Trials and Tiaras (Untouchable #7) - Heather Long Page 0,127

me the occasional slap, but not a real spanking. I swore my whole body went liquid at the offer as he rubbed the spot he’d slapped, spreading the heat out.

“You’re going to have to use your words,” he told me. “I’ve been reading and we’ve all been talking, but you haven’t told me exactly what you want from me in something like this.”

“I don’t want you to do anything you don’t want to do,” I whispered and reached down to cup his face. “But what I do with Ian is I surrender, I let him have the control. It’s nice. He wants to take care of me, and I let him do it. Sometimes, that’s a spanking, other times, it’s teasing me until I’m crying with the need to come. But there’s always bliss, and he’s always there to catch me.”

He rubbed his stubbly chin against my nipple as I confessed. Some parts of our relationships were always private. But this I could share with him. Because it was what I got from it, what Ian gave to me when I let him. It was always up to me to allow him, and there was a strength and power in that I’d never imagined.

“I want to give you what you want and what you need,” Jake promised, but there was something else there. Something deeper. An uncertainty? Jake had never sounded uncertain. Not once. But I honed in on that note and curled upward, and he met me halfway and then urged me back before blanketing me on the sofa. I wrapped my legs around him.

“Jake, you give me what I need. You love me.”

“I do,” he said, then kissed along my jaw before raising his head as he brought his hands up to cradle my face. “I love you so much. But I never want to let you down. You’ve been going to Bubba for that release when you’re too wound up. You go to Coop when you need comfort because he knows you so well. And you and Archie have been clinging so tightly to each other ever since that asshole dropped that bomb on both of you. They love you too and they take care of you, I just worry sometimes I’m not doing enough.”

“You are Jake,” I whispered, sinking my fingers into his hair. If he was cupping my face to keep his gaze on mine, then I gripped his hair so he couldn’t slide away. “You protect me all the time. I am so safe with you. You’re teaching me to fight and to be stronger on my own, but I know I don’t have to be. I know you’ll protect me. You, Jake. I love them, but none of them are you. If you want me to submit to you and to surrender, you have it. You have me.”

I could almost taste the wonder in how he sucked in a breath.

“You can ask me for anything, and I’d do my best to give it to you. If I’ve been ignoring you—”

“No, Baby Girl, shh, no.” He pressed his lips to mine with each word, kissing me as though trying to soothe a hurt. “You haven’t. This is me being awake at four in the morning and I want to give you the world, but I don’t want to smother you. Sometimes, I don’t know what it is you need, and I never want to clip your wings. Never again.”

I bit down on his lower lip and then laved the hurt before kissing him fiercely and trying to pour all of the complicated feelings into it. Yes, I needed the others. I needed them all. We worked, we were home, and I wanted to be that for each of them fiercely. Never did I want them to doubt that. None of them should ever feel a moment of doubt, but if they did…then I wanted to chase it away.

When he took control of the kiss and then dominated my mouth, I let out a little sound that echoed his groan as he ground his dick against me. A laugh bubbled up as I remembered grinding on each other that very first time, but there was something else I could show him. At my gentle nudge to his shoulders, he lifted upward and pulled back as I squirmed out from under him.

Only after I was standing did I shed my shirt and then pushed my panties down my legs. Turning away, I went to my knees