Chapter 9
NINE
BECCA
I think I’ve said something wrong, I just don’t know what it is. Butch is standing really still and looking at me in a really strange way. Normally when that happens, it’s because I didn’t filter my words properly. Didn’t analyze the cause and effect of them before I spit them out.
But it’s too late now. There’s no taking them back.
“Just to make sure I’m understanding correctly.” Butch says the words slowly. “You are or are not having sex?”
“Not.” Is that it? He just wanted clarity?
Because I don’t think that’s what’s going on. There’s definitely more. I’m just not having an easy time isolating what it is.
Butch’s brows climb his forehead. “Ever?”
I shake my head. “No.”
“Why not?” There’s no judgment in his tone, just genuine confusion.
I shrug. “It didn’t sound interesting.” Or appealing. At least not until very recently.
“Okay.” Butch drags the word out, like he’s still trying to make sense of what I’m telling him. “You’ve never had sex.” He takes a deep breath. “Have you ever made out?”
I shake my head again. “No.”
“Fuck.” He closes his eyes, letting his head tip back toward the ceiling as he pulls in a deep breath. After blowing out the air, he asks yet another question. “Have you ever kissed anyone?”
“Yes.” I feel a little better. Both at finally being able to answer affirmatively and at the look of relief on his face. “You. Tonight, before you left the safe house.”
“Fucking hell, B. That was the first time you’ve been kissed?” Butch seems astonished.
I’m not stupid. I get that pretty much everybody has had sex—or at the very least been kissed—by their early thirties. I’m very aware I’m abnormal. Different.
Weird.
But I’ve always been that way, and at a certain point I acclimated.
Got comfortable with who I am and who I’m not.
That’s when I started to notice some people just liked to be around me to laugh at me.
Because they found me entertaining. And not in a good way.
It sucked, but on some level it was freeing.
I didn’t have to keep working so hard to fit in.
Did my social circle shrink exponentially?
Yes. But at least I was only spending time with people who got me.
Even if I was the only one there.
“I didn’t want to kiss anyone before you.
” I chew my lower lip, trying to come up with the right words to explain something most people don’t understand.
“I don’t feel the things I think other people feel.
I don’t get aroused just because someone’s considered attractive, and I don’t have a need for physical contact. ”
“Then why did you ask to touch me?” Again, there’s no judgment.
There never has been, and it makes me more comfortable with him than I am around other people.
“Because I want to touch you.” My next breath is a little choppy. That tingle I only get when Butch is around amplifies as I say, “and I want you to touch me.” I can’t tell if he’s for or against the idea, so I add on, “If you want to.”
“Wanting to isn’t even a question.” Butch rakes his free hand through his hair. “Just a little surprised over this new information. It changes shit a little.”
Really? “Why?”
“Because I don’t want to fuck up any of your firsts.” He snorts. “Technically I already did, I guess.”
“What do you mean?” I’m not following what he’s saying.
“I mean, I just grabbed you and put my mouth on yours before walking out of the safe house. It was probably the worst fucking first kiss in the history of the world.” He seems distressed. Genuinely bothered that I would consider our kiss subpar.
Was it the most amazing thing that’s ever happened to me? No. But did I hate it? Not by a long shot. That’s why I would very much like to make out with him tonight. I want to experience more of how it feels to kiss and touch and explore. “Then just do a better job next time.”
Butch stares down at me. “It’s not that simple.”
“It’s also not that complicated. I’ve watched lots of videos, and the mechanics of sex and kissing are pretty basic.”
Butch makes a weird strangled sound in the back of his throat. “You know porn isn’t anything like regular sex, right?”
Interesting. “That actually makes me feel a little better, because I definitely didn’t see the appeal of a man ejaculating on my face.” I scrunch my nose as I think back on some of the other things I watched. “Or me sitting on theirs.”
“Agreed on the first one, but I’d like for you to keep an open mind on that second option.” Butch sighs, scrubbing a hand against the back of his neck. “What the fuck am I going to do with you, B?”
I feel like we’ve covered this a couple times already. “Well, you said you were going to make out with me, so I feel like that would be a nice place to start.” He’s making this into a big deal, and it’s really not. “Here. I’ll start.”
Gripping the hem of my sleep shirt, I drag it up and over my head, tossing it to the bed. I spent a lot of years wondering why I didn’t feel the sorts of things women my age described. Now that I do, I don’t want to wait to beging exploring it.
Standing in front of Butch in nothing but my panties—I kept them on since I’ve still got a couple days of my period left—I wait for him to do something. Say something. Breathe. But I don’t think he’s doing any of it. He’s just staring at me.
I don’t really understand the concept of what most people find sexy, so I have no clue if I am or not.
Objectively speaking, my boobs aren’t big, but they’re shaped in what I think might be an appealing way.
I don’t have any weird growths or crazily out-of-the-norm body parts.
At the very least, I’ve got to be okay to look at.
Finally, Butch pulls in a ragged breath, his broad shoulders lifting on the inhale. “It’s probably a good thing you weren’t attracted to anyone before me, because I’m not sure there are many men in this world capable of holding their own against you.”
I want to feel flattered by what he’s saying, but I don’t think I fully get what he means. “I don’t want you to be against me.”
“Then it’s going to be awfully hard to do what you want, because it very much requires my body to be against yours.” Butch steps closer, the front of his shirt brushing against my bare nipples in a way that has my thighs pressing together. “Are you sure you don’t want me against you?”
“I do want that.” I sway a little, letting the fabric graze me again. “I want lots of things.”
“What other things do you want?”
“I want to know how your mouth tastes. What your hands feel like on my skin. What your body looks like.” All things I never quite grasped the importance of, but now can’t seem to make myself stop thinking about. “And I want to know what an orgasm feels like.”
Again, Butch goes still. And again, I realize I’ve said something wrong.
“What are you being weird about now?” I don’t want to have to guess. The amount of effort it requires to try to understand what another person is thinking or feeling is freaking exhausting, and I just don’t have it in me right now.
“You’ve never touched yourself?” Butch’s pupils are oddly dilated. “Never made yourself come?”
I wrinkle my nose, because what would the point have been? Even if I wanted to, what for? “No. Why would I do that?”
“Because it feels good.”
I might beg to differ with him on that, but it does have me wondering. “Do you touch yourself?”
Butch tips his head. “On a regular basis.”
That’s interesting. “Does it feel good?”
“Good enough.”
It’s not hard to imagine Butch touching himself, and I have to admit it’s an intriguing thought. “Can I watch you?”
“I thought you wanted me to touch you?”
“I do.” But Butch touching me feels like it would come with expectations. And not necessarily from him.
Watching Butch touch himself would give me the opportunity to experience an orgasm firsthand without an obligation to perform on my part. “But tonight I think I would rather watch you make yourself…” I almost say orgasm, but that’s not the word Butch used, so I go with what he said. “Come.”
I’m curious. I want to know if watching Butch will be different from watching strangers I don’t know on the Internet.
I think it will be, but part of me is worried it won’t.
That even though Butch makes me tingle, that’s all it will ever be, and I’m never going to experience what everyone else does.
I wait, rubbing my lips together, hoping he understands. That he doesn’t think I’m strange or broken because I don’t have the same needs and desires as everyone else.
Except maybe I do. They just require very specific circumstances. And a very specific person.
Finally, he tips his head in a sharp nod. “Okay.”
I have to work a little harder to get my next breath in. “Okay.” I turn away, hurrying to the bed. Sitting down on the edge, I lean back against the pillows angled against the headboard and wait for him to come join me.
Slowly, Butch rounds the other side of the mattress. He looks down at where I sit on the blankets, his dark gaze sweeping me from head to toe in a way I can almost feel. It makes me shiver, my nipples pulling so tight they ache.
“How do you want me? Naked? Or do you just want me to push my pants down?” He seems a little awkward, and I really like that.
Normally I’m the one being awkward, even if I don’t realize it.
“Naked.” That’s an easy answer. I’d like to see him. What his body looks like. If he has hair on his chest. If his penis is big or small. I’m not sure any of that matters to me, I’m just curious.
“Naked it is.”
Butch shifts from foot to foot, kicking off his boots. Once they’re off, he tugs his shirt over his head, revealing a broad set of shoulders and well-defined chest.
With hair on it.
My eyes follow his hands as he works his belt loose and undoes the button and zipper on his pants. Instead of removing them and then his underwear, he shoves it all down at once, and I come face-to-face with my first in-person penis.