Page 26 of Fearless
“All right, now.” He’d always been a big believer in aftercare. But up until this point in his life, the vast majority of his aftercare experience had been fairly generic. Generalized comfort offered to women he didn’t really know and, if it affected him at all, it was usually via an erection. Holding Kitty was a whole different level to the experience. She felt good, and he’d never felt so wanted, needed, and involved. She kept hugging onto him, pulling herself into a tight ball, so he kept rocking her, kissing her forehead, and whispering into the top of her head. “Ease it down now, love. I don’t want you to make yourself sick.”
She wasn’t his submissive, but she did her best to obey by slowing her breathing and scrubbing the tears from her face with her wrist. In a shaky voice, she muttered, “I h-hate being a g-guest.”
He hid a smile in her soft hair. “Truth, love. I’d much rather have a roommate, and I really don’t like having to punish you. So, if you’re ready to pay attention to the rules, then I’m willing to make the kitchen once more your own.”
She made no move to get up off his lap.
Although he did stop rocking, he made no move to let her go.
“Is that it?” she finally asked, her voice trembling and small. “Aren’t y-you going to do… more?”
He craned in an attempt to better see her face. “Is more required in order to get my point across?”
Snuggling into his chest, Kitty shook her head, but her eyebrows were pulling into a frown that was more confusion than temper. “No,” she said, but with a wary reluctance that made him think otherwise.
He studied her closely. “Kitty, love. Is more required?”
Her fingers plucked at the collar of his shirt. Her breaths were quickening again, the rise and fall of her chest turning shallow and afraid. “Wh-what would you do if it was?”
A slow thump of pure longing pulsed once in the pit of his belly, the echo of it drifting all the way down into the base of his cock. In that moment, all he could feel was the warmth and pressure of her bottom in his lap. “That depends on what you need.”
Her eyebrows pulled together. She didn’t shake her head, but he knew she wanted to.
“Do you need closure?” he asked, letting his fingertips play softly down her spine.
Her fingers picked and picked at one another and she didn’t answer. She dropped her gaze to stare fixedly at his neck.
“Do you need to know that you’re okay, or maybe that you and I are okay?”
A corner of her mouth lifted. She tried to laugh, but it was a shaky ghost of a thing and died almost the moment it was born.
“I’m okay,” she said, but there was no confidence in it and he could tell by her flick of a glance before she dropped her gaze again that she neither meant it nor believed it. “Of course, I’m okay.”
When she pushed slightly against him, he let her go far enough for her to sit upright. She made no move to leave his lap. Her fingers, no longer picking at her nails, wrung together tight enough to make her skin turn red.
“But... you know, for the sake of argument, if I wasn’t... o-okay, I-I mean...” She swallowed hard before she could make herself finish. “What would you do?”
A dozen options immediately flowed through his brain, filling his thoughts and bringing that pulse back to the base of his cock with low-thumping vengeance.
“Ask me.” He tried hard to pretend it was perfectly normal that his voice should come out sounding as husky as it did. “We can find out what happens together.”
She shivered. Her thin face was haunted, twin parts reluctance and fear, but the tips of her breasts had spiked into peaks that he could see thrusting against the fabric of her t-shirt. Tiny, pinchable nubs that seemed to be reaching out to him, and which took every ounce of will that he possessed to leave entirely unmolested.
She licked her lips, the bedeviling pink tip of her tongue hiding itself away again and his own suddenly aching to give chase.
Her eyes locked with his, and in them he could read all the fears and regrets that would not be abated, ever, for as long as her experiences consisted only of Ethen and his cruelties. “Please,” she whispered.
He chucked her gently under the chin, so very proud of her for finding the courage.
“You know your safeword,” Noah told her. “Can I trust you to use it if you need to?”
Again, her eyebrows quirked together, as if she couldn’t understand why he would even give her the option.
“This isn’t a punishment, love. I’ve done everything I’m going to do in that regard. This, what we’re doing now, is closure. It’s relief, a chance for you to banish whatever guilt might remain and to know that my feelings for you haven’t changed.” As if he had a right to any feelings for her at all. Noah tried not to think about that. “Kitty, can I trust you to use your safeword if you need to?”
She breathed in, bracing herself. “I promise.”
His pride in her blossomed even bigger. The urge to kiss her was almost overwhelming, but he locked it back and instead said, “You made a mistake, but the mistake has been corrected. What’s Rule Number Eight?”
