“Uh-huh.” It sounded childish, but it was all I was capable of saying.
The room suddenly felt smaller and hotter. A rush of warmth spread throughout my body and I could feel my pulse in my temples my heart was beating so fast and hard. I breathed in through my nose and took in the scent of his heated skin. He smelled amazing, like men’s cologne and fresh laundry.
He surprised me with a soft kiss to the side of my neck and I split right down the center. The top half of me wanted to run out into the cool night air and jog home, but the bottom half of me wanted to fade into him and become one.
“You let me hold your hand. What else will you let me do, snowflake?”
I used to hate it when he called me snowflake, but now I was beginning to think she was who I really was. There was Patience, the governor’s daughter, and then there was Snowflake, the girl who was starting to melt in Zeke’s very capable hands. Given the choice of who I’d want to be for the rest of my days, I’d choose Snowflake every time.
A soft noise pushed past my moist lips and I felt him smile against the side of my neck. His breath shifted the hair that hung against my cheek and it made me shiver even more. Everything in me trembled as my insides began to push at my seams. The healthy girl deep within me wanted to be free. She wanted to explore all the dark corners of Zeke, but the scarred me, the one who’d been broken down beyond belief was still holding her back.
“Will you let me do this?” he asked as he slipped his hands down my sides and brought them around my backside.
I stiffened for just a second as a tiny hint of panic seeped in, but the minute he started drawing lazy circles on the back of my thighs with a single finger, I squashed that panic and let pleasure take its place. A tiny murmur came from deep within me and he softly growled his approval against my ear.
“And what about this? Will you let me do this?” he asked as he brought his hands up and slipped them into the back of my boxer shorts. He filled his large hands with my ass and gave it a soft squeeze.
Only my thin pair of cotton panties kept his hands from touching my heated skin. My breathing increased and my heartbeat sped up.
His hands moved down, taking the boxer shorts with them, and I didn’t stop the shorts when they slid down my legs and around my ankles. He brought his hands around to my stomach and ran his finger along the top of my panty line and pelvic bone.
“What do you want me to do? Do you want me to move my hand lower?” I felt his breath against my cheek as he moved his head down and kissed my collar bone.
I didn’t respond. Instead, my body took over and I pressed my pelvic area against his hand.
“Yeah, you want me to move my hand down. You want me to touch you here, don’t you?” His hand left my body for a brief second, and then I felt a fiery finger trace a path over the top of my panties right over the most sensitive parts of me.
My body jerked on its own accord, and I couldn’t stop the noises that slipped over my tongue. I’d never experienced anything like this. In my life, when someone touched your personal areas, it was disturbing and sick, but when Zeke touched me, it was soft and life-altering in a whole new way.
“Tell me what you want, Patience,” he said sweetly against my cheek.
And just like that, I no longer hated the sound of my name. The way he said it was so personal. After being called a nickname by a person so much, when they finally called you by your actual name, it had an emotional feel to it. It held a strange sense of finality, as if he’d somehow just given in to me.
His eyes connected with mine as he dipped the tip of his finger under the band of my panties and ran it back and forth across my pelvic bones. He worked a new finger inside my panties, until finally his hand was cupping me. He wasn’t moving his fingers, but just the pressure from the heel of his hand was almost enough for me.
I tilted my head back, my eyes closed, and my mouth opened on a wordless sigh.
“Please tell me what you want, baby.” His words were all around me.
My body got another rush of chills and my shoulders began to shake. When I finally spoke, my voice trembled with my body. “I don’t know.”
He was asking me what I wanted, but I didn’t know. I wasn’t like most girls who read about sex or even experimented with it. To me, it had always been a despicable act of injustice upon me, but this wasn’t like that. He was feeling me out before he touched me. He was making sure I was comfortable with his hands before he moved them. It was as if he knew my fear and understood it, and because of his understanding, I was able to enjoy touch for the first time in my life.