chest, teasing his nipples, her mouth high on his chest, moving up to his throat. He cupped her head as she nibbled the area beneath his ear, and when her fingers tightened on his side, digging into the layer of muscle over his rib cage, his stomach muscles contracted.
As she moved below his waist again, he watched the flex of her thin arm, imagined she was following the crease between his buttocks, then her fingers fanning out along the cheek again, to the back of his thigh. A quick shiver went up his spine.
She drew back, was watching his face. “Can you feel it there?”
He shook his head.
“Can you show me…where you stop feeling it?”
“It’s fuzzy. Not a straight line, sensation on this side and nothing on the other side. It’s kind of a gradual thing. But it mostly stops at the waist.”
He gripped her wrist, and took her hand to the top of his buttocks, just below the waistband of his boxer briefs. “I can feel traces of things in this area. Not real strongly. It’s kind of like phantom sensation. And here.”
He brought her hand around, resting her fingers on the leg hem edge of his boxer briefs, high on his thighs, a couple inches away from the bulge of his testicles and cock under the stretched fabric.
He released her then, and reinforced his earlier instruction. “Everywhere, Daralyn. I’ll tell you if I want you to stop.”
She skated her fingers down his thigh, then back up. She moved her hand over his groin area, around his cock. When she at last gripped him through the fabric, stroked, he let her keep the driver’s seat, decide how she wanted to go.
Reflexogenic hard-ons didn’t result in a pile driver of an erection, but there were ways he could get it harder, keep it up. Watching her explore was pleasurable torment.
He’d given some thought to whether she’d even want to have sex. He was better equipped than most men, so to speak, to accept that. But her interest, her reaction, said that she was interested. And her pleasure meant a whole hell of a lot to him.
“I want to be inside you at some point, Daralyn.”
“Okay.” Her brief hesitation, her tone, the softening of her mouth and brightness of her eyes, told him she was greenlighting the idea, though he’d still ask a few more questions to be sure, when the time came.
She’d moved her touch up to his abdomen again. She seemed intensely interested in how it made his muscles tighten and his breath shorten, and he gripped her more urgently with the hand on her hip.
He let go of the headboard to bring her face back up, so they could meet gazes. “I’m not ever going to force you to tell me what you want, Daralyn. But if ever you do, it will be a gift to me. Every time you do it.”
She pressed her lips together. “I… Sometimes I feel like you already know. That I don’t have to say it.”
“I’m not as smart as I might seem. Thomas and Les should have told you that.”
A slight smile appeared on her lips. “Being inside me... Will it be tonight?”
“I think we need to think about it some. Take a breath.”
She didn’t say anything to that. Her eyes lowered, and her breathing was shallow. Her fingers curled into his stomach, little bites of her nails.
Signs of disappointment, which surprised the hell out of him. He needed to explain further, so she knew it wasn’t a rejection. Not even close. Hand to God, if he was in the middle of church right now and she asked him to make love to her, he wouldn’t hesitate even a second. God would understand. He’d created Daralyn, after all.
“I want to right now,” he said. “But there’s more to it than that.”
He’d taken these steps with Amanda Brewster, and it had turned out all right. But truthfully, that had been about him, taking his first steps toward finding out he could still enjoy sex. Also toward something he’d been surprised to find was more important to his sense of his masculinity and pride as a lover: he could make it enjoyable for the woman he was with.
Having a woman willing to muddle through that with him had meant so much. His feelings for Amanda Brewster would forever dwell in the same room in his heart reserved for firsts—first loves, first kisses. His love for her wasn’t an “in love” love, and it didn’t