“It’s the time frame. I don’t know how to learn the things you need faster, Savage. I’ve never even . . .” She broke off, her gaze dropping to his cock.
“You’re doing just fine, Seychelle. You let me worry about what you need to learn and when. As far as you taking my cock down your throat, if that’s what that bitch was taunting you with, the truth is, baby, I never took them any other way. I never used my own whips on them. It was too intimate. I never kissed them. I never put my marks, my patterns, on their backs or their fronts. I put stripes on them, and I fucked their mouths. I got my release and got them off with my hand and I got the hell out. I told you I wasn’t a nice man.”
Savage bent his head and brushed kisses over her eyes and then her lips. Tender. Soft little kisses. He straightened and pushed back her hair. “You’re my woman. You’re the one I’m intimate with. To everyone else it might be a fucked-up kind of intimacy, but it’s ours. And every time I touch you, I’m saying I love you. No other woman can ever say that. I hope you feel it when I touch you, whether it’s with my hand or with my whip.”
He felt the little shiver that went through her body. He trailed one hand from her throat down the curves of her generous breasts to her nipples. “When I clamp you, or have my mouth or teeth on you, I hope you feel how much I love you, because I’m showing you.”
She nodded her head, but her fingers were plucking nervously at the hem of her shirt. He stilled them.
“Baby, you have to stop worrying that we aren’t going to be ready. I have you. Since the first day I met you I started getting you ready.” He caught her restless hand and pulled her fingers to his mouth, biting down until her eyes went wide. He sucked at the stinging flesh until her eyes went dark and her lips parted.
“You have?”
He nodded. “It’s always been you. Always. Ask any of the others in the club. I’ve never looked at another woman and wanted to claim her for my own. I don’t necessarily think that makes you lucky, baby, but when I say I’m in a hundred percent, I mean it. I don’t cheat. I don’t lie. I’m loyal to you. I don’t want you to let someone like Shari shake your confidence.”
She leaned toward him and rested her forehead against his chest. “Alena’s pain was visceral. There was so much. I could feel the others and the rage they felt because this man was causing her pain. They couldn’t even feel how deep her emotion went, not like you. They couldn’t tell what you were doing. I knew then that we were going to be on a very short timetable and it was going to be me slowing us down, causing you to carry that load much longer than necessary.”
His heart stuttered in his chest. Bog, every time he thought it was impossible to love her any more, she said or did something like that and he was overwhelmed with emotion for her. Swamped with it. So much he could barely breathe. He knew rage. He knew pain. He hadn’t known anything could be so good.
He caught the hair at the nape of her neck in his fist and pulled her head back so she was forced to meet his eyes. “We’re on exactly the right timetable, Seychelle. You let me worry about what you need to know. I’m the one teaching you. Understand?”
Those long lashes fluttered, putting resolution in his heart and knots in his gut. She did him in so easily.
“Yes. I just want you to know I’m with you, Savage. I think I could do better at home. I’m not so nervous.”
“Nervous is good. You should be nervous,” he pointed out. “Are you finished? Did we cover everything you needed to say to me? Everything you were worried about?” Reluctantly, he released her hair.
“I should be nervous?” she echoed.
“Answer me first. I want to know we took care of everything you were concerned with.”
Her eyes went wide. “Yes.” She slid off the railing and leaned against it.
He paced away from her, taking a breath. “Baby, I think I explained the rules to you, right? We went over them very carefully, and why they were in place. I’m the kind of man who needs to be in control at all times. It’s dangerous for me to be out of control. I have to be calm in every situation. I’ve never had problems with that before. My brothers say I have ice flowing in my veins.” He turned to face her and gave her a faint smile, one that didn’t reach his eyes. “The thought of you in danger throws me into a nightmare situation.”