Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
He made a sound against my mouth, low and broken, somewhere between surprise and relief, like a man who’d braced for a blow and gotten mercy instead.
His hand came up to my face and his fingers were shaking so badly he couldn’t hold them steady against my cheek.
He tried to cup my face and his thumb missed, grazed my ear, found my cheekbone on the second try.
The clumsiness of it undid me more than any smooth touch could have.
He kissed me back and it was nothing like the wall.
The wall had been hunger unleashed, a man breaking apart.
This was careful and uncertain, his mouth moving against mine, his beard soft and rough at the same time against my face, like he was learning the shape of it, like kissing was a thing he’d imagined a thousand times but the reality of it was bigger than the imagining and he didn’t know where to put all of it.
I shifted in his arms, turning so I was facing him fully.
We were already bare, had been since the lake, since he’d stripped us both for warmth and pulled me against him under the furs.
Our bodies pressed together now with a different intent, chest to chest, hip to hip, skin against skin, and the heat from his body was still impossible, still more than any human should produce, and I pressed into it and felt every inch of him.
The scars. The muscle. The hard evidence of what this was doing to him pressed against my hip.
He flinched. Tried to pull his hips back, his whole body going rigid with shame, like his body’s reaction was a confession he needed to take back, an apology he couldn’t get out fast enough.
“Don’t,” I whispered, and pressed closer.
His whole body shuddered. His forehead dropped against mine and his breathing came apart, ragged, uneven, a man drowning in a current he had no practice surviving.
“Talia.” My name in his mouth, rough and desperate. “I haven’t. I’ve never ...”
He couldn’t finish. The words jammed in his throat and his face twisted with humiliation, a grown man confessing the one thing he’d clearly rather die than admit.
His eyes dropped away from mine and his hands went still on my body and I felt him start to pull back, start to retreat behind the walls he’d lived inside his whole life.
The realization landed in my chest like a stone dropped into still water.
The ripples spread outward and touched everything, how he’d smelled my wrist on the floor like instinct had overridden every conscious thought, hovered his hands over my body at night without ever making contact, broken so completely when I’d kissed him by the mortar.
The clumsiness of his hands just now. Trying to hide his arousal.
The trembling that wasn’t just emotion but the raw, overwhelming terror of a man facing a hunger his body understood and his mind never had.
He’d never been touched. By anyone. In nearly forty years of his life.
“Look at me.” I tried to make it gentle.
He wouldn’t. His teeth were clenched and his eyes were fixed on a point somewhere past my shoulder and the muscles in his neck stood out like cords.
I put my hand on his face, felt the beard, the warmth, the tension in his jaw, and turned it toward me. Gently.
His eyes found mine. Bright. Shame and want and fear all tangled together, fighting each other to the surface, a man standing at the edge of something he was convinced would prove every terrible thing he’d ever believed about himself.
“It doesn’t matter,” I told him. My thumb traced the scar on his cheekbone. “It doesn’t change anything.”
“You don’t understand,” he managed. “I won’t know how to. I’ll be ...”
“You’ll be fine.” I traced his collarbone. “I’ll show you.”
His expression cracked. The shame was still there but underneath it, pushing up through the rubble, was a hope so raw and fragile it made my throat ache to look at.
I kissed him again. Slower this time. Gentler.
Let my mouth teach his what to do, how to move, how to match my rhythm, when to press and when to ease back.
He learned fast. His mouth softened against mine, found the pace I was setting, began to answer instead of just receive.
His hand came back to my face and this time his fingers knew where to go, cradling my face with a steadiness they hadn’t had before.
“Good,” I murmured against his lips. “That’s good.”
His hand slid from my face down to my neck, my collarbone, and then lower, and here the clumsiness vanished.
His palm found my breast and cupped it with a sureness that made me arch, his thumb finding my nipple with no fumbling, no hesitation, rolling it the way he’d pulled at it with his mouth by the mortar.
He remembered. The one piece of my body he’d already mapped, the one thing he’d learned in those frantic seconds against the wall before the stone came down on his skull.
His fingers knew this territory and the confidence of that touch against the uncertainty of everything else sent a jolt through me.
I’d taught him this. With a lie and a weapon in my hand. And his body had kept the lesson.
He bent his head. His mouth found my nipple and closed around it and any thought of guiding him evaporated.
He didn’t need guidance here. His tongue circled and pulled with the same desperate focus he’d shown against the wall, warm and wet and greedy, and the vibration of his groan rolled through my breast and into my ribs and settled low in my belly like a coal catching fire.
My fingers twisted into his hair. I arched into his mouth and the sound that came out of me was raw and graceless and I didn’t care.
Sixteen years. It had been sixteen years since anyone had touched me and my nerve endings were screaming awake after years of silence and every pull of his mouth magnified a hundredfold.
But his free hand was lost. It moved from my hip to my ribs to my waist and back again, restless and uncertain, touching everything and knowing nothing.
I took it.
“Here,” I whispered, guiding it down my stomach.
His mouth left my breast. He lifted his head and looked at me. His eyes were so wide and dark there was almost no amber left.
I guided his fingers between my legs and he made a choked sound, surprise, wonder, the shock of finding me wet and ready.
“For you,” I managed. “This is real.”
I showed him what I needed. Placed my fingers over his and taught him the pressure, the rhythm, the place that made my hips roll and my fists clench.
He was shaking so hard I could feel it through both our bodies but his fingers followed my lead with desperate concentration, adjusting when I adjusted, pressing when I pressed.
Then his mouth dropped back to my breast. He couldn’t help it — pulled my nipple between his lips and sucked while his fingers worked between my thighs, and the combination was a fist closing around something white-hot at the base of my spine.
I stopped being able to think. His mouth, tongue circling, teeth grazing, and his fingers between my legs, following the rhythm I’d taught him.
He was doing both at once and he didn’t know what it was building toward, didn’t understand the way my body had gone tight and trembling, didn’t recognize the way my thighs were tensing or my hips were rolling against his hand in a rhythm I couldn’t control.
“Don’t stop,” I gasped. “Whatever you do, don’t ...”
He didn’t stop. His mouth pulled at my nipple and his fingers circled and pressed and the wave built and built, climbing higher with every stroke, every pull, every graze of teeth, until there was nothing left except the tightening and the heat and finally I broke.
The orgasm hit so hard my whole body seized.
My back bowed off the bed and a cry tore out of me, sharp and high and completely beyond my control, and my thighs clamped around his hand and my fingers ripped at the furs and I shook while the waves crashed through me one after another, relentless, blinding.
His mouth ripped away. His hand froze. He scrambled upright, his eyes wide with panic, his face draining of color.
“What happened?” Fear sharpened his face. His hands hovered over me without touching, terrified of making whatever he’d done worse. “Talia — did I hurt you? Are you ...”
I was still shaking. Still gasping. The aftershocks were rolling through me and I couldn’t form words, couldn’t do anything except lie there with my chest heaving and my eyes wet and a smile breaking across my face that I couldn’t have stopped if my life depended on it.
“Talia.” He was over me now, his face stricken, his hands cupping my face. “Talk to me. Please. Did I ...”
“You didn’t hurt me,” I managed, shaking, and the laughter came, helpless, breathless, bubbling up through the aftershocks. “Dietrich. You didn’t hurt me. That was, that’s what’s supposed to happen.”
He stared at me. Blinking. Processing.
“That?” he repeated. “The shaking? The sound you made?”
“That,” I confirmed, still trembling, still coming back to myself. “That’s what it feels like. When it’s good.”
He looked down at his hand, the fingers still glistening, and then back at my face, and the expression that moved across his features was something I’d carry for the rest of my life.
The fear dissolved first, replaced by confusion, then realization, then a wonder so pure and vast it made him look ten years younger.
Like a boy who’d just been told the thing he’d been afraid of was actually a gift.
“I did that.” Soft. Like he needed to hear it out loud.
“Your mouth.” I reached up to touch his face. “And your hand. Together.”
The wonder hardened in his face, want flooding in behind it, so intense it thickened the air between us.
“Can we ...” He swallowed. “I want to ...”