bra, rolled the panties into a neat ball and dropped them into a clothes hamper. She was standing in her bathroom naked. He noted a slight tension to her, but other than that, she didn’t seem self-conscious. Les and Elaine had taught her what was socially appropriate, and that was what guided her when it came to nudity.
He wasn’t going to think any more tonight about the why of that, because too big a part of his soul was still howling from her latest revelation, thinking her sexual pleasure was a punishable offense.
Modesty was one thing; a lover’s regard was another. That tension, and how she had her back to him, suggested him looking at her naked had her a little unsettled. His gaze devoured every inch of pale skin. She was still too skinny. The doctor said she’d been malnourished for so long her metabolism might take years to right itself. And her indifferent appetite didn’t help.
Well, he had it on good authority that sex stimulated the appetite.
Despite the thinness, the curve of hip and breast, the rounded shape of a buttock, was all woman. He wanted to press his mouth to her shoulders, her throat, every bump of her spine. He wanted his mouth between her legs. He imagined spreading her on her mattress and feasting on her sweet pussy as her hands tangled in his hair and she strained up to him.
Going down on a woman fascinated him. She became so helpless and full of passion at once, writhing, begging, clawing. Needing what he could give her with his mouth and tongue, the edge of his teeth.
He pulled himself out of that. One thing at a time. Brushing hair.
She’d retrieved her robe from the back hook of the bathroom door and was shrugging into it, the plush pink thing with hearts on it. Her shoulders disappeared under it, and the shape of her body reappeared as she tightened the sash, turned toward him.
“Brush.” He nodded to the dresser. “And the wooden foot stool from your kitchen.”
When she brought those, he had put his feet back on his foot plate and adjusted his chair so he was square with her floor length mirror.
“Put the stool in front of me and sit on it, facing the mirror,” he told her. “Tuck the skirt of the robe underneath you to give yourself a cushion.” It would also keep it out of the way of his casters.
Curiosity in her gaze, she complied and settled on the stool, close enough his footplate was partly beneath it and she could lean back against his knees. He took the brush from her and left it in his lap.
“Untie the robe and shrug it off your shoulders. Let it fall to your waist. I want to see you.”
Her gaze met his in the mirror. “Rory…”
“Nothing you feel is going to be wrong, Daralyn. Every reaction you have to what I’m doing is what I want you to feel. I want you to react this way. What your uncle told you was wrong.” Repetition might not fix it, but it couldn’t hurt.
“It was good to react that way when he touched me?” Clouds gathered in her expression.
A tricky question. Rory slid his fingers through her hair. As he did, he gripped and tugged. Tugged hard. Her body moved with his touch and her gaze went opaque, her lips parting.
“That’s me, pulling your hair,” he said huskily. “Now, imagine if someone came up to you and yanked on your hair to be mean. Would it feel the same inside?”
She shook her head.
“Both reactions are normal. But it’s okay to like one more than the other. Our bodies don’t know right or wrong, good or bad. That’s our heads and our hearts. Our bodies react as bodies. Understand?”
Slowly, she nodded. He saw an intensity to her gaze, the way she looked when she was learning something, trying to fully grasp it. That gave him another idea. Daralyn often came to truths by a different path than most people took.
He leaned over to retrieve his phone from the jacket he’d laid on the bed. As he did an online search, he was aware of her eyes on him in the mirror. He extended the phone over her shoulder. “Read that. Aloud.”
She looked at it, then looked up at him quickly. Back down. He molded his hands over her shoulders, the robe in the way, but his thumbs found her collar bones, rubbed. He noticed her breath rose and fell,