“I’m getting…excited. That’s wrong.”

  “No. It’s not wrong at all. You’re waking up. Like opening your eyes and seeing the sun. Think of all the things you’ve realized are different since you came to be with us. Look at my face, Daralyn. Look at what your pleasure is doing for me.”

  Her wondrous expression went to his, and clung there as he kept his attention between that and her breasts, their overlapped hands there. She had her knees drawn up, pressed together, but the little shifts of her body told him it was time to change that up.

  “You know how you opened your legs at the restaurant, when I touched your thigh? Do that now. Move the robe out of the way so I can see between your legs.”

  That internal conflict increased, but the dazed look in her eyes did too, a little moan slipping from her lips.

  It was a precarious edge. She was aroused, but there was a struggle happening inside of her, past and present clashing. His own desire grew in leaps and bounds, the more she looked at him with that yearning expression, looking for him to take her down the path that had been denied her. He saw it in the increased trembling, and more of that heart-rending uncertainty in her eyes. He could almost feel the confused ache there.

  Taking it slow and easy wasn’t easy at all. She’d said she didn’t always want choices when it came to him. While that might be the natural Dom and sub stuff, if she didn’t understand she could choose, he was going to make extra sure he wasn’t doing anything she didn’t want, even if she couldn’t express those wants.

  “You don’t have to question if what you’re doing and feeling is right or wrong, Daralyn. If you’re following my commands, it’s my will you’re obeying. Is my will wrong? What I want?”

  She shook her head. “No. I don’t think so. I feel better, when I listen to you. Your voice…”

  He continued to knead her breasts, her fingers in between, so they squeezed together, teased her nipples. As he flicked over them with his stronger touch, she jerked, gasped. She was going to kill him.

  “What about my voice?” he prodded.

  “It’s deep…it echoes…resonates. New word. Resonates, so when you’re talking to customers, it fills the room. When you were here the other night, it filled the space, and stayed...like warmth from the space heater. Fire.”

  She could humble him. Fortunately, his desire was keeping him on point, its demands not letting the softer emotions take over before it was time.

  “Rory…” The cry came as her body jerked. Her hands fluttered, turned and clasped his, his wrists. Her wide eyes went to his, and he realized her sex had spasmed with the beginning of an orgasm.

  “Easy, girl. It’s all good. I’ve got you. It gets better.” He wouldn’t let anything into this space with them. It was just him and her. Nothing connecting to the world beyond them, or the past. As her hands stayed hooked on his wrists, he cupped her breasts, full flesh-on-flesh, and began to play, knead, flick, lightly pinch. “You haven’t done something I’ve asked. Spread your legs, Daralyn.”

  “I’m not supposed to feel…”

  “You can feel anything you damn well want to feel,” he told her, low, his eyes burning into hers in the mirror.

  Too much. Too much anger. She shrank against him, and he reined it back, made a soothing note. “Spread your legs for me, baby.”

  She slowly did. Pushing the robe back, then parting her knees, adjusting her feet out. There. The lips of her sex, nestled in dark brown, silky hair that gleamed with moisture. Keeping one hand on her breast, he slid the other down, to the mouth of her sex. He had to lean forward to do that, which shifted his center of gravity, but he had the upper body control and strength to allow for it. Plus, he was leaning into her, a pleasant counterbalance of soft woman and the scent of jasmine.

  He played his fingers over her and, as she shuddered and shook, his other hand slid upward, adjusted, closed over her throat. Her back was pressed to his legs, her shoulder blades against his knees. As she arched against his touch, her small breasts thrust out, the pink tips aching for a man’s suckling mouth. His mouth.

  There’d be time for that later. Now he just wanted this.

  “Look at my eyes in the mirror, Daralyn.”

  She did, and when they skittered away, he made a harsh noise. They came back. “You’ll keep your eyes on my face, no matter what happens in the next few minutes. Don’t look away until I tell you that you can. See how much I enjoy watching you when you’re feeling like this.”

  He’d delivered the command with the strength he’d felt it. More moisture slipped out of her, making her labia glisten, wetting his fingers. “You like it when I tell you what to do,” he growled.

  “It makes me feel safe.” Her voice was strained as she delivered that gift to him. Her breath puffed along his skin because his head was bent close over hers. “Like everything’s okay, when you say it is.”

  “It is.” He massaged the wetness into her swollen flesh, flicked lightly over her clit.

  “Feels like…butterfly. Dancing over a flower.”

  Male heat made his smile look almost dangerous, but that was because there was a glorious kind of pain fueling it. His striking girl, and her gift for words. Her love of using them in amazing ways.

  “Rory…oh…”

  Her back arched further, hips twitching. He tightened his grip on her throat, and the spasms grew stronger. “Is it okay…please…is it…”

  “Yes. It is. It is so okay.” He squeezed that slender column lightly even as he kept his other hand moving between her legs. He sensed the strength of the orgasm he might be summoning, and he wanted to see that. He wanted to see her completely shatter from the bliss of it. But intuition told him to reinforce who was in control. “But not until I say it is.”

  He put his burning gaze on her face in the mirror. “Hold your breasts in your hands like I was doing, Daralyn. Run your fingers over the nipples. Squeeze them, flick them.”

  She complied, even as she made a desperate little noise in her throat that became a chain of those kinds of sounds, needy moans. He answered with rough growls of approval, and words he offered back, in a hundred different versions. “Love seeing you excited like this. Want to push you over and make you scream…”

  Her eyes stayed as wide as saucers throughout all of it, every act and sensation obviously new to her. So he saw the final wave coming in those hazel depths, even before her body’s movements went from sinuous to hard jerks, deep shudders. Those wide eyes got wider, her mouth opening, seeking air.

  “Now, baby. It’s okay. Let it happen.”

  A cry of relief burst forth, but he saw the moment when the war started, inner defenses kicking in, a self-protection. She was trying to obey him, even as her body fought the climax like a drowning swimmer. He wouldn’t let it win.

  He let the movements of her body push his fingers inside her, his thumb firmly massaging the outside. At the same time, he pressed his face to the side of hers, his lips moving down to her collar bone, her throat, below his grip. He nipped her, then a stronger bite. With it, he demanded all her attention, inside and out, past and present, be on him, on what he was requiring of her. No one else.

  She lost the battle. Or won it, from his fiercely satisfied perspective. A cry became a wail, and her body lifted and fell against his grip, a wild, strong, magnificent creature. Her hair rippled over his knuckles, cascading over her back, head tipped back against his shoulder.

  At the height of it, the orgasm seemed to pull from something far deeper than the body. A good orgasm did, especially for women. Her eyes wheeled around as if she was lost at sea. He pressed his hand firmly against her cunt, a sealing in of that feeling, and she rode it, her hips pressing forward, pushing her sex into his touch, body still bucking.

  She almost toppled the stool once or twice, but he was firmly planted in his chair now, his core drawn tight to hold her steady, even as he kept his hand moving on her wet, spasming sex.

  Only when she seemed to have experienced all the aftershocks she could did he shift that hand. He banded his arm over her chest, moved the other hand from her throat to overlap it. He held her close, cocooned against him as she slowly came back to earth.

  He’d never wanted to be inside a woman more, with full feeling in his cock and every inch of the body attached to it. But this was enough for now. More than enough.

  “Rory,” she whispered. Her voice was raspy. Hoarse. “Rory.”

  “Ssh. You’re okay. I’ve got you.” He hummed to her, one of the old country tunes from earlier in the evening, and pressed a kiss against her hair.

  Her fingers were hooked over his forearms, nails digging in. She’d touched down like a feather, but now that slight sway to her body was becoming a more insistent rock against his hold. “Rory. I can’t let go…I’m falling…”

  Unease rippled through him, but he spoke soothingly. This was the flipside of the involuntary, pleasurable reaction she’d just experienced. A reaction she had no way to handle, no context, just his word. He had to make sure she could count on it, lean on it.

  “You don’t have to let go,” he told her. “And I’m not letting go of you. Just hang on.”

  “Why…why…why…” He thought she was trying to ask him a question, the way she was struggling with the single word, but a blink later, there was no spare energy to figure it out.

  Everything changed.

  Yes, an orgasm could be a deeper-than-the-body experience, opening rooms in the heart that had been closed up for too long. But instead of turning the knob and pushing inward, her release had ripped them off the hinges, busting the frame.

  Words disappeared, replaced by a raw, wailing cry. He was holding a wounded wild animal, not a woman. But she’d taken him at his word. She wasn’t fighting to get away. She held onto as much of him as she could, with raking nails, pummeling fists, biting teeth.

  His upper body was far stronger than hers, but she had the advantage of greater mobility. One of her thrashings tipped her over his arm, overbalancing him and the chair. Which, damn it all, broke his hold. She hit the floor on one knee as he grabbed onto her nearby bed, trying to catch himself. He missed, toppling out of the seat and onto the floor. The braked chair had tipped but it found the dresser, which sent it back to all wheels.

  He’d been afraid he’d land on her, but she had rolled, was on her feet. She ran into everything in her path, as if what she was seeing wasn’t this room. She knocked items off the dresser, then found the opening to the bedroom with flailing hands and was through it. She plowed into the sideboard in the kitchen. The flower vase rocked precariously, but didn’t topple.

  “No. Daralyn, stop.” He bellowed it, but it was too late. She had slipped and stumbled through the kitchen and was at her front door. In the next breath she was out of it.

  “Shit, shit, shit!”

  He pushed himself to a sitting position, grabbed his phone off the end of the bed. Every part of him roared in protest, but he needed back up. He used voice control to try Marcus, then Thomas. Nothing.

  While doing that, he was swearing, getting himself back into the chair, a process that required him to pull himself over to it, tuck his knees up against his body and use the leverage of that position and his core strength to haul himself back up into the seat. All of which took too much fucking time.

  He shoved himself out of the bedroom, headed for the front door, standing wide open. Even as he went that way, his gaze was already darting over the limited rectangle of outdoor area he could see, trying to find her.

  He couldn’t hear her, which scared him worse than that wailing she’d been doing. The saying “sounded like a dying animal” was inaccurate, because a wounded animal, instinctually motivated not to draw the attention of predators, hid and became more silent if he or she could.

  He came out the front door, his breath sobbing in his throat. If she’d run into the fields behind the house, he couldn’t follow her. And what if she abruptly emerged from a field onto the road? At this time of night, she could be stepping in front of the car of a lightly buzzed neighbor, coming back from one of the local watering holes.

  Fortunately, in the same blink of time that terrifying possibility and plenty more went through his mind, he also saw she was here. She was safe.

  Marcus and Thomas hadn’t answered their phones because they were with her. He suspected they’d seen her burst out the front door from their living room windows. She’d gone to ground in a nook formed by the rear corner of their house and the porch. She was backed in that alcove like a spider in a knot hole. Hunched into herself, down close to the ground, keening, rocking. Her robe was still off her shoulders, but she had it gathered around her like a blanket. It split open over her thigh practically to her hip, leaving no doubt she wore nothing under it.

  He balanced on his back wheels to get off her front patio and manage the rough expanse of ground between it and her. His heart was in his throat, his head pounding. If he’d hurt her, set her back months on the progress she’d made in her day-to-day world, he’d never forgive himself.

  He’d told her he wouldn’t let her go. And she’d broken free, because he wasn’t strong enough, whole enough, to be able to deliver on that promise.

  He snarled at himself. No time for this fucking self-pitying shit. He was aware that Marcus said something to him, maybe Thomas, too, but he had one goal and he couldn’t let anything interfere with it. He rolled right up to her, stopped where his feet were almost touching her folded-up legs. “Daralyn, look at me.”

  His faith in his gut was not bullshit. Though telling himself that and acting on it were different things, he wouldn’t let himself back away from it. It sliced into his gut like knives, but he sharpened his tone. “Stop this shit and look at me. Right now.”

  She cut off mid-keen. Her eyes snapped up to him, wheeled around, then came back to him. Rory didn’t waste any time, making full use of the sudden attention. He put out his hand, keeping his tone brusque. “Come here.”

  She was staring at his hand. He could see her trying to make sense of it. He refused to doubt himself, even if the effort burned like acid in his chest.

  “You make me wait, and you’ll regret it,” he said quietly. “I’ll use your brush on your bare ass instead of my hand.”

  That flicker again. He sensed there was no real comprehension right now. Just feeling. He was banking she would move toward sanctuary on instinct, and she needed that sanctuary to be solid stone. It had to be able to handle the power of the storm within her. He’d be the still point at the center of that storm.

  “I’m here, baby,” he said. “Come here.”

  Slowly, she pushed herself up to her feet. Her legs were shaking, but she reached out and then he had her hand. He drew her in closer. Where she’d been sitting was where condensation from the roof fell and rarely dried out, since it stayed a shady spot through most of the day. As such, she had mud on her pretty robe, her bare legs.

  She blinked, her gaze falling to it. “‘I am clay that was never shaped.’”

  The hollowness to her voice, that unnatural, hair-raising cadence, was the same as earlier, when she’d repeated what her uncle had said to her, about men’s weakness. Why was it so many monsters twisted Bible quotes for their crazy shit?

  Well, there were people who weren’t monsters, who used it as well. His mother, for one. The designs of fate were a fucking mystery to him most days, but this was one of those moments when it made its intentions clear. A lifetime of Elaine making him go to church, study the Bible with her, offered him the important part of the quote, the part her uncle and father had left out when they’d used it against her.

  “‘You are fearfully and wonderfully made,’” he said, then reminded her she wasn’t alone. “‘Behold, I am toward God as you are; I too was pinched off from a piece of clay.’”

  Tears gathered in her eyes. She swayed, her knees weakening, but he brought her to him with one hard yank just as they gave way. She crumpled over his lap. He lifted her, turned her in his arms with an effort that strained his back, because she was like a drunk, dead weight. He was aware of other hands helping him to position her, steadying him in the chair, but his full attention remained on her.

  Her eyes held all the ancient sorrows of the world, from the very first time one soul had dealt pain to another. But he saw more, too. A flicker, as if she was trying to order things in her mind, get a grip. Giving her that breathing space was important. So were signs of normalcy.

  He stroked her hair away from her face, reminding her of the brushing. She’d liked it, had leaned into it. She’d responded to it, physically and emotionally.

  He kept doing that until he saw her remember that, use it to bring herself back, one painstaking thought at a time, a chain she was forming and linking together in her mind, like that bracelet he’d made for her. Watching that struggle happen, seeing how agonizingly hard it was for her, reminded him of another quote his mother used.

  Do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.

  She’d used that quote to help him. At the time, he hadn’t been that appreciative, grieving the loss of half his body. His inner strength hadn’t meant shit to him. However, he could give Daralyn that quote, without the wasting away bit. As he spoke the words, her hands were on his chest, fingers twitching. Her head was against his shoulder, so he pressed his face to her forehead, then kissed it. “I’m here,” he said quietly. “And you’re amazing and wonderful. Don’t lose heart.”

  His own was breaking. He might not be the right person for her, but fuck, he didn’t know who was. So he’d make himself a vow, here and now and always, to stand by her, help her find what she needed. Give her whatever she needed, even if ultimately it meant she left him behind in the dust.

  He’d taken offense when he’d thought his mother had implied he was a waystation. But truth? If that was what he ended up being, and he could help her heal enough that she found a lasting happiness, that was what he’d do.