He returns his gaze to where his hand is. The tips of his fingers weave into the triangle of hair, and he tugs, making me hiss. But then he pulls away.
“Not yet,” he says. “You’re not ready for me to touch you like this yet.”
Yet.
“Not like I want,” he adds.
I swallow, my throat dry, and what I feel isn’t the relief I should be feeling.
He studies my face, eyes intense and dark, forehead furrowed. I think he must read me like a book.
“Disappointed?”
I shake my head.
“Liar.”
I don’t deny it.
He slides his hand back over my belly, and I’m not sure what he’s going to do. Not sure what he wants when he turns me over onto my stomach and keeps me pinned to the bed with a hand on my lower back.
I press my face into the pillow. My heart is going a hundred miles a minute.
I feel him then, feel the shift of the bed, feel the heat of his body and his breath on the back of my neck as he traces the length of my spine with his fingers as though he’s counting each vertebra.
He’s taking his time, and I can’t move. My body is shuddering totally outside of my control while he sweeps his hand up and down and up and down.
The pillow muffles my whimpers as his fingers follow the arc of my lower back, and I want more. I’m desperate for more.
The bed shifts again. He situates himself between my knees, taking his time to ease mine apart with his own.
I hold my breath and wait.
He won’t force me. I know that. I don’t know why, but I know that.
Still, I want to fight him, but my body’s reaction to him is something else. Almost submissive as if it wants to give itself to him.
He hooks his fingers into the waistband of my panties on either side, and I’m instantly up on my elbows, but when I try to pull away, he closes his hands over my thighs and squeezes to keep me from moving.
“Be still,” he commands.
I do as he says because I have no choice.
His fingers are back inside the waistband of my panties, and he’s sliding them down.
My heart pounds. I look straight ahead, breathing tightly as he drags them over my bottom, exposing me.
I don’t dare look back. I can’t look at him now. Not like this.
“Pretty,” he says, lying back down beside me. From my periphery I see his head is resting on his hand, arm up on elbow. He circles my butt, one cheek then the other and back and forth and back and forth.
I swallow so loud I’m sure he must hear me.
But then his hand is gone, and an instant later, he smacks my butt so hard that my breath hisses. My head flies up, back arching, the sound loud and startling. At first, I feel nothing, but then a hot, stinging pain blooms where he just hit me.
I look at him.
He grins, holding my gaze, and does it again.
“Stop!”
He repeats twice more, once on each cheek.
I cry out.
“That’s for my hand. And you’re getting off very easy.”
I try to pull up, to get away, but he grips a handful of hair, and I can’t move.
“I told you to be still.” No taunt in his voice now. No smile on his lips. He’s dead serious.
My body shudders, but it’s not fear I feel. At least it’s not only fear. I don’t think he’ll hurt me. Not really hurt me even given what he just did. The way his father looked at me, he’d kill me in a heartbeat. But Damian, he looks at me differently.
“Do you think we’ll ever stop dreaming about it?”
His words come back to me and I realize that in the moment he said them, he was vulnerable. He was raw. He was pain.
And in that, we are kindred.
It’s such a strange realization that I subconsciously do as he says and still. I look at him, try to see that part of him again.
He must feel my acquiescence because he nods, softens his grip, and shifts his gaze to my neck where he pushes the hair off.
How vulnerable necks are, I think, as he wraps his hand around the back of mine as if to measure it. Perhaps to test his grip. Test how easily he can snap it.
I hold my breath because I don’t want him to hear my whimpers.
He draws his hand away, and the next thing I feel is his mouth on me.
I close my eyes.
His lips are at the nape of my neck. His mouth is warm and soft, the scruff of his jaw rough, scratching. Together, the sensations they send through me make me shudder.
The bed shifts again.
“Look at me.”
He’s closer. I feel his breath on my cheek.
“Open your eyes and look at me.”