While he watched, rapt, I uncapped it, rolled it up, and reapplied it.

“You can’t be real,” he whispered.

My pulse pounded so powerfully beneath my breastbone that I still couldn’t catch my breath. I set the lipstick behind him on the desk and then reached up, undoing his tie, releasing the top two buttons of his shirt. He stood completely still as I bent, pressing my mouth to the warm skin just over his heart.

I lifted my head to look up at him, catching his expression of wonder.

“Again,” he rasped.

I leaned forward, kissing lower, releasing another button, and then another. I kissed over his rib, bending to kiss again where chest turned into stomach.

He remained silent, breaths coming out in sharp exhales that jerked his abdomen beneath my mouth.

I looked over the red marks along his chest and stomach, starting to relish the idea of Niall walking around the rest of the day wearing me beneath his clothes. But I didn’t want to be done with this, and he didn’t seem to want it, either.

“I can keep going,” I told him.

He wants my kiss there. I can see it in his eyes.

My fingers toyed with his belt, eyes studying his expression. If it tightened, if I saw even an inch of retreat there, I would back off.

Instead, I saw relief, acquiescence, something just shy of desperation.

His belt came free with a tiny clang of metal on metal. His zipper ticked down in the silent room. And then I waited, my fingers holding the open fabric of his dress pants. The straining tip of his cock pressed up against the elastic waistband of his boxers. The quiet was sliced apart every time he exhaled in a gust.

I saw his eyes flicker to the door and then return to my face.

I shook my head. “I can st—”

His “no” was sharply hissed.

With a little nod, I kissed the soft trail of hair on his abdomen, licked it.

“Dear God,” he gasped.

I slid my hand into his boxers, nearly undone by the dip of his Adam’s apple as he swallowed, let his head fall back. I was struck all over again by the weight of him, the heavy length I pulled free as I kneeled in front of him.

“I probably need more lipstick,” I whispered.

With effort, he raised his head, looking down at me, and then blinked into awareness. “Of course.” His fingers fumbled behind him on the desk, knocking pens and papers to the floor before finding the silver tube.

The cap came free with a tiny pop and Niall blinked away, to his own hands shaking in front of him as he twisted the lipstick to reveal the brilliant red.

With one hand cupping my chin, he reached down and pressed the lipstick to my bottom lip, carefully sliding it from middle to left, middle to right, before even more gently repeating the action on my top lip. “Ruby.”

I smiled, holding his gaze as I bent to kiss the underside of his shaft, just in the middle.

Niall’s grunt was rough, hands grappling behind him to grip the desk. “Christ.”

“Okay?”

He nodded.

I kissed lower, leaving perfect red prints down to the base.

I studied him in a way I hadn’t bothered to last night, looking at how he strained forward, filling my hands. “You’re so perfect I’m not sure what to do with you.”

Tell me, I meant. Direct me.

“L-lick,” he rasped. He understood. “Please, darling.”

I smiled, darting my tongue out and sweeping it along his shaft. Niall groaned, low and broken.

“There?” I asked.

“No. No, please.”

I smiled into another kiss in the middle of his cock. “Where?”

His eyes closed for a second as he swallowed, and then said, “The head.” His eyes met mine again. “Lick the head.”

I felt nearly liquid, chest thrumming with need, desire a wild pulse between my legs. When I slid my tongue over the wide crown of him, I tasted sweet and salt, earth and man, and felt more than heard his relieved moan vibrate through him.

Long fingers ran over my jaw and into my hair, turned into a fist when I opened my mouth and took the entire tip inside, sucking down a few inches and back, surrendering the game in favor of giving him what I suspected was his first blow job in years.

And what a tragedy. He was thick, intimidatingly long, but where his cock felt nearly savage in its size and need, his hands were gentle in my hair, shaking as he sweetly encouraged me.

Down and up, sucking, wet. I didn’t care about the sounds I made or the way I lost my breath when I took him deep, coming back with watery eyes and a gasping, wet mouth. He stared at me as if I was a glowing star in the middle of this room, and it made me want to give him every drop of pleasure a man could possibly feel.

My hand cupped him lower, the other gripped his hip, silently telling him take take take. I urged him to flex forward and he did, first a shallow thrust of relief, and then deeper and deeper with careful precision, helping me work him in and out of my mouth, across my tongue, between my lips.

I wondered if he loved the crude sound of it as much as I did, my unintentional gasps and moans when he went deep, when he jerked forward in a small loss of control, when he pulled my hair in tiny flashes of frenzy. It sounded wet, and good, and the tiny pop of him in and out of my mouth seemed to make us both frantic.

He let himself enjoy it—slowing down, speeding up, slowing down again—until he grew determined: knees bent, hips rolling easily. I watched his face as, against my tongue, he grew tighter somehow, his brow tight with what almost looked like pain, his fingers finding handfuls of my hair.