In the Palm of His Hand novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Dressing Change

Cal Ransome wakes on her couch, and while she changes his dressing he pulls her onto his lap for her first kiss and her first orgasm from his fingers.

He was awake when I came out of my room at seven, sitting up on the couch with the blanket around his waist.

He had slept in his trousers and nothing else, and the bandage on his side was a white block against all that bare skin.

"Dani is on a twenty-four-hour shift," I said, before he could ask who else lived here. "She's back tonight."

"Then I'm gone by tonight."

"You're gone when I say your stitches hold."

His mouth moved at one corner.

"Yes, ma'am."

I washed my hands, put on gloves and knelt on the couch beside him with the dressing kit.

The tape came away with a small tearing sound, and he breathed in through his nose.

The wound was clean.

It was pink at the edges, with no heat and no red streaks.

The stitches sat in a neat little row.

"It's good," I said, and I heard how pleased I sounded. "It's really good."

"You're proud of yourself."

"A little."

"You should be."

He said it low and close.

I was kneeling with my face a foot from his, in a sleep shirt and shorts.

I had left my bra in the other room, and he had noticed.

I put the new dressing on very carefully.

His stomach moved under my fingers with each breath, and the muscle under the skin was hard as a plank.

When I smoothed the last strip of tape flat, I didn't take my hand away.

"Penelope."

"Mm."

"Look at me."

I looked.

His eyes had gone darker.

His right hand came up and took the back of my neck, slowly, giving me a whole second to leave.

I didn't leave.

I leaned in and kissed him first.

It started as a small, clumsy press of my mouth on his.

Then he made a sound deep in his chest and kissed me back.

His beard scratched my chin.

His tongue slid against mine, hot and unhurried, and I forgot to breathe.

I climbed into his lap without deciding to, careful of his left side, with my knees on either side of his thighs.

His hand slid down my spine, spread wide.

He pulled me in until I felt him hard under me through his trousers.

"I'm hurt," he said against my mouth.

"I know."

"I can't hold you the way I want to."

"Then hold me the way you can."

He pulled back far enough to look at me.

"Say it again."

"Hold me the way you can," I said, and my voice shook. "Please."

His eyes closed for half a second.

When they opened, he had made a decision.

"Take your shorts off."

It wasn't a question, and it wasn't cruel.

It was the quiet voice of a man used to being obeyed.

He was asking for the one thing he wanted most this morning.

I stood on the rug and pushed the shorts down and kicked them aside.

I stood there in my T-shirt and underwear with my heart going.

He looked at me from the couch.

"Come back," he said. "Sit on my knee. My good one."

I climbed onto his right thigh, facing him.

He put his huge right hand flat on my lower back and pulled me in, my thighs open across his leg.

"Hold on to my shoulders."

I held on.

His hand slid around my hip and under the edge of my underwear.

His fingers found me wet and he made a low sound I felt in my teeth.

"Look at that," he said. "I haven't done anything yet."

"You kissed me."

"I did."

"That's something."

"Good girl."

I should have been annoyed.

Instead heat ran straight from my chest to where his fingers were, and my hips jerked.

He ran two thick fingers through me, slow and exact, up to my clit and back down, and then he pushed them in.

I gasped into his neck.

He filled me, and it was so much more than I had imagined that I dug my nails into his shoulders.

"Easy," he said. "I've got you."

His thumb found my clit and rubbed small, hard circles on it, and I rocked on his thigh without any shame at all.

"That's it," he said into my hair. "Use my leg. Ride it."

I rode his leg.

His fingers curled inside me and pressed on a place that made the room go white at the edges.

"Cal," I said. "Cal, oh my God."

"Say it again."

"Cal."

"Again."

"Cal, don't stop, please don't stop."

"I'm not going anywhere."

His other hand, the hurt one, came up slowly and settled on my waist.

It couldn't lift, but it could hold, and it held me on his knee.

His right hand worked me open while the pressure behind my hips built and built.

"You're so tight on my fingers," he said. "You're going to come for me, and then you're going to tell me how it felt."

"I can't."

"You can. Look at me."

I looked into those green eyes with my mouth open and my thighs shaking.

He curled his fingers one more time and pressed his thumb down hard.

I came.

It tore through me with a cry I couldn't hold.

My whole body clenched on his hand, over and over, while he talked me through it in that low voice.

"There. That's my girl. Just like that. Let go."

When it finished I slumped against his chest, shuddering, and he slid his fingers out of me and held me with that one big arm.

I could feel him under my thigh, rock hard against his zipper.

"You didn't," I whispered.

"No."

"I want to."

"Not today." He kissed my temple. "My side would split, and you'd have to stitch me again."

"And I'd have to listen to you be right."

I laughed against his skin, helplessly, still shaking.

He lifted his wet fingers and I watched him put them in his mouth, one at a time, with his eyes on mine.

Then he said my name, slowly, like it belonged to him.

"Penelope."

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