come close to the intensity he felt about Daralyn. But with Amanda, he’d confirmed that sex, while forever different for him, could still be intense and satisfying. Fulfilling.
Even more vital, it could be intimate.
That said, explaining how sex worked for him wasn’t such a common conversation that it came easily, particularly with a woman he wanted to be strong for, to care for. But being around other disabled guys who’d gone through it had helped him realize the stumbling points were often self-generated. If the person was worth talking to about it—and Daralyn was—it would ultimately turn out the way it should.
“You noticed when you touch me above the waist, I get pretty stirred up. Right?”
She nodded, her eyes serious. “It doesn’t work the same way for every guy with an SCI, spinal cord injury,” he said. “It depends on where our injury is, what kind of sensation we have left, but for me, when you’re touching my chest, my throat, it feels to me the way it does to another guy, when his arousal shows itself in his cock. I’m just feeling that somewhere else, if that makes sense.” Much like women could feel it in a lot of different places.
“When you were taking off your clothes,” he said, “touching yourself, it felt like my skin, wherever I could feel it, was catching fire, sensitive to everything. And when you touched me in those places, it felt so good I didn’t want you to stop.”
Her lips parted, hazel eyes heating. He loved that she had moved her hand back up his chest, caressing him in reaction to his words, before she consciously thought of it. He closed his hand on hers, gave her a smile. “Don’t distract me. I have to finish getting this out.”
He glimpsed that little smile again, the one that hinted at the day, maybe closer to the near future than anticipated, where she might feel safe to tease him.
“You know how when I say certain things to you, or you imagine me touching you, you get aroused?” Before her past could yank her back to that automatic shame and anxiety, he reminded her how he felt about it. “Something I love to see happen. You’ve seen that, haven’t you?”
Her brow creased, but she nodded again, her eyes clearing and body relaxing once more.
“Well, I can’t do that.” He tapped his head. “That’s called a psychogenic reaction, when it comes from here. But I can get hard with direct contact. Like when you were touching me there just now. That’s reflexogenic.”
He brushed his knuckles over her cheek, smiled. “Stop trying to spell it in your head. I’ll give it to you for your book. Later.”
Her lips tipped up slightly. Time to get deeper into it. The stuff that was a pain in the ass, something else he doubted anyone would ever see in a romance novel.
“When I decide it’s time to be inside you, there’s a little more to it. There are things I have to do before sex to make sure it’s good for both of us.”
“Can I help with any of it?”
Why was he not surprised that was her first question? “I love that you asked that, but they’re things I can handle. They just require a little bit of time beforehand. To keep an erection good enough for sex, I take a pill, which requires about fifteen minutes to kick in.” He moved his touch to her neck and shoulder, caressed with purpose. “There are a lot of ways to occupy those fifteen minutes.”
Her chin lifted, reacting to his touch, but he thought the way she pressed into it was also a reaction to the edge he put into his words, a sensual threat.
Once hard enough, he’d slide a well-lubricated, flexible silicone ring on the base of his cock, over a condom, to maintain his erection. He told her that, and lifted her hand, kissing her fingers. “That’s something you can help me do, especially if I tell you to do it. Right?”
“Yes.” She gave him that breathy syllable, while she watched his lips play over her fingers. The blanket was pulled up under her arm, but the tops of her breasts quivered with the lift and fall of her breath, and he could feel the tightening of her nipples against his side.
Now the last part of it. “I also have to do some things in the bathroom to prepare for sex, to keep other less romantic things from happening during.”