Page 78 of Slow Hands Cowboy

She clung to his shoulders, arched up against him as her orgasm roared through her.

Her internal muscles worked his hard length, and she flexed her heels into the mattress as she gave herself up to him, to this, completely.

And as he lowered his head, pressing his forehead to hers and growling out his own release, she suddenly understood what he had said.

She hated to admit it, wanted to avoid telling him that he was right, that she suddenly knew what good sex was, and it was far and away beyond any other experience she’d had before.

What she’d had before had been mediocre at best. Sex that had barely taken her to a whimpering summit, not quite a climax. And that almost made it worse than bad. Because she had been willing to accept it because it was all right.

She realized that now.

She hated him for that. For understanding something about herself that she hadn’t. For knowing something about her experiences that she just... hadn’t known.

She was hoping he wouldn’t say anything. That he wouldn’t lord it over her, wouldn’t make her feel small now.

He didn’t say anything. He got out of bed and walked straight into the bathroom.

She lay there, staring at the unfamiliar ceiling. He reappeared a moment later, standing as relaxed as he might if he were wearing a T-shirt and blue jeans, completely comfortable with his nudity, which almost made her want to burrow away under the covers, but that was silly, considering that he had seen it all, touched it all, tasted it all.

“You win, I guess,” she said. “So there’s that.”

“Was it a competition? Because if so, you definitely won. Considering you came twice.”

She blinked. “Oh. Well. I suppose so.”

He sat down on the edge of the bed, and she looked at his back, glorious and well-muscled, and she wanted to touch him. So she decided that she would. She reached up and traced the line of his spine, and he let his head fall back, a satisfied sound in the back of his throat.

Maybe he wasn’t just going to transform back into the same man he’d always been with her. There was something sincere in that sound, at least. Something that told her they were still closer to the space they’d been while they were making love than they were now.

Making love? Was that what that had been?

She had a feeling that was sanding off the raw edges of that experience.

“Aren’t you going to tell me that you told me so?” she asked, her fingertips still tracing shapes on his back.

“Why? You know it.”

“Well, I thought you might want to be a dick about it.”

He turned toward her, his eyebrows lifted. “Not particularly. But I suppose it’s fair enough that you expect it of me.”

“Just as fair as you expecting it of me, I guess. Or maybe, to be fair, I was worse to you than you were to me. I’m really sorry about all that.”

“I know you are.” He shook his head. “You really didn’t know you were doing it, did you?”

Sort of. But she also didn’t want him to let her off the hook like that, because she really didn’t deserve it.

“I did, in a way. I would never have characterized myself as a mean girl, but that was because I was so focused on my own motivation. Isn’t that how that works, though? I knew what I wanted, so I didn’t think about the consequences for anybody else.”

That also brought her mother back to the surface. She was having a harder time villainizing her after the intensity of the experience with Walker just now.

Was that what had happened to her? Everything had seemed doable and bearable because what she had felt mattered more than anything else? Because she knew what she wanted, and it seemed like the only way to get it?

Addison loved her dad.

But what if her dad had been her mom’s Alan? She had married him, and she had felt stuck in it, and then she had met somebody who lit her on fire, and maybe she hadn’t known how to even resist it?

Addison was sad to admit that she more than fully understood that now.