Page 53 of The Back Forty
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
A pause stretches between us, full of unspoken things and the sound of rain tapping against the windows like a slow, steady heartbeat. Her gaze locks on mine, and neither of us looks away.
“Okay, then,” she breathes.
And then I say the thing I shouldn’t. The thing I know will change everything.
“Are you going to go use it?”
She blinks. “W-what?”
“Your vibrator,” I say, voice still quiet despite us being alone. “The one I saw you using the other night. Are you going to go upstairs, in my home, and use it?”
Her mouth drops open and her eyes widen. “W-what—?”
"Wish I hadn't seen it because now I can’t stop picturing you with it. Jacking up the speed so high it tortures your clit, trying to come quick so you don’t have to think about how empty it still leaves you to come around a piece of plastic instead of a warm cock. About how much you’re craving something real.Someonereal.”
She swallows hard, her lips parted, like she’s not sure how to respond.
“Maybe I am going to use it tonight,” she finally says. “Why does it matter?”
I rake a hand through my hair, break the stare for just a second, trying to breathe around this need that’s clawing at my chest.
“Because you deserve better than that. You deserve someone who takes their time. Who shows you that sex isn’t about racing to the finish line. It’s about the buildup. The tension. The slow unraveling. Every gasp. Every whisper. Every fucking second of the slow burn before you finally hit that release that has your toes curling and your mind calming.”
She shakes her head. “I don’t believe that's necessary.”
I laugh, low and rough. “Yeah, you do. You just haven’t been shown otherwise.”
She tilts her head in that familiar little challenge. It’s the same one she always gives me when we’re knee-deep in some ridiculous debate. Except this time, it’s not something playful that we’re arguing. It’s serious.
We’ve debated just about everything. The best barbecue sauce in Texas. Whether Whitewood Creek counts as a town or a city. IfDie Hardis a Christmas movie. What really happened the night the Titanic sank. The superior berry—strawberries or blueberries.
But this? This isn’t a debate. And it sure as hell isn’t banter anymore. We’re toeing a line and I’m about to cross it.
“This ain’t something up for discussion, Dani,” I murmur. “This is fact.”
And then she says it. The words I’ve been waiting to hear. The words I’ve imagined in her voice, over and over again.
A dare. A plea. A surrender. I’ve thought of nothing but Dani begging for me for the past week and finally it’s reality.
“Prove it then.”
Chapter 21 – Dani
Lawson’s body goes completely still, and for a second, I wonder if I’ve just sent him into full-blown cardiac arrest.
Not impossible. He’s older than me, and it happened to me, so it could definitely happen to him.
How much older is he again?
Oh, right. Thirty-seven. I know that because I’ve memorized his birthday. Along with his social security number and probably his license plate and blood type if I thought hard enough. Not because I’m unhinged, though the jury’s still out, but because I’m an overachiever and I've needed this information more times than I thought I'd need it over the past year of working for him and booking flights and hotel room stays.
Adedicatedemployee. The kind of woman who reads HR files like bedtime stories and knows way too much about her boss for someone who isn’t romantically involved with him. Yet here I am, teasing him about orgasm strategy like it’s a business pitch.Drawing out the tension, asking him to proveto me that slow and steady wins the race when I’m firmly on Team Just-Get-To-It and Get-Through-It.
How he’s planning to prove his point? No idea.
