It Takes Two (25 page)

In fact, she sometimes regretted that she couldn’t give it all up to him like that. The constant drive to be exciting and to keep things spicy was exhausting sometimes. And though she knew it might hurt a little, the idea of being at
his
mercy was tempting.

“Fine.” She walked to the bed and sat on the edge again.

“Lie back.” He hadn’t moved yet.

She did.

“Move up to the pillows.”

She did.

“Now close your eyes.”

Okay, this sounded promising. It wasn’t like she was
never
on her back during sex. He was quite good with his fingers and tongue in this position. She just always made a point to move into more comfortable positions for the main show.

She closed her eyes and sighed happily.

The next thing she knew, he’d handcuffed her to the headboard.

She had no idea how he’d done it.

The element of surprise was a big part of it. That he was pretty good with handcuffs didn’t hurt either.

“Hey.” She tugged on the metal rings. “What are you doing?”

“Showing that you can trust me…with everything.”

She frowned. Her heart was pounding and it wasn’t entirely in the good I’m-so-hot way. She tugged again, but she wasn’t getting out of the things until he let her out. “Shane, come on.”

“I think we both need to know what would happen if I was in charge in bed once in a while.”

“It’s not like you just lie there.”

He shook his head and pulled his T-shirt off. “Nope, I don’t just lie there. I do exactly what you want me to do. And now I’m going to do a few things
I
want to do.”

She’d never get tired of looking at his chest and abs. She paused, drinking in the sight. Then she remembered that she was annoyed. “What about what I want?”

“You want this.” His hands went to his jeans.

“When did I say that?”

He looked her up and down. “You don’t have to say it.”

Isabelle moved her legs restlessly on the bed. It was annoyance, she was sure. She felt flushed because she was angry. Probably.

Shane unzipped and pushed the denim to the floor, stepping out of the jeans and kicking them away. The bulge behind the black cotton made Isabelle swallow hard.

He was big. And passionate. And totally in control of what was about to happen.

Okay, so how to handle this? Compliment him on how huge he was while gently reminding him that it could be a bit of a problem? Talk dirty—specifically about blow jobs—and try to get him worked up to the point that he’d have to unhook her to get the blow job that she was going to tempt him with? Beg? Yell? Threaten?

“It’s hard for me to relax like this,” she said, settling on guilt. “You were right that this position might be painful.”

“It’s hard for you to relax because I’ve never proven that I can take care of you like this.”

He climbed onto the bed, on his knees at her feet.

“There are lots of other ways you’ve taken care of me,” she told him, meaning it completely.

“And now that I know all the reasons to be extra careful, I’m going to show you that you can relax in
any
position with me.” He reached to take one of her feet in both hands, rubbing then pressing a thumb into her arch and making her moan. “And I’m going to show myself that I can take care of you like this.”

Ah, the guilt had worked. He was feeling bad about not being more careful in the past. But that wasn’t his fault.

“You didn’t know. You can’t feel bad about it,” she said.

“And now I do know,” he said, meeting her gaze. “Which means I finally get a chance to use my cuffs on you.”

“You’ve thought of that before?”

He gave her a wicked grin. “Of course.”

She wiggled in the cuffs again and his attention dropped to her breasts. “God,” he said, his voice suddenly husky. “I love what that does to your breasts. The way they’re on display for me, thrusting into the air, begging for my tongue.”

Another flush of heat rushed over her and she acknowledged that she felt decidedly less angry now.

“I’m nervous,” she confessed. “I always worry that if it hurts, I’ll flinch or clench or gasp and make you feel bad.”

He narrowed his eyes and looked at her again. “Don’t fake
anything
with me, Iz. Don’t protect me or do something just because I like it. If it hurts, you tell me.” He said it firmly, his thumb pressing hard into her arch.

She bit her lip and pulled on her foot.

He looked down, then let go of it. “Right. Okay, like that.”

She smiled at him. One thing she knew, deep, deep down, where she also knew she loved him, was that Shane would never hurt her.

“I’ll tell you.”

“Great.” He moved up, leaned in and kissed her stomach. “Then we can get started.”

She took a deep breath. She could do this. For him, she could do this.

On his side facing her, he ran one big hand over her stomach, up between her breasts and down again, stopping with the heel of his hand on her pubic bone. He repeated the path three times, his rougher hands on her skin making goose bumps erupt and spread in all directions, her nipples bead and her nerve endings crackle with awareness and anticipation.

“Shane,” she breathed.

He was watching her skin react to his touch. “I’ve never realized how fast we always go.”

She arched into his hand, unable to keep from trying to get closer to his touch. “What?” she asked, only half listening.

“We always go so fast. Like we’re on a deadline.”

She bit her lip and wiggled her hips, trying to get him to slide his hand lower. They did go fast. She did that on purpose. She pushed, made it hot and spontaneous, which many times meant a surface other than a soft feather-top bed. Bare ass on marble flooring, or metal car hood, or Formica countertop was not something she necessarily wanted to prolong.

Besides, Shane was very good at hard and fast.

“I love touching you,” he said, still watching his hand move over her. “I love how silky you are. I love how it affects you. I haven’t spent nearly enough time doing this.”

“I love you touching me too,” she told him. “Some places more than others.”

He didn’t move his attention from his hand as his slid it down one of her thighs to the knee and back up again. “Don’t make me gag you too, Iz.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“I would. You’re not going to speed this along with your dirty talk. I’m going to take my time. I’ve been against and inside your body so many times that I assumed I’d touched and tasted and seen every inch.”

Her body reacted to his words, growing warmer and wetter. She parted her legs slightly, willing him to slide up and over a few inches.

“But turns out that there are some gorgeous, and probably delicious, spots I haven’t gotten to know.”

Shane stroked the pads of his fingers over the back of her knee, causing a tingle to shoot straight to her clit.

Wow. That was…nice.

He did it again, then bent her knee and placed a kiss on her knee cap.

Her knee cap. And it totally made her hot.

“Do you have all the classic tender points?” he asked.

He swiped his tongue over her knee cap this time and she gasped.

“Isabelle?”

“What?” she said, breathless. From him touching her frickin’ knee cap. Geez.

“Do you have all the tender points they talk about in the book?”

Tender points? She was feeling achy right now but not really tender…oh. She stopped wiggling. He was talking about her fibro. “Um, yeah. Most of them.” That damned book.

“So, this is one of them.” He pressed a kiss to the inside of her knee.

She caught her breath again. The sensation was tingly like when he’d kissed her knee cap, but now there was something else. There was a sweetness in how he did it.

She cleared her throat. “Yeah. But that sure doesn’t hurt.”

He smiled up at her. He ran his hand up and down her calf, over her ankle and across the bottom of her foot. “I know about the tender points. What else is sore?” he asked, stroking his hand back up the length of her leg to her stomach.

“You memorized the trigger points?” she asked, referring to the tender points spread through her body the way the doctor had.

“Yep. There are a few in your neck and shoulders, a couple in the low back and hips.”

Wow. She didn’t know what to do with him. All of the things she’d been hiding from him were now the things he was most focused on and the things that were making her wonder how she’d make it even forty-eight hours without him.

“Sometimes if my hips get stretched too far, they hurt.”

He grinned, stretching out beside her again. “And I definitely stretch things out, huh?”

She gave a surprised little laugh. Instead of feeling bad about it, he was almost bragging. “Yeah, you do, big guy. But I don’t usually mind until after.”

He nodded, still looking smug. “That makes sense. But I don’t want you to hurt after either. Other than in the wow-he-really-did-me-good way.”

She chuckled again. “Well, there’s always some of that too.”

He rubbed back and forth over her lower stomach again. “What else?”

This wasn’t so bad. She took a deep breath. “If I’m up on something hard and you’re…going fast…” It was so stupid to hesitate over those words. She’d often begged him to go fast in the midst of sex and it wasn’t always to get her off the hard surface she was on.

He was the one to chuckle this time. “Yes?”

“It gets sore on my back. But I figure any girl would feel that way.”

His hand slid up to her ribcage and he rubbed back and forth. “Yeah. But it probably hurts you more. Or longer.”

“Yeah, maybe.” She hadn’t had wild sex on hard surfaces with anyone else, so she couldn’t say.

“Anything else?”

She knew he was going to keep asking and she knew she had to tell him this part, but it was more sensitive. Again, that was silly considering all the things they’d done together, but she still felt it.

“Yeah, there is.”

His hand paused. When she didn’t go on, he reached for her chin and turned her to look at him. “Tell me.”

Another deep breath and she said all at once, “When you go really deep it hurts. My pelvic muscles get sore and tighten up and it hurts. For about a day after.”

He stared at her for several long seconds and she wondered what was going through his head.

“I love it deep, though,” she said. “Which I know doesn’t make sense, but—”

“How deep?”

She licked her lips. She had to be honest with him. It wasn’t fair to tell him only part of this. He wanted to know because he cared about her and he wanted to keep having sex with her and to make it good for her. “Like when I’m on top and you take my hips and thrust up. Or when I’m on my back and you put my leg up on your shoulder.”

She could feel the tension in his body, but his hand went back to stroking over her stomach gently.

“I really like both those positions,” he said thoughtfully.

She smiled. “I know you do.”

“No problem when you’re on hands and knees?”

“If you go a little slower, it’s fine.”

“And if you’re on top we’re okay as long as I don’t take over on the rhythm?”

“Right. If I can control the speed and everything, it’s fine.”

“And you like it sitting up.”

She smiled. She was feeling lighter, freer with him knowing this stuff. “Yes, I do. A lot. In fact—” she arched her back and succeeded in pulling his gaze to her breasts, “if you’d unhook me, I’d show you—”

He shook his head. “No. We’re doing this with you cuffed.”

Isabelle felt her eyebrows shoot up. “Oh?” After everything she’d told him?

“I’m starting to think that sex is like ice cream.”

“Because it’s sweet and sticky?” she guessed.

He grinned and moved over her, his hands braced on the mattress on either side of her. “Because of the variety. You might have your favorite flavor, but if that one runs out there are
lots
of others that are good. And, of course, there’s always
vanilla,
which let’s be honest, actually kind of rocks. You can’t have a root beer float without it.”

They were talking about ice cream, but Isabelle’s body didn’t seem to know that. She felt like her skin was sizzling as Shane hovered over her, his heat notching her body temp up a few degrees.

“You’re sad about losing your favorite sex positions?” she asked, as he moved a knee between her legs.

“Not sad,” he said. “Eager to try something new.”

“Like wh—”

He leaned in and took a nipple in his mouth as he slid his hand lower, over her mound, the middle pad of his finger brushing over her clit and the sensitive folds below.

“Oh,” she gasped. It wasn’t new, but it was very good.