“We’ll have to take that chance. Don’t you understand? Hearing about the war brings me closer to my father, makes me understand what he experienced and perhaps potentially will help me find him.”
“I can’t talk about it. I dream about it often enough. Horrible nightmares. Sometimes I lash out in my sleep, punch the pillows or the headboard.”
She could tell it took a great effort for him to say the words. “Is that why you don’t want to stay the night with me?”
He nodded.
She reached for his face, lightly touching his scars.
He flinched. Pulled away.
Her hand on his scars. Too much.
“Did I say you could touch me?” he asked in a low, warning voice.
She snatched her hand away. “I was only trying to—”
“Comfort me? I don’t require comfort. I require you to follow my rules. You don’t touch me, remember.” He caught her hands behind her back. “I’ll have to discipline you now.”
He pulled her toward him, arranging her over his knees with her head over the side of the bed, her hair tumbling down nearly to the floor. She squirmed against him, her soft belly sliding over his erection.
“I’ll release you if you don’t like it.” He tested the smooth skin of her bottom with his palm, gliding over her curves, before bringing his palm down in exactly the right way to sting but not hurt, to draw the blood to her lower regions. She squirmed harder but stayed silent. He spanked her again, and again.
“Shall I stop?” he asked.
She shook her head no.
He smiled. He reached around to lightly squeeze her nipples with one hand as he spanked her again.
“Have you learned your lesson?” he asked on a low growl.
“No,” she whispered, her thighs clenching and unclenching. “Spank me again.”
The firm smack and bounce of his palm against her flesh brought all the blood rushing there, and made her squirm, clenching her thighs together.
“Open your thighs,” he ordered.
She complied, lost to everything but the promise of pleasure. He rewarded her by sliding two fingers inside her, gently working them in and out at a pace and depth that soon had her moaning.
“Do you like that?” he asked.
“Yes. Keep going. A little deeper.”
“You’re such a good, brave girl, asking for what you want. What you need.” His fingers sank deeper and her thighs moved to meet his thrusts. “Soon I’ll be inside you with more than my fingers.”
“When?” she asked shakily.
“Soon. When you’re ready.”
She shuddered her release, thinking about taking him deep inside her, wrapping her legs around his hips.
It had taken every ounce of his tattered control to leave Ana’s bed tonight. They were separated by only a door. So easy to open it, go back to her bed, be with her completely. Make her his.
Why was he torturing himself? He couldn’t stop the thoughts spilling out like water overflowing a dam. He couldn’t stop wanting her, longing for her. He woke up hard from dreams about her. He went to sleep with the phantom indention of her body next to his, fiercely wrapped in his arms. He woke hugging a pillow, not her. Not warm, sleepy her.
His life had been devoid of laughter, lightness, happiness, sunshine for so long and, like a man dying of thirst, she was his imaginary oasis, a cool wellspring of thirst-quenching happiness.
She was everything he’d denied himself for so long.