Page 17

I keep my mouth on her and work her through it. I don't let her go until the shaking stops and she sinks back onto the pillows.

When I raise my head, she's flushed from her cheeks to her breasts and breathing hard. She's right here with me, looking straight at me.

I get off the bed, open the nightstand drawer, take out a condom, and shuck my jeans. My cock is so hard it aches. I roll it on while she watches.

She doesn't look away, and she wets her lips.

"You turned your back on me at nineteen," she says. "Took you long enough."

"You were nineteen."

"I'm not now."

No, she isn't. She's a grown woman lying in my bed, and she walked here on her own feet to be in it.

"Your ribs won't take my weight," I tell her. "Roll toward the window."

I help her turn onto her right side, with the cracked ribs up, and wedge a pillow under her waist.

I stretch out behind her with my knees tucked behind hers. Her back is warm against my chest, but none of my weight is on her.

She looks back at me over her shoulder. My mouth comes close to hers.

She turns her face into the pillow, quick.

"I know," I tell the back of her neck.

I draw her top knee forward so it rests bent on the mattress in front of her. Then I take myself in hand and fit the head of my cock against her. I push into her from behind, an inch at a time. She's slick and snug around me, and she opens to me so slowly that sweat breaks out across my back.

Her breath catches in short pulls against the pillowcase.

My hips jerk forward before I can stop them. I make myself hold still, buried in her, and let her body get used to mine.

She's turned her cheek back to the pillow, facing the window. In the window glass, I can see her face pressed sideways into the pillow. Her lips are open and her eyes are half shut.

I watch her reflection while I move. I draw almost all the way out and slide back in, slow and deep. Every time I pull back, she pushes against me for more, and I make her wait for it.

"Harder," she says to the window.

"You'll get what I give you."

I give her a little more, then a little more. I reach around her hip and find her clit with my fingers. She gasps, and her fingers dig into the quilt.

My whole body wants to drive into her hard. My spine aches from holding back. I keep it to the pace I've set, because she's got cracked ribs and because I'm the one who decides.

I lean in to go deeper, and without thinking I let my chest come down on her shoulder. The angle tips her forward, with her cheek mashed into the pillow and her face still turned toward the window.

In the window, her eyes go empty.

One second they're half shut, and her face is flushed. The next they're wide open and fixed on nothing. The sounds stop. Her hips still move against mine, but it's like a body moving in its sleep. Her good hand lets go of the quilt and lies open beside her face.

I've seen that look before, on men in my ring who'd been hit hard enough to keep standing after they'd stopped knowing where they were.

I stop dead.

I pull out of her and get my chest off her shoulder. I sit up and back away to the foot of the bed, where I'm not touching any part of her.

"Delilah." I say it quietly. "Where'd you go?"