Free Submissive Desires by Carolyn Faulkner Page A

sight, and, if he hadn’t been sure she would have to be his before, her bright, feminine looks cinched it.
    Normally, he might have been rather impatient with her tentativeness, her hesitation in trusting him. But not with Maura. She was well worth waiting for, and he wanted her to be sure of him before she did something she really didn’t want to do.
    “I promise – you’re just as safe with me as you want to be. I would never let anyone hurt you –
    including me.”
    Maura turned and looked at him for the first time, and had the breath knocked out of her even though he was far from gorgeous – too roughly hewn and craggy faced. But he had a presence – an aura, if one believed in such things – that practically knocked her on her butt. She had no doubt about the truth of his words. The problem was that she didn’t know how safe she would want to stay with him – and his eyes were so full of sensual promise that she had to look away again.
    He was tall and lean, not overtly, bulgingly muscular, but obviously very strong – physically and mentally – broad shouldered with a classic Y-shape. Simon had a full head of graying hair, and a well-kept gray mustache. She wanted him on sight, and the accompanying gush of feminine liquid onto her panties only made her that much more wary of him.
    He just sat there, as if they had all the time in the world and he was perfectly content to wait for her to decide to gird her loins and meet him properly.
    Finally, after much too long trying to convince herself to move – during which he was remarkably quiet and calm, watching her wrestle with herself about him – she eyed him with more bravado than she thought she possessed. “Well, are you going to move, or am I going to knock you over with the car door?”
    He got to it before she did, pulling the handle and backing away as he opened it for her. Feeling distinctly inelegant, Maura exited the car, and Simon took several steps closer to her to close the door with a thunk. Although she desperately wanted to slink away from him, she didn’t, and was inordinately proud of herself for standing still, although she was eying him with incredible wariness that Simon wholly understood.
    He offered his hand – hoping to show her that he didn’t expect intimacies from the outset – that he was quite patient enough to let her get comfortable with him before he touched her in the manner he really wanted to.
    Maura just looked at his hand for a moment, as if it was a rabid dog stealthily approaching her, but then she blinked several times and shook it, firmly, pumping twice then releasing. He let her go immediately with no coy attempts to retain contact. “It’s nice to meet you, Maura Boardman.”
    Her eyes slid away from his. “Same here, Simon Hawkins.” Her voice was not her own – it was someone else’s who was more than slightly timid and awed by both the situation and him.
    She wasn’t getting any more relaxed, in fact she looked more frightened and unsure than she had in the car. “Well, why don’t we go in and get some grub?”
    That earned him a small, tentative smile. “Yes, why don’t we?” God, after everything they’d talked about online, how could she still feel so damned awkward around him? They started to walk; Simon obviously shortening his strides to accommodate the difference in their statures. He didn’t touch her in 37

    any way – didn’t put his hand on the small of her back as he wanted to, just to guide her – hell, just to get the feel of her in the most courteous and gentlemanly of manners – didn’t take her hand or drape his arm around her shoulders. All of which he almost desperately wanted to do, despite the fact that he wasn’t usually the most tactile of people - in fact he was normally quite solitary and self-contained.
    Still, there it was; a deep, aching need to put his hands on her, so much so that they literally itched to settle on her somewhere – anywhere at all, even the