Page 63 of Blue Moon

“Then you use your fingers?”

“Use them for what?”

There was the longest pause. So long my nerves began to stretch, and they were pretty perished already. It wouldn’t take much for them to snap.

“Use them for what?”

“Moon, will you trust me?”

We’d had a few shaky months, but when the chips were down, there was no one I trusted more. No one else who’d taken my side, even when it cost him.

“Yes, I trust you.”

“I’m going to touch you. If you want me to stop, I will, but I promise I won’t hurt you. Is that okay?”

“Touch me where?”

He leaned in close, so close his lips brushed my ear. “Everywhere.”

“But I can’t?—”

“All you have to do is relax and tell me if you feel uncomfortable.”

Relax? Yeah, right. I steeled myself for what was to come. If Ryder wanted me to do this, then I’d try, for him, but if he thought it would be anything other than an ordeal, he was dead wrong on that.

“Fine. Do your worst.”

“You might be surprised.”

“Please, just get it over with.”

He was going to touch skin, I knew that, but he did surprise me by caressing my cheek.

“I love you,” he murmured.

“I love you too.”

That was the only reason I was going through with this.

A hand slipped under my pyjama top, and warm fingers rubbed slow circles all the way up my side. The skin on Ryder’s fingers was rougher than mine—he was no desk jockey—but he kept his touch light. This…this wasn’t so bad. Those circles teased the edge of my breast, and then a featherlight touch whispered over my nipple. It puckered the way it did when photographers’ assistants flicked cold water over me at a beach shoot but without some old lech yelling, “Turn to the left, work it, work it, cutie.”

Okay, I could cope with this.

And that thing, that thing he did with his thumb where he stroked it over the tip—that was actually pretty good. I shifted to give him better access and felt something hard against my butt. No, not that something. The TV blared on, the volume increasing, and darn it! I’d rolled on the remote.

“Sugar honey ice tea!”

I fished around in the sheets as the local news anchor droned on about a missing woman. Kacie Bachman, twenty-two years old from East Las Vegas, had gone missing after finishing a shift at the Slam Dunk Saloon. A witness saw her climbing into the passenger side of a silver SUV near the exit of the parking lot, and there had been no sign of her since. Which was terrible news and everything, but he just needed to shut up. Finally, finally, I managed to get rid of him.

“Sorry,” I mumbled.

“That’s a first.”

“The TV coming on while you’re…doing whatever?”

“That and a woman apologising in bed. Don’t do it. You have nothing to be sorry for. You okay?”

“Better than I thought I would be.”

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