His plan for handling what had happened earlier had been to stay as long as he could determine she wanted him here. Maybe sleep in her bed, hold her through the night. But as they fed on the contact between them, her getting more absorbed in touching him, and him reacting to that contact, he realized that wasn’t the only way to handle what had happened earlier.
He could show her how much power she had in those slim fingers of hers.
“You’re so strong,” she whispered, her hand moving over his biceps again. “You could carry me forever. I’ve dreamed that. You carrying me.”
He tilted his head. “It wasn’t a dream, baby. I did carry you once.”
Surprise crossed her face. “When?”
“That first summer you stayed with us. You and Les were out doing chores. It was a really hot day, and you got overheated and passed out while feeding the chickens. She hollered and I came out with Mom. She was figuring out how to get you out of the heat and I picked you up, carried you inside.”
His mother had called for Thomas, but Thomas was in the hay barn, and Rory was right there. He remembered how astonishingly light she’d felt in his arms.
“I thought you opened your eyes once, but I didn’t know if you remembered it or not.”
“I thought it was a dream. I felt safe. You held me like you’d never drop me.”
He’d never picked up a girl who’d passed out, who needed to be carried from point A to point B. The clammy feel of her skin, her paleness, the worry in his gut, reflected in Les and his mother’s eyes, had made an impression. But his desire to protect her, and the realization of how much she’d needed his care in that moment, had made an even stronger one.
The illumination in the room, coming from the outside utility light, streaming through the bedroom window, shadowed and etched her thoughtful features. Her next question took him by surprise.
“Do you dream about it? When you could walk?”
“Yeah. Plenty of times. Sometimes, if it’s a really vivid dream, when I wake up, I can’t figure out why I’m trying to swing my legs to the floor and it’s not working.”
He used to hope that the mind would conquer the body in those vivid dreams, so when he was in that half-asleep state, things would kick in, just start working again.
Her fingertips drifted up, down. Following the arrow of hair toward the waistband of his boxers, then back up toward his navel. Her attention was on his face, the way he was pressing his lips together, the curl of his hand on the headboard as he stayed out of her path. “This feels really good to you?” she asked.
“Yeah. It does.”
She moistened her lips. “You said it was okay for me to touch you. Does that mean…anywhere?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Where do you want me to touch you?”
“Everywhere.”
She curled her hand around his waist. He felt the pressure and movement of her forearm against his side and glanced down to watch her trace the curve of his buttock over the fabric of his underwear. Even though he couldn’t feel it, his memory could take over where his nerves couldn’t.
He adjusted partially onto his side toward her, and she lay down to face him, scooting closer, cuddling into him. Her cheek rested on his chest as her fingertips glided up to the small of his back, his shoulder blades and back down again.
There'd been times, with a hand on his dick, working it, and his other hand running over his chest, his abdomen, playing around his navel, he'd brought himself to an orgasm, just to see what it would be like. But that was a pale shadow compared to how it felt when it was caused by Daralyn's hand trailing along his chest, teasing his nipples, her mouth high on his chest, moving up to his throat. He cupped her head as she nibbled the area beneath his ear, and when her fingers tightened on his side, digging into the layer of muscle over his rib cage, his stomach muscles contracted.
As she moved below his waist again, he watched the flex of her thin arm, imagined she was following the crease between his buttocks, then her fingers fanning out along the cheek again, to the back of his thigh. A quick shiver went up his spine.
She drew back, was watching his face. “Can you feel it there?”
He shook his head.
“Can you show me…where you stop feeling it?”
“It’s fuzzy. Not a straight line, sensation on this side and nothing on the other side. It’s kind of a gradual thing. But it mostly stops at the waist.”
He gripped her wrist, and took her hand to the top of his buttocks, just below the waistband of his boxer briefs. “I can feel traces of things in this area. Not real strongly. It’s kind of like phantom sensation. And here.”
He brought her hand around, resting her fingers on the leg hem edge of his boxer briefs, high on his thighs, a couple inches away from the bulge of his testicles and cock under the stretched fabric.
He released her then, and reinforced his earlier instruction. “Everywhere, Daralyn. I’ll tell you if I want you to stop.”
She skated her fingers down his thigh, then back up. She moved her hand over his groin area, around his cock. When she at last gripped him through the fabric, stroked, he let her keep the driver’s seat, decide how she wanted to go.
Reflexogenic hard-ons didn’t result in a pile driver of an erection, but there were ways he could get it harder, keep it up. Watching her explore was pleasurable torment.
He’d given some thought to whether she’d even want to have sex. He was better equipped than most men, so to speak, to accept that. But her interest, her reaction, said that she was interested. And her pleasure meant a whole hell of a lot to him.
“I want to be inside you at some point, Daralyn.”
“Okay.” Her brief hesitation, her tone, the softening of her mouth and brightness of her eyes, told him she was greenlighting the idea, though he’d still ask a few more questions to be sure, when the time came.
She’d moved her touch up to his abdomen again. She seemed intensely interested in how it made his muscles tighten and his breath shorten, and he gripped her more urgently with the hand on her hip.
He let go of the headboard to bring her face back up, so they could meet gazes. “I’m not ever going to force you to tell me what you want, Daralyn. But if ever you do, it will be a gift to me. Every time you do it.”
She pressed her lips together. “I… Sometimes I feel like you already know. That I don’t have to say it.”
“I’m not as smart as I might seem. Thomas and Les should have told you that.”
A slight smile appeared on her lips. “Being inside me... Will it be tonight?”
“I think we need to think about it some. Take a breath.”
She didn’t say anything to that. Her eyes lowered, and her breathing was shallow. Her fingers curled into his stomach, little bites of her nails.
Signs of disappointment, which surprised the hell out of him. He needed to explain further, so she knew it wasn’t a rejection. Not even close. Hand to God, if he was in the middle of church right now and she asked him to make love to her, he wouldn’t hesitate even a second. God would understand. He’d created Daralyn, after all.
“I want to right now,” he said. “But there’s more to it than that.”
He’d taken these steps with Amanda Brewster, and it had turned out all right. But truthfully, that had been about him, taking his first steps toward finding out he could still enjoy sex. Also toward something he’d been surprised to find was more important to his sense of his masculinity and pride as a lover: he could make it enjoyable for the woman he was with.