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“Yes,” he breathes.
Getting my shirt off one-handed, I drop it beside the chair as he keeps working. His eyes move over my chest and linger on the old scars, but he doesn’t stop or ask. That’s what gets me. He saw them this morning and understood enough not to demand anything of me. Maybe he’s waiting for me to tell him when I’m ready. I don’t know if I ever will be.
I pull him off me. “Up.”
He rises on shaky feet, and I strip him where he stands, shirt over his head and everything else down and off. “Hands behind your back.”
Picking my shirt up from the floor, I wind the cloth twice around his wrists and knot it before taking him by the hips and pulling him back onto my lap. He straddles me bare and bound, breathing hard against the side of my face.
The oil is still on the table beside the chair from last night. I get the cap off with my thumb and coat two fingers.
“I just thought maybe this was the wrong time,” he says, his mouth moving against my throat. “After today. Your dad showing up at the hospital, those flowers, and then Ryven. I know you’re thinking about him, obviously, and maybe I should’ve left you alone for a bit, but then you sat down like that, and I—”
Reaching around him, I press one finger inside.
“Fuck.” His forehead drops against my shoulder, but apparently that isn’t enough to shut him up. “And Onyx is here, which is good, obviously. He looks better, but your father knew exactly how to get us there, didn’t he? He knew we’d come if he went near Onyx, and then those men at the house, and you looked at them like—”
“Yeah? Feel good?”
“Yes. Really fucking good.” His hips shift against my hand. “I’m just saying there was a lot today, and I didn’t know if this was helping or if I was making everything worse, because I’m still angry with you, by the way. I haven’t forgotten that part.”
A laugh almost gets out of me as I work him slowly, all the way in and back out. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
A second finger joins the first.
His next sentence dissolves into a moan, his teeth briefly catching on my collarbone before he tries again. “But then this morning happened, and the shower, and then I met him and I understood why you wouldn’t look at me when I touched those scars, and I thought maybe—”
I catch his chin and lift his face from my shoulder. “Puppy.”
He blinks at me, cheeks flushed.
“Listen to me.” I curl my fingers inside him and watch his mouth fall open. “Stop talking for five fucking minutes and feel this.”
His lashes flutter closed.
“There. Better.”
He nods, then drops his forehead against mine as his hips begin moving on their own, riding down onto my hand.
“That’s it. You wanted to take care of me?” I work him deeper. “Let me take care of you for a minute.”
“More.”
“Ask properly.”
“Please. More.”
Three.
The sound that leaves him breaks apart against my mouth as he takes them, his body tightening around my fingers before he pushes down again. I keep one arm firm around his waist as he works himself on my hand, his bound wrists safely trapped behind him.
“I don’t have to hold anything up,” he says against my shoulder, wrecked and almost surprised by his own words. “You’ve got me. I don’t have to hold anything.”
“No.” I kiss the side of his head. “I’ve got you. The rest we’ll figure out together.”
His fingers flex uselessly behind him, his whole body tightening around mine.
“Say it.”
