For three hundred years, hands have touched me without consent. Taken what they wanted while I let them. I learned to go away in my head, to retreat to a place where their hands couldn’t reach me. But I’m here now. Feeling every stroke of her fingers, every shift of her weight on my lap.
I reach down and stop her hand. “Enough.”
She stills, and when I open my eyes, she’s staring at me,flushed and breathing hard.
“Out of the tub, and on the bed.”
She climbs off my lap and out of the tub, water streaming down her body and pooling on the floor, and walks to the bed. She sits on the edge of the mattress, her fingers curled into the sheets, her knees pressed together.
I follow her, and kneel in front of her.
Cold stone. Candlelight. A woman’s thighs spread before me, her hand already reaching for my hair.
I breathe through it.
I’m here. The floor is carpeted, not stone. The woman before me is my choice.Mine. She’s looking down at me with wide eyes, not hungry ones.
I put my hands on her knees.
“Open.”
She hesitates, then lets her knees fall apart. Not all the way, she’s still resisting me, still wary. I use my hands to force them wider, then lean in and press my mouth to the inside of her thigh.
She jolts, a gasp escaping her. I stay there, my lips against her skin. Then I move higher, and the tremor that runs through her is nothing like the impatient squirming I remember. She’s not grabbing my hair, or dragging my face where she wants it.
I breathe her in. Salt and musk and heat. Then lean in close, letting my breath wash over her, and she whimpers. When I finally press my mouth to her center, she cries out, sharp and startled, and her hands fly to my shoulders.
The first taste of her floods my senses. I explore her with my tongue, and with every stroke she responds a little more. A whimper. A moan. A gasp. Her hands tighten on my shoulders, then one slides up, and her fingers thread into my hair.
Did I tell you to stop?
Fingers yanking my head back. The taste of her on my tongue while I choke?—
“C-Cairn?”
Her fingers have gone still. I lift my head a little, forcing air into my lungs. My hands have locked around her thighs hard enough to bruise. It’s a battle to relax them.
“Keep your hand there.” The words come out as a snarl, and she flinches.
“I don’t th?—”
“Keep. It. There.”
She blinks at me, but her hand stays where it is, resting against my scalp like she’s afraid to move it.
She’s tense now—my fault. All the fear and nerves she’d lost are back because of my reaction to her touch. So I return my mouth to her thigh, kissing and licking, stroking my fingers up her calves, the backs of her knees, until the muscles in her legs relax again. Then I bring my mouth back to her again.
Every slight shift of her fingers sends tension coiling down my spine. But I keep going. I work her with my tongue, and I stayhere, feeling the softness of her thighs against my cheeks, and the hitch in her breathing when her hips start to rock.
“Cairn.” Her voice is breathy. “Ohhh, what … I can’t—” She whimpers again, her thighs clamping around my head. Her hand fists into my hair as she writhes and shudders against my mouth.
I ride her through it, my tongue stoking the flames higher and higher until she cries out, and her grip on my hair loosens slowly as she floats back down. When I lift my head, she’s staring at me, flushed and dazed. Her hand slides out of my hair, fingertips grazing the tips of my ears, and I jerk backward.
Are they sensitive? They’re so strange compared with ours. What happens if I touch them?
I shove to my feet. “Get on your knees on the bed.”
She slides off the edge and turns, climbing onto the mattress and kneeling in the center, facing me. I take a breath, then stretch out on my back beside her.
