31. Jamison #7
Her gaze dropped, and the memory of her face when she saw me came back with enough force to make my ego stretch like a satisfied animal.
She swallowed. “I still don’t think it’s possible.”
“It is.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Because I’m right.”
“Very humble.”
“No one asked me for humility in bed.”
That earned the smallest laugh, and I kissed it softly, then drew back.
I stood beside the bed and undressed properly because if Sienna wanted to see me, she would see me without half measures.
The wet shirt came first, peeled off my shoulders and dropped onto the floor.
Her eyes followed the movement over my chest, my stomach, the tattoos she had only touched through fabric. Her breathing changed again.
Good.
The holster had already been abandoned near the bath.
I stepped out of the rest of my clothes slowly enough for her to watch, because watching had become its own kind of touch between us.
Her gaze moved over me with shy hunger, then flicked back to my face whenever she thought she had stared too long.
“You’re allowed to look,” I said.
She pressed her lips together. “I am looking.”
“Yes, baby. You are.”
Her cheeks went hotter.
When I climbed back onto the bed, she shifted toward me as if pulled. Her hand reached first, hesitant, then touched my abdomen. No fear in the touch this time. Curiosity, yes. Nerves. Want. She traced the line of muscle below my ribs, then lower, stopping when my stomach tightened under her hand.
I covered her hand with mine and guided it down.
Her fingers brushed me again, and my breath left through my nose. I let her explore only for a second before catching her wrist and bringing it to my mouth. If she kept touching me with that careful reverence, I was going to forget every plan I had made for her body.
“Lay back.”
She obeyed, eyes still on me.
I moved beside her rather than over her, kneeling near her shoulder on the bed. “We’re going slow. You’ll use your mouth a little, and I’ll get you ready with my hand. If you need to stop, tap my thigh or say red. If you need slower, yellow.”
She nodded, her gaze dropping to me again.
“Words.”
She blinked up at me, dazed enough from my mouth that her eyes took a second to focus.
“Um… green?” Her brows pulled together. “Can’t I just say yes?”
The question stopped me more cleanly than fear would have. She truly did not understand why a word as simple as yes had failed the room.
I stroked my thumb along her cheekbone. “You can say yes too.”
“Then why do I need colors?”
“Because yes tells me you want me.” I lowered my voice, keeping it calm because this mattered more than my cock. “Green tells me your body and your head are still with me.”
“That sounds… very planned.” She frowned slightly, trying to understand.
“It is.”
“But sex is meant to feel romantic.” Her eyes dropped between us, then back to my face. “Stopping to say colors doesn’t feel romantic.”
“That is because you think stopping means something went wrong.” I touched the side of her throat, feeling her pulse jump beneath my thumb. “When I ask your color, I’m telling you I am still listening. I am still answering to you.”
I kept my hand on her face, the other braced beside her hip, because she needed to feel held while we talked about things people in our world preferred to pretend happened naturally. Safety had structure. Desire, if it was going to survive men like me, needed better than hope.
Sienna swallowed. “Normal people don’t do that.”
“No.”
“They just…” Her lashes lowered, embarrassment moving through her. “They start. And consent is already done because both people are there, and then the woman just…”
“The woman just what?”
Her mouth tightened as if she regretted speaking. “Nothing.”
“Sienna.”
She looked at the sheets. “She just stays until it’s over.”
The sentence entered me quietly.
Then it did damage.
I had heard men confess worse things under knives and felt less immediate violence. The ugliest part was how plainly she said it. As if that had been filed somewhere in her head under ordinary adult truths. Women endured and men took and everybody called the absence of screaming consent.
I caught her chin and brought her eyes back to mine.
“No.”
She blinked at the tone.
“No, baby. That is not how this works.”
“I didn’t mean with you.”
“Yes, you did.” I kept my voice low, but something dangerous had entered it anyway. I could hear it. So could she. “You meant once sex starts, a woman becomes polite furniture until he is finished.”
Her lips parted, but no argument came.
That told me plenty.
I leaned closer. “You will never be polite furniture in my bed. And you are not giving me colors because you’re inexperienced. Do you hear me? I am not normal.”
A shaky breath left her.
“Our relationship sure as fuck won’t be normal either,” I continued.
“I told you what I want. I want your knees. Your trust. Your rules. Your body trained to settle when I touch you. I want to own spaces inside your head that no one else gets near. That is serious, Sienna. That requires language sharper than maybe and softer than no.”
Her hand moved to my wrist.
Good girl.
Still reaching for me.
I covered her fingers with mine. “Green means keep going. It means you feel good, safe, present. Yellow means slow down, adjust, talk to me, something is too much or changing too fast. Red means everything stops. Instantly. No questions before the stop. No sulking. No punishment. No making you feel guilty because my body wanted more than yours could give.”
“What if I say yellow and I’m only embarrassed?” she asked.
“Then I slow down and help with the embarrassment.”
“What if I say it because I don’t know what I’m feeling?”
“Then I stop moving and we find out together.”
“What if I say red and then change my mind?”
“Then I hold you until your body catches up with your mouth, and we decide after that.”
She stared at me. “You wouldn’t be angry?”
“No.” I shifted so I was closer to her. “When I ask for your color, I’m not leaving the mood. I’m building the mood the way I want it built. Honest. Safe. Mine. Yours. No guessing.”
She looked down at my hand covering hers. “I’m happy to use yes and no.”
“That isn’t enough for what I am.”
Her gaze lifted.
“There will be moments,” I said carefully, “where I tell you to say no because you’re teasing me.
Or because you want to feel me overrule a little protest you gave me on purpose.
There may be scenes one day where no belongs to the game.
If we agree to that. If you want that.” My thumb moved over her knuckles.
“Colors never belong to the game. Green, yellow, red stay clean.”
Her face flushed, but she didn’t look away. “People really do that?”
“Yes.”
“And it doesn’t ruin it?”
“No, baby.” I bent and kissed her wrist. “It makes it safer to go further.”
She took that in with a tiny breath.
I watched the understanding begin to form. Sienna had spent years thinking safety meant making herself easy. Now I was asking for a color while kneeling beside her with my cock hard and she was trying to reconcile that with every terrible little lesson society had handed her in silk gloves.
“I don’t want to make it less…” She searched for the word and blushed harder. “Intimate.”
I gave a low laugh, because if I didn’t, the tenderness in my chest might become visible and ruin my reputation.
“You think my asking whether you’re still safe under me makes it less intimate?”
“It sounds silly when you say it that way.”
“It was silly before I said it.”
She frowned at me, but the corner of her mouth moved.
Good.
I wanted her here with me, not floating toward some obedient little version of herself who lay still because she thought that was what women did.
I lowered my mouth to her jaw. “I want your color because I want your trust awake. You choosing me through every step. I want to feel you give me more and know you gave it because you wanted to, not because I made the room too heavy for you to say otherwise.”
Her fingers tightened around my wrist.
“Every time I ask,” I said against her skin, “I’m saying, you’re still in control, baby. Even under me, with my hand on your throat one day. When you call me Daddy and let me take over. I still answer to you.”
“You answer to me?” she whispered.
“Yes.”
“But you’re…” Her gaze moved over me, my shoulders, my chest, the tattoos, the size difference she had already declared a mathematical impossibility. “You.”
“I know what I am.”
Her fingers slipped from my wrist to my palm, threading through mine. “And you’d stop?”
“Before you finished the word.”
I kissed her, slowly. Her hand stayed in mine. When I drew away, her eyes were steadier. I brushed her hair from her face. “Color?”
“Green.”
“That’s my good girl.” I touched her face, thumb brushing over her lower lip. “Open for me.”
Her mouth parted. I leaned in close, guiding myself with my hand, \controlled despite every nerve in my body demanding otherwise.
“Only the head,” I said. “Nothing more. You don’t have to take all of me.”
Her eyes lifted to mine.
I stroked her cheek. “Just let me feel your mouth, baby.”
She nodded once, then accepted me slowly.
Her tongue moved with nervous curiosity, and I had to shut my eyes for one brutal second because the feeling went straight through me. The head of my cock was fat and leaking for her, sensitive enough that even the light pressure of her lips made my hands flex against the mattress.
“Fuck.” My voice broke lower than I wanted. “That’s it. Just there.”
She hummed, maybe in pleasure at the praise. The vibration made my hips jerk a fraction before I caught myself.
Her eyes widened.
I touched her cheek at once. “You’re safe. I’ve got it.”
She relaxed again and gave a careful suck.
My entire spine locked.
“Good girl.” The words came rough. “Soft. Slow. Just like that.”
Her cheeks hollowed slightly around me.