8. Hannah
8
HANNAH
E verything was fine until I walked into the living room.
I had woken up to sharp sunlight cracking through the curtain. Zack was gone but I hadn’t really expected him to stay, so after the smallest, silliest sinking of my stomach, I very firmly told myself that was fine. I would have to see him soon anyway to talk about the rodeo. And that was not going to be awkward at all, even though he had shot cum all over my chest. It would be perfectly fine. Really and truly.
Today was Sunday, my day off, and that was better than fine, and I had the whole day planned precisely to my liking, so it absolutely did not matter that Zack had rolled out of bed after that and left without saying a single solitary word. I didn’t care in the least. That hollow feeling in my stomach was simply a lack of food. I wrapped myself up in my thick, cozy robe and headed for the kitchen to make tea and breakfast.
And that’s when I realized everything was not fine.
Because Zack had not left. He was still here, naked except his boxers, his bare feet dangling off one end of my sofa, reading one of my books while he usurped the affections of four of my cats. And I did not feel fine about any of it. The sight of his bare chest and little Evie snuggled beneath his chin knocked me off kilter. Even St. Vincent, who was actually quite large and had been mistaken for a fox on more than one occasion, looked small curled up under one of Zack’s knees. Lillian and Daisy had made a black-and-white cuddle pile on his stomach.
A gorgeously made, mostly naked man was sprawled out on my couch, covered in cats and reading a romance book. It was as though a fantasy I’d never even known I’d possessed suddenly came to life in my living room.
How was I supposed to function? Form coherent sentences, have intelligent thoughts, be a contributing member of society? All I wanted to do was lick him like an ice cream cone.
“You’re awake,” he remarked in the exact same voice he had used to tell me I’ll be such a good boy , soft and rough all at the same time.
Honestly, how dare he.
I draped over the back of the couch, leaning on my elbow with my chin propped on my palm, and looked down at him in all his naked, cat-covered glory. “What are you doing?”
“Waiting for you, Hannah Bell.” His voice was still rough-soft, his smile slow and teasing. My stomach swooped. I was in danger of being very silly about this man. “Your cats were kind enough to keep me company. Except for that one.” He jerked his head in the direction of my gray tabby, Annabelle, who sat two feet away, her back turned to us and her tail flicking back and forth in high outrage. His eyes narrowed. “She doesn’t like me.”
He said it like he was annoyed about it, and I smothered a grin. “That’s Annabelle. I told you, she doesn’t like anyone.”
“Hmm. Now that’s a shame.”
He cupped his large hand over Evie’s small body in a long stroke down her back. She arched into his touch like a wave and I moved too, like I could feel his calloused fingers against my own spine.
“I’m not used to pussies giving me the cold shoulder. You think I can win her over someday?” He all but winked when he said it. His hand kept stroking, Evie kept purring, but suddenly I felt a lot less silly.
My spine snapped straight and I full on vibrated . “I am not frigid.”
Shock replaced all the teasing humor in his eyes. “I didn’t say?—”
“I know what you meant , Zack,” I said crisply. I spun on my toes and marched into the kitchen. “I have an English degree. I know a metaphor when I hear it. You weren’t talking about cats. You were talking about my vagina.”
I banged open a cabinet, grabbed a frying pan, and banged that onto the stove. I reached for a bowl so I could bang that too but instead found myself hauled backward against Zack’s hard, broad chest, his arms wrapped around my belly. His low laugh rumbled in my ear.
“ I don’t have an English degree. I don’t have a degree at all. Fuck, darlin’, I’ve had two concussions and if you ask either of my brothers, I didn’t start out with a whole lot of brain cells to begin with.” He laughed again, but I heard it this time. The anxiety that skirted along the edges. He used humor like a shield, but if he truly didn’t care, he wouldn’t have trapped me against his body so he could whisper every word into my ear.
“I was talking about your vagina, you’re right about that, but I wasn’t talking about its temperature. Hell, I don’t even believe in frigid, as it applies to women, and it damn sure doesn’t apply to you, either. I watched you come from fucking yourself with your fingers. I watched you spit on my cock. Frigid is the last thing I would call you. You’re a goddamn volcano.”
I wanted to believe him, to see myself the way he saw me, but his words couldn’t drown out all the voices in my head, of the men who had been personally offended that my body didn’t work the way they thought it should. “All right,” I said, mortified to be having this conversation at all, much less in the bright light of day before breakfast. “I’m going to make us omelets.”
I pressed forward and his arms gave way. I didn’t have to turn around to know he was still standing there, watching me. I could feel the heat of him against my back. The man was a self-sustaining furnace.
“You know, a lot of women can’t come from penetration alone,” he said easily, as though that was a perfectly normal conversation to have while making breakfast. “Most women need clit stimulation to get there.”
I shot him a baleful glance over my shoulder as I pulled eggs, milk, mushrooms, and spinach from the fridge. “Oh, really? Thank you,” I cooed. “I had no idea how my body worked, having only been living in it for a mere twenty-nine years. Thank goodness I have a man to explain it to me.”
“Yeah, okay.” He laughed ruefully and held his arms up in the universal I surrender pose. “I’m just saying, you don’t have to be shy with me. It’s a privilege to be naked with you, and there’s not a damn thing you could ask for that I wouldn’t say yes to. Tell me how you want to be touched and I’ll learn. Or hell, touch yourself while I’m inside you. That’s fucking hot.”
If only it were that easy. I shook my head and got to work cracking eggs. “I’ve tried that. More than once. It doesn’t work for me. I wish it did. You can’t even imagine how badly I want that. Do you know how it feels, to touch yourself with someone watching, to know that they’re depending on you to make it happen, and then you can’t? Even though it’s your own body, you just can’t? I’ll tell you how it feels, Zack. It feels awful. It’s humiliating. It’s?—”
To my absolute horror, my eyes burned with tears. I turned away quickly, swiping the sleeve of my robe across my face. Then I took a deep breath and whisked the eggs together with a splash of milk. I was not going to break down.
“Hey.” He took the whisk from me and nudged the bowl aside, then turned me around to face him. “Hey. You don’t have anything to feel bad about. I want to help you feel good, that’s all. However that happens for you is perfect. Okay? I’m sorry.”
“Oh, it’s not you. It was—” I waved a hand, not wanting to waste my breath on his name.
“I see.” Zack braced against the counter, bracketing my body with his muscular arms, and regarded me with narrowed eyes. “Darlin’, I’m going to need a name and his last known address.”
I snort-laughed in spite of myself. “That won’t be necessary. Really. He’s not in my life now, and it wasn’t really his fault, either. It’s me. I’m the problem.”
“You’re a lot of things, Hannah, but a problem isn’t one of them, and whoever made you think otherwise is an asshole.”
I fiddled with the belt of my robe, then sighed. “He was a jerk about it, but he wasn’t wrong. I can’t orgasm with another person. And it’s not because I don’t know how my body works, or because I’m too shy to ask for what I want.”
I didn’t know how to explain it, the overwhelming fear that took hold every time I became too aware of a man’s proximity to my body. My fight or flight instinct was broken, because I didn’t fight and I didn’t fly. I simply froze.
I chanced a peek at him and found his gaze intent on me. No judgment, just concern. It gave me the courage to keep going.
“It’s not for lack of trying, either. I’ve tried. Really. Different positions, different men. Relationships, a one-night stand. None of it worked. Sometimes I got close”— like last night, with you —“but then something would happen. We’d make eye contact or I’d feel his breath on my neck and…” I looked away again. “Suddenly I wasn’t safe. I mean, I was, of course. In reality, I wasn’t in any danger. But I didn’t feel safe.”
“Safe,” he echoed. His eyebrows drew together. “Hannah…”
The way he looked at me, I knew what he was thinking. What he was fearing. I’d had this conversation before with the therapist my brother, Jeremiah, sent me to while he was my guardian, and then again with another therapist I saw after I graduated college. I knew there was a connection between what had happened to me and how I felt during sex now, but knowing it didn’t seem to help me fix it.
“I wasn’t assaulted, Zack. It wasn’t like that.” Although it kind of was, but even with therapy, I never felt I had the right to claim it. I had never fought it. I had simply accepted it as uncontroverted fact that it was God’s plan for me. “I was married. When I was fourteen years old.”