Chapter 9 Você Sente… #2
"And then…Rafael came home from a business trip, and he wanted what he wanted, and he got it, as always. And he…he was violent. Very, very violent. The details of that night will go with me to my grave, like the details of my time in that cell. Some things cannot be spoken of."
"I know," he whispers.
“I was left a ruin again. It took weeks to recover. Maybe even months—time is hard to measure when you’re delirious from agony. The pain…such pain, Lorenzo." My eyes burn as I try to force away the memories. Instead, however, they roll through me. I see the things he did, and I let them exist.
I wallow in them.
I am wracked with sobs so violent I nearly vomit.
He holds me through it all.
Eventually, I recover enough to continue. And I feel….lighter, yet again. As if the ocean of acidic nightmare within me is reduced yet again, dwindling with each exorcism until it’s nearly nothing.
"He impregnated me, that day. Neither of us realized it until I missed three periods.
My cycle was never the same after the rapes.
I still had them, they were just irregular.
But when I missed three, and when I started getting sick at the sight of certain foods, I knew.
I didn't tell him. I didn't tell anyone. "
I sigh, swallow, continue.
"He came to me a few months later, after being away on business for a very long time, and I was…
big." I make a rounding motion over my belly.
"That earned me a reprieve from his attentions for the rest of the pregnancy.
I relished it. And…plotted. The hate was so…
much, so hot yet also so cold. So vicious and dark and powerful that I couldn't…
I couldn't live with it anymore. And I knew the birth would be the end of the reprieve.
I couldn't go back to taking his vile abuse.
And the staff…the pity when they saw me waddling around the estate…
the laughter, the disgust. They didn't understand how I could let a man like Rafael have me.
They thought I…they didn't know. But I didn't see that. I was blinded by hate and rage."
"Sophia, my love—”
"Almost done, Ren." He kisses my crown, and I let the rest tumble out.
"I came to hate the staff as much as I did Rafael.
I planned to escape with the baby, and I was willing to do whatever I had to in order to get away.
I didn't plan what actually happened. I went into labor early.
I wasn't ready. The midwife wasn’t there.
My water broke and there were no drugs. It was just me alone on the bed, screaming, in agony, terrified that my child would die, or turn into Rafael, or…
or be taken away. That I'd die before I could murder Rafael.
" I choke, swallow. "As a man, you cannot fathom what it feels like.
I don't know if you have ever witnessed a woman giving birth, but we are not always exactly…
rational…under the best of circumstances.
And I was far, far from rational. The midwife showed up when I was about to actually give birth.
And thank god for her, or I would have lost him.
He was twisted, and she…she knew what to do.
" I shake my head, sniffle. "I regret her death, too, even though she was a mean, spiteful woman. Hers and the stableboy, most of all."
A brief silence.
"I was so…mad, so crazed, with rage and hate and pain and the hormones of birth….I don’t know. I just snapped. I've told you the rest." Another pause. "I was eighteen when my father put me in that cell, and I was twenty-eight when I slaughtered Rafael's staff."
"Sophia, I…"
I turn in his arms so I can wrap my arms around his neck and bury my face in his throat, feel his pulse thrum against my nose. "There's nothing to say, Ren. That is who I am. I spent the next ten years hiding from all of that. Letting it all harden inside me like…" I shake my head. "I don't know."
"I have heard of a rare medical condition," Lorenzo says. "A woman becomes pregnant, but it isn't…viável."
“Viable," I offer the English word.
"Yes, viable. I am upset for you and….yes." He sighs, clears his throat. "Instead of miscarrying, the dead fetus stays inside the woman and fossilizes, essentially. It hardens into this thing. Calcifies, I think the word is. It makes her sick, after some time. I think that is what you mean."
I nod. "Yes. Exactly like that. And I had to get it out. With the girls. With you."
"Thank you for sharing that with me," Lorenzo says.
Silence for a while then. My eyes are heavy, and I feel Lorenzo's breathing grow slow and deep. "Are you still awake?" I ask.
"Mmmm. Um pouco."
"Earlier," I whisper. "What we did. What I…wanted you to…to do."
He stirs, clears his throat, coming more awake. "Mmmm-hmmm?"
"Was it…was I…" I swallow hard. "I don't know how to say it."
"You feel self-conscious," he guesses.
I roll a shoulder, answering in English because it's what comes easiest, at this point. "I…yes, I suppose so. I don't know what came over me." I can't help but snort. "Don't say it."
He chuckles. "I don't think I need to." He’s still talking in Portuguese.
"I just…I don't know who that woman was, Ren. Saying those things, doing those things. It was almost like an out-of-body experience."
He's quiet for a while, considering his response.
Or just trying not to fall asleep. "Sophia, that was…
so fucking sexy." His half-asleep brain is drifting back and forth from one language to the other at random.
"I know you have to be Inez, still, at times.
But in private with me? Be that woman, the Sophia from yesterday.
Don't be embarrassed or self-conscious. Nothing we do together can be wrong or bad or disgusting, as long as we both want it and enjoy it.
I love you. I am honored that you trust me so much as to offer your body to me.
Your heart. Your past. Everything you are, you are trusting to me.
That is the most precious and priceless gift I could ever receive. "
"Can I ask you a personal question?"
He laughs. "Sophia, I have no secrets from you."
"Have you ever done that? What we did?" I clear my throat. "The part where you…you know. On me."
He curls me closer and kisses my temple. "No. That was a first for me. It's not something I would normally think of doing."
"Why not? I'm just curious."
"The few other lovers or partners I've had aside from you—and they are very, very few—things were more geared to getting to actual sex. The occasional handjob, but that was just to get me ready for sex. Or a blowjob, sometimes just for the sake of it and other times as part of foreplay."
"Ren, I promise I will get there. I just don't know—"
He cuts me off with a finger over my lips, leans over me, eyes glittering in the gloom. "Hush, my love. What has come before for me is irrelevant. I have no expectations, truly I don't."
“But you have to want—"
"You. I want you. I want to share my life with you.
I want to share my body with you. I want the intimacy of sex with you.
But if intercourse isn't possible—if it is too frightening, too triggering, I will be perfectly and utterly happy with anything you are comfortable with.
" He sighs slowly. "To put it bluntly, ejaculation feels great, yes.
But if all I wanted was to ejaculate, I would just jerk off, as I have done for years.
What I want, what I care about, is sharing experiences with you.
I'm not overly concerned with whether I come, or how, or where, really.
And to be honest—because this can only work if we are both honest—yes, I do hope you become comfortable with intercourse.
It is the deepest source of intimacy, the closest connection two people can share.
But Sophia, my love, if we get there at all, it will be in your time and in your way.
Just communicate with me. Tell me or show me what you want and what you need.
If you can't find the words, if you are too nervous or scared to say it out loud, that's okay.
Find a way to show me. All I want is your love, however you feel comfortable giving it to me. "
My eyes burn and my heart threatens to swell and crack beyond the confines of my ribcage. "My god, I love you so much."
"That's all I need."
I nuzzle his jaw—some small, bitter, cynical, absurd part of me feels ridiculous and self-conscious at showing that kind of affection—at all, to anyone.
It scares me nearly to panic being so vulnerable with him, showing him the softness in me.
I've had to be so hard and so cold for so long, it's hard to relinquish the impulse to protect myself by walling off and controlling my emotions.
As if to prove to myself that I can conquer those demons, too—the ones that demand isolation and hardness and icy self-control and emotional rigidity—I dive deeper into softness, into affection.
Into femininity. Not that softness, gentleness, or affection are the purview of women only. It's just…alien to me.
I nuzzle his jaw with my nose, my lips. Palm his cheek and caress his beard, scratch delicately with my fingernails. Press ghost-soft kisses to his cheeks, his nose, his upper lip, his brow, his ear, his chin.
He rumbles, a low, happy growl. "Soph…" his voice is tight with emotion. "Love that. So much."
I bury my face in the side of his throat, let my eyes grow heavy, let them shutter closed. Focus on the safety of Lorenzo's arms around me. On the love between us.
I fall asleep again, and there are no dreams, no panic.