He smiled. She felt his cheek lift against the edge of her ear and she heard laughter in his tone. “Many are ready, all will be willing,” he said, “but they will not satisfy you.”

“Why not?”

“Because the answer is here.” He pushed her hands into movement again. “In your own hands.”

“And in my bedside table.” An obvious joke, but she couldn’t resist. He made her nervous.

“In clarity,” he corrected. “Focus on what we are doing.”

As if she could do anything but feel him surround her, know that it was his hands guiding hers, and live each breath wishing they could continue what they were doing forever.

“Breathe,” he murmured, the low vibration of his word penetrating almost as deeply as his heat.

She inhaled with his upstroke. Exhaled with his down. Then another circle and her breasts felt like changed things. They were still breasts, but they were also energy—calm, quiet and very, very there. Like bright, golden little mounds on her chest, alive and new. She wanted to speak, she wanted to express how wonderful this was, but she feared breaking the spell. Each stroke made her chest—no, her whole body—a little brighter.

He lightened, as well. The weight of his arms on hers disappeared. Instead, he became part of her, an extension of her body. She knew his temple pressed against hers, and his chest brushed up tight to her back, but there was no added weight. There wasn’t even the fire that she had expected. He was simply part of her, and together they breathed as one, moved as one.

“Forty-nine,” he said. The sound blended into the air, folding around her without surprise or disharmony. “Those strokes dispersed the negative. Now we will awake the positive.”

“I thought my tigress was already awake.”

“Wait and feel.”

He held her hands by her sides. But this time, instead of curving under her breasts, he stroked over the top. She still inhaled as he moved, lifting her breasts into their joined hands. And as they spiraled in toward her nipples, she felt herself relax into total trust.

She would wait and see. And in waiting, she felt life pouring into her body and her breasts. She had no other word for it. She was alive before, but now she was alive! Or at least her breasts were. Before, her body had been a beautiful glowing landscape of serenity. Now that landscape was being stroked into Technicolor brilliance. She no longer felt hot. Though there was a blaze of hunger under her flesh, she expanded past her skin. She was wondrously, gloriously more. More awake, more alive, more here than ever before. And it was all from his touch. The circles continued, but her hands slipped away. She wanted him to touch her; she wanted his hands on her body.

His fingertips were larger than her own; they widened the gentle pressure on her skin and deepened the stroke of his energy. She felt him all the way to her spine. He was heat that had little to do with temperature—caressing her, stroking her.

“Yes,” she whispered. “Oh, yes.”

But after a few more spirals, she felt a growing discontentment. His spirals always ended near her nipples without touching them. He stroked her higher and hotter with each spiral, but would not quite reach the peak.

“More,” she whispered.

“Isn’t this enough?” he countered, humor lacing his voice. “Do you feel how your breath boils with fire?”

It did. She did. Every exhale released steam. Every inhale brought more oxygen to the blaze, but it wasn’t enough. Her hands had fallen away, down by her sides. With only the tiniest movement, she extended them backward so that she gripped his thighs.

He was crouched behind her, his legs braced on either side of her chair. She could reach—and massage—the corded muscles behind her, tightening her hands with his every stroke.

“You are not supposed to touch your teacher,” he said.

“Then stop me.”

He didn’t, though she felt the conflict within him. Then she began to move with his strokes. As he circled her breasts, she drew her hands higher on his thighs. At first it was a small movement, a simple shift of her wrists. But as he continued to flow around and around her breasts, she began to lengthen her movements. She extended her arms and grabbed him just above his knees.

His muscles were clearly defined there. The thin cotton fabric did nothing to disguise the lean strength of him. She knew she could grip her hands as tightly as possible and he would barely notice. She began with a grip, but as his thighs widened, her hands opened, making her touch more of a caress.

His arms tightened. The chair back creaked as he leaned harder against it, more fully into her. He no longer touched her with just the pads of his fingertips, but the full lengths of his fingers. And though he was careful not to touch her nipples, more and more of her breasts hummed beneath his stroke.

“Focus on the energy,” he whispered. “This is not sexual—”

“Shh,” she interrupted. His words were disruptive. Yes, she felt the energy expanding all around them. She was her body, but also so much more. And together, they were like a bright flame of light.

And contrary to what he claimed, it was also very sexual. Her breasts were pulsing with power that throbbed on a direct line to her womb. Even better, that beat seemed to echo through their joined energy, reverberating in her mind and through her hands where she stroked his thighs.

“Touch me,” she whispered.

“This is not sexual,” he began.

“Touch me!” she ordered, and she felt power echo through the words. Then at the peak of her stroke, she stretched one hand farther up so that she had his cock in her grasp.

She heard him gasp in alarm, and his hips jerked in reaction, but he didn’t move away. His body thrust forward into her palm and in that moment, she knew she had won. He had his dragon power, a force she didn’t even begin to understand, but apparently, she had her own strength. She could touch him, she could hold him and feel the heat of him like a sun. It arrowed through her hand all the way up her arm. It stroked across her palm, allowing her to measure the length and girth of him. And most of all, it allowed her to wrap her fingers around him and keep him right there, hard and hot.

She let her head fall back against his shoulder and wished that they didn’t have a hard wooden chair between them. Then she simply breathed, letting her lungs expand into his hands as they now spread around her full breasts, cupping them as a man would. He held her now, without circles, without intention, he simply held her as she held him.

“What now, Grasshopper?” she asked.

“The tigress wants to play, does she?” he answered, his voice a seductive caress.

“She does.” She pulled her hand upward a bit so that she could roll her forefinger across his tip. She felt the wetness in his pants and knew he trembled behind her.

“Then lean forward into my touch and spread your legs.”

She did, but she was still wearing her sweatpants. They felt hot and confining, but when Tracy shifted her free hand to release them, he tightened his arm, holding her still.

“But my pants—”

“I am going to penetrate you with my energy, Tracy. I will not touch you more than I am now, but my chi will. My masculine dragon power will dance in your cave until you quiver your delight. In this way, you will know it is real.”

“Really?” she asked, fear and excitement building inside her. “Is that really possible?”

She felt his face turn toward her neck, and then his lips pressed against her, right at the pulse point beneath her jaw. “Not only is it possible, Tigress Tracy, but it is only the beginning.”

She thought about telling him then. She thought about confessing how new all of this was. Sure the energy stuff was very unique, but did she tell him that no man had ever…That she had never…

His hands began to move again, and her thoughts scattered. Whatever she had done—or not done—in the past didn’t make a difference. This was about now, and she didn’t want it to stop. She wanted to learn what she had been missing all those years. And so she closed her mind to her other thoughts and let herself experience this.