Page 41 of Ruthless Sin
A breath comes out of him, uneven.
“Because you haven’t had a yes you got to give. Not in a long time. I’m not taking that too.”
He pauses again.
“Sat outside your door tonight. Thought you wouldn’t come.” His voice cracks. “And then you did.”
The dress is wet against me. My hips shift on the bed. Small. I do not mean to do it.
He hears the fabric move.
The room smells like him. Soap. Cotton sheets. Jasmine through the magnolia. I have smelled these things on him in the SUV for weeks. Inside a closed room they are different.
Heat starts at the back of my knees and moves up the inside of my thighs without stopping.
Years of going somewhere else when my body did this. Tonight I am not going anywhere.
My nipples are hard against the dress. My underwear is soaked through. I shift my hips against the comforter again. Looking for pressure I will not give myself.
Behind me his breath leaves him, stops, and restarts.
“Cara.” Soft. Tender. “Your hand.”
My right hand has gone white on the comforter, the thumb folded under, gripping so hard it hurts.
“You’re going to hurt yourself,milaya.” Barely a whisper. “Let go for me.Cara. I’m right here.”
I open the hand. One finger at a time. I let it lie flat against the comforter.
“Good,” he breathes. “Brava. Just like that.”
The fabric shifts on his side, his fingers curling into the sheet and flattening.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he says. “I’m not reaching for you. I’m right here.”
Heat between my thighs sharpens.
The silence holds.
Then his hand moves slow across the sheet and settles on the comforter on his side, the palm turning up and open, six inches from mine.
He does not slide it closer or tell me it is there.
He goes back to breathing. Badly.
I look at his hand a long time, and the wanting to touch it is a physical ache in my fingers.
Scars across the knuckles, the width of the palm, the spread of his fingers — the same spread he keeps on the gearshift between us every Tuesday.
I move my fingers three inches across the comforter.
The back of my hand brushes the side of his palm.
He makes a sound in his throat that does not become a word.
His palm stays open. Mine to do what I want with.
His skin is hot. Mine is hotter. The chain moves at my throat.
