Chapter 33 #2
“Oh fuck—” he gasps as he grabs the chain on his restraints and tries to stabilize himself as I pound him through his orgasm.
It sets me on fire when the sounds of his release issue from his perfect lips.
I pull out immediately when I realize the clench in my groin isn’t strain—it’s my own savage release. I’m coming with him.
I yank off the condom and hold tight to my throbbing cock as my cum shoots onto his hole, dripping down his sac as it continues to gush from me. It pools on his beautiful, spent dick, and I throw my head back, panting harshly, thanking God it’s over.
“Please,” I hear him whisper. “Please. Don’t make me say it. I don’t want to say it.”
Blinking out of my haze, I turn for his ankles first and let them go. When I get his hands free, he curls into a ball, facing away from me, and I feel the subtle rejection like a punch in the stomach.
I grab his water and put on pants before coming back to the bed. “Will you drink it?”
He reaches out and takes the bottle. “Sit down,” he mumbles.
I let out the breath I was holding and sink onto the mattress to sit beside him.
He puts his cheek on my thigh and lets out his own deep breath. “I can’t feel my body.”
“Can you feel mine?” I ask.
He wraps a hand around my calf and sighs again. “Yeah. Thank you, Gibson.”
I run my fingers through his sweaty hair. “You’re welcome, baby.”
His hand tightens, and I have to reckon with the fact that I just said something I’ve never said to anyone but my wife.
I brush my knuckles down his cheek and close my eyes. These feelings…when did they get so big?
“How are you doing?” I ask, checking in as I drag my fingers through his sweaty hair.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean…” I sigh, nervous but compelled to ask. “Are you finding what you need here? Still?”
“Do you still think you know what I need?” he asks.
“That’s one of the reasons I’m asking.”
His hand moves back and forth over my right pec, making my nipple hard. “I wonder sometimes if part of me died with her.”
I shut my eyes, understanding deeply what a raw and real thing that is to admit.
“Like I just feel numb. Invisible. I have all these disjointed thoughts, and they’re angry or sad or filthy or whatever, but none of them unstick me. Like I’m still just lying there oblivious thinking she’s asleep.”
His words land like lead in my chest. I try to decipher the meaning of them, piece them together into something I can comprehend, but he goes on.
On Tuesday when he spoke about Trinity it was more of a rant about what her church had done with her—the personality changes he blamed on them.
It had very little to do with him or his feelings, more of a diatribe on purity culture and the damage it does to young women.
He railed against the unfairness of it all, and I didn’t disagree.
Emilia has a similar story about her own upbringing, but she’d been able to grow up, get away. Her faith is unshakeable, but she took total autonomy over her body, which even she’ll admit was a response to being told it was sinful.
“You know there’s no way you could have known, don’t you?” I ask softly.
“I was half asleep, too,” he says. “But you know how it goes, right? What if I had been paying more attention? What if I asked what kind of sleeping pills they were, and looked it up? What if I knew better and watched her closer instead of just being lazy and falling asleep?”
“You were just a tired kid.”
His body shudders against mine, and he lets out a choked sob. I move my hand to his cheek to wipe his tears. It doesn’t last long. Only a few minutes pass before he’s speaking again. “Pain makes more sense when it’s physical. Suffering feels like the least I can do.”
“For her? For God?” I ask.
“For me.”
I hate hearing that. “Is it helping?”
“Yeah,” he whispers.
“How?”
“I’m starting to understand my limits, I think. Not in terms what I can handle physically—I mean, that too—but the restraints…being helpless…just a reminder I guess that I can’t control everything.”
“And no one expects you to,” I add.
“Yeah. True. There’s something comforting about that. Knowing my body—like this thing I’m trapped in—it’s vulnerable, and no matter how hard my brain works, there’s only so much control I have over what I’m feeling before I break.”
“Where does God fit into all this?” I ask.
“I’m not sure. I’m starting to think He’s got nothing to do with it. God may be something else entirely.”
I can’t pretend to understand all the places Christian’s mind goes, but I do love his openness, and sometimes I even get what he means—if not intellectually, then on a gut level. “I think you might be onto something.”
“Come with me,” he says, his hand pausing over my breastbone.
“Hm?”
“Tomorrow. Come with me.”
“Ask me again in an hour if you still want that,” I tell him.
“I’ve wanted you to come. This isn’t new.”
I make myself swallow, choked up suddenly. “What will Drew think?” I ask to buy us both some time.
“Drew’s all up to date,” he says, surprising me. “He gives it another two weeks max.”
I huff. “Good to know.”
“How long do you give it?” he asks.
“I’m not the one who’s relationship averse,” I remind him.
“No, I guess you’re not. But tell me anyway.”
“As long as you want,” I say, which is a cop out, but I don’t want to scare him with forever. I can’t think of another word for what I’d like, though. Maybe always? I’m quite attached, which, given all the time we’ve spent together over the last two and a half weeks, I doubt he’s missed.
“I’m not the one who’s married,” he says, as if I could forget.
I wish I could ask him what difference it makes to him, whether I’m married or not. He and I haven’t tried to hide our—whatever this is. I spend nearly every free second with him. My marriage may be an emotional drain on me, but it’s no hindrance to this. To us.
But now’s not the time to bring it up. He’s still in the fetal position.
“How are you feeling?” I ask, sidestepping the wife issue and the Hamptons. “Physically.”
“Fucked up,” he says.
“More than usual?”
“I feel like if I sit up, I might pass out.”
“Drink the water.”
He takes a pitifully insufficient sip. I grab the edge of the comforter and pull it over his naked body, annoyed it took me so long to remember to warm him up.
Our scenes are intense. Since we got back from Rome, this is only our fourth.
And each time, I find myself sinking deeper and deeper into a different space in my own mind.
I’m more emotional, certainly, and attached as I’ve mentioned, but my recovery time is longer.
The fact that I need recovery time is, in itself, a new phenomenon, but I’ve certainly done everything I can to keep him around while I process all the tumultuous emotions our scenes bring up.
I’ve yet to get him to spend the entire night with me, such that we wake up together. On Tuesday, he fell asleep, only to be gone when I woke.
Since he did the thing I wanted and asked me to be his plus one in the Hamptons, I figure I can ask him for something, too. “Stay the night?”
“In here?”
“Is there someplace else you’d rather go?”
“My place. Yours.”
Sleeping in my apartment means the possibility of hearing Marianne entertain, which is something I’ve never relished.
Less so, now that Avery’s been coming around more often.
I haven’t seen anyone else doing the morning walk of shame since that one time, but I’ve also never left Marianne alone in the apartment at night.
Someone is always with her. “Forget it,” I sigh.
“I don’t want to forget it,” he says. “I don’t mind spending the night with you.”
“Well…if you don’t mind…”
“You know what I mean.”
I don’t, though. I’m far too entrenched in what I want him to mean.
He lifts his head. His cheeks are pale, drained of all color, and his eyes are still feverishly bright and bloodshot from crying. Those eyes…they may as well be a battering ram aimed at my chest for all the damage they do. “Do you want me to stay or not?”
“I asked.”
“You drive me nuts, you know?”
“Yes,” I say. “You’ve mentioned it.”
“Fine, I’ll stay here if this is your safe space.”
“I should pop you in the mouth.”
“I do not consent to that,” he murmurs, scooting up in the bed to put his arms around me and rest his head on my chest. When he slings his leg over my lap, my dick reacts.
His favorite cuddling position invariably leads to sex, and I’ve developed a Pavlovian response to the feel of his soft cock on my thigh. It never stays soft long.
He takes a longer sip of water, hands me the bottle to set down, and settles against me. My fingertips skim his side as my heart thuds beneath his cheek. Remembering to breathe is a challenge.
“Wait—you have a house in The Hamptons, don’t you?” he asks.
“Mmhm.”
“Would you rather stay there?”
“I think Marianne’s planning to be there, so no. I told her I was staying here.”
“You lied?” he asks.
I shrug.
His hand moves up my neck and gives me goosebumps. “Why lie?” he asks. “Would she not be okay with this?”
“It isn’t that. It’s a matter of privacy. I don’t need her input on my personal life. She might assume too much if I told her about this.”
“Like what?”
“Like…” I fumble for the right words. “Like…it’s something…else.”
Christian cradles my jaw, tilting my face downward to look at him. “Do you know what I want?” he asks.
I nod.
“Then what are you waiting for?”
Our mouths meet in a long, full kiss that really does feel like something else.