Page 56 of Control Freak

He waggled his eyebrows. “Tell me more.”

“We’d have to start really slow,” I warned. “I talked to my therapist about it. She suggested holding hands first.”

“It won’t hurt you to do this, will it?”

I frowned. “Hurt is the wrong word. It scares me. Makes me panic sometimes. I can get flashbacks, and that…well, it makes merememberthe pain. It’s awful when it happens, but I’ve learned a lot of coping strategies for that. Most of the time, it’s just a physical reaction. My body was programmed at a young age to associate touch with pain, and I have to retrain my brain.”

“That sounds difficult.”

“It is. I, uh, probably could have made more progress by now, but…I had other things to worry about, so I pushed it to the back burner. I figured, why try when I can avoid?” My mouth twisted. “I’ve been holding myself back out of fear.”

“You have good reason,” he said hesitantly.

“But I don’t want to keep holding back,” I said, taking a step toward him. “I want totry.With you.”

“Wow. Okay. That’s a big deal, isn’t it?”

“For me? Yeah. For you, I don’t know. You’ve probably held hands a lot of times before.”

“But never with you.”

There was a sincerity to the statement that eased my nerves a little. Everything we did would be a first for me. It would be scary and stressful, even if the possibility of more also excited me. Knowing that Shiloh would take it seriously, that he understood the gravity of it, made it easier for me to take this step.

“So, how does this work?” Shiloh asked.

“We’d just practice small touches at first. Work our way up to more. It would all be planned. No surprises. And, um, I won’t lie. I might jerk away. I might even hyperventilate or go into a full-fledged panic attack. I mean, I hope not. I hope we can take it slow and gradually make progress, kind of like I did with the tattoos.”

“So if you have a bad reaction, what then?”

“Well, I would need some time to calm down and regroup. We’d talk about what went wrong, and we’d either try again or we’d move on to something else.”

“I don’t want to trigger you,” he said. “I don’t want to fuck it up and make things worse.”

“Shy, you won’t. I’ll be guiding you, okay? If anyone messes up and pushes too far, it’ll be me. I’ve never done this before either. We might never make it past holding hands for all I know, or we might make it all the way to…”

“You inside me?” he suggested.

“Jesus,” I murmured with a shudder. I wanted that. So damn bad. “It’s a journey, like you said.” I licked my dry lips. “I want to take the journey, even if I don’t ever reach the destination. Does that make sense?”

His eyes softened. “Yeah, it does.”

“Will you help me take this journey, Shy?”

“Is it too cheesy to say I’d be honored?”

“Yes,” I said with a laugh.

“Then I’ll just say, fuck yeah, sign me up. Whatever you want or need, Holden, I’m there, and not just because you’re incredibly sexy and I’ve wanted to touch you since the day I laid eyes on you. But because you deserve to know the kind of pleasure touch can bring, and I’d absolutely love to be the guy to help you experience that.”

I grinned, even as my pulse leapt. This was really going to happen.

It was just a first step, and I had no idea if I’d get beyond it, but it was a start.

CHAPTER 14

Shiloh

I scrolled through Netflix offerings,not really seeing the screen. My mind was too full of Holden’s request to explore touch with me.