Chapter 10 #2
Diana steps closer. “I want your hands at my hips and along my ribs. Not my throat. Nothing that restricts my breathing. Nothing meant to hurt.”
“I don’t want that.”
“I know what you have not asked for. I’m telling you what I want.”
The correction is quiet. It lands where it needs to.
“Okay.”
“If I say release, both hands leave me.”
“Immediately.”
“If I go silent when I was giving you direction, check.”
“Okay.”
Her gaze stays on mine. “What do you need?”
The question is harder because my first answers all involve her. To know she is comfortable. To know I have not missed a signal. To know my weight is not turning trust into endurance.
“If I stop,” I say, “it might be because I can’t tell whether I’m paying attention to you or only being afraid of hurting you.”
Diana nods once. “Then you stop.”
“I might not have an explanation ready.”
“You don’t owe me one before you stop.”
The words remove a pressure I had not known how to name.
My body has spent years learning that pulling out of physical commitment at the wrong time gets somebody hurt.
Stop the check halfway and the angle becomes dangerous.
Hesitate in a fight and the other man’s fist arrives first. Give up leverage along the boards and lose the puck with a teammate trapped below you.
This room does not use those rules.
Diana points to the edge of the bed. “Sit.”
The word moves through me with more force than any complicated invitation could.
I sit.
The mattress lowers beneath my weight. My knees spread because there is nowhere else for my legs to go, and Diana steps between them.
She does not look small from here. She stands with her shoulders open, strong calves visible beneath the hem of her dress, and her gaze level with mine because I am seated. Her body occupies the space because she chose it.
She touches the side of my face.
My hands stay on my thighs.
Diana bends and kisses me. The first pressure is slow, her mouth warm and certain against mine. Her fingers move into my hair, holding just enough to set the angle. I follow the direction rather than rising to meet her.
The restraint makes every sensation sharper.
Her breath crosses my cheek. The fabric of her dress touches the inside of my knees. Her mouth opens, and the kiss deepens until the weight low in my body becomes an ache I can feel in the way I hold myself still.
I could close both hands around her hips. My reach would pull her against me before she had time to take another breath.
I wait.
Diana lifts her head. Her lips are darker, her eyes fixed on my face. She takes my right hand and places it against her waist, then moves it lower until my palm curves over her hip.
“Here.”
My fingers close carefully.
She takes my left hand next and slides it around her other side, higher this time, along the line of her ribs. The warmth of her reaches me through the dress.
“Like this?” I ask.
“Closer.”
I draw her between my knees until the front of her body meets mine.
The contact pulls a rough breath from me. She feels what the evening has done to me through our clothes, the hard pressure I have stopped pretending can be hidden. Her eyes stay on mine, and the hand at the back of my neck tightens.
“That,” she says quietly. “I wanted to know that.”
My body answers the words with another heavy pulse. The closeness becomes almost painful, not because anything hurts, but because every instinct tells me to move and her direction has made stillness part of the pleasure.
Diana kisses me again.
This time she settles her weight against me.
My palms remain where she placed them, one spanning her hip, the other following the movement of her ribs beneath each breath.
Her mouth moves with more hunger than it did on the steps outside her home, less cautious because we have already made the choice that brought us into this room.
She draws my lower lip between hers. My fingers tighten before I can decide whether the pressure is wanted.
Diana makes a low sound against my mouth and shifts closer.
“Firmer,” she says.
I hold her the way she asked.
The shape of her hip fills my right hand. My left presses her against the broad front of my body, enough force to make the contact complete without lifting her from the floor. Her breath catches, then leaves in a warm rush over my mouth.
The response travels through me so hard that I have to close my eyes for one second.
Not because I am losing control.
Because control has never felt like this.
It has usually been the thing I impose on my own body while another person tries to break it. A locked grip. A set jaw. A shoulder held in the right position while pain moves through the joint.
Here, control is listening to one word and knowing exactly how much of my strength she wants.
Diana’s mouth moves to my jaw, then lower along the side of my neck. Her hair brushes my cheek and falls across my shoulder. I breathe it in, clean and warm from the shower she took before dinner.
My hands stay steady.
She straightens and reaches for the hem of my shirt. I lift my arms while she pulls it over my head. The fabric catches briefly at one shoulder, and her laugh touches my skin before the shirt lands on the floor.
“You own clothing designed for your dimensions,” she says.
“Most of it.”
“This attempted resistance.”
“It knows what happens next.”
Diana places both palms against my chest.
Her hands look smaller there without feeling insignificant. She follows the shape of muscle with open curiosity, not admiration performed for me. Her thumb passes over an old line near my ribs. She does not ask whether it came from a fight or turn the mark into proof of toughness.
I remove her dress more slowly.
She turns enough to let me reach the fastening, then faces me again while I guide the fabric from her shoulders.
The dress loosens and falls in stages, revealing warm skin beneath it.
I take in the strength of her shoulders, the fullness lower down, the slight rise and fall of her breathing as more of her becomes visible.
Desire narrows the room.
My attention catches on every place I am not touching. The curve beneath her ribs. The soft weight of her breasts above the remaining fabric. The line of her waist where my hands already learned the right pressure.
Diana notices where I look.
“Hands,” she says.
I return them to her.
Her skin is hotter without the dress between us. My scarred palms move over smooth warmth, the contrast strong enough that I slow to feel it fully. I do not think about how the scars formed. They are only part of the hands she chose and the sensation she answers by leaning closer.
I kiss the center of her chest, then one side, following the changes in her breath. Her fingers return to my hair. Every time her body shifts toward my mouth, heat builds heavier beneath my skin.
She pushes lightly at my shoulder.
“Back.”
I release her and sit upright.
Diana removes the rest of her clothes without turning the moment into display. She watches me watching her. Confidence stays in the set of her shoulders and the way she steps out of the final fabric without hiding the body she has decided to give me access to.
I strip the rest from myself.
Her gaze drops.
The silence lasts long enough for me to feel the full effect of it. I am already hard enough that the air across me feels like contact, my body heavy with everything I have held back since she stepped between my knees.
Diana looks up again. “You were accurate about needing gradual.”
“Is that a complaint?”
“No.”
Her eyes move down once more, slower. “It is an observation about width.”
Heat moves over my chest and into my face. I have been looked at before. Wanted before. None of it has felt like this precise assessment from a woman who does not flatter bodies to make them easier to manage.
“There’s time,” I say.
“I know.”
She kisses me once, hard enough to stop the answer becoming reassurance she did not ask for. Then she moves onto the bed and reclines diagonally, arranging herself against the pillows.
I follow on my knees.
The position keeps my full weight off her. I remain upright between her legs, close enough to touch and far enough that she controls when the distance closes. Her left ankle rests near my thigh. I see the slight adjustment she makes to keep it from turning outward.
“Pillow,” I say.
Diana points toward the spare one.
I place it beneath her ankle and calf, lifting only after she relaxes the leg into my hands. The support changes the angle without holding her in place.
“Better?”
“Yes.”
I kiss the inside of her knee, then move upward at a pace that makes her breathing deepen. My hands travel along the outsides of her legs without forcing them wider. She opens for me as I approach, and the sight sends another hard pull through the center of my body.
Diana reaches for my left hand.
She places it against her ribs again, palm open. My right settles at her hip after she guides it there. Her body lies beneath me without being covered by mine, every expression visible.
“Stay upright,” she says.
“I will.”
She draws me down far enough for another kiss.
The angle makes me brace through my knees and thighs. My chest hovers above hers, close without crushing. Her mouth opens under mine, and her free hand travels down my back, nails pressing lightly enough to make every muscle tighten beneath them.
I hold her hip.
“Firmer,” she says again.
My fingers close.
Diana’s head tips back into the pillow. The reaction exposes the line of her neck without making it an invitation. I keep my mouth at her jaw and shoulder, nowhere she excluded, while my hand gives her the pressure she selected.
Her body rises into mine.
I feel the movement everywhere we touch. The drag of skin. Her breath against my ear. The soft, involuntary sound she makes when I hold steady instead of loosening at the first sign of intensity.
My fear enters anyway.