And she almost laughed out loud—granted, a little bit hysterically—at the thought of what Conrad would say if she mentioned herbrandjust now.
Rory braced herself. She took hold of the skinny little string of the bag she liked to wear out to dates and things, because it was so little and easy, and slipped it off her shoulder. She placed the bag on the table closest to her, and maybe she made a little production out of that. Eating up minutes.
Dawdling, her father would have said,only makes dread into a decision.
For God’s sake,this was not the time to think about her father.
Yet in that moment, Rory suddenly realized exactly why her father had been so appalled that she’d wanted to talk about her sex life with him. She’d never understood before. All the sex she’d ever had was about as meaningful as a sneeze. Why not debate and discuss over food with family? Why not talk it up all over the place, because what did it matter if everyone knew her thoughts on every last detail? They were onlythoughts.
But she understood, at last, that when other people talked about sex they weren’t talking about their thoughts and philosophies andwhat ifs. They were talking aboutaction.About actualacts.And all the actsRoryhad ever taken part in had been about as intimate and vulnerable as a high five.
But that wasn’t true for everyone.
Because everything with Conrad already felt more intimate, more raw, more meaningful or powerful—in the sense of consequences, in this body that no longer felt like her own—than literally all the sex she had ever had.
That made a different sort of sensation go through her like a long, sad ripple.
And then Rory banished her father from her head and at the same time, put her hands on her knees and tried to imagine how she was going to make herself do this. It should have been simple. Sliding out of the chair, getting down on the rug—no big thing.
But it felt...huge. Like flinging herself off a cliff.
Like changing her life, as he’d said.
She looked at Conrad for help, but he remained as implacable as stone. As if he could sit there, watching and waiting, until the end of time.
Maybe that was comforting. She blew out a breath. Then heaved in another one, because oxygen no longer seem to be doing the trick.
She shifted a little and realized that her pussy was ridiculously wet. That there was that low, throbbing ache that made her wonder whether, if she just squeezed her thighs together, she could make herself come just like this.
Just at the idea.
And then oddly, she felt her eyes well up, even as her nipples prickled to life again, poking hard against her tank top.
Something shifted inside her, the way it had when she’d been standing outside this church earlier. It was the sense that she was already ruined, so what was a little more? Rory wanted to call that defeatist, but she had the sneaking suspicion that it was nothing more and nothing less than that wholescale surrender that he’d been talking about.
The very word made her want to sob. It made her want to put her hands between her legs and make herself come, over and over.
It made her want him.
It made her feel as if she was caught in a terrible undertow, tossed and rolled by the waves and then dragged out to a sea she hardly knew—
And then finally, in the end, it was such a simple thing.
She slipped off the chair. She took herself down to the rug.
Rory knelt there in front of him, her chest heaving and her pulse a drum inside her, as if she’d performed an Olympic feat.
For a moment, the noise inside her head was so loud, and her body shook so much, that she thought she might crumple down into a puddle—
But Conrad smiled.
A genuine smile, and it changed everything.
Everything inside her seem to...lift. Then spin a bit, like hope.
He sat forward, and that was when it occurred to her that she wasn’t simply kneeling, which was bad enough. She was kneeling between his legs, in front of his chair.
But she didn’t have time to worry herself to death over that little detail, because he was sitting forward and putting that palm of his to her cheek.