“Or I will be angry. And that’s not a good place for me to be, not for anyone. Least of all for you. I didn’t mean to hurt you, X.”
“Yet you did, and I’m not okay with it,” I say.
I wish desperately to push the hand away, yet it slides up my waist, and fingers hook in the blanket. Draw it away. I’m cold now.
Huge, hard hand, pushing me to my back. I don’t resist. Not yet.
“Come on, X. Let it go.”
“Don’t you think I’ve tried? I can’t. I can’t just let it go, Caleb.” I finally sit up, wishing I could draw the blankets up around my chest, but they’ve been tossed aside, and it’s dark, and I don’t dare risk making physical contact.
“Goddammit. All of this because of that stupid bitch Sara.” Anger, raw and rife.
“Sara didn’t put her hands on my throat, Caleb.Youdid.”
“And am I never to be forgiven for it?”
“I don’t know.” I remember the taste of come in my mouth, that day.
The way my sexual service was just... expected. And given, so easily, without question. I despise myself. I loathe myself for dropping to my knees and putting my mouth on that waiting erection, for doing what I was told without question. Why did I do that? What am I, to offer such ready subservience?
Maybe this is all a refraction, everything distorted by my memory of a so-very-different touch on my skin, the way lips touched mine.
“No.” I say this firmly.
“No?” Amused now. “No, you’re not going to forgive me?”
“No.”
Hands on my arms, groping, seeking, finding the back of my head. Pulling me. Heat and heaviness hovering over me. “I think you will, X.”
“Caleb...” I squirm, trapped, claustrophobic, feeling oppressive presence crushing me down and down and down to the bed, until I’m horizontal and hands are feathering over myskin, scraping up the loose cotton of the T-shirt I wear as a nightgown, pushing it up around my throat, baring my breasts to the shadows. All is blackness, and heaviness, and my skin being touched. Palms, gentle but insistent. Fingers finding and tugging away my underwear.
“Caleb.” I find strength. “I don’t want this, Caleb.”
Lips, on my skin, at my belly. Hair tickling my hip. “Yes, you do.”
The problem is, my hormones remember what those hands can do. The damp slit between my thighs remembers what those fingers can do, what the erection I know is ready and waiting can do. I remember, and I feel the contradiction. The lies, tangled and mixed. I lie. I do want it. I know what happened was a moment of anger, isolated. And I know, too, that it may perhaps not be so isolated. Perhaps, if I ask the wrong question, say the wrong thing, wish for the impossible, maybe those hands that can offer such pleasure will offer pain once more. Pain as punishment. Another accidental moment of strangulation, even a fist, or an open palm. Who knows?
I remember also a stolen moment in a men’s restroom, and the sensation of utter safety.
Who am I, and what do I want?
Does it even matter what I want?
“See? I can smell you, X.” A nose, nuzzling my thighs apart, inhalation. “I smell it. You want this. You want me. You’ve always wanted me, and you always will. You know it, and I know it.”
I squirm, heels dig into the mattress, feel my hips lift off the bed at the wet swipe of a tongue. A thrill, lancing through me. Such pleasure, the tongue tip tickling and twirling at the precise spot where I’ll feel the most pleasure, zeroing in, flicking.
But stronger than the pleasure is the self-loathing. The hatred of myself for succumbing, for being weak, for giving in,for letting pleasure dictate my actions. For letting pleasure take away what little freedom I have.
I reach down, tangle my fingers in thick hair... and shove. “No, Caleb.” I twist, roll away.
Slide off the bed. Find the light switch, flick it on. Dark eyes, squinting against the sudden light. Mussed, imperfect black hair. A smear of my essence around the expressive mouth. T-shirt, suit slacks—tented.
Barefoot. Beautiful. Brutal.
How did I never see the brutality, before?
