He caught her hand, tugged. “Come here, Ms. Baird.”
“No. I need to be alone.” Her voice broke.
Gabriel curled his fingers more firmly around her hand. “Come here. Just a couple of steps.”
She didn’t realize she was moving until she was beside his leg. Sliding his arm around her waist, he pulled her down onto his lap. “There, you’re back where you’re meant to be.”
Charlotte crumpled into him. “I want to be fixed,” she whispered. “I want to be normal. I want you not to have to worry about every touch.” He’d been so careful during the sex, his muscles and tendons rigid with control.
“I had a hell of a good time.” He settled back into the sofa, one of his hands on her thigh, the other spread on her lower back. “Did you not feel me inside you?”
“You had to think throughout it.” She sat up, twisted to face him. “Don’t lie.”
“I’d always have been thinking our first time together—you’re damn small, Ms. Baird, and I’m a big man.” He cupped the side of her face. “No matter how much I want to pin you down and ram into you, I would never have done it the first time—or the second. We’ll build up to it.”
Charlotte didn’t know how to respond. The blunt sexual words, his determination, the tenderness with which he touched her, it all overwhelmed.
“But Charlotte,” Gabriel said when she stayed silent, “you are hurt deep inside. Have you ever talked to anyone about what happened to you?”
Charlotte gave a jerky nod. “Right after, I did.”
“And?”
“After about six months, I started to feel guilty for taking up the therapist’s time when I wasn’t getting better, so I stopped going to see her.” The smart, well-dressed, and together woman had made her feel so small, her impatience hidden but obvious to Charlotte.
Gabriel snapped out a low, hard word. “That therapist was incompetent if she made you feel that way.”
CHARLOTTE WANTED TO BELIEVE him. “I don’t know if I can talk to a stranger,” she whispered. “It was so hard to tell you, and I trust you.”
Gabriel gently stroked her thigh. “I know someone,” he said. “A doctor I talked to after my injury.”
“You talked to someone?” Her eyes went huge, then turned suspicious. “Did your mom make you?”
“My dad,” he admitted. “It was a good thing. I wasn’t too messed up, but I might have been if I hadn’t talked to Dr. Mac at that point in time.” He shrugged. “He reminded me I had a whole lot more going for me than just my skill on the field.”
Charlotte pressed her hands flat against his chest. “You were hurting.”
“I’d been playing no-holds-barred rugby since I could run, then poof, it was all gone.” Feeling Charlotte melt against him, her features soft, he realized she was a sucker for his hard-luck story. Too bad he adored her too much to use it to manipulate her. “Anyway, Dr. Mac, he’s a good guy.”
“A man?” Charlotte twisted her lips. “I don’t do too well with men, you know that.”
“He looks like Santa Claus, complete with the beard. Why don’t you give it a shot? I can go with you for the first session.”
Charlotte rubbed her hands up her arms and immediately found herself cuddled against the heat of Gabriel’s chest. He really was very tactile—she loved it. Settling into him and hotly aware of how intimately he held her, one of his hands curved over her left thigh, she said, “Okay, I’ll try it.” She wasn’t sure she could talk to even Santa Claus, but she was willing to attempt anything at this point.
“I’ll give him a call tomorrow, see when he has a slot.” Gabriel’s hand moved to between her thighs.
She shifted restlessly on his lap, her pulse spiking. When she tipped up her head, his lips were there for her to kiss. Sliding her hand around to his nape, she opened her mouth to him. He thrust his tongue inside, and it was a more aggressive kiss than he usually began with; it made her wet all over again.
He cupped her between her thighs a second later, swallowed her gasp with his kiss. Rising up in an instinctive move, she pushed back down and he thrust two fingers into her. It was so hard, so fast, that it tore a rasped scream from her throat.
Biting down on her lower lip, Gabriel said, “Come back here, Ms. Baird.”
She gave him her mouth again and in return, he moved his fingers in a deep, demanding rhythm, his tongue echoing the tempo. Charlotte tried to hold on, but it was hopeless. Her thighs squeezed his wrist, her internal muscles clamping down on him as the orgasm crashed over her. It didn’t stop when she thought it would, because he kept doing things to her. Pressing his thumb against her clit, pulling out his fingers and thrusting them back in past her passion-swollen entrance, sucking on her tongue.