She huffed, and a ripple of relief passed through his chest. If she was huffing, she was feeling better. He took a strand of her long, dark hair and coiled it around his fingers. “You know, for me, half the pleasure of intercourse is watching the woman.”

She looked at him suspiciously. “It is?”

He nodded. “Don’t get me wrong; the other half is important, too. There’s nothing on earth that feels as good as sinking into a wet, willing woman. But watching her … seeing her pleasure mount, that’s beautiful. And incredibly, incredibly arousing.”

They lay in silence. He let the lock of hair uncoil, weaving it in amongst his fingers as he watched her think.

“I don’t like my neck kissed,” she said finally, her voice gruff.

“All right,” he said. “What do you like?”

She glanced at him, the suspicion not completely gone.

“For example,” he said, “do you like it when I do this?” He pinched her nipple gently. Which, if he was honest, wasn’t totally fair. He already knew she did.

A slight smile—success. “Yes,” she said.

“Hmm,” he said. “And this?” The other nipple.

The smile grew a little. “Yes,” she said.

“What else?”

The color was definitely back in her cheeks. “I suppose I liked it when you touched me down there,” she said, a little embarrassed, a little wary, but he could hear the need coming back into her voice. She wanted a path to continue. That something bad had happened to her—well, he had suspected, and now he knew for sure. But wounds healed strange, sometimes, and his instincts said it was more important to give her that path forward than push her about something she wasn’t ready to share.

“Uh-huh,” he said. “Where was that?”

“You know where.”

“Nope,” he said. “You’ll have to show me.”

There it was, the full, unrestrained Alva smile. He wondered how many people got to see it.

“You’re ridiculous,” she said.

“So true,” he said. “Show me.”

“I don’t—”

“You can’t tell me you’ve never touched yourself there,” he said, lowering his voice and watching the pink color her chest. “Not owning those nightgowns.”

“I … why—”

“Show me, Alva. Show me how you touch yourself.”

She didn’t break eye contact. That’s what he would remember, later, the way she held his gaze as her hand moved down her body.

“Here,” she said, her fingers moving through the soft, dark hair covering her mons and into her slit, the tips of her fingers disappearing. The curls near her entrance were wet, and Sam was overcome with an urgent stab of desire. His cock sprang back to immediate, insistent, aching life.

“Oh,” he said, torn between warring desires to touch her himself and to keep watching her. “There.”

Ultimately she decided for him, opening her legs in invitation. “Come back, Sam.”