her desires from her body language, get as close to what she wanted as anyone could. He wouldn’t let their damage to her keep her from it.
She’d sat back on her heels, but she was rocking back and forth, curled over her bound hands, her back rounded. “Please don’t say we have to go home,” she whispered. “I wanted to do…the ropes. I just couldn’t…when he touched me…”
It was so unexpected, at first he thought he’d misheard her. While he recognized it had been unconscious, driven by the erratic tangle of her emotions, the physical stress of her nervous stomach, it took an act of will not to react with a fist pump.
I wanted to do the ropes.
He held that in and kept stroking her, feeling the bumps of her vertebrae. He wanted to tell her he was sorry for not paying better attention, but she’d keep trying to take the blame. He needed to change the focus for both of them.
“Come on up here. Let me see you.”
She adjusted onto her knees, then put a foot under her. He took it from there, using her momentum and his strength to slide her up and onto his lap, adjusting her so she was leaning on her hip against him, cradled in his one arm. He reclaimed the trailing lengths of rope, a considerable amount of it, drawing it into a pile in her lap.
Julie approached, left a bottle of water next to his wheel, but withdrew without a word, just a reassuring look. Daralyn had her face pressed into his throat, so only he saw her.
Julie and Daralyn were friends, but this, what was happening right now, it was a Dom/sub thing. And Tyler had said no one disrupted a moment between a Dom and sub unless invited.
Everything rested with Rory now, as long as the DM didn’t disagree, and apparently he didn’t. He was still nearby, but he was sticking to the peripherals.
Rory opened the water and offered it to Daralyn. She took it, swishing the water around her mouth. With a furtive look toward him, she spat it out in the grass and then took a few more swallows, clearing out the taste of her being sick. Then she handed it back to him with a nod. He recapped it and set it down next to them.
He sent a pointed look at the front of her dress, pinched up folds of her skirt as if looking for something. Her brow creased. “What are you doing?” she asked thickly.
“I’ve hung out with football players who partied and drank too much. Not a one of them could vomit without getting it all over themselves. You could give them lessons.”
Her weak attempt at a smile came with a little glistening in her eyes, a quivering of her chin. “Hey.” He tightened his arm around her. “Easy. I’ve got you.”
She let out a little sigh, her body melting more into his, her head back on his shoulder. He rested his hand on the pile of rope in her lap while clasping the ends close to the wrist bindings. A little tug caused a flicker in her gaze, one he noted as he pulled back enough to look at her face. “So,” he said casually. “You did it.”
“What…did I do?” Her voice was still rusty.
“You said you wanted to do the rope stuff.”
She blinked. When a million conflicting emotions crossed her face, he interlaced his fingers with her tense ones, stroked her wrists around the hold of the rope.
“You feel up to doing a little more?”
Chapter Sixteen
He waited a beat. She’d agree to it, whether she did or didn’t want to do more, but when he detected relief and an easing of her features, he had his true answer.
His gut might be as clueless as the rest of him, but he wasn’t Dr. Taylor. Words weren’t going to get them where they needed to go. Neither was going home and giving up on this. She’d asked him not to do that, which in his book was expressing something she wanted.
She nodded.
“Good.” He gestured to Des. As Julie’s Dom came toward him, Rory turned his attention to the Dungeon Master, standing a little farther away. He had steady blue-gray eyes that looked a little dangerous, short cropped hair and a tribal tattoo around one of the biceps exposed by his short-sleeved shirt. He had the compact build and previously broken nose of a fighter.
His eyes also held the concern that Des’s had, suggesting he