“You know how when I say certain things to you, or you imagine me touching you, you get aroused?” Before her past could yank her back to that automatic shame and anxiety, he reminded her how he felt about it. “Something I love to see happen. You’ve seen that, haven’t you?”

  Her brow creased, but she nodded again, her eyes clearing and body relaxing once more.

  “Well, I can’t do that.” He tapped his head. “That’s called a psychogenic reaction, when it comes from here. But I can get hard with direct contact. Like when you were touching me there just now. That’s reflexogenic.”

  He brushed his knuckles over her cheek, smiled. “Stop trying to spell it in your head. I’ll give it to you for your book. Later.”

  Her lips tipped up slightly. Time to get deeper into it. The stuff that was a pain in the ass, something else he doubted anyone would ever see in a romance novel.

  “When I decide it’s time to be inside you, there’s a little more to it. There are things I have to do before sex to make sure it’s good for both of us.”

  “Can I help with any of it?”

  Why was he not surprised that was her first question? “I love that you asked that, but they’re things I can handle. They just require a little bit of time beforehand. To keep an erection good enough for sex, I take a pill, which requires about fifteen minutes to kick in.” He moved his touch to her neck and shoulder, caressed with purpose. “There are a lot of ways to occupy those fifteen minutes.”

  Her chin lifted, reacting to his touch, but he thought the way she pressed into it was also a reaction to the edge he put into his words, a sensual threat.

  Once hard enough, he’d slide a well-lubricated, flexible silicone ring on the base of his cock, over a condom, to maintain his erection. He told her that, and lifted her hand, kissing her fingers. “That’s something you can help me do, especially if I tell you to do it. Right?”

  “Yes.” She gave him that breathy syllable, while she watched his lips play over her fingers. The blanket was pulled up under her arm, but the tops of her breasts quivered with the lift and fall of her breath, and he could feel the tightening of her nipples against his side.

  Now the last part of it. “I also have to do some things in the bathroom to prepare for sex, to keep other less romantic things from happening during.”

  Like empty his bladder, his bowels beforehand if needed, depending on the time of day. He was lucky enough not to have to wear a catheter bag, but he still had to cath himself to void his bladder. He wasn’t going to go into detail on those things with her, though. Not if he didn’t have to do so.

  “So that’s it. The high level.” He stroked the tops of her breasts, moved up to the pocket at the base of her throat, logging every reaction, the glazing in her eyes as he teased her flesh. Maybe he would deep suckle those two pretty breasts she kept innocently flashing at him, or put his hand between her legs and bring her to climax again. Her arousal was a need he craved to satisfy, much as he wanted to keep driving it back up for his viewing pleasure, again and again.

  “We don’t have to take that step today, tomorrow, or anytime soon,” he said. “We can give one another pleasure without it. But there’s a caveman part of me that wants to do it as a claiming, Daralyn.” He paused, his thumb resting on her neck pulse, stroking in a slow firm way that had her breath shortening. “I do want you to belong to me,” he said.

  Her dark eyes glowed with a fire that shot straight through his center. A neon sign in his book that she wasn’t just accepting that statement with meek resignation. Then her words confirmed it. Her fingers curled over his hands, holding them. “Are you sure we can’t do those things now?”

  It was the closest she’d come to saying she wanted something with words. And it figured, that the first thing she straight out asked him for, no way to interpret it any other way, was something he wasn’t so sure was a good idea for her yet.

  Falling out of one’s chair was one of the most important fears to overcome. The best way to do it was to learn how to get back into the chair when it happened. Because then that fear wouldn’t stand in the way of anything you wanted.

  She needed to know he wouldn’t back off every time she had a breakdown. That he trusted her to decide whether she could get up, dust herself off and keep going, or if she needed to try another day.

  She needed to know when he read those messages from her as clearly as he did right now, he wouldn’t back away from them.

  “No,” he said. “We don’t have to wait.”

  Chapter Nine

  Now it was his turn to prop himself on an elbow. He put his hand on her chest, exerting pressure to tell her he wanted her flat on her back. She obeyed, resting nervous hands on her abdomen. He moved his hand from her chest there, curling his fingers over her overlapped wrists, a light manacle that captured her attention. He felt the texture of the scar on the underside of her forearm as he ran his thumb over it.

  “I’m going to go into your bathroom,” he said. “I’ll be a few minutes. While I’m in there, I want you to be warm.” He reached over, lifted his dress shirt off the end of the bed. “Put this on.”

  He transferred himself back into his chair as she sat up to don the shirt. Going to her dresser, he found a drawer full of cotton underwear in a variety of pastel shades. He chose pink, and returned, laying it on one slender leg. “And these.”

  Surprise crossed her gaze, no doubt because he was having her put on clothes. But that was because he liked the look, a woman in his shirt and a simple pair of panties. When she complied, moving onto her knees to make it happen, her long hair fell forward over her shoulders. The neckline of his shirt revealed the curve of her breast. She’d only buttoned the two buttons in the middle. When she was done, she hesitated, then lay back again, the way he’d originally put her.

  “Good,” he said, warm approval in his voice. “Put your fingers inside the panties, on yourself.” His gaze flicked meaningful in that direction. “Don’t move those fingers. You just rest them there. Think about how I’m going to touch you, put my mouth on you, put my cock inside you, when I come back.”

  “Rory…” His name was a breath on her lips.

  “You are so goddamn beautiful,” he said. “Nothing you want is wrong, you know that? And if you could be inside my head, you’d know that, down to the soul.”

  He gestured before she could get uptight about his fierce tone. “Do it now. Put your hand where I told you to.”

  She wet her lips, that erotic anxiety that captivated him. Her hand slipped into the panties and he bit back a groan of pure want, seeing a tiny blot of moisture against the panel already. “Keep your fingers where I told you,” he reminded her. “Don’t move them. Tell me you understand.”

  “I do. Yes.”

  He felt her eyes on him as he turned and went into her small bathroom, which had just enough room for him to close the door. He took a long, steadying breath and turned his attention to what needed to happen.

  While he’d had no intention of this date ending in sex, he thanked God he’d prepared for it. In the pack that hooked to the back of his chair, he carried extra catheters, but also a silicone cock ring in a small plastic lubricant pouch, ED meds, and condoms. He dry swallowed the pill first. When they reached the point where it was needed, he’d be ready. As he’d said, he could take his time, do a hell of a lot for her, and her for him, before she closed her wet heat around him.

  Moving around in that small space was precarious, but he took care of what was needed, washed his hands. He removed the rest of his clothes and draped a towel over his lap.

  Before he emerged from the bathroom, he took a look at himself in the small mirror over the sink. At first, he’d avoided looking at himself in mirrors, not able to handle what he was, what he looked like. Maybe that was why he’d noticed how rarely Daralyn looked at herself. Just furtive looks to ensure she looked presentable. Not a full-on meeting of one’s eyes, facing the person in the mirror.

  He could look at himself now, and that ability was an important self-care message. When he looked at himself, he was sending a message to his reflection.

  Be what she needs, and be who you are. Deep down, soul level, both sides of that equation.

  He left the bathroom. As he came back into the bedroom, he stopped at the foot of the bed to let himself look, because it was an incomparable view.

  Any worries about whether this was the right course or not vanished. The instincts that had told him what instructions to give her had had better results than he’d expected.

  She was trembling, and not from fear or cold. Having her put her hand on her sex, forbidding her to move it, meant the ripples of sensation had built and spread outward. Her body quivered with three hundred horsepower sexual urgency. Her gaze was back to that feverish heat, her face taut with it.

  He moved to the side of the bed. “Give me your fingers.”

  She withdrew them from the panties, her arm shaking. He gripped her wrist, nuzzled her fingers, nostrils flaring at the scent of her arousal. As he licked the tips, teasing her, a little sound came from her throat. “Nice as that is,” he said, “I want a taste straight from the source.”

  Keeping his grip on her wrist, he reached out with the other hand and molded it around her inner thigh. With the pressure of that touch, he guided her to slide in his direction, bringing her pretty backside to the edge of the mattress. He positioned her feet on his push rims, the chair locked in place. Then he slid his hands beneath her thighs, cupped his palms under her buttocks and lifted her up to bring his mouth to her cunt.

  He answered an urgent mewl of female need with a pleased male growl. He played with her over the cotton of the panties, rubbing his tongue over the cushion of petals beneath, the swollen bud of her clit. Her buttocks tightened in his grip and he squeezed, hard enough to have her gasping.

  “Unbutton my shirt,” he said against her flesh, and reveled in how she fumbled to obey him in her dazed state. He attacked her cunt even more passionately, his tongue pushing against the cotton, lips sucking.

  The shirt fell away from her, exposing her upper torso, the rise of her breasts as she twisted. Her toes gripped his push rims, her thighs locked against his shoulders. He paused to remove the panties, enjoying the way her ass pressed into his lap, her legs coming together and rising in front of him so he could kiss the backs of her knees before he spread her legs on either side of him again. He dropped the panties to the side and discovered her wetness up close and personal.

  As he slid his tongue inside her, she didn’t climax, but she did come apart, in all the right ways. A harsh, surprised noise came from her, a ripple that made her body undulate in his grip. He saw her eyes flash toward him, and she was clawing the covers.

  They’d never done this to her. He’d bet his life on it. Because this was all about her pleasure.

  “Rory…” made it past her lips, once, twice, and then she was moaning his name over and over as he took her up, closer to that pinnacle, but not quite there.

  He’d pushed the towel off his lap when he brought her to the edge, and now he shifted his grip to her waist, let her hips ease down to his thighs. The opened shirt got left behind, falling off her shoulders and onto the edge of the mattress, so he held a fully naked woman in his hands.

  She was already reaching for him with eagerness. He’d intended to get her lost in that desire she’d tasted earlier in the night. She now had the tentative confidence to grip it in both hands, and he wouldn’t give her any breaks in those waves of pleasure to doubt herself, introduce all the worries about what her responses could and couldn’t be.

  Everything she saw and felt from him would confirm what he’d told her—nothing her body or mind or heart wanted was wrong. Not with him.

  Unconditional acceptance. He’d never understood what that meant. Now he did. He knew her heart as well as his own in this moment.

  He’d tucked the ring into a side pocket of his pack. After sheathing himself in the condom, he removed the ring from the lubricated pouch to slide it onto himself, all the way to the base. She watched, and he saw her fingers twitch with the desire to touch him. They were on the same damn page on that. He guided her hands down between them, her thighs straddling him. “Touch me,” he murmured. “Stroke me in a way that tells me how much you want me inside.”

  He dipped his head to watch her hands close over him, explore, stroke in a jerky way that told him her desire was continuing to affect her coordination. Savage satisfaction speared through him.

  He lifted her under the arms, let her feel that his strength was supporting her. “Put me inside you,” he said, because he wasn’t letting her go.

  She bit her lip and he watched her fit the head of his cock into the mouth of her sex. As he slowly lowered her weight, she picked up on what was needed, her fingers sliding along him, helping to guide him deeper until he knew he was in position. He brought her all the way down to the hilt, so she was sitting snug on his lap. Her lips had parted, eyes glazing even more as she internalized the sensations. Though he couldn’t feel it in his cock, the tightness in his lower belly, the hard pounding of his heart, the sheer amount of sensation in every part of him that he could register…it was indescribable.

  When his father had the sex talk with him, years ago, Rory hadn’t really paid attention to the things that weren’t about the physical. Thank God all those undigested details had stayed in some corner of his mind, ready to be called when he was mature enough to hear them.

  You might want to have sex with everything with a pretty face, son, but when it happens with someone you love…it won’t matter how it goes, you’ll remember it more than any other time. If you continue to love one another, it will become the best that sex can be. Because the best sex comes from the heart. Not lower down.

  Now he knew exactly what his dad had meant.

  Daralyn’s hands had landed on his shoulders, were gripping them hard. He had his on her hips, and he pushed her down even deeper, watching her face for any signs of the wrong kind of reaction. Her grip increased, and her head tipped back, her long hair flowing over her bare shoulders.

  “You are fucking beautiful,” he murmured again. “Ride me, Daralyn. I want to watch.”

  The feeling low in his gut built, getting tighter as she rose and fell, her small breasts quivering, neck arched, slim arm muscles flexing as she held onto him, scraping her nails over his shoulders. As she dipped forward, her lips pressed against his throat, below his ear. She’d remembered everything he’d said about being so sexually sensitive in his upper body and she was eager to give him pleasure, too.

  He held on to her, letting her know he had her and she could get as wild as her body wanted. He loved watching her get lost in it, even as primal reaction surged in him, shoving away thought and leaving only the warrior desire of possession. Every live nerve ending caught fire so that he could move with her, follow that rhythm with his upper body.

  He curled his hand in her hair, wrapped and tightened the grip so he kept her head tipped back, her throat exposed. Banding his arm around her waist, he brought her even closer, tighter, holding her down for a minute on his cock as he captured her breast in his mouth, suckling. She cried out, her nails digging in, scraping over his skin. That was it. He wanted her to lose herself enough to mark his flesh.

  She quivered against his hold and he shifted his palm to her buttock, gripping with a bruising hold that told her without words that now he wanted her to stay still. She shuddered with the effort it took, a plea humming in her throat as he slowed himself down, leisurely suckling, making hungry, wet noises against her nipple before he moved to the other. When he took his time there, he heard the noisy swallowing in her throat. Her fingers were busy, making those scraping pathways across his back.

  He knew her pussy was clamping down on him, because his coiled lower belly reaction was growing, a flush spreading across his chest and back. An orgasm was pending because something was stroking, holding his cock. Something hot and wet, and needing what he could give to it, and her.

  He started moving her with the flex and release of his arm as he kept suckling. Pressure and gravity told him he was hitting her clit against his pelvis with every downward stroke. Breath left her, and he treasured that begging note in her voice as his name slipped out. “Rory…”

  He stopped, holding her on him, and lifted his head long enough to meet her gaze, inches from his. “Not until I say. I want it to build for you until it takes you over, and you lose your mind. Got it?”

  His voice was a harsh growl, and she responded just as he’d intended. Color hit two high spots in her cheeks, and her voice was an erratic whisper. “Yes, Rory.”

  “Good.”

  He went back to her breasts. They were perfect and small, the nipples so tight and sweet in his mouth. Her body kept jerking, little spasms, and when he kneaded her buttocks in one large hand, his fingers sliding along the seam, that jerking increased. Which increased the friction of her clit where they were fully locked on one another.

  “Rory…” The bliss of desperation. Most women would enjoy fighting their natural reaction to obey his command, knowing there was no true downside to losing the battle.

  But for Daralyn, there was a line past which sensual torment could become actual torment, a fear of failure. He was sure she knew he’d never hurt her, but she’d been taught that failure meant disappointment, bad things.

  He wouldn’t let her go there. Eventually, he’d show her the pleasurable kind of failure, the kind that meant good things, but not tonight.

  He lifted his head, his mouth wet from teasing her nipples, and brought his hand back to her nape, pulling her in to kiss him. She was ravenous, frantically licking at his mouth, kissing his lips, tangling her tongue with his as he moved her up and down, up and down.

  “Rory…” this one was nearly a cry for help.

  He pulled her back, holding one hand in her hair, the other at her hip as he moved her on him in that inexorable rhythm. He locked gazes with her.