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"Same kind. This one's never touched a horse. Tonight it's yours."

She almost laughs. She stops when I touch the brush to her collarbone.

The goat hair is softer than a fingertip. It barely touches her, and her whole body tightens anyway. I take it down between her breasts and draw circles around one nipple, then the other, never touching the tips. Gooseflesh rises across her chest and down her arms.

When I finally sweep the bristles straight across one nipple, she jerks against the rings in my hand and hisses through her teeth.

"Hold that kneel," I say. "Whatever this does to you, your knees stay on that quilt."

I take the brush down over her stomach and along the crease of her hip, then high up the inside of her thigh, where the skin is thinnest. Her thighs tremble. Her knees stay where they are.

"Open your knees as far as they go."

She does, until her knees press against the insides of my boots. The shirttails fall away. She's swollen and pink and so wet that the insides of her thighs shine in the lamplight.

I set the brush at the bottom of her pussy and draw it straight up through her, slow, so every soft hair drags over her swollen lips and parts them. At the top, the bristles sweep across her clit and flick off it.

She cries out, sharp and shocked, and her hips chase the brush when I lift it away. Her bound forearms grind against my thigh as she sways forward, and a shiver runs through her from her knees to her shoulders.

The soft hairs come away darker, clumped and glistening, and I hold the brush up between us so she has to look at what she did to it. Then I toss it up toward the pillows.

I cup her pussy with my whole palm and keep every finger still. She gets the heat and weight of my hand and nothing else.

She's slick and burning against my palm. She pushes down into my hand before she can stop herself.

I tug the rings. Her bound hands slide an inch along my thigh, and she freezes.

"Coleman's got my daddy's paper," she says, and her voice shakes. "You've got mine."

My jaw locks. My hand doesn't move.

"I've got yours because you signed it," I say. "One word from you, and I tear it up. Until you say that word, I'm keeping it."

I turn my hand and set two fingers at her opening, right there, and hold them still. Then I draw the rings down off my thigh toward the floor.

Her hips sink to follow them, and she slides down onto my fingers. She gasps. I lift the rings, and she comes up off them. I press them down again, slower, until my knuckles are against her. She doesn't get my fingers unless I put her on them.

"I'm the one moving you," I say. "Feel that?"

"Yes." Her voice cracks on it.

I work her like that. Every time I press the rings down, she sinks onto my fingers, and her inner walls clamp around them and hold on. Every time I lift, she slides off them with a soft, wet sound. I go slower on each stroke, until my knuckles grind into her at the bottom and her thighs quiver against my boots. She's shaking on her knees, and my palm is slick with her.

Her breath turns ragged. Deep inside, she starts to flutter and squeeze around my fingers, and her hips rock down on their own, trying to get there. That's when I lift the rings and hold them high. She comes up off my fingers and hangs there over my empty hand, so close to coming that a whimper breaks out of her.

"You bastard." Her voice shakes. "I was right there, and you know it."

"Read me the last line," I tell her. "The one you wrote after mine."

She knows it by heart. "'No condoms.'"

"Why?"

"Because I chose it." Her eyes are wet and furious and locked on mine. "Nobody chose it for me."

I press the rings down, take her all the way onto my fingers, and curl them deep inside her, against the rough patch that makes her gasp. I grind the heel of my hand against her clit.

"Then come for me on your knees. Right now."