Chapter 54
Cal
‘You sore?’ I ask Aida as we lie together in my bed. I can’t stop touching her, stroking her skin.
‘A little,’ she admits. ‘The meds helped, though.’
‘Good.’ I hesitate. ‘Can I ask you something?’ It’s a question that feels personal given we’re not mid-fuck, and I don’t want to make her uncomfortable. Add to that the dull flare of my usual post-rough-sex paranoia and self-flagellation, and it’s safe to say I’m treading carefully.
‘Of course,’ she says, running her knuckles over my stomach with the lightest touch.
‘When we go at it… rough, is that something you’ve always liked? Or is it my bad influence?’ I hope that’s ambiguous enough. I’m not asking if she credits me with uncovering her kinky side as much as I’m asking if she had this kinky side before and failed to mention it in our early chats.
She’s quiet long enough that I start to panic, but I force myself to give her space.
‘Put it this way,’ she begins. ‘It’s not something I’ve ever had the luxury of entertaining in previous relationships, if you catch my drift.’
Got it. ‘You told Gen you’d had an underwhelming sex life when you were married,’ I venture. ‘Is that what you mean? It was pretty vanilla? If you feel weird discussing it, that’s fine,’ I add hastily.
‘My husband fucked around behind my back and several of his lovers sold their stories to the press. It’d be ridiculous if I had some false sense of loyalty to him after having had both our names dragged through the mud.
The truth is, our sex life was very… safe.
And it was safe not because we both preferred it that way, but because our preferences, I guess, weren’t compatible. ’
I slide my hand up her back and give her shoulder a little squeeze. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be. I think I mentioned that first time we went out that our marriage was super strong when it came to our intellectual relationship.
’ Another pause. I sense her usual eloquence has deserted her.
‘But John made it clear early on that he liked being dominated.
He wanted—well, he wanted all sorts of things that left me cold.
‘We tried stuff once or twice—stuff I didn’t love, that did nothing for me—and then we both kind of gave up and stuck to the basics, you know? I feel so stupid saying that.’
I frown. ‘Why on earth do you feel stupid? None of that was your fault—of course you shouldn’t have done things you weren’t comfortable with.’
‘I guess because you’re the poster boy for sexual liberation, and making peace with your needs, and going after what you want.
But when you’re in a monogamous relationship with a human being you love, and your wilder sides aren’t compatible, what choice do you have but to meet in the middle, for want of a better term? ’
‘Can I ask what kind of stuff he was into?’ I ask, and she notably tenses under my hand.
‘I mean, nothing crazy, just—dominatrix stuff, I guess. He wanted me to tie him up and whip him and, you know, prod him with my stiletto heels. I tried a couple times at a more basic level, but honestly, I hated it. I hated seeing him lying there, all trussed up.’
She takes a deep breath, like she’s getting ready to share a fresh confidence.
‘I wanted it to be me. I wanted him to tie me to the fucking bed and flip me over and just fucking fuck my brains out, but I never even asked him for that, because it was so obvious he wanted the same from me. He would never have done a one-eighty. And I know he felt rejected, too, because I basically rejected his kinks and shied away from giving him what he needed.’ A heavy sigh. ‘I let him down.’
Nope. No. Not having that. ‘Hang on a sec. That’s absolute bullshit.
You didn’t let him down. You two just weren’t sexually compatible.
That’s the beginning and the end of it. The depressing thing is, I suppose meeting in the middle was all you could do, really, aside from walking away or having you both play roles you weren’t comfortable with. ’
She blows out a breath. ‘Yeah. I guess.’
‘You don’t guess, you know,’ I say, more firmly than I mean to. ‘Those other women he shagged—did they dominate him?’
‘Fuck knows. I’m guessing so, or maybe they were just new and young and shiny and adoring enough that he got his kicks from them anyway.’
The way her voice cracks on the word young has me tugging her into my arms so fucking tightly.
‘Sweetheart,’ I say into her hair. ‘You are so fucking beautiful. So sexy. And the way you are with me—the way you let me cuff you and order you around and fuck you hard—is so utterly, unspeakably perfect I can’t bear it. ’
I clarify, because I need to make sure she understands this. ‘Everything about the way we are together is flawless. You give me everything I crave, but I just want more, more, more, because I’m a selfish bastard and I can’t get enough of you. I’m addicted to you, you understand?’
She nods into my chest and I hear a muffled yes.
‘Are you saying,’ I continue carefully, because I don’t want to put words into her mouth, ‘that the way we fuck is what you’ve been needing all this time?’
She pulls away a little so she can raise her face from under my chin and face me. And when she speaks, there’s no hesitation. None at all.
‘The way you fuck me, and the way you make me feel when you’re doing those things to me, is so right and so elemental that it feels like every planet out there has aligned. It scares the ever-living crap out of me, because it makes me not want to come back down to earth.’