“I hear you, Master Griffin.”
“Now, tell me you believe me.”
“I...I...” She shook her head. “Permission to speak freely? Please.”
“Speak.” He needed to hear what she had to say. Needed her.
“I know you wouldn’t lie, but my head still makes me doubt. For lots of reasons.”
He could guess at some of them, and it made him want to smash his own head into a wall because they were his damn fault.
“Straddle me,” he said, needing to touch her, to reassure her, to make her believe.
Those haunting gray eyes cut to his. “What?”
He gave her an expectant look. “Now.”
Kenna did as he ordered, straddling her long, bare legs over his thighs.
He held up both of his hands, fingers spread in silent invitation. She readily laced her left hand with his right.
“Both of them,” he said, needing her to know that he accepted all of her, desired all of her, and nothing would change that. She laced the black fingers of the prosthesis through the fingers of his left hand, the movements making a tiny whirring noise that revealed some sort of internal motor in the device. “Good.”
Looking into her eyes, he pulled her left hand to his mouth and kissed her knuckles one by one. He felt her muscles tense as he reached the last finger, but that didn’t stop him from pulling her right hand to his mouth next. He repeated the kisses one knuckle at a time, the composite material of the fingers cool against his lips.
“Open your hands and hold them up.” When she did, he gently grasped her left hand and treated the pads of her fingertips, the crest of her palm, and the center of her palm to a series of soft kisses. Knowing what was coming, this time she didn’t tense up as much as he next kissed the fingertips and palm of her prosthetic, too. “It’s all you to me. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Sir,” she said, shifting on his lap and reawakening his erection.
He grasped her flesh hand and pressed it against his hard cock. “Do you understand?”
She released a shaky breath and licked her lips, the little action making him want to taste her. “Yes, Master Griffin.”
“Good,” he said, holding her hand there. His gaze dragged down the deep cleavage of her neckline to where her nipples were prominent within the tight fit of the slick-looking suit. His cock hardened further under her touch.
“Do you feel what you do to me, Kenna?”
She nodded, even though a wariness remained in her eyes. Piece by piece. He would fix what he’d done if it was the last thing he ever did.
“Do I still do it to you, too?” he asked.
Her hand gave an unconscious squeeze that nearly made him groan. “Yes,” she whispered, as if it was an admission she didn’t want to make. “I mean, yes, Sir.”
For a long moment, he drank her in and made sure his head was screwed on right for whatever was about to happen between them. Because he couldn’t screw this up with her. Not again. He would never forgive himself, not that he ever had for letting her go the first time.
Griffin wanted to know what had happened to her—God, needing to know was literally eating at him. But it was clear that revealing her arm to him had already caused her a lot of stress. So he put what he wanted and needed aside and let her decide. “Whatever happened to you, I am very sorry, Kenna. Sorry for the pain you endured. And sorry that I wasn’t a part of helping you heal. As you might imagine, I have a lot of questions, but I’m going to leave it to you. Would you like to talk more right now?”
“Not even a little,” she blurted, and then her cheeks went pink. “Sorry, Sir, it’s just—”
“You don’t have to explain yourself. This time.” He arched a brow, but that little show of sass was more like the old Kenna than almost anything else she’d done so far. “But we will talk more later.”
She nodded. “Yes, Sir. I know.”
He examined her closely. Her erect nipples. The goosebumps that kept erupting on her arms. The restless shifting of her hips on his lap. For as stressed as she’d been, she’d told him the truth—she was definitely aroused. But he was going to have to better understand the condition of her arm before he’d be comfortable strenuously binding or suspending her with rope as he’d done in the past.