Kid Gloves Read Online Free Page B

relieves me of the associated pain.”
    Finn felt himself blushing further, sure his face must be blood red by now. So it wasn’t a ladies’ undergarment at all. It was medical.
    Suddenly, Dalton smiled and gestured to Finn’s hand. The fingers were slowly curling in toward the shiny copper palm, and Finn’s embarrassment leaked away as he watched the movement, quietly stunned.
    “It’s doing it on its own,” he murmured.
    “No,” Dalton corrected, taking Finn’s arm in his hand and watching as the mechanical fingers started to sensuously undulate. “You’re doing it.”
    “I’m not,” Finn protested. “I’m really not.”
    “Your mind isn’t, then,” Dalton said. “But your subconscious is. Those nerve endings in your wrist—Tennessee didn’t tie them off like he would with a traditional amputation. They’re still there, waiting to attach themselves to something.”
    “What happens if I take it off?” Finn asked.
    Dalton shrugged. “You’d have to start again, trying to get the nerves to align themselves with the magnetic points in the joints. It’s hard work. That’s why I told you that it takes weeks to acclimatize yourself to a new limb. You have to train yourself, you have to figure out what this strength is and how to use it. You will need to teach yourself how to write again, how to hold a bow and arrow, how to shoot accurately.”
    “Will you help me?”
    The words were out of Finn’s mouth before he could think on them. He wasn’t one to ask for assistance from anyone, he took pride in his self-sufficiency. But for this… for this he needed Dalton’s help. He wanted to learn, but more than that he wanted to exceed.
    “Of course,” Dalton said with a smile and let go of Finn’s arm.
    Finn would later wonder if the move was one he’d calculated and instructed his new hand to do on purpose, or if it was a decision that his subconscious made for him. Either way, he couldn’t stop himself from reaching out and touching, wondering if the dark brown leather was really as silky smooth as it looked.
    The sensation through these fingertips was dulled, and he’d already touched with one hand, and Dalton hadn’t flinched, so as an experiment, and nothing more, he reached out with his left hand too to compare the sensations.
    It was so warm.
    Finn wondered if the other man slept in the corset, if he lived with the leather wrapped around his waist.
    “No,” Dalton said.
    “I’m—I’m sorry?”
    “No, I take it off at night and tie myself into it again in the morning,” Dalton said. “You asked me if I sleep in it. I don’t.”
    Finn dropped both his hands. “That was uncalled for. I apologize.”
    With great certainty, Dalton took Finn’s wrists in his hands and guided them back to his own waist. “If I minded you touching, I would have stopped you,” he said.
    Emboldened, or maybe just determined to prove that he had nothing to prove, Finn cupped both his hands around Dalton’s waist and ran them up and down the soft leather, learning the textures with his new one and storing the memories for later comparison. His fingertips compared the ridges of the whalebones, then around the back to the rough laces.
    His hands worked higher, up and up until they were pressed against hot skin that was sheened with sweat. The corset ended just below Dalton’s nipples, and Finn explored those too, the tight pink nubs and how they hardened under his touch, the whorls of hair on the other man’s chest, the hard collarbones and strong shoulders.
    “This is… I shouldn’t be doing this. It’s sinful, it’s wicked….”
    “According to who?” Dalton said, his voice a low whisper, his lips only an inch away from Finn’s neck. “I gave you a hand, now I’m showing you how to use it. How to feel with it again.”
    “I don’t know what I’m feeling,” Finn said with a tiny sob.
    Dalton stepped back, aware that Finn’s hands still lingered on his waist, but not prepared to go any