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“Yeah.” A lock of my hair has escaped the knot I keep it tied in most days. Poet tucks it behind my ear. “You locked up, but it was all in here.” He taps my temple. “You’re not scared of my dick.”

He’s right. I’m not scared of his anatomy and what he might do with it. What he might teach me to do with mine. Touching him feels as natural as any woman I’ve ever been with. And yet…that coil in my gut—in my brain—it feels like physical pain and I make a frustrated sound I am glad he can’t hear.

Until I realise he felt it. That his hand is on my chest again and the look on his face is as patient as the tide.

I don’t say anything for a good while. Poet lies beside me, tracing idle patterns on my forearm with his free hand. It’s the lightest touch, a breath of pressure, but it travels through me and I close my eyes to it, my body giving in to what my mind still fights.

We kick off our shoes.

I pull Poet over me again, and this time, as we fall into another kiss that never ends, one kind of tension bleeds out of me, only to be replaced by another.

The loss of control should terrify me.

Distantly, maybe it does.

But as Poet tugs off his shirt and relieves me of mine, all I feel is relief. “I do want this,” I tell him, in case I was not clear.

Poet brings us together again, his warm skin so sweet against mine I groan at the contact. “I know.”

He does not ask what this is.

Nor do I.

We kiss until we run out of air. And then our hands begin to roam. He keeps one on my chest, listening, I think. The other drifts as mine find his muscular ass and grip him there, my thumbs at the base of his spine, my fingers splayed as he bites my jaw in response.

He likes that?

I want to ask, but that would mean pulling away, and I can’t do it. I am so lost in him, I do not know the way back. Instead I drown in the certainty of his touch and trust my body’s response. Instinct beyond thought. Surrender, perhaps. To myself, as much as him.

Almost.

Because something inside me still clings to the restraint wound so tightly in my bones, even though I have left red marks on Poet’s skin. Even though my cock is straining so hard for him it hurts.

I do not want to stop. But again, I stumble. Again, I let frustration bleed from me with a groan that tears at my throat. “I am sorry.”

A whisper to Poet’s hot mouth.

He draws back.

I protest and he studies me for the longest second. Long enough I notice the stones of his bracelets are warm on my skin, and the leather binding them smells like him. Like apples and sunbaked wood. Like comfort and heat.

So much heat.

My hips give an involuntary flex.

Poet answers with a slow grind and a deeper part of me aches for him. A part of me that has my leg hooking around him, trapping him above me, while my mouth seeks him out and I claim his lips with enough force to drag a snatched groan from him.

The push and pull in my mind is something else. If I’m confusing Poet, he doesn’t let on. He lets me do whatever I want. Takes over when I need a minute.

I need to let go.

I need him.

But I don’t know how to offset one against the other. Until Poet’s deft fingers stray to my waistband, to the button holding my jeans together, and we reach a new plane.

I can stop him if I want. I know I can. But I don’t. I grip his belt buckle instead and slide weathered leather through brass, rake my fingers through a trail of golden blond hair, and I find his length before he finds mine.

Poet is hot and heavy in my hand. Long. Thick. The skin is soft, but the firmness there makes my head spin. Makes that ache inside me throb and thrum as I trace him with fingers sure of their path, even if I’m not.