Chapter 10 #3
It lives in the knowledge of what these hands can do. How little effort it would take for firm to become too much. How many people have stepped back when I moved toward them, whether I intended fear or not.
Diana’s fingers close around my wrist.
“Release.”
Both my hands leave her.
I sit back at once, palms open beside my thighs.
The absence of contact is immediate enough that cold air moves into every place my hands had warmed. My heart strikes hard against my ribs, but I do not reach for her or ask what went wrong.
Diana watches me for one breath.
Then she takes my right hand and returns it to her hip.
“Here,” she says. “Not as tight yet.”
I set my palm against her without closing my fingers.
Her hand remains over mine for a moment, guiding the pressure. Then she lets go.
Nothing has broken.
The word did what we agreed it would do. My hands left. Her choice remained hers. She decided where one returned.
The simplicity affects me more deeply than praise could.
Diana studies my face. “Still with me?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
She slides her hand over my chest and lower, tracing the tension that runs through my body. The first full contact makes my breath leave in a rough sound I cannot contain. My hips shift toward her hand before I stop them.
Her eyes sharpen with pleasure at the response.
“You can move,” she says.
The next stroke destroys every useful thought for several seconds.
I brace one hand beside her, not on her, while she explores the effect she has on me. Her touch is direct, unhurried, and confident enough that I do not have to perform control by becoming silent. My breathing grows louder. My head drops briefly, then lifts because I want to see her.
She watches me come apart by degrees.
The broad tension across my shoulders. The way my thighs lock to keep me upright. The pulse she can feel beneath her hand. I have never been more aware of my size and never felt less like it exists to overwhelm the person beside me.
I kiss her before the sensation takes everything else.
Our mouths meet harder now. Diana’s free hand grips my shoulder while the other keeps moving, and I answer by letting my palm follow the shape of her hip, tightening only when she presses into the contact.
The room becomes breath and friction, instructions reduced to the few words that matter.
“Here.”
I move.
“Slower.”
I slow.
“Stay.”
I hold still while she uses the stillness, her body moving beneath my hand and mouth until waiting becomes its own kind of torment.
When she finally reaches toward the bedside drawer, I almost follow the movement with my whole body.
Diana opens it and removes a condom and the lubricant. She places both beside her where we can reach them.
“No rush,” she says.
“I’m not rushing.”
“You look offended by time.”
“I’m negotiating with it.”
“That has gone well for you before.”
The humor loosens something in my chest. I kiss her again, slower, and let my hand travel from her hip along the outside of her thigh. She guides me inward. The first touch there changes her breath and draws a visible shiver through her body.
I pay attention to what follows.
The way her knees relax farther apart. The way her eyes close, then open when I pause. The small lift toward my hand when the pressure is right.
“Like this?” I ask.
“Yes.”
One word is enough.
I keep the rhythm she answers. Her hand curls around my upper arm, not directing now, only holding while sensation builds through her.
Every change in her body reaches mine. The tightening beneath my touch.
The broken pace of her breathing. The way her gaze loses focus, finds me again, then slips away when pleasure becomes too strong to hold inside a look.
I want to give her everything at once.
That desire has always been the dangerous part. More force. More speed. More certainty because waiting feels like failure.
I do not add anything she has not asked for.
I stay with the rhythm until her body arches and a low sound leaves her, fuller than the quiet responses before it. Her fingers close around my arm. The release moves through her in waves I can feel beneath my hand, each one making her body draw tighter before slowly letting go.
I remain where I am until her grip eases.
Diana looks at me through heavy breaths. “Come here.”
I bend over her without putting my weight down. She kisses me with an openness that sends fresh heat through every part of me already aching.
Her hand reaches between us again.
The pleasure is almost too immediate. I groan into her mouth, my body tightening toward the contact while she steadies me with the other hand at my shoulder.
“Condom,” she says against my lips.
I reach for it.
The practical motion makes my hands feel briefly too large. Diana takes the packet, opens it, and gives it back to me without ceremony. I roll the condom on, then add lubricant with enough care that anticipation becomes another physical pressure.
She watches all of it.
Not shy. Not detached. Her gaze makes preparation part of the encounter rather than an interruption that must disappear from it.
I settle upright between her legs again.
Diana adjusts the pillow beneath her ankle and places both hands at my hips. She looks from where our bodies are about to join to my face.
“Slow.”
“Yes.”
She guides the angle.
The first careful press draws a sharp breath from both of us. I stop before the reaction can become something I interpret for her.
Her hands tighten at my hips. “Stay.”
I stay.
The effort travels through my whole body. My thighs shake once from holding the position. Heat surrounds the small part of me she has accepted, and the width of my body asks more of hers than desire alone can make easy.
Diana breathes slowly. She shifts her hips by a fraction, then another, testing the angle instead of enduring it.
“Back a little.”
I ease away.
“Now closer.”
I follow.
The next movement takes me deeper. Her lips part. A sound catches low in her throat, and her fingers press into my hips hard enough to make the direction unmistakable.
“Still good?” I ask.
“Yes. Do not speed up.”
“I won’t.”
She keeps one hand at my hip and reaches down with the other to guide where our bodies meet. The adjustment changes everything. Her eyes close, and her head presses back into the pillow while her body gives another careful amount.
I move only when her hand draws me forward.
Her breath catches at the fullness. Mine stops entirely.
I am used to my body being the larger fact in every room.
A problem other people measure before I speak.
Here, the breadth of me becomes something Diana receives by choice and manages without apology.
She makes room in increments, controlling angle and depth until the tight resistance slowly changes into hot, surrounding pressure.
Nothing in my life has ever required this much restraint while giving me this much sensation.
I enter her fully only when she pulls me closer.
The pleasure is so complete that my arms tense beside my body. My hands close into fists against my own thighs because I need somewhere for the force of it to go.
Diana opens her eyes.
“Hands.”
I flatten them.
She takes the right one and returns it to her hip. The left goes against her ribs, where I can feel every breath.
“Firmer,” she says.
I hold her.
Her body tightens around me in answer.
The sensation strips a sound from my chest. Diana’s eyes remain on mine, and the intensity in them makes the physical pleasure feel almost secondary for one impossible second. She wanted the strength in my hands. She wanted the width of my body. She wanted to choose how both entered the room.
I begin to move.
Slow at first. Enough to let our bodies find the path we established. I ease back, feel the heat resist my departure, then return along the same angle.
Diana’s fingers dig into my sides. “Again.”
I repeat it.
Each movement becomes smoother without becoming less intense. Her body adjusts around my size, but the fit stays close enough that every small change reaches me. A tilt of her hips. A tightening beneath my palms. The way her legs shift around my knees without straining the supported ankle.
I watch her face.
The pleasure moves visibly through it. Her control does not disappear. It changes form. Her instructions shorten because her body supplies more of the answer.
“More.”
I increase the depth, not the speed.
Her mouth opens on a broken breath.
“Like that?”
“Yes.”
I keep it there.
The rhythm builds through repetition rather than force. Back. Forward. A pause deep enough to feel her body close around me. Another measured withdrawal that makes her fingers tighten because she does not want the distance to last.
I could move harder. Every muscle in me asks for it. The need has become a hard current through my hips and stomach, a demand to take the pleasure to its end before control turns into pain.
Diana’s voice keeps me inside the choice.
“Stay.”
I stop deep.
Her body continues moving around mine.
The deliberate stillness is more erotic than speed. She shifts beneath me, using the full pressure of our joined bodies while my hands hold her exactly where she placed them. Each small motion drags pleasure through me until my jaw tightens and my breath comes in uneven bursts.
Diana watches the effect.
A faint smile touches her swollen mouth, not teasing, simply aware.
“You feel that,” she says.
“Yes.”
“Stay.”
I stay until sweat forms along my back and the strain in my thighs becomes almost as sharp as the pleasure. Her hands travel over my chest, my stomach, the sides of my body held rigid above her. She explores the strength without needing it to act.
Then her hips settle.
“Move.”
I do.
The first stroke after stillness hits both of us harder. Diana’s head lifts from the pillow. I bend enough to kiss her, careful to keep my weight through my knees and one braced arm while the other remains at her hip.
Her mouth meets mine with no patience left in it.