Tropical Holiday Tails - Zoe Chant Page 0,42

blinked at him. “Then you…”

“Have really managed to make a hash of this,” Liam said in wonder. He should have trusted his dragon, he thought. He should have trusted his mate.

She started to touch him and stopped herself. “Tell me what you do like,” she begged. “Do you want to be touched?”

“Yes,” Liam breathed around the lump in his throat, and she was reaching for him at last. “It’s just that usually there’s this...expectation.”

She stopped herself again, fingers aching inches from his skin. “Tell me,” she said. “I promise not to do more. Do you like kissing?”

“Yes,” Liam said promptly, because he very much wanted her mouth against him. He wanted all of her against him. “Just...not tongue?”

Caroline giggled, a low, sweet sound of release, and then she was crawling into his lap, and he could put his arms around and draw her close to him, the way he’d been longing to for so long. She laid a series of light kisses on his neck and nuzzled close, and Liam thought he might burst from the pure pleasure of it.

She was so right in his embrace, she fit there so perfectly. Liam never wanted to let go.

“Skin?” she asked, toying with the buttons of his shirt.

Could they be closer? Was it possible? “Yes,” Liam said, and when they pulled apart it was like losing something.

She took his hand and they stood, going together without discussion back into the cottage and following the trail of petals for the bed.

This was it, he thought with sudden fear as they undressed. This was where it would go wrong. She would ask for more, and see that he couldn’t...he would fail her, it was simple human biology that had always eluded him...he was broken…

Then they were both completely unclothed and she was drawing him down onto the bed, murmuring, “Hold me, just hold me.”

And he could do that. He craved that. The touch of her skin against the whole length of him, the warmth of her in his embrace, her leg just over his, her arms around his shoulders...he waited for the demands, for the awkwardness that always followed...but it didn’t happen. They simply relaxed into each other, slowly and completely, until Liam could barely tell where he stopped and she started.

She sighed happily, and Liam felt it against his chest. “Do you know,” she said quietly, “that the medical community hasn’t settled on a concrete definition of orgasm?”

“I didn’t know that,” Liam admitted.

“I’ve always had a favorite,” Caroline said. “But it’s not the most widely accepted. It is ‘intense pleasure resulting from the release of physical tension.’ Some women have it during childbirth or exercise, completely independent of sex.”

Liam could only hold her in wonder. Is that what this was? This perfect contentment as he let go of expectations and satisfied the simple yearning he’d had since he’d first laid eyes on her to hold her close?

He’d never felt so peaceful or whole, never been so in harmony with another body...or his own.

Caroline felt like she’d come home. Liam’s arms were strong and gentle, and he held her like he never wanted to let go. She certainly never wanted him to.

She felt protected and free, all at once, completely content to lie next to her mate and simply be.

“Have you always known you were ace?” she asked, not wanting to disturb their tranquility, but too curious to resist.

“Since before I knew I was a dragon shifter,” Liam confessed, his voice half-rumbling through his chest as she lay on him. “I thought that sexuality was a big joke for years and kept waiting for the punchline. And waiting. And waiting. Eventually I realized that I was the one out of step. I found out that ace was a thing on the Internet and finally had a name for it. You?”

“I didn’t realize for a long time, not until after I was married.” She made lazy patterns on his sculpted chest. “I always figured...I was just doing things wrong, that I was feeling shy, that there were other factors. My husband and I...it was challenging. I never initiated anything, and he feared it was a fault of affection. And...when we did, I had fun, but I rarely came. It was frustrating and he felt inadequate. But we loved each other, and were willing to put in the work to figure something out. And we finally realized that we didn’t have to take the same things from sex.”

Caroline propped herself up on one elbow and gazed