My body tensed at the memory, the one that felt like it happened a lifetime ago. It still gave me butterflies thinking about it.
“I guess I did,” I snuggled deeper into him.
We lapsed into comfortable silence, for a time, at least. I wasn’t mad at him, not really. For a moment, maybe I had been. For forcing the separation between us just because he wanted me to be pissed enough to take charge. But then he didn’t really separate us. He had been with me, every single night. He had been right there with me, waiting.
“You didn’t…” I tried to find the right words. “When you… you didn’t—”
“When I came, I didn’t put my hands around your neck, strangling you until you almost passed out?” he offered.
I swallowed. “Yeah,” I whispered.
During the many, many times Swiss and I had had sex, it had always ended with his hands around my neck, squeezing until I saw stars, until my lungs burned. It was a kink of his, connected and born out of trauma, no doubt. But surprisingly, it had become a kink of mine too.
He stroked my arm. “Baby, I saw you lyin’ in a hospital bed with a tube down your throat, with your neck black from the evidence of that piece of shit tryin’ to end you.”
My skin prickled, his words corrupting what had been a perfect moment. But it wasn’t his words that were responsible, it was Preston’s actions. They had tarnished everything, changed everything. But somehow not entirely for the worst. Swiss and I were lying here together after the best sex I’d ever had in my life.
In the house that my friends had given me.
Givenme.
I was alive, breathing. I was divorced.
Yeah, things were not bad. Objectively, things were wonderful.
Still I needed to pick at things, it seemed. I needed to open the wound.
“I’m fucked-up, babe,” Swiss dragged a hand down his face. “That’s not gonna change. Even someone like you cannot change that. So I imagine I’ll still need a fair bit of kink when I fuck you… Though if what we just did was vanilla, I’m content with that.” He continued stroking my arm.
“That was certainly not vanilla,” I replied.
He chuckled. It was low and throaty and warm.
“I know that seeing me like… that did something to you,” I whispered. “Changed something. But I also need you to know that even after that, especially after that, I want you to mark me. I don’t want you to be afraid of hurting me.” I bit my lip, moving to position myself so my elbow was on his chest, propping me up to look him in the eye. “I need you to hurt me,” I confessed. “Your marks on my body are ones I’ll wear with pride. Because if you haven’t noticed, I’m a little fucked-up too.” I smiled softly.
Swiss did not smile back.
“I’m sure I’ll get to the point where I enjoy that again,” he reached up to brush the hair from my face. “Where seein’ you writhe in pain and pleasure makes my cock explode.”
I shivered in expectation and excitement. I was hungry for that, for a different kind of pain. But maybe I was being a little hasty, wanting that from him when I was barely healed.
“Besides that, it’s my job, the one I take really fuckin’ seriously, to give you what you need.” He rubbed his thumb along my bottom lip.
His hand ghosted downward, to my neck, which had returned to its regular coloring.
“But I will never put my hands around here again,” he vowed, eyes displaying the conviction in his words. “I’ve needed to taste death when I come. A woman’s death. ’Cause of my past. ’Cause I like to torture myself.” His eyes shimmered. “But, Kate, I didn’t just taste your death. I had to swallow it whole. Now it’s inside of me. And the only thing I need when I’m fuckin’ you is to know you’re alive.” He laid his palm on my chest. “To feel the life inside of you.”
My heart thundered underneath his hand. I swallowed roughly. “Did you mean it?” I asked in a meek voice.
“Everything I say I mean to you, Kate,” Swiss replied soberly. “But what in particular are you talkin’ about?”
I drew circles on his chest, tracing over the raised skin of my mark.
“About marriage,” I said. “Ours.”
Swiss stilled. I glanced back up at him.
“Fuck yes, I meant it,” he murmured, taking my hand to lift it to his lips.