It was tender and understanding, his lips grazing mine as soft as a cloud, and then I shifted and gave way to him. I yielded utterly, giving over everything I had, and everything I’d ever be.
Rex never hesitated to strike like a blizzard, harsh and demanding. His lips and tongue were impossible to resist, dragging sharp sparks through me until I whimpered for mercy. I tangled my hands in his hair and clung to him, my lungs burning with the crispness of my Daddy’s every move.
But something in my noises or touches melted his iciness, too. Rex yielded to my breathless need and grew soft, uncertain, slow. He let me take over, held still as I caressed his mouth with mine and showed him something I could tell in my very bones he’d never known.
Soft and hard, his and mine, it belonged to us both, and time itself ceased to matter. It lasted for exactly as long as it was supposed to—not a second longer or shorter.
When we pulled away, breath and eyelids heavy, we lingered close together, intimate at last. Our breaths were hot against each other’s swollen lips. And my spirit was heavy against him, but he never gave in. Not even once.
I gradually straightened up again, dizzy and drained but back in my own self, strong and alive. More alive than I’d ever been in my whole fucking life.
Certain, as I’d never been of anything, that Rex was the Daddy for me.
Rex rose to his feet and held up a finger. I waited, patient at last, and my Daddy brought me a warm cloth and wiped me down more tenderly than he did himself.
Then he pointed to the bedroom. “Go,” he whispered. The word wasn’t harsh, though, like earlier, but it also wasn’t certain and unyielding.
I hesitated, sensing something raw in him. Something had split open in him, and now he looked at me like a man of his own age, rather than a timeless, implacable force.
“I’ll join you shortly,” Rex murmured, rising to his feet once more and offering me his hands.
I took them and stood, and I wanted to kiss him. But Rex turned his back, his shoulders heaving with an emotion I couldn’t possibly identify. I didn’t yet know how to read the every ripple of his expression.
Rex was half a lover, half a stranger to me. And I had the distinct feeling he never let men become his lovers, keeping them at a stranger’s distance.
Except me. So far. Fuck, this was it, tonight. The make-or-break moment.
I didn’t know if he wanted me to stay the night, but God, I hoped so. I should have stopped and asked right there and then, but I was too raw still. So instead, slowly, I headed for the bedroom, sliding the door shut behind me when Rex gestured for me to do so.
Alone at last, the last of the adrenaline drained, and I stumbled for the bed before stopping with a smile. He had a pair of pajamas on the bed—and they looked new, and in my size.
Like he’d known we would come back here and I’d need them. That gave me a flicker of hope. Fuck. How was I to know what he intended?
I wriggled out of my harness and shorts, laid them on the chair, and clutched the pajamas to my chest.
Just ask him, you fool. Ask if I’m welcome to stay tonight.
The thought brought a tear to my eye again. I wasn’t going to put these on and climb into bed if he was just planning on cuddling me for a few minutes and then sending me home. If this was it.
No, I couldn’t accept an ounce of pity cuddles if that was all he had left for me. So I clutched the pajamas to my chest and walked, naked and unafraid of my nakedness, to the door.
I gathered my courage—what little I had left, wiped out and exhausted by the best sex I’d had in my life, emotionally naked, terrified of the fear I’d glimpsed in Rex’s eyes…
But I paused when I heard his voice, my hand on the groove laid into the door. I didn’t mean to listen in, it just sort of happened.
“What do you want, cocksucker?”
It was the same harsh tone he’d used in speaking to me just minutes ago, and it ripped me open from head to toe. My mouth fell open. I dropped the pajamas on the floor in front of me, my fingers suddenly numb.
And yet… and