Page 56 of Branded

It should make me feel exposed. Instead, it makes every word I just said to her feel more exact.

She closes her hand around my cock and strokes me, slow, base to tip. I get hard in her grip. When her thumb spreads the wetness at the head, my thighs go tight.

“Stay where I put you,” she says.

“I intend to.”

“Your intentions have required outside review.”

“Then keep the evidence in your custody.”

Her laugh brushes my mouth. She keeps one hand on my cock and the other flat on my chest. She isn’t holding me down. She doesn’t need to. I stay where she put me, right arm tight to my side, left hand open on my thigh.

When my hips start to follow her hand, she stops them with her palm. “Still.”

I obey. Control without force behind it is different, but it’s no less a decision. Every instinct that kept me alive in my father’s house says needing somebody creates a debt. Her hand says wanting her care doesn’t give her ownership of the weakness she can see.

She lets go of me and takes off my shirt. The little glass cuts on her forearm are clean. I reach with my left hand and touch the unbroken skin beside them, light enough to carry no weight.

“Do those hurt?”

“Less than watching you try to drive an automatic with one arm would have.”

“It was a reasonable question.”

“The clinician disagreed in writing.”

She steps out of her underwear and gets a condom from her bag. She checks the foil and rolls it onto me with both hands. Then she arranges two pillows on the bed with the concentration she gives a movement record.

“Lie on your left side. Shoulder on the long pillow. Don’t put weight on that forearm.”

I do everything she says. She tucks a second pillow under my right arm so the joint stays close to my body, and checks the position, and only then lies down facing me.

Her bare thigh slides between mine. I kiss her deeper now, and cup her breast with my good hand, and she presses into my palm with her nipple hard under my thumb while her fingers close around me again.

“You can touch me,” she says. “You don’t get to move the shoulder.”

“Understood.”

“You sound disappointed.”

“I’m calculating how much I can do with one hand.”

“I’ve already completed that assessment.”

She turns away from me onto her side, her back against my chest without pressing my arm, and lifts her top knee over my thigh. She reaches between us and guides me into her.

The first slow push takes the head inside. She pauses, shifts half an inch, and presses back until I’m buried in her. I keep my hips still and my shoulder quiet and let her decide exactly how we fit.

“There,” she breathes.

“You decide how deep.” My mouth is on the back of her shoulder, nowhere near her throat. “I stay where you put me.”

“That may be the first sensible use you’ve found for surrender.”

She rocks forward and back, drawing me almost out and taking me in again, slow. I spread my hand across her stomach. She covers it for a moment, then moves it up to her breast, and I hold her there while her other hand slips between her legs.

“Touch yourself,” I tell her. “I want to feel what you choose.”