Page 64 of Carrick
That earned me a flicker of something in her expression. Uncertainty. Maybe even curiosity. She didn’t flinch when I reached for her hand again. Let me take it. Hold it. Like maybe part of her wanted to believe I meant it.
She exhaled. “I don’t need aftercare.”
I didn’t answer right away. Just brushed my thumb over her knuckles, grounding her. Grounding me.
“I think you need something,” I murmured. “Even if you don’t know what to call it yet.”
That hit harder than anything else I could’ve said, it seemed. She didn’t react outwardly, but I felt the shift. The tiniest softening. Her shoulders dipped, her knees relaxed apart a few inches—just enough to signal she wasn’t braced anymore.
“I’m not offering coddling,” I said, my voice even, quiet. “I’m offering care. Without condition. Without expectation.”
“I don’t want to be someone’s project.”
“You’re not a project,” I said. “You’re a person I’m beginning to care about.”
She blinked—once, slowly—like she wasn’t sure she’d heard me right. I didn’t rush to fill the space. I just waited, steady and still, until she gave the smallest nod. Barely there. But real.
Her voice was softer when she spoke again, not defensive or sarcastic—just raw. “What does it look like, then? Your version of care?”
I stood, letting her hand go just long enough to grab the tin of balm. She tilted her head, curious but silent. I handed her a towel. She took it without question, drying her hair like her body already trusted what her mind hadn’t named.
I sat beside her, warming the balm between my palms. When I touched her thigh, she didn’t flinch. Her legs parted slightly, the towel loose across her chest. My hands weren’t hungry. They were reverent. I traced each mark—proof of surrender, intensity, connection. And something inside me shifted.
This wasn’t about control or ritual. It was about presence. And for the first time, I wasn’t trying to keep her from falling apart.
I just couldn’t bear to let her fall without me there to catch her.
She didn’t speak. Didn’t reach for humor or distance. Just stayed close, curled in my blanket, steam rising off her skin.Her hair clung damp to her collarbone, a drop of water slipping between her breasts. I didn’t ogle. But I noticed. She was breathtaking like this—raw, undone. Not because of sex. But because she let herself be seen.
And that—her quiet, deliberate choosing of softness—wrecked me.
Bellamy didn’t rebuild the walls. She didn’t retreat. Her silence wasn’t a mask. It was trust. A request.
Not to be rescued.
To be known.
I stayed close, our knees brushing. My presence wrapped around her without pressure. Her shoulder leaned into mine, soft and instinctive, like her body trusted me before her mind gave permission. I let my hand drift to her knee, not to lead, just to say I’m still here. My thumb moved in slow, grounding arcs. No urgency. No expectation.
Just space.
So she could return to herself—on her own time.
“I didn’t expect that,” she said eventually, her voice low and slightly hoarse.
I kept my touch steady, glanced down at the side of her face. “Which part?”
She hesitated. Her breath pushed out in a slow stream as her head tilted a little closer to my shoulder. Her voice came quieter this time, but the honesty threaded through it with startling clarity. “The way it felt. The restraint. The control. You.”
My chest tightened. Not in surprise—but in recognition. Because I’d felt it too. Whatever this was between us, it was uncharted. Not just sex. Not just dominance or chemistry. It was something older. Deeper. Something neither of us had asked for but had both leaned into without realizing.
“I’ve done scenes before,” she added, almost as an afterthought, though it clearly wasn’t. “But it was different with you.”
Her words echoed in the space between us. I didn’t interrupt. I didn’t press. I just waited.
She drew a slow breath, then exhaled through her nose. “It wasn’t about pushing limits. It wasn’t about chasing a high. It felt like… I could actually let go. Not just of control. Of fear. Of everything.”
I turned to her then. Not dramatically. Just enough to see her expression, to meet her eyes. “Do you know why?”
