Chapter 26 #2
I lean forward enough that she looks up reflexively, and I meet her eyes when she does.
“The thing is that I would have hurt you and not even in the way I want to hurt you. I was about to tear you apart while you had stitches in your leg, while you were taking antibiotics for the same thing that nearly killed me as a teenager. But I was so impatient, so…insensate to anything that wasn’t finally having you, and if I hadn’t left that very instant, I would have had you flat on your stomach with my hand on your back while I undid my belt.
I would have done it knowing full well that you were almost admitted to the hospital the day before. ”
I let out a long breath, not of real remorse but something like it, I think. I do wish I were a better person for her sake. I’ve wished it for a long time now.
“I like transgression, Birdie, but I want to pollute your dear little heart, not risk ripping your stitches open. Not tax your immune system and make you susceptible to blood poisoning.”
She keeps her gaze fixed to mine as her hand comes up and chafes slowly at her chest.
“So if you have any concerns about my continuing interest in the deal, let me put them to rest. I stayed away because if I didn’t, I was going to break one of the very few rules—and I mean very few rules, Birdie, so unbelievably few—that I’m trying to follow when it comes to you.
I stayed away because I want this so much more than I ever could have predicted, because I didn’t trust my restraint, because I would have put your health at risk while you were healing.
Because I don’t think I’m capable of not touching you when you’re this close and this available.
So don’t worry that I don’t still want this, and if my answer doesn’t reassure you, then let today reassure you: I didn’t fuck you three times in a row because I’m reconsidering. ”
She drops her hand, and the skin above her left breast is now all pink and warm looking. I want to lean forward and lick it, but I heroically hold myself back.
“I want to know what’s going through that brilliant head of yours. I want to live inside it, but I can’t, so you have to share it with me. You can’t be a miser when it comes to something I want so badly. It wouldn’t be Christian of you.”
A subtle bunching of her cheeks again. I take this as a positive sign that she doesn’t want to run naked and screaming into the street after my confession.
“I’m not brilliant,” she says softly, which is one of the few truly stupid things I’ve ever heard her say. “If you knew how scattered and ordinary my thoughts were, you wouldn’t want them.”
“How can they be ordinary?” I ask genuinely. “They belong to you.”
She shakes her head, but the corners of her mouth are turned up. “Ry.”
“I suppose you’ll have to trust me when I say that I’m hungry for every bit of you, even the things you think are boring or common. Tell me what you’re thinking.”
She looks down at the glass still cradled in one hand, but it seems more about gathering her thoughts than avoiding my eyes this time.
“I guess…I’m grateful that you care about my health, and I’m scared of what you might be capable of, and I’m ashamed that my fear is alloyed with so many other things. ”
I don’t hide my interest as I move closer to her, now sitting with my legs crossed. “Like what?” I ask, finding a nice, plump blueberry and holding it to her lips.
Just like she did with the pomegranate seeds seven years ago and just like she did last weekend with her medicine, she parts her lips and takes what I give her. Obedient and shy. Blood thumps valiantly into my sore dick.
After she chews and swallows, she sighs. It’s a forlorn kind of sound. “I don’t want to say it.”
“I’m not a priest taking your confession.
I’m not doing an audit of your soul. I’m the worst thing that’s going to happen to you this year—your Lucifer, remember?
Telling me is the opposite of a confession.
It’s an exoneration, an acquittal. You tell me how fucked up you are, and I’ll praise you for it. ”
She licks her lower lip and then looks up at me. Her eyes are always big, but they are huge like this, wide with uncertainty and maybe a little bit of hope.
“When I’m afraid of you, I feel desire,” she finally says, her voice low and tremulous like she’s actually confessing to a priest. “When I’m afraid of you, there’s this sick part of me that craves what I fear.
You say you would have had me on the ground with your hand on my back, and I should be disgusted, and instead I almost wish it had happened.
You use me like a toy, and I come anyway.
I shouldn’t want any of this, I should be enduring this, and yet I was devastated when you didn’t fuck me right away. ”
Devastated? Oh, I like that.
“So you were right. Everything you said the last time I came. I am messed up. And I’m not sure what that means.”
She sounds so sad, and I hate it, because while I’ve always found her sadness beautiful, I can’t stand her feeling sorrow over this—this essential part of her that matches an essential part of me.
I shift so I can press my forehead to hers and nuzzle her nose with mine.
“It means you belong here, with me,” I murmur.
“It means we’ll be messed up together, and when you’re in my bed, it won’t feel like anything but heaven because everything you think is wrong inside you is the absolute mark of God’s creation to me. ”
Her breath shivers against my lips. “You always make everything sound so easy. So seductively easy.”
“Let me seduce you then. Be my messed-up, free-use girl. It gets me hard. It makes me obsessed. The more tangled and depraved you are, the more I’ll adore you for it.
” I kiss her then, with all the tender longing in me, a gentle, chaste kiss that has her chasing after my mouth when I pull back.
I find her jaw and make eye contact when I speak.
“Give me your shame for the rest of the year, and I promise I’ll make a new world out of it. ”
We’re so close that her eyes have to move between mine as she hesitates, that adorable crinkle in her nose.
“I hope you can,” she finally says in a whisper. And then: “Okay, Ry.”
I give her the grin that makes her cheeks go pink and another gentle kiss. “Now, I do have two things I want to talk to you about…”