Same way he’d learned how to do plenty of other hard stuff. With practice.
He turned her over toward him, guiding her so she was curled in his arms, her head tucked under his chin. One of her arms crept under his, the other tucked between his chest and her body. Her bare breasts pressed against him. He stroked through her hair again, cradling her jaw and side of her throat. He didn’t want to distress her, but he wasn’t going to make a wrong assumption again, if he could avoid it by asking her the right questions.
“Whenever I touch you, Daralyn, if something doesn’t feel right, or scares you the wrong way, can you tell me to stop? Truthfully.”
She thought about it for a few heartbeats, then she shook her head against his chest. “No. I don’t know if I can. When I think about doing it…”
In a heartbeat, she was a ball of quivering nerves, her breath rasping, a warning of a panic attack. He held her closer.
“Easy,” he said. “You’re fine. We’re fine.”
When she’d said no, they’d punished her.
Her reaction to anger was to draw inward, defuse. How was he going to get past that very male part of him that wanted to rage, tear apart anyone who’d hurt her?
“It’s okay,” he said, saying it to himself as much as her. All while holding her, rocking her. “It’s okay.”
“But I can’t…” Despair drenched her tone. For fifteen years, she’d been told what she wanted wasn’t an option. And they’d done such a good job that it was branded down to the unconscious level.
Telling her she could make choices didn’t liberate her. It shattered her.
Until she could get there—and she would, he knew it—he would have to continue to determine, guess, or deduce her wants and needs, all while watching out for her well-being. And hope like hell the Dom part of him didn’t get so used to it that he missed any attempts she made to start doing it for herself, such that he overrode her at the wrong moment.
It was a lot of responsibility, and he felt the weight of it, the fear of it. But he could handle it.
“I get it,” he said, taking them away from the danger zone. “It’s okay. Don’t tell me what you want. Tell me what feels good.”
A little bit of tension went out of her, though she spoke hesitantly. “I don’t want to tell you what to do.”
“Did I say that?” He made his tone firmer. Decisive. “Tell me what I said, Daralyn.”
“You said to tell you what feels good.”
“Right. It will be my decision, whether I do those things or not. Right?”
More relaxing of those tight muscles. It was a small miracle to him, discovering an avenue that might work. It seemed the Dominant side of his nature could read the submissive language of hers better than his conscious self.
“You holding me feels good.”
“That’s good, because that’s what I want to do. What I’m going to keep doing.”
Her fingers between them opened and closed against his chest. Her breathing was leveling out, but he decided a change of subject was in order.
“Hey, you know that guy in Florida with the specialty fixtures?”
“He sent us the picture of a spigot shaped like a dragon’s head.”
“Yeah, that’s him. I was thinking about driving down and doing a face-to-face with him. See his stock in person. He’s on the Gulf. I want you to go with me. I could go fishing, you could bring some books, hang out with me on the dock. School will be closed for the bank holiday in a couple weeks. You’d have a four-day weekend since you have no Friday classes. I can work out coverage for the store.”
“Okay. Oh…sorry. I mean…”
He wasn’t sure what she was apologizing for, then realized the arm she’d had threaded under his, hand resting on his waist, had shifted as she changed position. Now her palm was back on his side. He gave her a mock stern look.
“Did you just grab my ass?”
She colored three ways. “No…I just, my hand brushed…”
She came to a halt as he grinned at her, and she pushed lightly at him. Keeping her close in his arm span, he adjusted so he was lying on his back, her draped over his upper body, her arm on his chest, head up under his jaw. Her fingertips followed the curve of his pectoral, a small movement, just a couple inch span of skin. Shy, careful. She had no idea what that contact was doing to him.
He reached up, closed his hand on hers, flexed out her fingers to a wider reach. “Touch me however feels good, honey. Because all of it feels good to me.”
When he met her gaze, confirming he meant it, they held that way for a long moment, humor dissipating in the face of a different set of emotions.
Slowly, she pushed herself up on an elbow, so she was gazing down at his body. The blanket was at her waist, so not only did he see the curves of her naked breasts, but the slope of her side, the shadowed juncture between her thighs, the fold of her legs as she rested on her hip. He made himself keep his hands where they were, one loosely curved over her hip, forearm pressed against her buttocks, fingers playing with the crease where thigh and hip met. His other arm was above his head, hand gripping the post of her headboard so he could dig into it for resolve if needed.
Laying her fingertips on his opposite shoulder, she drew her touch downward, over his biceps, the inside of his elbow, his forearm.
Heaven. Absolute bliss. Anyone who’d ever seen the way a simple breeze could turn a whole lake into a canvas of ripples was watching what it was like for a paraplegic, to be touched by a woman where he could feel.
She moved across, onto his abdomen, up around his nipple, toward his collar bone. She moved as carefully as a novice painter, afraid of taking a wrong stroke on that canvas. Or maybe an expert, knowing just where she wanted the brush to go.
Down from his neck and shoulder again, back over his pectoral, to his sternum. Her fingers threaded through the hair on his chest, over the bump of his nipple. A little extra exploration there. He’d been able to contain the reaction, until that moment. But when the pleasure rippled through him, capturing her attention, he realized he shouldn’t be hiding it at all. The wave was strong enough to have him briefly closing his eyes, his hand tightening over her hip. Her gaze was intent and curious.
“Your hands feel good,” he told her.
What an understatement. A normal guy his age had one major erogenous zone, between his legs. Yeah, other stuff felt good, but most guys he knew would agree. When an orgasm happened, it channeled through the cock and balls like a fire hose. But after losing sensation below the waist, he’d discovered the gods could be kind. Heightened sensation in the parts of his body above the level of his injury meant the whisper of a hand over his shoulders, his nipples, his abdomen, stirred the urgency that a woman’s grip on his cock used to do.
Sex wasn’t about genitalia, or only about fucking. He hadn’t known that before. It was about feeling.
The movement of Daralyn’s hands on his chest, his throat, his arms and shoulders, was something he fiercely enjoyed. He told her that, not letting himself avoid what it said about the parts that couldn’t feel. Her eyes stayed wide, deep and thoughtful, her mouth moist. “So I can keep doing it?”
“Hell, yeah,” he said, and the hoarseness in his voice made the gold in her hazel eyes deepen in color.