TWENTY-SIX
CLARA
My legs were still trembling.
Knees spread, towel somewhere in a sad little heap on the floor. My chest heaved like I’d sprinted up the dunes. My hand was still between my thighs, slick and shaking, fingers frozen mid-movement.
Did you want a taste?
The sentence hung in the air between us. Like I could actually see the shape of it, hovering over the bed, impossible to drag back into my mouth.
Oh god, maybe that was too far.
Please, please say yes.
Both thoughts slammed into each other in my chest, colliding hard enough to make me a little dizzy.
Across the room, Wes was plastered to the wall like he’d been nailed there. One hand braced against the doorjamb, knuckles white. His jaw clenched so tight I could see the muscle jumping. The damp, dark patch on the front of his sweats left very little to the imagination.
He looked wrecked. Turned on. Humiliated. Like he was equal parts furious with his body and stunned by what it had just done.
I couldn’t tell if I wanted to apologize or crawl across the bed to him.
His gaze dragged over me—my bare thighs, my hand, the flushed pink of my chest—and something in his expression changed. The shame didn’t vanish, exactly, but it shifted, making room for something darker, hotter.
He swallowed, throat working. When he finally spoke, his voice came out low and rough edged. “You have no idea how much I do.”
Heat shot up my spine, sharp and electric. My fingers tightened on the comforter.
The rules we’d made—the safe little box labeledlesson—felt flimsy now, like tissue paper. This was not theoretical. This was me offering him more than a show. This was him admitting he wanted it.
“I meant it,” I heard myself say, voice quieter than I intended. “You don’t have to just watch.”
His eyes flicked to my hand still resting high on my thigh, then back to my face. “Clara,” he rasped. I could tell he was worried about his leg, how he would position himself, because kneeling was out of the question.
I pushed a breath out and sat up, trying to steady the wild fluttering in my chest. “We can have you lying back,” I said, choosing each word. “Where you’re not fighting gravity. Your body already knows how to be okay there. No balance. No falling.”
His gaze searched mine, like he was looking for the trap.
“Then,” I continued, pulse thudding in my ears as I rose to my knees, “you let me come to you.”
Something raw flashed across his face. Hope, maybe. Hunger. Fear. All of it tangled together in one hit.
The only sound in the room was our breathing.
Then he pushed off the door with a small, decisive nod. His limp was more pronounced after everything that had happened, but his steps were steady, each one measured. He crossed to the bed and eased down on it like he’d practiced this a hundred times, testing the mattress, shifting his leg until he found a position that didn’t make anything in his face tighten.
He settled onto his back, head against my pillows, broad shoulders sinking into my comforter, glasses still slightly crooked, chest moving in slow, deliberate breaths.
“Here,” he said, looking up at me, voice a quiet challenge. “This work for you, Duchess?”
My thighs clenched. Every part of me screamedyes.
I made room for him, every inch of my skin aware of his eyes. The distance from the headboard to the foot of the bed had never felt longer. I moved anyway—on my knees, careful and deliberate.
One step closer to him. One step deeper into whatever this was.
“Yeah,” I said, my voice coming out much steadier than I felt. “This works for me.”
