Sick that I wanted to be the one to have the honor of sending her soaring. The one who would cause her to give in and let go.
Realizing in it, she was the one who held all the power. Because I knew I couldn’t erase it or be the one to fix her, but maybe through me she’d see how fucking strong she was. See she could rise above the brutalities that had been committed to her.
“Yes, I want to feel you. I want to feel everything,” she rasped, squirming on that leather cushion.
“You’re going to let me give you this? The little that I have?”
Fire flamed in those harvest eyes, and Brinley kept flipping between innocent and vixen. “And what’s that, Silas? What is it you have to give?”
“Pleasure and the promise that you’re in control while I’m giving it to you. Just for a little while. While you’re here and under my roof. Then, when you walk out of here, safe and whole, you’ll realize the sick fuck who hurt you no longer has any control over you.”
I gritted my teeth at the mention of the faceless degenerate. I’d try to get her to give me the name later. But not right then.
Not when I was trying to inject her full of belief.
“He has no say in the way you live or the things you want. Has no control over your fantasies or desires.”
A wave of that desire flooded from her body, and Brinley’s lips parted on a breath of passion and yearning.
Trust filtering out into the fervency that carved the room in lust and something far bigger.
Something I knew should send me running.
Instead, my hands clamped down tighter on her knees as I tried to force myself into a cool that had been obliterated the second this woman had stepped onto my land.
“Don’t know what you’ve done to me, Brinley. Don’t know how you have me so spun up. The way you have me ignoring every rule that I’ve ever made for myself and this club.”
She huffed a disconcerted laugh. “It’s you, Silas. You who has me so twisted up that I don’t recognize myself. I shouldn’t be letting you touch me like this. I don’t…”
Her eyes squeezed shut as her words trailed off.
My heart took that time to be reckless, stretching out for hers, wanting to assuage the flash of pain that struck through her being.
“You don’t let men touch you?” Maybe I was the twisted one since it crawled out like possession.
She gave a little frantic shake of her head, that armor dropping. “No.”
“Do you want me to?”
“Yes.”
My hands shook where I had them locked on her knees. I didn’t know if it was originating from her or me.
“How long has it been? How long has it been since you felt safe with a man?”
A quiver rolled her delicate throat, and she attempted to swallow the heaviness. “Five years.”
A growl rolled in my chest, and I splayed my hands wide as I slowly glided them up the tops of her thighs. Attention fixed to her face, searching for any discomfort or fear.
She arched back, and her shoulders hit the backrest of the sofa as the rest of her bowed toward me.
She released a raspy, frenzied breath, and in it, her admission slipped free. “I’m not so sure I feel safe with you.”
I froze, a stake to my fucking heart. “Would never hurt you. Not like that.”
Her hands were suddenly over mine, urging them farther up her legs, her body arching more with each inch.
“Maybe I’m a total fool for believing it, but I do. It’s the rest of you that terrifies me. The way you make me feel every time you come into the room. The way you seem to understand me. See me. I think you could crush me, Silas.”
