For me.

“Show me,” he demanded.

I felt his voice as if it were a caress over every inch of my body. “W-what?”

Again, if my legs were working, I might’ve run. But I couldn’t be sure. My need was quickly surpassing my embarrassment.

He didn’t touch me. No… Even though I was desperate for him to.

“Show. Me,” he repeated, mouth inches from mine. “Show me how you make yourself come.”

My knees started trembling.

“Rowan,” I whispered. “I can’t do that.” I was a mix between incredibly fucking turned on and so self-conscious I wanted to curl into myself and disappear. It was an exhilarating and incredibly uncomfortable feeling.

Rowan’s solid gaze did not abate at my words nor the unspoken plea threaded into them.

He was asking too much of me. We’d never done more than kiss. And somehow, this felt more intimate than sex. A heck of a lot more intimate. I’d never done it with another man. Ever.

“Where do you keep it, cupcake?” he asked, whisper soft.

I didn’t have to ask what he was talking about. I knew what he was talking about.

“In the nightstand.” I nodded over to my ‘side’ of the bed, paperbacks piled on the surface along with my water glass from last night, a pink, antique lamp and trinket tray with discarded earrings and crystals in it.

Rowan didn’t hesitate. Didn’t ask permission. He walked over to my nightstand and opened the top drawer. I squeezed my eyes shut, embarrassment washing over me. But it wasn’t just embarrassment that infiltrated my system. There was something else too.

A fire that had been burning inside me. A fire Rowan had been stoking since that day at the bakery when he smiled at me and asked me if I was his Beth.

I kept my eyes shut as the drawer closed, as his soft footfalls returned in my direction.

“Nora.”

My body spasmed at my name coming out of his mouth.

My eyes opened on instinct.

And there was Rowan. In front of me. In my bedroom. Holding my vibrator.

“You want to be a good girl for me?” he asked, voice silky, holding the vibrator out to me.

My pussy pulsed.

I didn’t think I had a praise kink. In fact, I’d always mentally rolled my eyes whenever I watched or read about a man asking a woman to be his ‘good girl’. There was much too much misogyny in a request like that. Taking away a woman’s power by requesting she be ‘good’ by obeying commands of a man.

Or so I’d thought.

I’d never felt more powerful than I did right then. At that moment.

My hand was shaking when I took the vibrator. Our fingers brushed, but that was the only contact we had. He turned with me as I walked on unsteady feet to my bed, slipping off my heels before sitting on the soft pink comforter.

I was aware of my every movement. My every breath.