Wind Therapy - A.J. Downey Page 0,57

and stood there, waiting her out.

“Is it fucked up that I think it’s hot?” she asked.

“That what is hot?” I needed more than that.

“When you hold me down. When you take without asking… I like it.”

I sank to the edge of the bed and put a hand on her knee, searching her face.

“There’s nothing wrong with liking what you like,” I told her.

“Having you fuck me against your desk with your belt around my neck was the hottest thing… like the freest I’ve ever felt,” she confessed and she swallowed hard, looking a little ill at having said it out loud.

“Technically it was your belt, and I have no problem doing anything like that with you again if it’s what you want.”

“Right,” she whispered and then said, “Sometimes I want to say no but no isn’t what I mean, you know?”

She put her hands over her face and sighed out, a frustrated sound.

“I get that, actually. Like when you’re a kid being tickled and you’re having so much fun and you yell ‘no, no, no’ but you don’t really want it to stop.”

“Right,” she said nodding, her expression slightly haunted, slightly worried, more than slightly scared, and I felt the weight of this moment keenly.

She was opening up to me. Trusting me with her secrets and I wanted to give her no reason to doubt that I was here for it. I wanted all of her. I wanted to please her. I wanted her to want to please me, and I wanted it with a fierce throbbing ache that I hadn’t felt in a really long time about anything.

“So, you need a safe word,” I murmured.

“A what?” she asked, and I smiled. Sometimes I forgot how sheltered she was in some ways. How young she really was.

“A safe word. A word that is sort of out there that means ‘no’ for real so you can say ‘no’ all you want, and I know you really mean ‘yes’ or that you’re okay.”

“What, like if I scream ‘bananas’ at the top of my lungs mid-thrust that’s it? Everything stops?”

“I would pick something other than bananas,” I said with a slight laugh, stroking a hand up and down the smooth skin of her shin from the top of her foot up to her knee and back down, just loving the feel of her skin beneath my palm.

“Okay,” she said. “Then you pick for me.”

I laughed and shook my head.

“Not how that works. It’s supposed to be your word.” I patted her knee and stood back up feeling stronger. I went to the bathroom and ran the tap all the way to ‘hot’ to get it warmed up, rinsing a washcloth under the stream of water until it steamed.

I cleaned myself up and rinsed the cloth good, making sure it was hot and not just warm so when I brought it to her, it would be just right. I turned around to see her leaning up against the headboard, her expression deeply thoughtful.

I went and sat back down beside her, batting her hands away when she reached for the washcloth and she smiled with a light little giggle that turned into a lighter, sighing moan, as I cleaned her up carefully.

That sound made me instantly start to grow hard and I hoped she was ready to go again because goddamn, I needed her tonight. Desperately.

I leaned forward and kissed her, delighted when her hands came up to cradle my face, when her thumbs smoothed along my jaw, when she let me in when she had absolutely no real reason to that I could see.

“Meatloaf,” she whispered, and I drew back and laughed.

“What?”

“My safe word. Meatloaf.”

“Meatloaf?” I repeated incredulously.

“Yeah, because I would do anything for love, but I won’t do that.”

I couldn’t help myself. I laughed. I laughed long and hard and kissed her between bouts of laughter and chuckling.

Meatloaf.

She was something else.

Chapter Sixteen

Marisol…

I don’t know why, precisely, I had done it, but I had let go with Maverick. Had let him in like I’d never let anyone in in my life and it was absolutely exhilarating and totally exhausting all at the same time. I slept so hard, so well that night, yet woke ill-rested. As though I hadn’t slept a wink.

It made for a rough day of riding the next day and I collapsed into bed that evening, forgoing dinner in favor of sleep. Maverick, to his credit, didn’t wake me. He simply put my food aside in the mini-fridge and let me