunday.”

Knox lifted his head to look down at her. “And that would’ve been bad . . . why?”

“It wouldn’t have been bad. It would’ve been great. But I don’t know how this kind of thing works, okay? Every other sub I’ve been with, we parted ways at the club. Last week, when we ended up at your house, it was an easy transition. Saturday night after the scene, you acted like you didn’t want anything to do with me.”

“You could’ve just commanded me to come home with you.”

Her eyes were so serious. “I know. But I didn’t want to fuck this up, and I ended up doing it anyhow. Last weekend wasn’t us only being Domme and sub, or coworkers. We were—”

“New lovers getting to know each other outside of bed.”

“Exactly!”

He kissed her forehead. For someone so smart, sometimes she overanalyzed things too much. “Shiori. There’s a word for that. It’s called a relationship.”

She sighed. “I suck at this.”

“You suck very, very well, so don’t ever apologize,” he murmured against the top of her head.

She pinched his side.

He pinched her ass.

They didn’t speak for several long beats as they each gathered their thoughts.

“I did some thinking, which is why you didn’t hear from me,” she said. “I also did some painting, but that was way less productive than the thinking.”

“Painting? Like painting the walls?”

“No. Like painting pictures. But I’d be hard-pressed to call my paint smears art.”

“Wait a sec. Did you paint that picture you brought me the first night you came over?”

“Yes.”

“I love it. I put it front and center on my mantel.”

She smiled against his chest. “I’m glad.”

“Keep going with the other part. The thinking part.”

She propped her chin on his chest and looked up at him. “Ironically, what I decided is exactly the opposite of what I originally told you.”