Page 49 of Brave
He pulled his hand back. “All the rules still apply. You’re to make yourself come at least once before you get up in the morning.”
“Yes, Sir.” But it wasn’t her fingers that she wanted to feel, creeping down into the elastic of her panties.
“Goodnight, honey.” Pushing back off the couch, he gave her one last smile and then walked away.
“Goodnight,” she whispered, just before the light in the hallway winked out.
She listened, but she didn’t hear a door close. He’d left it open so he could hear her, just in case there was a problem.
There really was no comparison between Carlson and Ethen. None at all.
Easing onto her side to take the pressure off her tender butt, she hugged her pillow and waited for that sensual pulsing to stop its wanton cry for attention.
It didn’t. It dulled, but it never fully went away and for the longest time, Puppy lay there, fingers lightly caressing the welts that could still be felt. It hadn’t felt like it at the time, but he’d gone light on her. There were only a few and he hadn’t cut the skin at all.
Touching the tenderness behind her was making the ache between her legs that much worse.
Taking her hand away, she hugged her pillow closer and tried to go to sleep, but her mind wouldn’t shut off. All she could think about was the pulse, the wanting, and Carlson, just down the hall.
Digging through her backpack on the floor at the head of the couch, she drew out her notebook and hugged that now too. It didn’t work. She curled around it, but her need was too raw.
What would he do if she went to him right now?
She wilted. He’d probably remind her yet again that sex was off the table and send her back out here.
He was a good man. A kind man. She needed to not be so needy.
She closed her eyes again, hugging her notebook, but her clit throbbed and her heavy breasts ached, and not all the ignoring in the world was making her lust go away.
He was going to send her right back out here and she knew it, but she got off the couch anyway. She gathered her blanket, her pillow, and every tattered shred of courage she could find. She wouldn’t be a nuisance, she told herself, as she left the dim glow of the living room fire behind her and ventured down the hallway. She wouldn’t even wake him up. She’d just lie down by his door and go to sleep where she could be near enough to hear him breathing. It would be hard, but she could make herself be content with that.
His bedroom wasn’t hard to find. Even in the dark, there was just enough fire light to see the shadowy blackness of three doors down that hallway. One was the guest bathroom, one his office, and the other was standing wide open, showing nothing inside but an alarm clock with a digital display that read 11:23 in bright red numbers.
All but holding her breath, she waited for Carlson to say something, but everything in the black of his room was silent and still. She could barely detect his breathing, but the slow evenness of it suggested he might be sleeping. Otherwise, why wasn’t he saying something?
She fidgeted with the cloth folds of both her pillow and blanket, wrestling with all those last-minute fears trying so hard to convince her that he would surely be angry when he awoke to find her sleeping just outside his door. Maybe he wouldn’t, though. So far, her track record for being able to guess what would or wouldn’t make him angry wasn’t at all accurate.
Moving slowly, she lay her pillow on the floor and was just trying to figure out how to get the blanket both under and over her without accidentally bumping the wall when he said, “What are you doing?”
Caught, she froze. The interior of his bedroom was blackness. She couldn’t see him at all, but with the glow of the living room behind her, apparently, he didn’t have that same problem.
“I didn’t mean to wake you,” she whispered.
“I wasn’t asleep yet,” he replied, mildly enough. “Again, what are you doing?”
She looked down at the blanket she could barely see, half spread out up against the vague paleness of the wall. Feeling stupid, she asked, “I wanted to be close to you. Can I sleep here on the floor? I breathe heavy when I have a cold, but I don’t snore. I promise.”
She heard the shift of his weight on the bed a half second before he clicked the lamp on the bedside table on.
Propped up on his elbow, the look he gave her was bemused, not angry. His own blanket, pulled all the way up to his underarm, did nothing to hide his bare shoulders of the muscular pecs of his chest.
“No,” he said dryly. “You may not sleep on the floor.” He lifted the corner of his top sheet and blanket, granting her access and a sneak peek of a sparse, dark-haired happy trail leading from his navel into the elastic waist of the grey pajama bottoms he slept in. “Get in here.”
Did she dare trust that?
She was moving before her brain could fully form the question much less the answer. She crawled into his bed, but she did it with every intention of respecting all his boundaries.
“Sex is still off the table,” she said, so he wouldn’t have to.
