Turning to Stone (Heart of Stone: Book 2)

Chapter 4: Senses

"Not really a full sensory experience, though, is it?" he countered.

Sidling up beside me at the cooker, he dipped a finger into the sauce. Before I could smack him away, his other arm wound around my waist and tugged me back from the hob. The wooden spoon slid from between my fingers and hit the edge of the saucepan with a dull clang.

"Hey," I said with a scowl. "It's not ready yet—"

The admonishment got stuck in my throat when he spun me around to push me up against the opposite wall.

"What are you doing?" I asked, struggling to conceal my irritation at his antics.

His eyes glinted as he leaned closer, hips meeting mine to secure me against the cool tiles. He towered over my body, a solid façade of muscle, cologne and temptation, and a thrilled shiver floated over my bare skin when his cheeks dimpled with that infuriatingly endearing smile.

"I'm educating you," he said.

This was clearly one of his games, and while I wasn't yet sure how to play this particular round, I refused to back down from a potential challenge.

"Can you hurry up with it, then? I don't want the sauce to burn."

His fingers, soft and gentle, skimmed down my forearm and curled around my wrist. Without breaking eye contact, he pulled my hand upwards and pressed it against the centre of his chest, the warmth from his body seeping through the thin fabric of his t-shirt and burning my palm.

"If you want a full sensory experience, you need to do more than just watch and listen," he said.

Ah, so this was about my music taste. If his intention was to distract me from Derulo by ensuring I could think of nothing but him, he'd already succeeded. But, if he wanted to prove to a point...

"True." I lowered my voice and splayed my fingers across his chest. "Touch is a very important sense."

Holding his intense gaze, I slipped my other hand between our bodies and teasingly fingered his belt—just long enough for his jaw to tighten and his eyes to darken. Then I eased my touch beneath his top and over the smooth ladder of muscles etched into his stomach.

A ball of tense frustration coiled in my gut. As much as I loved feeling his warm skin against my fingers, I wanted to see it, taste it, wrap my whole body around it.

The beat of his heart thudded steadily against my other hand, much calmer than my own racing pulse, yet I could see the familiar heat in his stare.

"You also need smell..." His tone dropped an octave, a huskiness to it that reverberated from his chest into my palm.

Until he lifted his sauce-covered finger, I'd forgotten about his attack on my pan. He held it still in the small gap between our faces, but it wasn't the scent of tomato and basil wafting through the air that caused my mouth to water.

"...And you need taste..."

The finger darted down my jaw, smearing sauce across my skin until he paused at the corner of my mouth. The dark gleam in his eyes dared me to play along, but the twitch of his lips suggested that he thought I wouldn't.

Reverse psychology be damned, I parted my lips and sucked his finger into my mouth, swirling my tongue around the remnants of now-cold sauce as I held his scorching stare. Ed's throat rippled as he swallowed, the steady thump of his heart quickening beneath my right palm, the lean muscles of his stomach tightening beneath my left one.

An aching heat pooled between my thighs, and I shifted my legs outwards to relieve the pressure. Reluctantly, I dropped my hand from under his top, instead threading my fingers through his belt loops in a silent request. I loved and hated in equal measure how well he knew me, how he instantly complied and rolled his hips against mine.