by Smart, Kit
“I meant the sex scene.” I told him severely.
“So did I.” He said with blatantly fake innocence.
“Hastings.” I growled. “Get serious, or I stop the foot massage.”
“Anything but that.” He shuddered in mock horror but I could tell that he was enjoying the massage by the way his foot moved and flexed beneath my hands. “Okay, okay,” He laughed and held up his hands appeasingly as I lifted my hands threateningly from his foot. “The sex scene. Where would you like to start?”
Appeased, I dropped my hands back to his foot and continued the massage. “Well as this is an erotic romance, we need a fair number of sex scenes and they need to start fairly early in the book.” Hastings raised his brow at me and I shrugged. “Yeah okay, I guess I don’t need to tell you that.” I conceded. “This early in the plot though it feels off to have the hero invite the heroine home with him, which means we can’t bring the assistive devices into the sex scenes just yet, so I was thinking of setting the scene in his office. Maybe having them on the chair or desk?”
Hastings nodded. “I assume you mean the hero seated on the chair and out heroine astride or our heroine seated on the edge of the desk and the hero standing?”
“Yes.” I confirmed trying to keep a professional frame of mind, and body. Don’t think about it.
“Smart.” Hastings nodded again. “Both of those positions transition easily from kissing to intercourse without a lot of effort for our hero which allows both the heroine and the reader to see him as a sexual being and form some sort of attachment to him before the details of his body can interfere. The heroine and the reader are much more likely to stick around as a result.” Another nod. “It’s a strong choice Sinclair.”
I was simultaneously pleased with the compliment in a way that I was certain my inner pirate wouldn’t approve of, and taken aback by his statement.
“What do you mean interfere?”
“I mean this way the hero doesn’t have to take his clothes off so you don’t have to contend with scars and other… deformities in the early scenes of the book.” Hastings glanced down at the manuscript. “The chair is probably the best choice because there isn’t much to worry about there in terms of spasms or stiffness or clumsiness either.”
I took that in. “Is that why you’ve been putting off having sex with me?” I asked eventually. “Because you’re worried about scars and so on and so forth?”
Hastings looked up, arched an eyebrow. “We were talking about the book.”
I contemplated letting that evasion stand. The man had just taken a pretty big kick to the brain and body after all. Nope. Not what Blackbeard would do. “Have you been putting off having sex with me because you’re worried about scars and stiffness?” I went directly in for the kill.
He looked away and I watched his jaw clench and unclench several times. “Pippa—” He started. “I—yes.”
“Why?”
“It’s intimate.” He refocussed on the manuscript, began to run his index finger along the top of it.
I frowned confused. “But we’ve been to a sex shop, tried things—” I stopped when I saw him hunch forward slightly.
“It’s different.”
That didn’t help. I took a deep breath. “How is it different?”
“It’s…difficult.” He glanced up briefly before returning his gaze to the finger tracing patterns on the paper.
My silence must have spoken volumes, because after a moment, he continued. “It’s a different kind of intimate. Letting someone see your scars; your reality is different from sexual intimacy.”
“I already know that you have scars.”
“Knowing is different from seeing.” He looked up at me then and his face was calm but his eyes were guarded. “You can think you’re okay with something but once you actually see the reality—it changes things.”
Ah. I got it then. You don’t trust me with your body. I frowned. “Have I done something to make you think—”
“No.” He cut me off; raised a hand to stem my flow of words. “It’s not that.” His lips twisted briefly into a self-deprecating smile. “It’s more that I don’t trust myself not to mind your reaction.”
“Ah.” I said for want of anything better to say, and immediately felt stupid for it.
“Yes. Ah.”
“I’m not going to mind your scars.” I said into the face of that gentle mockery. I held his gaze. “Show me?”
Heat warred with reluctance in his eyes. “Sinclair now isn’t the best time for—” He broke off with a groan as I pushed myself to my knees and began unbuttoning my pajama top.
“Why not?” I let the shirt fall open and began to loosen the drawstring of my pajama pants. Despite the desire swirling through me, I wasn’t going to go any further until I had an answer. It was one thing to know that I would have to take the first step, and another to strip myself bare only to be rejected. Which is rather the issue of the moment is it not?
He eyed the midriff exposed between the two open halves of my pajama top seemingly unable to look away. My nipples tightened in response, and I dropped my gaze to his lap gratified to see the beginnings of a bulge there.
“I’ve just had a seizure.” He listed off his reasons while his eyes caressed my breasts and his erection grew. “I could have another, I’m stiff and awkward and having muscle spasms; and we don’t have anything to help here.” He gestured around the room to indicate, I suppose, the lack of assistive positioning devices.
“Are you comfortable?”
“What?” He looked an adorable combination of distracted, aroused and confused I decided when he dragged his attention from my chest to my face.
“Are you comfortable right now?” I nodded down at his body.
“Relatively.” He conceded after a moment.
“Then just stay like that.”
“Sinclair—” He exhaled. A variety of expressions crossed his face one after the other so quickly that it was impossible to guess at what was going through his mind. “It’s not a good idea…”
“Your body seems to think it is.” I dropped my eyes to his lap.
He adjusted the cushion to hide his erection. “My body is stupid.”
Stubborn. I rocked forward until I could run my hands up along his calves to his knees where I used my thumbs to stroke the sensitive line of flesh where the inner knee met the beginning of the inner thigh. “Perhaps it is your brain that is stupid and your body that is the sensible one.” I moved forward positioning my knees on either side of his knees and smoothing my hands farther up his thighs. I kept my touch feather light both because the way he was breathing and shifting around told me it was effective and because I didn’t want to jar the sore muscles in his legs.
“Sinclair—”
“Yes?” Curling my fingers, I scratched lightly along the tops of his thighs.
Hastings closed his eyes briefly as the sensation moved through him. I took the opportunity to take the cushion with the manuscript piled on top of it and set it aside. “This isn’t how I want to do this.” He murmured.
Entranced by the open pleasure on his face, and curious to watch it grow; I ran my hands up along his upper thighs to his hips and hooked my fingers in the waistband of his pajama bottoms. “Sinclair!” He grabbed my hands; stopped their downward momentum. He glared at me with eyes that were raw with pleasure and dark with reservation.
“Hastings.” I used the thumbs of my captured hands to stroke the sensitive skin of his flanks above the line of his waistband.
“Why are you doing this?”
“I should think that is fairly obvious.”
“It won’t be good for you.”
“I disagree.” Thinking to distract him I slid my hands out from under his and, over his pajama top then ran them up his belly up across his nipples to his shoulders and back down. When he shivered in response I did it again and took the opportunity to slide forward until my knees rested alongside his hips and I could feel t
he tip of him against my core. Dipping down I rolled my hips slightly in a motion that apparently galvanized something in him, because his hands were suddenly on my back restlessly stroking my skin as he pulled me down against him. I had time to suck in a breath and then his mouth was on mine and his hands moving urgently between us as he unbuttoned his pajama top. I only understood the urgency when his hands snaked around my sides leaving a delicious trail of shivers and heat as they went, and pulled me to him so that we were chest to chest. “Closer.” He groaned against my mouth and as that had me flashing back on the times he’d pulled me against him during the day. I got it then just how tactile he was. He pulled his mouth from mine and let his forehead fall against the crook of my neck.You don’t want sex right now so much as you want connection. I thought as I felt his erection dissipate. A different kind of intimacy. I thought as half my body throbbed its dissatisfaction at me while the other half basked in the pleasure of having him so close against me.
* * * * *
We must have fallen asleep because the next thing I knew, I was being jostled and, then falling as Hastings’ pulled me off of his lap.
“Leg spasms.” He told me as he pulled the arm he’d used to shift me, out from under my shoulders. “Sorry.”
Twisting myself onto my side, and stuffing the pillow beneath me, I watched him pull himself into a seated position. “What can I do?” I asked quietly, unwilling to disrupt whatever thought process that was holding him upright and breathing steadily through the pain.
“I could use a hot bath.” He told me from between clenched teeth.
“Okay.” I slid out of bed, and crossed to the bathroom, where I flicked on the light, and after catching sight of myself in the mirror, grabbed a hair tie from the counter, and pulled my hair back into a quick bun.
After twisting on the bathwater, I opened the medicine cabinet and retrieved a bottle of pine scented epsom salts which I dumped liberally into the water. By the time I had grabbed a towel and arranged it for his head, the water had reached midway up the bathtub—safe for turning on the jets—and I debated the matter mentally for a few seconds before turning to call to Hastings. “Do you want—” I nearly jumped out of my skin as the unexpected sight of him leaning against the bathroom door took five years off my life.
“Do I want?” He repeated.
“Do you want the massage jets?”
“Yes.”
Wondering, in light of our earlier conversation, whether I should stay or leave, I turned to adjust the dial controlling the jets. I should respect the fact that he doesn’t want me to see his scars. I told myself as I levered myself off the side of the tub, and turned toward the door where the sight of Hadrian braced against the wall with one hand as he attempted to remove his pajamas with the other, stopped me in my tracks. Without comment, I altered course and halting in front of him began to unbutton his pajama top.
“Pippa.” His hand moved to brush my hands away but I wouldn’t be dissuaded. “I won’t look.” I told him quietly. “If you’re not ready or don’t want me to. I won’t look.”
He hesitated then dropped his hands. “Thank you.”
* * * * *
“You must think I’m certifiable.”
I glanced over my shoulder at Hastings from where I was lighting the candles that lined the bathroom vanity because I needed something to occupy myself. “In what sense?” I teased, keeping things lights even though I knew what he meant.
That earned me a smile though he neither opened his eyes or turned his head in my direction. Out of respect, I refrained from looking at his body.
“I told you, you couldn’t look away and yet here I am asking you not to look.” He said over the murmur of the jets.
I turned back to the candles. Searched for the right thing to say. “It happens.”
He huffed. “That’s damned understanding of you.”
“I am not without my merits.” I replied primly as I puzzled over the faint edge in his voice.
“No you’re not.” There was a slosh as he adjusted himself in the tub. “I—what you said earlier today about making things easier after a seizure… You, what you’ve done today has made it easier… for me. I want to thank you for that.” Another shift. “As well as to apologize for being inconsistent and difficult about it.”
I stifled a laugh and turned to face him. “All the horrible things you’ve ever done and said to me, and this is what you apologize for?” I raised a brow, and smiled inviting him to do the same.
The smile that crossed his lips was fleeting and didn’t quite reach his eyes. He stared down at the water.
“What’s bothering you about this Hadrian?” I forced myself, despite my natural inclination to want to shy away, to seize the bull by the horns as it were and wade directly into the issue in good pirate fashion.
He tilted his head to look at me then. “I’m worried that this is going to affect things between us.” He said quietly.
I frowned confused. Hadn’t we already gone over this? “This morning—” I began only to have him cut me off.
“A lot has happened since this morning.” I watched as the muscles in in neck tightened. “You’ve had to deal with this—” He raised the hand resting on the edge of the tub to indicate his body. “All day.”
I felt the muscles in my own neck constrict as I realized that the anxiety of the morning had not been dealt with as I had thought, but rather had grown undetected by me throughout the course of the day. “Hadrian…” I paused trying to get my thoughts together. How to reassure him? I was stymied for a moment before I recalled something he’d said earlier: “Both of those positions transition easily from kissing to intercourse without a lot of effort for our hero, which allows both the heroine and the reader, to see him as a sexual being and form some sort of attachment to him before the details of his disability can interfere. The heroine and the reader are much more likely to stick around as a result.”
I stared at him more than a little puzzled. What was he was asking? This anxiety was so at odds with the man who’d spoken so openly about his cerebral palsy and how it affected his body; the man who’d taken me to a sex shop and shown me how assistive positioning devices worked; the man who’d given me a hands on demonstration of his favorite kissing positions and walked blatantly aroused with me through a restaurant; the man who’d told me not to look away from his disability and asked me whether I’d ever fucked anyone with a disability; that I was finding it hard to figure out what was going on with him. “Are you asking me if…” I hesitated feeling it out. “I am going to stick around now I’ve seen you…” I trailed off unable to find the right word. Ill doesn’t exactly cover it does it? I cocked my head at him. “I know, after what happened earlier tonight, you can’t be asking me if I still see you as a sexual prospect.”
That earned me a sharp humorless laugh, and an equally sharp glance. “Why not?” He held my gaze. “There’s always a point at which enough is enough. I don’t suppose you’re interested in trying to sleep, and I do mean sleep, with someone who has leg spasms, and seizures, and gets up at all hours to walk the floors and soak in the bath.”
Faintly annoyed, I narrowed my eyes at him. “Are you asking me or telling me Hastings?” His hand twitched against the rim of the tub just enough for me to detect a tremor before he clenched it into a fist, and it was that little shake that made me understand finally exactly how intimate we’d been since the previous evening and how vulnerable he was at the moment.
The realization had me moving leaning back against the vanity to steady my suddenly wobbly legs.
“I’m asking.” His eyes met mine briefly, before flicking away to stare at the bubbles that covered the length of his body.
I studied the lines of his face, the strained lines of his face as I contemplated what he was asking. Do I mind sleeping with someone who has leg spasms and seizures and gets up at all hours to walk the floors and soak in the bath? I asked myself honestly. Stepping back mentally, I tried to as
sess what I was feeling at that moment and found that I was tired certainly,—I mean who wouldn’t be at this hour?—but otherwise found only concern, and deep affection for the man in front of me. Forcing myself to take my assessment further, I imagined a lifetime of getting up with him when he was hurting, of making space for his CP and found it held no particular stress or horror for me. I mean, I hate having my sleep interrupted as much as the next person, but that’s what naps are for right?
Images of Hadrian taking me to task for being everyone’s Girl Friday flashed through me filling me with the knowledge that this man had my best interests in mind. I thought of the way he’d pushed himself to the point of collapse to help me with my book; the way he’d exposed himself to me, and pushed me to be true to my own sense of integrity, so that I could do justice to the characters and their relationship, and thereby succeed at freeing myself to follow my dreams; the way he’d been pulling me close all day, and it abruptly seemed like such a paltry thing to hold space for him in the way he was asking. I love this man. I realized with a certainty that had me sucking in an abrupt breath. I love all his funny moods and the way he pushes me to be better; to be true to myself. I love his unflinching honesty in the face of everything up to and including his own insecurities. A feeling akin to joy started somewhere near my feet, and rolled through me with a force that had me feeling that I was moments away from floating up from the floor.
As I stared at him, transfixed by the force of my own feelings, Hadrian’s jaw clenched hard, and a vein in his neck began to pulse hard. He’d misread my sharp breath I realized. I opened my mouth and found myself tongue-tied; uncertain how to express what I was feeling. Start with the basics. I reminded myself. Answer the question you were asked and move on from there. “I’m interested.” I managed to rasp and saw his head tilt back as he sucked in a breath of his own. As the sound of his breathing echoed off the tiled walls, and filled the room, I realized that he’d been holding his breath. “Way beyond interested actually.” I elaborated as his ragged breathing cut my heart open.
