the more I writhed. I was wet, more than I’d believed possible. I practically gushed. He’d told me not to be ashamed, and so I wouldn’t be.
But soon I was panting. Was this normal? Should I ask, or should I just…
I exploded. Stars crossed in front of my eyes. I gasped, sucking in air, but this had nothing to do with my heart or my lungs. This wasn’t physical malfunction. It was the opposite—perfect physical function.
Pleasure.
Holies, yes.
It came in waves, like gravity or sound or water, pressure after pressure after pressure of delicious sensation. I didn’t tell my hands to grip Torrin’s head, to fist in his lush, thick hair, but suddenly, I was holding his face against me, holding the moment. Holding the stars.
The crashing subsided, like an orchestral denouement, leaving me with a deep, intense, and glorious exhaustion. I loosened my grip on his hair and exhaled one long, unsteady breath.
“Ancient and holy ones, log my plea, wrap me in the mesh of your grace, ere I descend to rapture.” The old prayer, the first prayer, slipped out of my mouth without pauses between words, as a reflex. It was any devout person’s reaction to certainty that the end approached.
I wasn’t devout, but I felt like I had just survived the most brilliant death, the perfect end, and I’d come through it.
The rumble of Torrin’s chuckle brought me out of the fugue. He pressed a kiss against the ridge of my pelvis. “I’ve been called a lot of things,” he said, “but never ancient, and never, ever holy.”
“And yet, you deliver rapture like a god.”
“Hmm.” Another kiss, near my navel. “You do know how to make a man feel like one.”
He moved up to lie beside me, sharing his warmth with me, and I turned into him, ready for whatever came next. I knew, academically and biologically, what happened during coitus. But I’d long decided it wasn’t going to happen for me—to me. And I had no idea what the immediate next step was here. The thing he’d done with his mouth, should I also do with mine? How would that work?
For all those years in medical isolation, reading and learning, you’d think I’d know a little bit about the most important things. These things. How to return the gift of physical pleasure. And yet here I was, with one of the most attractive men I’d ever encountered, my body still humming with the skill he’d lavished on it, and I had no idea how to proceed.
Disappointment in myself—in my body and my lived experience—formed an obstruction in my throat that tasted like tears, but I forced myself to swallow it.
Chapter Thirteen
“Where you are from,” Torrin said, his voice a rumble deep in his chest, beneath my cheek, “do people ever run long distances, as a contest or sport?”
“Well, not me personally,” I said. “Bad heart.”
“Right. But others do this?”
“Yeah.” I tried not to let the word sound wistful, but it hurt a little, him bringing up something else prohibited to me, some other very human activity that I’d been made to believe was not possible. Was he now going to tell me that I couldn’t actually go through the rest of the mating? That I’d done something wrong? Please no, don’t stop. I’m fine. I’m better than fine.
“Here, we call this a long-haul. It is a test of stamina, but also a chance to be alone with the land, to learn her shape and to accept and endure her challenges. To prove oneself to her.”
Okay. I said nothing, but surely, he could feel my tension.
Torrin dropped a kiss atop my hair and enveloped me in his strong, warm arms. “Please think of tonight as your long-haul with me. Take time. Find the hills and the valleys. This is not a fast run. Explore. We have all night.”
We had all night? This could go on all night? I opened and closed my mouth. He shifted slightly, rolling more toward me and tugging on the end of my hair. “Do you need anything? Water?”
I’m not sure what spurred me forward. I wasn’t the aggressive type. But he’d just had his mouth on my most private spots. I loved it. I wanted more. And I really didn’t want to wait.
I kissed him, square on the lips. He sucked in his breath. This whole evening had started because I’d wanted to take care of him, something that obviously didn’t happen very often. Maybe that was the thing to do.
He thought he