Whatever has him scared must be bad. He’s petrified that I’m leaving.
“Come on.” I lead him down to the bathroom, and we get into the shower. He takes the soap into his hands and begins to wash the oil off my body in silence, leaving me to stare up at him.
I don’t know what the hell just happened, but I’m not pushing him.
Whatever it is, he’ll tell me when he’s ready.
He washes my sex, and I wince. His face falls. “Did I hurt you?” he asks quietly.
“No.”
He clenches his jaw as if stopping himself from saying something.
I kiss his big, beautiful lips. “It’s okay, baby.”
“Nothing about this is okay.”
I hold his face in my hands. He looks so sad and lost as the water beads on his face in the steamy room. We wash each other in silence, and we eventually get out. He dries me off first and then himself, and we get into bed.
I hold him in my arms. Tonight, it’s different. His head is on my chest.
We lie in silence as I run my fingers through his hair. Every now and then, I kiss his forehead in reassurance.
“It wasn’t her fault,” he whispers into the darkness. I frown. “I was too much for her.”
I don’t want to throw him off before he tells me what he’s talking about, so I choose to stay silent.
“In the months leading up to the divorce, I couldn’t…”
Helena. He’s talking about Helena.
I kiss his forehead again, trying to encourage him to open up.
“She was small, I was big. I liked it rough, she…”
“Didn’t?” I murmur.
“She kept pulling me up during sex. In the end, I…” He pauses, and I know that the memory is still painful. “I was so scared that I was going to push her too far that I couldn’t turn my mind off.” He kisses my breast, and I hold him tightly.
“She wanted vanilla. I needed chocolate.”
I exhale as the jigsaw puzzle finally falls into place.
“You stopped having sex with her,” I whisper.
“I was just trying to get my head around it. Every time we would have sex, I couldn’t come. I was too controlled—too in my head. In the end, I didn’t even want to go there. It was too stressful for me. I’d have anxiety for the next two days, worrying that I’d been too rough with her.”
I hold him tightly. “Baby,” I whisper.
He blames himself.
“She started to think I didn’t find her attractive anymore.”
“Did you?’
“Of course, I did. I loved her.”
My heart constricts. Ouch.
“We fought.”
I kiss his temple as I brush the hair back from his forehead.
“I started going away for work. I thought the distance would make us better.”
“Did it?”
“She thought I wanted to get away from her—that I didn’t want sex because I was seeing someone else.”
My heart drops. I already know how this story ends.
He stays silent for a long time, lost in his own thoughts. “In the end it turned out our gardener had the vanilla she needed.”
That bitch.
“This is why you protect her… because you feel responsible?”
“She was hurt.”
“She went to another man, Sebastian.”
“Because I couldn’t—”
“Because she couldn’t,” I cut him off.
He exhales heavily.
“Is that why you like call girls? Because you know they can take it rough? Because you know that there is no chance you can hurt them?”
He stays silent, and I know that it is.
I think for a moment, and then I smile. “Maybe this was God’s way of saving you for me.”
I feel him smile against my chest. “My sweet coffee girl who fucks like the sexiest whore I ever met.”
I giggle. “You know I can’t regret how we met, not even for a moment because I don’t believe if we had stayed together back then, we would have worked out.”
He leans up onto his elbow. “What about now?”
“I’ve been looking for a man to deliver me straight up chocolate fudge for me all my life.”
He chuckles, and then falls serious. “I’m not too much for you?”
“You’re perfect for me,” I whisper as I kiss him. "I always knew something was missing Seb, and it wasn’t until I slept with you that I found out what it was. I need you like this, I need this darker form of love making…. more than anything."
He screws up his face against my lips. “I love you. Promise me you’ll never leave.”
“I promise.” My heart somersaults. His words are so heartfelt. He really does love me. I can feel it pouring out of him.
This poor, beautiful man has been to Hell and back, all because he was too sexual for his prim and proper adulterous wife.
“I do have one bone to pick with you, though,” I say.
“What’s that?”
“That sex doll has got to go.”
His mouth falls open in fake horror. “Belinda? Spence bought me her. She’s a Vero 5000.”
I smirk at her name.