Listening to the sound of her voice, those breathy syllables, he wanted to close his eyes, let it soak into him. But he wanted to see her too. He liked that she could feel the intensity of his gaze. He liked seeing her get a little nervous for good reasons.
When the hot chocolate was ready, she put his mug on the table and sat down beside him with her own. She took a breath. “You look like you might want to talk about something,” she said.
“Yeah. I do.” He reached out, cupped her face, and laid his mouth on hers.
She made a surprised and pleased noise, but it was nothing next to what surged through him. The strength of it told him how much he’d thought about doing this, all night, ever since he’d kissed her throat when they left for the school. How he’d denied himself for those few hours was a miracle of deprivation. He wanted to pull her on his lap, but he didn’t. He kept it right there, elbow on the corner of the table, his hand hooked with hers on the edge.
She wanted more, was pressing into it as she made a little sound in the back of her throat. Tension shivered through her as she struggled between giving into the kiss, giving him what he seemed to be demanding from her, and leashing her natural response, reining it back. What she thought wasn’t allowed.
He wanted to tell her anything was allowed with him, anything she wanted, but he knew the dangers of going down that path with her. Daralyn never framed things in terms of her own wants and desires. Asking her what she wanted, pushing her to express that, was a sure way to send her into a panic attack. They’d all learned that the hard way.
With effort, he broke the kiss, keeping it easy but lingering, running his thumb along her delicate jaw. She was staring at him. When he dropped his hand to the table, palm up, he noted she put her braceleted wrist, not her hand, in his grasp. As he gripped it, she settled, resulting in a surge of feelings hard to describe. He just knew they were the exact right ones for the moment.
“What’s going on in your head?” he asked. “Tell me.”
“No one looks at me the way you do. Like I’m something in an art gallery, interesting and special, and almost too beautiful to touch.”
“I want to touch you. A lot. Tell me more about what you’re thinking. You can’t say anything wrong.”
She pressed her lips together. “There’s this feeling when you look at me, like I’m about to feel something I’ve never felt, and I’m scared. But excited, too. Happy. I feel like I can talk to you, say these things in my head that don’t make sense, they’re so jumbled, but when you look at me the way you’re looking at me, there’s this steady calm in your eyes that comes inside of me. It unjumbles those thoughts, makes sense of them.”
He considered himself decently experienced with girls. He’d lost his virginity as soon as he could take the beat-up truck down one of the many back roads that all the teens knew. He hadn’t been naturally smooth with females, but being a football player had helped improve his fumbling tongue-tied state. He’d learned the basics, how to navigate the often awkward signals and baffling clues men and women dropped for one another in the dating game. The things they struggled to say or not say.
Not in a million years would any of them have opened their hearts this baldly, spoken such simple, emotional truths about what they were feeling. She had no experience with playing coy or being worried about what he thought of her. Not that way. It was a humbling gift of innocent trust.
And heartbreaking that she’d managed to express it so well, without crossing into the territory they all knew was dangerous for her.
Thinking about what Marcus had said about watching for cues, Rory knew she’d taught him to do that early on. Uniquely preparing them for the direction this relationship seemed to want to go.
He brought her into his lap, her hair tumbling over the arm he had around her back, holding her securely. He gathered all those thick locks in one hand and twisted them, his knuckles pressed to her neck.
He liked knowing she’d put herself in his hands. What she’d said about Joe and belonging to Rory, he knew there was something wrong there. But he wanted the words to be wholly, perfectly true. Because the gift of her giving herself to him on every level, wanting to belong to him, whether she could say it with words or not, was what he wanted.
Slow. Easy. He was in love with a woman who was unable to say what she wanted. Talk about a minefield.
But he wasn’t going to deny her pleasure because of how her uncle and father had fucked up her head. He slid his thumb beneath her neckline and hooked it under her bra strap to discover cool, soft skin. He caressed her shoulder and collar bone as he met her gaze. “Take off your shirt.”
No hesitation, and no apprehension, only desire in her multi-colored eyes. She straightened in his lap, arched as she brought the shirt off, set it aside. The feel of her skin against his arm was something he wouldn’t get tired of any time soon, so he settled her back into the cradle of it and enjoyed looking at the small curves cupped in pale blue cotton. He tightened his hold to bring her close enough he could brush his lips over one quivering mound. Still steady and slow, not going for the nipple. Just everywhere near it. Her hand had hooked over his shoulder, her fingers digging into his shirt.
He went beneath the loose waistband of her jeans to find the nip of her waist, molded his palm over it and her hip bone, his fingertips against the elastic of her panties.
She started trembling harder as he petted her with a light touch that moved in lines and circles. Over her hip and side, up to her rib cage, around to her bare back. He unhooked the bra one-handed, pressed his palm to the ridge of her spine there.
He didn’t give a damn about getting to the “good stuff,” as his buddies had often called it. It was all good stuff, and he wanted her to know it. He was content to spend his energy studying her every reaction, making sure they were doing all right.
He left the loosened bra where it was and lowered his touch to slip the button of her jeans, trace the edge of her panties below her navel.
She bit her lip, and one hand had dropped to his knee, fingers gripping the seam of his jeans in a sudden death grip, indicating the wrong kind of tension.
“It’s okay,” he said quietly. “Don’t worry. Talk to me.”
“When you touch me,” she said hesitantly, “it feels good. But I’m not sure about…between my legs.”
Not unexpected. “How about taking off the jeans? I just want to hold you in my lap in nothing but your panties. That’s all we’ll do.” He didn’t want to spook her. Make her think he was going to ask too much, too soon. The way she nodded, her expression easing, settled his concerns.
“Good,” he murmured. “I want to look. Feel how wet you are.”
The concerns he’d thought he’d reversed snapped into a full locking of her muscles, so violent she bucked herself off his lap. He caught her before she could fall, but she scrambled away, stumbling over his feet. She was a few paces away in a jarring blink, standing in the doorway of her bedroom.
“I’m sorry,” she stammered. “I’m so sorry. I can’t help it.”
“It’s okay.” He kept his voice calm while his mind sifted rapidly through the past few seconds. When he’d spoken, he’d moved his touch up, his fingertips gliding along and above her navel. Because he’d moved away from the area causing her worry, back toward something she’d seemed to like having him touch, he knew it was his words, not the contact, that had caused her abrupt reaction.