“You don’t need to do this. I never—”
“I want to,” she says, and even though she’s nervous, her words are firm with certainty.
She shifts restlessly on my white sheets, bunches the blankets in her hands, and finally, like it’s taking all the bravery she possesses, she spreads her legs for me. A little at first, but then wider and wider. So I can see. Every fold, every line, every color, every secret, is bared to me, and I get drunk off of the sight.
Watching me from beneath half-lowered lashes, she pushes her hands over her belly toward her pussy, but before she touches herself, she loses her courage and squeezes her eyes shut, swallowing so hard I can hear the sound.
“There’s a certain way I need to be touched,” she says. “It has to be this way, or I can’t relax and I can’t let go.”
After a period of time that feels like eternity, her fingertips settle on her clit, and I watch, transfixed, as she touches herself. Her breathing quickens and her hips rise, and I have never seen anything more sexy.
“There’s a pattern,” I hear myself say as I sit at the foot of the bed, unable to stay away. Of course there’s a pattern. She’s Anna. But it’s not complicated. It’s extremely simple. There’s symmetry to it, with clockwise strokes and an equal number of counterclockwise strokes. I want to touch her that way so bad that it feels like a physical need.
Her face blushes a deep red color, but she nods. “I know it’s strange, but—”
“What you need could never be strange. It just is what it is,” I say. “What else do you need?”
I shouldn’t be asking. I still don’t know where we’re going with this. But I can’t help it. I have to know.
“You don’t know?” she breathes.
“No, I don’t.”
“I need you to touch me and kiss me, so I?
?m not alone in this,” she says, and it seems that she holds her breath as she waits for me to respond.
A full-on battle rages inside me. I want to do what she’s asking. There’s nothing I want more.
She’s naked.
In. My. Bed.
But that would mean I’m ready to forgive her and risk letting her hurt me again.
I hesitate too long, and she covers her mouth to stifle a sob and moves to get off the bed. She turns her face away from me, but she’s not fast enough. I see her devastation, and it’s like a knife in my solar plexus. I pull her to me before she can touch her feet to the floor.
“It’s okay,” she says in a ragged voice. “I understand. I blew it. I don’t deserve—”
I kiss her. Just once. I know I can chalk it up to a mistake, say it was done in the heat of the moment. I can still end us. But then I kiss her again, and her mouth is so unbelievably perfect that I can’t help kissing her again, deeper. As soon as I taste her, I know it’s over for me. I can’t lose this. I understand what she was going through now. She’s finally being open with me, just like I’ve been demanding from the start. It’s hard for her but she’s trying anyway, and that means everything to me. I forgive her. I’ll risk anything for her. I kiss her with everything in me. Maybe I’m too rough, but she welcomes me. She kisses me back like she’s been starving without me.
When I release her mouth and kiss my way to her neck, she shivers and asks, “Are you kissing me because you feel sorry for me?”
I bite her neck and slide my hand between her thighs. I touch her the way she showed me. “You think I do this when I feel sorry for someone?”
Her shoulders hunch forward, and her hips press sharply against my hand. Her mouth falls open on a soundless gasp.
“Do I have that right?” I ask, even though I think I know. She’s drenching my fingers as she tries to get closer. “Is that good?”
Instead of answering, she pulls me down for a long kiss. Her hips undulate against my hand as she licks at my lips, sucks on my tongue, making needy little sounds that drive me out of my mind. She touches me hungrily, my face, my scalp, my shoulders. Her nails scrape down my back, hard, but not enough to break the skin, and every muscle in my body tightens. The instinct to lower her to the bed and drive into her is almost overwhelming.
The only thing stopping me is the brightness of the room. When we were together before, the darkness wasn’t just for her. It protected me, too.
When she grips my ass over my towel, the cloth loosens precariously, and I barely manage to catch it with my free hand before it falls.
She doesn’t seem to notice the conflict going on inside me. Her movements are urgent now, urgent but frustrated. I can feel it in the way she’s touching me, like she’s looking for something, trying to say something.
“Tell me,” I say.