Page 33 of Pay the Piper

She gasps as I strike, my hand wrapping around her wrist, stopping her from making one more goddamn flippant gesture as if her sexual trauma is just the way things are for women. Her heartbeat throbs under my grasp, and the eroticism of this woman’s wrist has my dick hardening down the leg of my sweatpants. I want to sink my teeth into it, drape it in diamonds, chain it to my bed…but I’m getting ahead of myself. For now, I settle for placing a chaste kiss to the delicate skin covering her pulse point and pulling her back down next to me on the bench.

“I’m sorry for touching you without your consent. Will you sit for a moment with me? I’d like to talk about what you said.”

“You don’t have to apologize. It’s fine,” she whispers. “But I do need to go soon, and I—”

“Just a few minutes of your time, Abby. Please?”

She loosens a shaky breath and nods.

“Can I touch you? Just your hand?”

Thankfully, she nods again, and I pull her left hand onto my thigh, flipping it so that I can continue my new obsession of tracing the intricate veins from her wrist to her palm.

“I don’t know why you think that about sex. Although in my nightmares, I suppose I could guess,” I say, still gently tracing patterns across her soft skin. Her finger needs a ring. One with a diamond so massive that it’s clear she’s taken from far, far away. “It should absolutely not hurt for a woman, and if it ever does, that’s something that her partner should immediately do everything within his power to rectify.”

Massaging the muscle at the base of her palm, I make small circles as her breathing evens and she relaxes a bit more.

“It should never be a man thing, and I’d argue, at least for my preferences—”

Her gaze snaps to mine, and I wink, earning a huffed chuckle that makes my heart sing. Now we’re getting somewhere.

“For my preferences, it’s really all about the woman. Her pleasure is the main attraction for me. Mine is just a bonus, and the only time I can truly, fully let go is when whoever’s in my arms is already so satiated that it’s almost impossible to wring any more pleasure from her.”

Her ring finger is roughly the size of the very tip of my pinky. I’m sure I can use string to measure when she’s asleep, but this is pretty close…

“I don’t understand. None of the men I’ve…” She trails off as if embarrassed to admit she has a past, but I move my calming circles back to her wrist and give her an encouraging squeeze. “It just hasn’t seemed like they cared.”

Fuck hiding.

“Every inch of you is meant to be cherished, lesnaya. You should be worshipped, tasted, doted upon.” There’s no chance she can’t see the raw desire in my gaze as I continue my soft touch back and forth across her forearm, but she needs to know.

“I wouldn’t even touch you until you were wetter you’d ever been. There would never be pain unless it was from too much pleasure, but even then, I guarantee you’d beg for more in the same breath that you begged me to stop.”

The same shiver that rises with her inhale causes goose bumps to pebble across her skin, but I don’t stop. She has to know.

“What…” she whispers, clearing her throat before continuing. “I mean how…how would it be too much?” She’s chewing on her goddamn lip again, and it’s almost my undoing.

I can’t stop the dark chuckle that escapes, but I realize if I stay like this, within sight of the lip she won’t stop chewing, I’ll have a harder time explaining myself than I need to.

“It’s hard to describe…but I’ll try. Can you turn for me? Straddle the bench.”

She does as I ask, gorgeous curls cascading down her back as I swing one leg over and copy her position, scooting myself up to her back. Thankfully, she agrees to let me touch her hair, and as soon as I sink both hands in to scratch her temples, her moan reverberates through the room.

“To start with…it’s never just about getting off. It’s about making sure you’re taken care of. Whether that’s a head rub, a foot rub, a bath, a massage…whatever. Women are meant to be cherished, not taken for granted.”

Digging my thumbs into the nape of her neck, I revel in the way she sinks back against me, melting into my touch as I move from one pressure point to the next.

“But to answer your question about how it could be too much…” I lean down, struggling with our height difference but contorting myself to speak lowly just behind her ear. “Imagine if I kissed you, right here. Just behind your ear. And I told you I wanted to kiss every inch of this soft skin until I knew if you had freckles everywhere.”

It’s impossible to stop from brushing my nose against the spot I’m obsessed with, just once. Just a brush.

“You have erogenous zones you can’t comprehend. The inside of your ankle maybe. Almost definitely your inner thigh. I’d help you discover every single one, and then I’d use them all against you.”

“Against me?”

“Mm-hmm. Against you. They’d be the sweetest way to torture you. Some people prefer to be kept on the edge of the cliff until they’re sobbing, begging to be pushed over the edge. Or to do the keeping.”

Her million-dollar question comes just as I finish the French braid I doubt she’s noticed.