Page 27 of The Shield
My first reflex tried to buck. “I like?—”
“Not today.” His gaze softened but didn’t let go. “Today is for you.”
“But I want to—” Please you. Earn this. Be good.
“You will,” he said, a thread of humor tightening the syllables. “You already are.”
It didn’t compute. My muscles wanted a list of tasks, an itinerary of service. He turned me gently and walked me backward until my back met cool tile. My body shivered like a plucked string, heat and cold breaking against each other.
“Tell me when something’s good,” he said. “Tell me when something isn’t. And if you get quiet the way you did watching that tide chew the dune, I’ll bring you back.”
“How?”
His mouth curved. “I’ll use your name.”
The way he said that made my knees go weak. He didn’t make me prove anything else. He kissed me—finally, deeply, thorough in a way that said he believed in doing each thing properly or not at all. It wasn’t pretty. It was focused. His hand slid into my hair and anchored, the other flattening low on my back and drawing me flush. When his tongue stroked into my mouth I felt it everywhere, like a fuse lit in six places at once.
Everything went quiet except pulse and water and him.
He didn’t rush. He mapped. The corner of my mouth, the slope of my jaw, the hollow under my ear where my breath broke. He found each soft place and pressed until the softness turned to heat. When he cupped my face, something inside me unclenched with a little sound I didn’t recognize as mine. He caught it and answered with one of his own.
“Better?” he asked, roughened around the edges.
“Better,” I managed, dizzy.
He nodded like a man making a note and then his mouth moved lower. My head tipped back against the tile. He took his time with my throat, with my collarbone, with the place where my shoulder met my neck—a bite there, a soothing pass of tongue, a bite again until I arched like a bow. Heat pooled low, liquid and insistent, a tide working itself up a wall.
“Natalie,” he said, just to say it, and my whole body answered.
His hands were big enough to hold me in place and gentle enough that I didn’t want to escape. When he gathered my wrists and pinned them above my head, I made a helpless sound that had nothing to do with fear. He watched my face, checked what breathed there, then let his fingers lace with mine so I could squeeze if I needed to. The restraint made everything else sharper. The water sang on my skin. My heartbeat climbed. My back arched against tile I suddenly loved.
He learned me quickly. The rhythm that made my breath hitch. The pressure that turned a good thing into a demand. He paid attention the way men pay attention to threats. Or to sacred things. When I tried to slide my hands free to give, he tightened his grip the smallest fraction and shook his head without speaking, and theyesthat rolled through me felt like confession.
“Say what you want,” he murmured, mouth grazing my cheek, my jaw, the corner of my lip.
“I don’t know,” I said, hating the truth and needing it. “I don’t know how to ask.”
“Ask badly,” he said. The smallest smile ghosted my mouth. “I’ll translate.”
Heat climbed up my throat until it trembled there. “I want—” The word snagged on a lifetime of making room for other people. I swallowed. “I want to stop … managing it. I want to not think.” The admission shook me. “I want to be—” Taken care of. Held down. Seen. Possessed. Claimed. “—out of my own way.”
His breath went harsh for one measured beat. Then: “Good. That, I can do.”
He released my wrists and slid his hands down my arms like a benediction, catching my waist, my hips. He lifted me as if I weighed less than the worry I carried and settled me where the ledge met the glass, water beading on my skin. He was careful with the angle, with the set of my back, with the way my knees opened around his hips. There was nothing careless in him. Nothing performative.
He wasn’t showing off. He was building something, on purpose.
The wet cotton of my dress clung to me, plastered in place by rain and steam. His palms skimmed over it once, slow, as if taking inventory of every line of me through the thin fabric. Then his fingers found the hem, tugging gently, the soaked material peeling upward with a reluctant whisper. Inch by inch, he freed me from it, his knuckles brushing along my thighs, my hips, my ribs. I lifted my arms, trembling, and he drew it over my head, tossing it aside with a wet slap against the tile.
The cool air met my skin, and I realized I was shaking harder—not from cold, but from the gravity of being seen. My bra was soaked through, lace gone sheer, nipples hard beneath the cling. His gaze dragged over me like heat, reverent and unhurried. He cupped the weight of one breast through the wet fabric, thumbcircling until I arched into it, then reached behind me with a sure touch. The clasp gave way, straps sliding down my arms. He pulled the bra away, dropping it beside the dress. My breath came shallow.
“Beautiful,” he murmured, not like a line, but like a fact.
His hands moved lower, to the last barrier, the thin strip of cotton glued to me by water and want. He pressed a palm there first, broad and possessive, making me gasp at the weight and the heat. Then he hooked his thumbs into the waistband, eyes steady on mine. I lifted my hips without being told. He drew my panties down slow, the drag of wet fabric between my thighs almost unbearable, until I was bare before him, the panties landing on the pile.
Now it was only skin—mine flushed and damp, his hands steady and sure. He stepped in close again, letting me feel his heat where the steam cooled, letting me know there was nothing between us anymore. He wasn’t careless with my nakedness. He held it like something he’d chosen to earn.
When his mouth found the place just below my ribs, I jolted. When his hands wrapped my thighs and urged them wider, the shock turned to a low, helpless roll of heat. He looked up at me from under wet lashes, waiting for the smallest nod. I gave him more than that—I said his name like a key turning.
