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I knew the moment I laid eyes on her that she was tough. What I didn’t know was all the reasons she’d had to be. I want to show her something different. Something better. I want her to know in her core that men can be good and gentle, even if I wasn’t that way with her in the beginning.
I reach my arm out and encircle her shoulders.
“There you go,” I say. “Nice and easy. Nothin’ to it.”
Josie
Not nothing. Everything. I feel him pull me close in a slow snuggle and my heart skips several beats all at once. I am cuddling with Orion Steelbane. He saw my past pain and wanted to comfort me, which is about the last thing I ever expected the outlaw to want to do. I thought he was just using me for my land. I still think he probably is. But he’s taking the time to be human in the middle of greed and that’s more than I expected he’d ever do for me. More than I expected anyone would. But being close to him isn’t just comforting. It’s arousing. All those thoughts I thought I’d packed away over dinner are rising again, making me want to squirm against his hard body.
“It’s okay,” he says.
“What is?”
“If you want to touch me.”
I blush bright red. How did he know? Am I that transparent?
“There’s something between us, Josie,” he drawls, his voice rumbling through his hard body and making my flesh vibrate. “There’s been something from the beginning. I don’t see why we should deny it. Do you?”
“I… uh… you mean… you’re interested in me, that way?”
“Sure. You’re a beautiful woman,” he says. “Smart. Tough. Sassy. And you’ve got a body on you…” he trails off just before his words become outright lecherous. “You’re very attractive, Josie.”
“I don’t look anything like…”
“Those saloon girls you keep going on about,” he snorts. “I know you might feel like they’ve got something you don’t, but I’m telling you now, Josie, you have everything they do and more.”
“Not everything.”
“No?”
“I don’t have their confidence.”
“Well, that’ll come in time,” he says, squeezing me closer. “One of these days I’m sure you’ll be a siren sashaying around, seducing every man in sight if you want to be.”
“I don’t want to be!” I say, scandalized at the very idea.
He laughs out loud at having gotten a reaction from me, and I find myself smiling along with him as I realize he’s playing with me, trying to lighten the mood, helping me relax and feel safer than ever with the most dangerous of all animals on this planet: man.
“Then I guess you don’t have to,” he says. One of his big hands is on my waist, a comforting grip which has a hint of intimacy to it. The other is on his thigh. I don’t know what to do with my hands. Can I touch him? Should I touch him? Would he want me to?
He reaches over with the hand on his thigh and puts that hand over mine before moving both of our hands to his thigh. He does it so casually I almost feel as though it doesn’t mean anything to him. It means a lot to me. I can feel the muscle of his thigh flexing, and I know that there’s more of him to flex just up above his leg. I wonder if it is… flexing.
“You’re a very attractive woman, Josie,” he says, rubbing his hand over mine lightly. I still don’t know exactly what he’s doing. His touch could be nothing more than kindly comfort, and yet, I don’t think it is, but I also don’t want to assume.
“T… thank you?”
“I’d like to be with you.”
“We’re together now.”
“I mean… be with you.”
“Oh.”
I swallow. I still don’t know what to say. Maybe I don’t need to say anything. Maybe touch is enough.
Orion
“It’s going to be okay,” I say, holding her close. I want to be intimate with her. I want our bodies to join the way only lovers can join, but I don’t want to scare her. That day in the saloon, when she thought I was going to ravage her, she was truly afraid. Her introduction to sensuality has to be slow. I have to be patient. Let her come of her own accord, just like a wild filly might.
She’s curious though. I feel her hand roaming my body hesitantly, almost as if she’s afraid of what she will find.
“I know you don’t like talking about this,” she says. I know she’s touching my arm, because I can’t feel it. It is the dead part of me. A mechanical sinkhole of sensation. I say nothing. She’s right. I don’t like talking about it. I don’t like anything about it. Sometimes I feel pain in it, but that pain is nothing but a memory from the past made real in the present.
