Tighter and tighter, he held me, and tighter and tighter the coil twisted in my lower stomach.
As Asa growled his release, he returned one clever hand to my center, eager to help me catch up to him.
“Yes,” I murmured, riding his fingers until the tension in me burst in kaleidoscope colors behind my eyes.
Until now, until him, sex had lacked any depth beyond the pleasure of its culmination.
This was…
…I had no words.
Arms weighted with lead, I hefted them onto his shoulders and held him until our ragged breaths eased.
“Thank you.” Asa kept me locked against him. “For loving me.”
For the millionth time this week, I fought the hot sting of tears that threatened to overflow my cheeks.
This I could do. This I could use to make him understand. This was more than words.
This was us.
Not him.
Or me.
Us.
“Thank you.” I licked the salt from his shoulder. “For letting me.”
Intimacy was an alien language I heard others speak in, their whispered secrets shared with tender grins, but I didn’t understand the words or comprehend their meanings. There was a blockade between my head and my heart, built stone by stone over the long years I spent with the director, withering away from the lack of affection until the shriveled remains of my soul met with his approval, and my tattered memories tasted of imagination and wishes and dreams of a better life than a girl like me deserved.
“Come to bed with me.” He toyed with the ends of my hair. “Let me wake up with you like this.”
Cheek resting over his heart, I was asleep before he got his legs under us.