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“All right, just checking.” Moving lazily, as though he had all the time in the world, Merrick unfolded his arms and reached down to hook his thumbs in the waistband of both garments. Lifting his hips, he paused. “Last chance to back away without shame, darlin’.”

Feeling more confident in herself, and in his reactions, she flicked her fingers at him. She loved that he used his facial muscles every bit as skillfully as he utilized the inflections in his voice. There was never a trace of violence in his expression, even when she frustrated him to the point where her father would’ve just backhanded her.

Merrick gave her room to explore herself, to learn who she was beneath the smothering tutelage of the community. It was a surprise to find she had a sense of humor, the desire to laugh—even if she didn’t let it out. He allowed her to feel impatience, to express herself with temper or uncertainty, to delve into the range of emotions she’d systematically been forced to suppress in order to become awife.

Fabric bunched around the middle of his thighs as he settled back onto the bed, resuming his previous pose. Leaving that glorious body on full, unapologetic display.

For a moment, the fire in her died, leaving her cold and yes, not a little afraid.

She didn’t think the community women had developed a code word for Merrick.

The base of his cock was thick, rooted at his groin in a neatly trimmed base of darker hair flecked with his trademark silver. A heavy sac tucked his testicles close to his body; based on her father’s lectures, the size of Merrick’s balls indicated he was a virile man.

Jedidiah would recruit him to the fold in a heartbeat, declaring him as ababymaker.

One who never failed to increase the wealth of the community.

Shaking that off, Tamsyn bit her lip and followed the slightly curved shaft up, up, up to the brutally flared head. Too heavy to stand upright, it twitched against his lower abdomen, plump veins pulsing in time with his heartbeat. Fluid glistened from the deep notch in the tip, leaking onto his own skin.

She remembered what he’d said to her the day she’d made her first trade of her own accord, the day he’d mentioned finding where she came from and getting her back home. The day she’d swapped her lifeline on his hair for his hand.

Don’t know what spooked you so bad, darlin’, but if it happens again, all you gotta do is look in my eyes. You’ll find what you need.

Truth be told, shewasspooked now. In her very limited experience, his cock was perfection, just like the rest of him, but she was struggling to figure out how something of that size and girth was meant to fit where it hurt to take two fingers.

She understood why he’d warned her.

Blowing out a long, slow, and controlled breath—which she took pride in—Tamsyn met his eyes, silently begging for him to give her what she needed. Because she didn’t know what she was asking for, what kind of reassurances she required from him to make the doubts go away.

Merrick smiled softly, his gaze mirroring the gentleness. “Spooked, little owl?”

Oh yes, she didn’t know what she needed, but he comprehended her in ways she’d never fathom. She was an open book in his eyes, free for him to read whenever he chose, yet in the recesses of her mind, she was just a sentence. A single, lonely sentence that couldn’t figure out how to expand into a paragraph, a page, flourish into that book.

“I told you it would hurt,” he said in a low, calm tone. “We need to talk about that later. For now, all you need to understand is that this—” he lifted his chin toward the erection flexing in subtle little jerks, “—is flesh and blood.Myflesh and blood. It’s part of me, darlin’. I control it. Would I ever harm you?”

She shook her head adamantly, trusting he wouldn’t.

“There’s no reason to be spooked then, is there? I’ll never force you to do something that I know will harm you. I’ll never make you take more pain than you can truly handle. Hell, if you don’t want sex with me at all, there are ways to make a relationship work around it.”

She instantly pulled a face of disgust. Love for her was all-encompassing; once she fell, she was all-in. When her love was abused, she cut herself off completely. She’d learned that lesson the hard way with her father—she’d loved him with everything she had as a child, not realizing what kind of monster he was beneath the surface.

Her mother’s death and her subsequent descent into the education of a community wife changed a whole lot about the way she felt about her father.

Love was strong, loyal, eternal, but so was the hate it evolved into when provoked.

“Darlin’, I’m spread out here like an all-you-can-eat-buffet. Hands behind my head, just waiting.” He grinned wickedly at her. “Touch. Play. Explore. I ain’t gonna complain.”

Even with his permission, she still hesitated.

“Alternatively, you can just stare at it. Bet I could come with those pretty eyes watching me without touching my cock.” A small frown tugged his eyebrows down. “Anyone ever explain what happens when a man comes, little owl?”

What was there to explain? Evidently, a man pushed his cock into a woman, pumped it in and out a few times, and—if she interpreted the glimpses of what she saw in the orgy correctly—grunted, yelled, or groaned as if he was dying and collapsed on the woman.

It seemed like a simple process, all in all.

Making a baby seemed as though it should be an event with more pomp and circumstance, but who was she to criticize nature?

Ignoring the silly question, she reached out and skimmed her fingertips down the outside of his shaft, tracing the outline of a cord beneath his skin. It jerked at her touch but didn’t do anything untoward, so she got a bit braver and wrapped her fingers around him.