by Lilia Moon
If I were a different kind of man, or she were a different kind of woman, she’d be right.
I run my hands up to her shoulders, taking enough of a detour to brush my thumbs over her breasts as I go. “Show me. Lie over my lap and touch yourself and let me see you as you take yourself over.”
She stares at me like I’ve lost every brain cell I was born with. Which isn’t far from truth—a naked Daley is as much temptation as I’ve stared at in a very long time. Fortunately for me, what I’ve asked of her is going to be pure pleasure for me as well. I take her hand and sit back down on her couch. “On your belly, sweetness. I want to watch you as you come.”
I can tell when the gently given orders begin to make some sense in her head. Which is a long way from her complying with them, but at least she’s understanding the outlines. Her face runs through a dozen different feelings, confusion and embarrassment return visitors in the mix, but I don’t miss the curiosity. Or the desire.
She’s off-balance, but not unwilling. I let my hands glide to her hips. I’ve let her see a little of what’s she’s stirred in me. The rest of tonight needs to be about what stirs in her. “This way, so the light of the fire is on your face.”
Her breath whiffs out of her as she drops to her knees on the couch beside me. “I imagined a lot of ways tonight might go. This wasn’t on the list.”
I smile. I’m always delighted to make lists more interesting. “It was very high on mine.”
She huffs out a laugh as she studies my face. “You really mean that.”
I do. I’ve enough years in me to know how to appreciate widely, and if I can ease her into what I’ve asked of her, and if she can find it within herself to let me fully see, it will be magnificent. I reach for her hand and the curve of her ass, using the two to guide her down over my lap. She struggles, not with me, but with herself. The awkward fumbling of a woman new to being over someone’s knees and all the many kinds of exposure it brings.
I stroke her back and the work of art that is her ass in firelight. “Can you get your hands to where you need them to be?” Her couch has modern lines and very old-fashioned comfort. It’s not going to be a barrier. The modern and old-fashioned inside her might be.
She turns her head to scowl at me. “This feels really awkward, Callum.”
I let my hand linger a bit, brushing over her heat. “It feels quite wonderful, actually.”
She sighs, but she hasn’t missed my point, or the one my cock is trying to make under her belly. She wriggles on my lap, working her hands in underneath herself, brushing my cock in ways that surely aren’t accidental, much to my amusement and his delight.
I smile as her fingers peek out between her legs. “Go slowly for a bit. Let me savor.”
She makes a quiet sound laced with more than a tinge of frustration. “I don’t know if this will go anywhere at all with you watching.”
I’ve gambled that it will, but I don’t think I’m wrong. I run my hand up and down her spine. Soothing. Pulling her back into her skin. “Show me how you pleasure yourself, darling. Let me see.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Daley
Let me see.
He’s found the magic words, damn him. The three that have just turned the awkwardness to ashes, because as entirely uncomfortable as this feels, he’s doing it for a reason that sings to my soul.
I press my cheek a little deeper into the soft fabric of my couch, stare into the fire, and do as he asked. I start slowly, letting my fingers glide a little. Not part of my regular routine, but that doesn’t include sexy men with hard cocks and intent eyes, either. Not real ones, anyhow.
I already know I won’t be fleeing into fantasy tonight.
My fingers circle my clit, which suddenly annoys me. That’s not how this works for me and I know it, and this is pointless if it turns into a demonstration of how some imaginary woman might get off. I move my fingers to my outer folds. Pressing. Finding the well-known spots that let me work the long roots of my clit from the sides, not its oversensitive top.
The man with his hand on my back hums appreciatively.
My body jumps to attention. He’s watching. My folds get slicker and more pliant under my fingers. It’s not taking much. This afternoon laid plenty of kindling for this particular fire.
My knees begin tiny rocking motions, working my folds against the stationary pressure points of my fingers in a dance I’ve done for as long as I can remember. Erotic kneading that wakens my nerves, connecting them to the fire in my belly, the heaviness of my nipples, the tingling in my toes. Headwaters for a hot, turbulent river of arousal.
I realize I’m rocking against his thighs, his cock, and I go still.
His hand moves on my back again. “Let me feel, too, sweetness. And hear.”
I don’t know if I’ve been making noises. Don’t want to know. I turn my head away from the fire, toward the back of the couch.
His free hand reaches over and tucks in under my cheek.
A message. I can turn away from the fire if I want, but he won’t let me turn away from knowing that his eyes are watching and his ears are listening and his lap is literally vibrating with my efforts to get myself off.
Efforts that have gone badly astray. I’ve lost the rhythm of the river. It’s easily derailed, and I know how to get it back on track, but this isn’t the night to pull a favorite fantasy off the shelf and use it to form my riverbanks. I toy with the idea of borrowing his fantasy, of stripping myself naked on a rock for his seeking tongue and hands, but even that feels like dishonesty. Like hiding.
He wants to see.
I turn my head again, growling, but I set it back down on his hand. Not leaving. Just shifting orientation. My fingertips press harder, finding the nerves with more demanding pressure. The kind that makes my hips do more than gently rock. I can hear my soft grunts as my body shifts back and forth on his lap, the orgasm that was hard to hold off this afternoon needing more persuasion this time.
His hand, which has traveled to the back of my knee, tenses. I don’t think he knows. I can hear his breathing, a sharp counterpoint to my own. Audience as part of the art. I run my fingers through my wetness, because I want to this time. I want him to see. Then I send my fingertips back to those reliable places that have always brought me pleasure. I breathe into the lull, my heart beating in my hands, my blood gathering for one last uphill climb.
It’s a small one.
Quiet panting moans accompany me over, an undulating victory as I finally get to where I’ve been going. I exhale into the puddle that always finds me after orgasm, my hands gone still between my legs. I often fall asleep this way, but that’s not on tonight’s menu. I have plans. Just as soon as I find my bones again.
Chapter Thirty
Callum
She’s breathtaking.
Slumped over my lap, covered in the light sheen of her own pleasure, my presence the paper she’s used to draw her art. I didn’t expect her to find her way so quickly, and I admit to sadness along with my satisfaction.
Trust grows between us.
She squirms a little in my lap, a woman whose mind isn’t ready to let her body simply be. I move my hands to assist her. I’d rather she stayed draped over me in front of the fire while my hands explored, but that isn’t the path of this. Not yet.
She’s not yet done finding how big she can be.
She pushes up onto her arms, and with more grace than I expect, straddles my lap. Which is clue enough, but her eyes tell me the rest. She’s fanning the flames inside her again, for a tangle of reasons that are beautiful and enticing and possibly damaging, because I’m not at all sure it’s her needs she’s blowing on. I suspect it’s mine.
The ones I’m having a fair hard time keeping in check. “You let me see. Thank you.”
Her eyes shutter a little as she catches notes in my voice she didn’t expect. She slides in a little closer, naked temptation in firelight, and drapes her arms over my shoulders. “Will you
let me see now?”
It’s not the question I expected her to ask, and it’s going to make my answer more painful for both of us. I run my palms along her arms, capturing her hands. Bringing them to my face. They smell of her desire, and I inhale deeply. “Not tonight.”
She stills.
I try to offer the words that will take away the hurt, or at least the part of the hurt that believes I might not be in this as deep as she is. “We’ll have sex when you believe my needs won’t take air from you being who you want and need to be. We’re getting there. Thank you for trusting me this far.”
She stares at me, and I watch the layers as she pulls them on. Armor. Rejection. Confusion. Anger.
I keep my eyes on hers. My truth lies in mine, if she’s willing to see it.
The sharp edge of what’s riding her eases. She puts her hands on my chest, and they tremble. “Is this you trying to keep that blasted promise of yours?”
Something taut inside me eases. “Yes.”
“I don’t like this. It feels out of balance.” She swallows. “Like you’re making yourself smaller instead of me.”
I can’t help the look down at my cock. Or the grin that comes after.
She snarls, but there’s laughter behind it. “You know what I mean.”
I do. And it’s a conversation we need to have. I tuck a stray curl behind her ear. “Is that what you think happened tonight?”
More sounds from her lion. “I don’t know.” Her eyes lift to mine. “That’s not me avoiding an answer. I’m cranky and disgruntled and confused, and nothing’s very clear at the moment.”
I stroke my thumb over her cheek. “How else do you feel?”
She leans into my touch. “Agitated. Sexy.” A pause. “Proud.”
That’s a very fine night of work.
Her thumb mirrors my touch, stroking my cheek. “And you? How do you feel?”
“Aroused. Tempted. Gratified.” I turn my head and kiss her thumb. “Happy.”
She sighs. “You’re a very confusing man, Callum Burke.”
“There are worse things to be.” I smile and let my hands play in her hair a bit. Leaving tonight is going to be very difficult, but she’s not fighting me overmuch. She’s got things to work through inside her, and there are very good reasons to let her do it without my needs in the room.
She shakes her head. “That’s twice you’ve been in my home and stayed fully dressed. A woman could develop a complex.”
Perhaps, but I don’t think this one is. There are other things careening around inside her, though. And much as I want to sit here and hold her and soothe them, that isn’t the game I’ve begun at all. I run my hands over her shoulders, delighting in the curves of her. “Do you need me here a while longer, or shall I go?”
She makes a face. “I’m planning to tuck myself into bed and sleep for ten hours. Just so you know.”
She sees the game well enough. “February’s a fine month for hibernation.” Even if I’m quite sure hers won’t be particularly restful tonight. She deals far too honestly with what lives inside her.
She climbs out of my lap with a growl, but she takes my hand as she does it. “Fine. Let me toss you out into the night so that I can get on with thinking about whatever you’ve stirred up.”
I tuck my face into the curve of her neck for a moment, inhaling so that I can take the smell of her with me. “I’m not the only one doing the stirring.”
She makes a sound that could mean anything.
And then escorts me out her front door.
Chapter Thirty-One
Daley
My eyes jerk open, propelled by the violent stew inside me. I curse at the dark ceiling of my bedroom. I shouldn’t have gone to sleep. I know better.
The last two days have riled me up and not settled me back down, and there’s only one good way to deal with that. I want to be angry at the man holding the big spoon, because that’s twice Callum’s walked away and left things unfinished and he hasn’t so much as taken his shirt off, arrogant man.
But he’s not wrong. There are four hands on the big spoon that’s stirring up this particular mess, and two of them are mine, and they’ll never figure anything out tucked under the covers and pretending the dark hours of the night are for sleep.
I’m already swinging out of that warmth, propelled by something that has always been willing to throw me into cold and discomfort in the name of truth. I find a pair of leggings and a warm sweater by feel, and scowl as I walk out of my bedroom. It’s an overcast night, with no hints of moon or stars to light my way. Which suits my mood, but it doesn’t make it any easier to get to the door of my glass bubble without wrecking my shins or taking a header down a few steps that tried to move in the night.
I traverse the hazards, muttering under my breath as I pull open my studio door against the gentle suck of the fans. It’s a space designed from the ground up for drawing in the daytime, but this isn’t the first time I’ve been yanked out of bed by demons that won’t wait for dawn.
My hands move on their own, taping up a big piece of my favorite paper for when I’ve got angst to deal with, finding my most disreputable box of charcoals, tossing in a new eraser because I’ve tormented the last one to death. I turn two overhead spotlights on low and add a couple of mobile spots at my feet. It’s crap light for drawing, but I’m already reaching for my box, fingers itching. Needing.
I huff out a breath as I search for the big, soft chunks. One of the grand contradictions of my art—the deepest blacks come from the softest charcoal. I reach for a rag to smudge with and drop it back down again. No rags. I need my hands deep in this mess, whatever it is.
I use the blunt end of my charcoal, laying down hard, dark scribbles that suit my mood, slashing at a page that has done me no wrong but will collect the history of whatever’s about to puke out of me. The scribbles trace an arc that looks far more polite than I feel, so I draw back and strike again, frenetic, the agitation in my soul moving through my shoulders and out my hands.
Charcoals can be deft and subtle and elegant—or they can be full-body sport.
I work two-handed, my left hand laying down black, my right moving over the scribbles. Smudging them. Playing in the contradiction of dark and soft, of dark that moves, smudges, rearranges itself at a touch.
The spreading pool of dark and shadow and scribble sucks me in, as it always does. It pulls on the ends of the fierce ball of muck that woke me up and commands it to unravel onto the stark-white paper. I’m getting in the way of my own lighting, but it doesn’t matter. First, I must create the dark. Everything else will emerge from that.
The edges are jagged yet, but I pick up my eraser. Not the new one. It’s not pristine I need yet, not even close. This is an old friend, covered in almost as much charcoal as it will remove. It makes tentative swipes at the dark, searching for hints of things yet unseen, for the truths that need to emerge from the inside of me, out through shoulders and fingers and into the light.
I slap the soft charcoal down on my work tray like a surgeon, grabbing for one a little harder. It tangles with the eraser, putting shadows back into what I’ve erased. I’m angry yet. The light won’t come easily tonight. Callum has teased me in close with his warmth and ease and charm, but there’s a fierceness in him, too, and the answers to that don’t lie in the light or the dark. They lie in the fight between them, in the one hand removing as the other hand lays down new shadows, new fury, new truth.
My shoulders already ache. I press harder. Ache is just a sign that there’s more left to say.
I’ve covered most of the paper with my frantic dark scribbles. The eraser can’t keep up. It’s not meant to, yet. The dark can never be tentative. So much of feminine goodness lies in the deep, and so much of what covers it up, too. I’ve spent the last thirteen years of my life dedicated to clearing that ooze away from me and the women I draw, and to leaving enough of the dark to tell the truth of what really lies behind the cowering and the fear.
My hands are slowing. No less intense, but they’re searching now, covering a small area with shadows and taking them away again, seeking the bones of what’s buried here.
The part of me that emerges first isn’t my eyes or my hips or my hands, which are my usual first arrivals, the easiest paths into what lives deeper.
Not this time. The shadows unveil, showing hints of shoulders, of surprised nipples and breasts and the valley running between them. I hiss and scribble, but my hands aren’t having it. The eraser moves, lifting all but the echo of my scribbles. Leaving vestiges of truth layered on truth.
I blink back the first tears as I rub away more of the shadows. Uncovering my heart.
I grab for my soft charcoal again. Not scribbling over the unveiled light, this time. Deepening the dark at its edges. Another one of charcoal’s truths. The most interesting places—the most important ones—are where the lightest lights meet the darkest darks.
More hints emerge. More edges of a thing yet unseen and terrifying, clutching at my throat and then heading for my hands instead.
I keep drawing. Words have never been my first language.
My fingers run over the curve of a shoulder, just like his fingers ran over mine, calling my heartbeat into my skin. I suck in a breath, which fills my lungs with dust and does nothing to stop the snot threatening to leak down my face. I swipe at my nose as another wave of agitation comes, as lines and smudges and the constant removing of them keep shaping truth out of shadows and light.
Making art of tears and dust and truth.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Callum
I walk into Liane’s house, trusting that the invitation to show up at any hour was a true one. Matteo looks up as I meander into the kitchen. “Coffee’s fresh. Scones aren’t, but Li was up half the night arguing with some new hemp, so we’re stuck with leftovers.”
