Iron Seas 03 - Riveted

had never suspected a man’s organ could be this big, this rigid. She measured the length again, stroking her cupped palm over rough wool, testing the width with her fingers. Incredible.
    David shook beneath her. “Stop. Annika, stop.”
    She froze. Was she hurting him? “I’m sorry. It’s just…not what I thought it would be.”
    “You thought it was the pistol?”
    Absurd. “No. You’d have to be an idiot to tuck one there. I meant that your penis wasn’t.”
    He gave a strangled laugh. “Of course. A village of all women. But you know what it is?”
    “I’ve seen rams mount ewes. But it wasn’t anything like this.” Hot and hard, filling her palm. She tried to imagine him inside, not like a finger at all, but so much thicker, longer.
    Oh, she desperately wanted to know.
    “The sheep?” He spoke evenly now, but each word seemed flat, lacking the duh dum rhythm she liked so well. “No, it’s not like that. Forgive me, Annika. I wouldn’t have…If I could help it, I wouldn’t have let it happen.”
    But it had happened. Because he’d desired her, too? The needy ache between her thighs deepened.
    “You said that you didn’t want to bed me.” Even now, she remembered the disappointment of that. How stupid she’d felt for revealing her own attraction.
    He didn’t reply for a long second, a hesitation that seemed to last forever. “With you over me like this, it happens whether I want you or not.”
    Oh. This thickness beneath her hand wasn’t for her?
    Her lungs seemed to squeeze in around her heart. He was the only person who’d ever made her ache like this—and he’d have been aroused no matter who she was.
    “Annika?” Concern filled his voice.
    He could see her, she remembered. He could watch her reactions.
    She pasted on a smile. “Like a ram to any ewe, yes?”
    “Do you fondle the sheep, too?”
    She yanked her hand from between them. “No. I’m sorry.” Embarrassment boiled up. She’d groped him like an animal. Cheeks hot, she cast about for any other topic. “What time is it? How much longer do we have to wait in here?”
    “Another hour.” Frustration roughened his voice—or anger.
    An hour, and she could still feel the phantom touch of his fingers on her thighs. When she slid off of him, her hip brushed over his erection. He stiffened again.
    But not for her. She lay in the dark, her throat aching with humiliation and disappointment. The boards were hard beneath her, and colder now. Though the air in that small space remained warm, a chill sank into her side, her back.
    “Is it all men?”
    “All men, what?”
    “Do you all harden for anyone?”
    A long silence, followed by an abrupt, “Some do.”
    “But not every man does?”
    “No.”
    “So some will harden for anyone, but others only desire one person. They only want to be with the one they love.”
    “Yes. As you do.”
    Yes. Though she had been aroused before—never as much as she felt with him, but she understood how the body could respond in such a way, even without love. Perhaps he waited, too.
    “Have you bedded a woman before?”
    She knew it was improper to ask; she didn’t care. He exhaled sharply, as if through gritted teeth.
    “Yes,” he said. “Two.”
    Pain slipped like a knife through her ribs. Oh, she hadn’t truly expected that—and she cared now. She wished she hadn’t asked. And she should stop herself from asking more. This was like rollingdown a mountain: knowing the danger, but still unable to slow down.
    She jumped anyway. “Did you love them?”
    “No.” His voice was harsh, no longer a whisper. “And that’s enough of this.”
    Annika nodded and laid her head on his shoulder, but the pain continued swelling up in her. Strange, awful pain that throbbed like a physical wound, pulsing open wider with each beat of her heart. Oh, but it needed to stop. There were so many different things she should be thinking about—her list of items that she’d fallen asleep on. The boots she needed to find. They were in a mechanical whale and murderers waited outside somewhere. But all of that seemed so far away. Eyes closed or staring into the dark, she could only see him kissing another woman. She could only imagine someone else finding him hard in her hands. He’d desired them enough to bed them, even without love. Had he kissed her breasts? Licked between her thighs?
    Yet he didn’t want any of that with her. Annika thought she could have loved him—she was well on her way.