Page 62 of Death, Interrupted

I had to be honest with myself. I was scared shitless at first.

Joey had taught me to dread closeness. He broke something in me that I thought would take me years to fix. He always used intimacy as a weapon. Every touch came with pain, and he made me believe that being wanted was the same as being owned. That if someone touched me, I owed them something back.

It started small. He’d ask for things I didn’t want to give. Then he stopped asking. And after a while, I stopped saying no because it didn’t matter anymore. He’d already decided for both of us.

That kind of thing didn’t leave right away. It settled in my body, and I found myself flinching at movements before anything ever happened. Even now, I reacted to certain things the way I had reacted with Joey, and I knew Sly had noticed. But he knew I wasn’t scared of him. Never had been. But this…kissing and touching him did light something in me that at first sent shivers down my spine.

For a long time, I avoided everything that even looked like intimacy. I didn’t want to be touched. I didn’t want to explain why. I didn’t want to see pity in anyone’s eyes. I thought it was easier to shut that part of me down than to risk it again.

Then Sly came along. And it wasn’t that he fixed it, but he didn’t push. He didn’t act like I was broken. He treated me like someone who still had a say in what happened to her own body.

He gave me space to breathe, to decide, to want. That was new. I hadn’t wanted anything in a long time. Not without fear tagging along.

With him, the fear was manageable.

He stayed careful, always checking in with his eyes, hishands, his pace.

He let me lead.

He let me be in control.

And that, more than anything, made me want to keep this going.

His fingers curled inside me, moving in a slow, steady rhythm that made my head spin, and I could feel something building deep inside, a growing heat that left me desperate for it to rise even further.

It was a feeling I hadn’t felt in years. Or ever, really.

“Sumner.”

I met his gaze when he said my name.

“Tell me what you want,” he said, still moving his fingers in and out of my while his thumb circled my cit.

I sucked in a shaky breath and gripped his wrist tighter. I hadn’t even noticed I was holding it, but I was subconsciously making sure he wouldn’t pull away.

“I need more,” I croaked out.

“Will you let me taste you first?” he asked. “I told you we’ll take this slow. I wanna do this right.”

And I was grateful for that. But I wasn’t sure I could wait any longer.

“Sumner,” he growled, dipping his fingers even deeper inside me. “I want inside you, but I want a taste first. Will you let me?”

I nodded quickly. “Yes…ah!” My thighs shook and mytoes curled. “Yes, I’ll let you.”

A smug but pleased grin tugged at his lips as he pulled his fingers out of me, and I whimpered at the loss of their thickness stretching me.

Sly hooked his fingers into the waistband of my pants and pulled them down, and I lifted off the counter enough to let him take them off me. My panties followed, and once they were on the floor, he put his fingers on me again.

He leaned in to kiss me, with his tongue sliding into my mouth passionately. He pushed his two fingers back into me, and when he broke the kiss to look at me, he said, “I’m going to put my mouth on your pussy now. If you need me to stop, you tell me, okay?”

I shook my head because I had a feeling that I wouldn’t want him to stop.

He chuckled and lifted his other hand to cup my jaw. “Sumner, if you need me to stop, you will tell me,” he repeated, his tone darker now. “You understand?”

I nodded. “Yes, I understand.”

“Tell me what I just told you.”