by Trixie More
“Nothing you do causes me pain,” she said, and she rose above him, positioning him and waited. “Do it,” she said.
She was killing him, offering him everything and nothing. Tonight was his last night with her, and that made up his mind. He gripped her slender waist, lifting his face as if to look up at her. He wished he could see her eyes.
“Okay?” she asked.
Doug nodded.
Sophia impaled herself on his cock while Doug wrapped his arms around her narrow back and held on.
“I didn’t want to love you,” she said and kissed his face.
“No, of course not,” he agreed.
Sophia bit his ear.
“Don’t interrupt,” she said. She sucked on his neck. “But I can’t help it.”
She stroked his neck. Pressing down on his shoulders, she lifted, slipped down again.
“Tell me,” she said.
What did she want to know? What was she asking?
“You don’t need me to tell you who you are,” he said, and he reached up and took her, drawing her mouth to his, sliding his tongue against hers, consuming her and consumed by her. She set the pace, and he pushed to keep up.
Faster and faster, she rode him, and he was helping her, used his hands on her waist to keep the rhythm as she started to falter. “God, Sophia.” There was no stopping now. His balls drew up tight.
“Gah. Sophia.” He pushed his head back, his neck tight as she used him to orgasm, her body shuddering around his cock, grabbing him by the soul and running off with everything he’d been, taking his sperm, his mind, his very essence, bringing him newly into the world.
“Sophia!” Doug tried to keep back the words, but they erupted as his orgasm shook him. “I’m not sorry. I’m not sorry for us.”
He was leaving, but not yet. Sophia leaned against his sweat-drenched chest and listened to Doug’s heart.
“You’re going to be the death of me,” he groaned into her hair.
“I love you,” she said.
He exhaled.
“It’s okay. You don’t have to say it,” Sophia said.
Doug sighed. She sunk lower as his breath left him; warm, warm arms came around her. The man was a furnace.
“Whoever says it second is always at a disadvantage,” he muttered, sounding disgruntled. He squeezed Sophia hard.
“Ow,” she squeaked. Doug slackened his hold on her.
“Sophia Moss, you are the only woman in the world I’ll ever love. As long as I live, you are my one and only.”
She raised her eyebrows. Impressive, but then this man had said it first, the night of the explosion.
“Not so disadvantaged,” she said. She played with the fine dusting of pale hair on Doug’s chest. “I’m going to tell Edward Walker tomorrow.”
The gentle squeeze he gave her set her at ease.
“I understand,” was all Doug gave her.
He shifted beneath her.
She licked his nipple. “Do you like that?”
His grunt was noncommittal.
She sucked on him. His hips bucked. “What about that?”
He pinched her nipple, hard, and she clenched. Huh. Perhaps she wasn’t frigid.
Doug huffed out a strangled sound. “What?”
Oh, had she said that out loud?
“I used to think I was frigid. I told you that.” She glanced at his face.
Stunned, bemused, there were other words for the expression. Doug’s brows were up in his hairline. “Maybe I’m not.”
“How long ago did you think this?”
She considered. When had she and Ben broken up?
“Right up until I met you.”
“You are not frigid.” He shook his head. “No way.”
She humphed and went back to testing out all the places he liked to be touched. She kissed the inside of his elbow. “What about that?”
A warm hand slid over her ass, a finger resting on that place. She held her breath at the slight pressure against her anus.
“What about that?” he said.
“Maybe…,” she said, considering. “If we had about two years to ease into it.”
The finger prodded her again, and she had a fierce urge to ram her hand between her legs and rub.
“I think you should eat me,” she said. Who knew she could be like this? It felt so natural. “Why don’t you like me to tell you you’re good?”
“I think I should eat you.”
She slapped his abdomen.
“You’re not going to punch me, are you?”
She laughed, just a bit.
“Tell me.”
His chest heaved again. “I lived with a woman.”
Jealousy took precisely zero minutes to assert itself. Sophia was so loose and disjointed and relaxed that she felt odd like she was watching a movie of a woman being jealous.
“Maybe you should eat me,” she said.
“Janice,” Doug said.
“I hate her, I think.”
“I did, too, for a while.” Doug looked thoughtful.
“No more?”
“I don’t hate anyone,” he said.
“Not even yourself?” she whispered.
He paused, the finger slid away from her bottom, and his arms wrapped around her.
“No,” he said. “I did for a long time.” He paused again. “I don’t think I can hate myself if you love me.”
The sharp tingle in her nose and tightening of her throat surprised Sophia. She wasn’t one to cry, was she?
“Anyway, she used to praise me during sex.”
Sophia sniffed. “Sounds terrible,” she tried. He didn’t laugh.
“The last time we were together, I’d just realized that Dorothy knew my secret. I used to feel so attached to Helen and Carl. I wanted them to have been my parents.”
“Dorothy’s parents? Huh.”
“I felt,” he hesitated, looking at the ceiling, rubbing her back absently, “…lost. I knew nobody would ever forgive me once they found out what had happened with Walker. I came home, and the sky was scarlet. The sun was setting. I couldn’t take my eyes off that sunset.”
He seemed to come back to himself.
“I came out of the shower and overheard her talking to her best friend. I felt so much affection for her at that moment. I heard her telling her friend I worked at it. I knew she meant sex. I thought it was a good thing. And then she said I was richer than Croesus. All she had to do was let me bang her. She said I was just dying for praise.” He closed his eyes.
“Oh, Doug,” she said quietly.
“Yeah, well,” he said, opening his eyes, his voice harsh. “Janice laughed. She said I acted like banging her and eating her made me special. She said, ‘Well, I’m good. So good that tonight he cried.’”
He huffed out a breath. “Yeah. I don’t know. That, that just tore me up. I threw Janice out that night. Tommy...” Doug stopped. “Oh, God. Tommy drove her to her mother’s. He was always there for me. Sophia, I…”
There weren’t any words. Sophia had no words for him. So she reached up and pulled his mouth to hers, sliding her tongue into his mouth, trying to tell him something without language. It didn’t work. She needed the damn words.
“You are good.”
“Sophia...” His voice held a warning.
“You are. You’ve done some bad things.”
He turned his face away from her, his body tight.
“Look at me.” She continued in the face of his disapproval. “You’ve done some bad things, and the ones that were crimes, you should pay for.” He crossed his arms over his chest, pushing her off of him as he did so.
“But.” She pulled at his face. It was like trying to turn a mountain. “But, you’ve done so many wonderful things. You’ve cared for your sisters, your mother. You saved Alice’s life for heaven’s sake.” Her voice went soft. “You saved mine.”
He turned to her, kissing her, running his hands over her body, showing her over and over h
ow he felt. Sophia loved every minute of their silence.
It was deep into the morning hours when she told him. They’d been sleeping, Sophia with her head on his chest, a cooling wet patch near his ribs where a tiny bit of water pooled beside her mouth. Doug thought the intimacy of that small indignity would be the wrecking of him. As he lay there feeling her breathing softly, Doug memorized the weight of her on his breastbone. He drank in the feel of her slender arm around his waist and the smell that was them together and relived the rhythm of her in the night. He thought this blissful pain was what would break him, but there was worse to come.
It began with her head twisting, side to side, and then she was awake. He felt her eyelashes flutter against his skin, and he tightened his arms around her, willing her to stay as she was. She pushed herself up, straightening her arms and looking down at him. He could barely make out the shape of her, but Sophia must have seen his eyes were open.
With a slow movement, she rose from the bed. Doug heard her moving about, and he waited for her to leave the room. Instead, she stayed. She was not in bed with him, so she had to be in the chair across the room. He sat up in bed.
“Sophia?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”
If sadness could fill a room, then that’s what was happening. Doug sensed the coming disruption in his bones, the way he noticed the sluggish reluctance in the market before the bottom fell out.
“Sophia?” Doug moved to the edge of the bed, dropping his feet to the floor.
“Don’t get up,” she whispered. Doug stood anyway.
“I’m serious.”
He sat at the end of the bed, finding his shorts and tugging them on before he sat. Sophia was only a few feet from him. He could get to her quickly if she needed that. He waited.
“When I was thirteen, I was assaulted.”
The words.
“No,” he said.
She was looking away, her voice directed towards the window and the terrible night.
“I’m OK,” she said.
I’m not, he thought.
“It was a long time ago.”
Not for him. His head was turning as if he could find her assailant here in the room.
“I was at a fair. My girlfriend, she wanted, well...” Sophia hesitated. “He followed me behind a building. I was so frightened.”
“Sophia.” It wasn’t possible, not Sophia. That young, she would have been all elbows and eyes.
“I felt stunned,” she said. “I couldn’t move.”
“You ran,” he whispered his hope.
“I couldn’t. I was frozen; I couldn’t even speak.”
Her words clanged inside him, leaving him helpless and adrift. His chest felt tight, his throat closed.
“He pushed his fingers into my underwear, into me,” she said while her voice trembled. “I wasn’t ready, and it burned.”
There was no one to fight, nothing he could do for her.
“And then Ben appeared.”
“I hope he beat the guy.”
She must have looked at him finally; her voice drifted towards him again. “I was alone when he found me.”
Good God. How had she got free, what else had happened?
“I just want you to know,” she said, her voice full of an emotion he couldn’t name, “this thing I have to do, turning you in, it’s...”
He didn’t let her finish; didn’t think he could stand it. Somehow, he’d caused this pain. Like some karmic wheel of hell, here was his crime, back again.
“I don’t know what to say,” he whispered, shame filling him. “I don’t know what to do.”
“It’s not about you, Doug,” she said. Of course, it wasn’t. So very little in the world was. The man he’d been seemed a long way back.
“Sophia...” A howling uselessness blew through him. He was the one who solved things, settled the score, paid the rent. Not now.
Across the room, the woman he loved more than freedom, more than money, lifted her head.
“I never told anyone that,” she said.
Give her something, damn you, he thought.
“You survived it.”
“I did,” she said, he could hear a sad smile in her voice.
“You shouldn’t have had to,” he said.
She moved. “I don’t think that helps.”
Here was something he understood. “Sometimes, it’s better just to start where you’re at.”
“Yes,” she said. “I can’t pretend I don’t know what happened between you and Ed.”
Of course, she couldn’t. Doug knew that, just like he knew that there was no hope for him. This woman was his perfect match, and she would never be his. “I know.”
Before the moonlit window, she sat, holding herself stiff and apart.
“I’m glad you told me.”
“Are you?”
“Hell no,” he said, and Sophia chuckled.
“But I am glad you decided to talk to me.” He felt her attention on him, heard how shallowly she breathed. Despite all his sins, she still trusted him.
“To me, it’s already done. You’re faultless.” Her arms moved; she had them wrapped around herself.
“Surely, you see that?” Silence. Her fingers twitched in the gloom.
“I made mistakes. I took my anger out on Ed, my fear out on Dorothy. These things can’t be forgiven. Soph, they just can’t. You’re a prosecutor. You have to tell someone what I’ve told you. There’s no way out of that, but don’t make this about you. I’m a grown man. I knew exactly who I was confessing to. I knew what was I was doing.”
Her voice was a whisper. “Do you see why I can’t be quiet?”
Damn chair. Why hadn’t Sophia sat on the bed? Doug leaned forward, trying to push the understanding into her just by looking at her.
“You’re conflating these. What happened to you, horrible, it’s horrible. It makes me want to hit something, but you’re not that silent girl anymore. Not by a long shot.”
“I have to betray you.”
“So dramatic.” He shook his head. “It has nothing to do with you.”
“You don’t hate me?”
He closed his eyes, the dull ache familiar now. When he opened them, she was still there. “No. No way. I love you.”
He stood. “Can I come over there now?”
Sophia stood and then she graced him with the chance just to hold her.
Chapter 36
He was long gone before she found the note he’d left her, already on his way to Florida, when she watched the video.
My dearest Sophia,
I love you more than I can say. Even more than I love you, I admire you. I am in awe of your ability to stay strong in the face of all the things that make it so difficult to be honest, to do what’s right. I always knew you would have to share my confession. It’s the right thing to do. I’ve had the benefit of your moral integrity, and I understand the gift of it, the beauty of it.
No matter how old you are, no matter what time does to your body, you will always be the most beautiful woman in any room. Your strength and integrity are the true source of your abundant and endless beauty, so you, my love, are always timeless.
Know that I don’t regret a single minute. Know that you are not responsible for anything that happens to me from this moment forward. I’ve made my own confession to Edward, and I’ve finally gained a sense of peace that I never had before.
I’m poor now, but I won’t be for long. I’m not a nice man, but I am very determined and very lucky, and I’m tough enough to withstand anything that happens to me now. You’ve made me that way, and I thank you.
All my love, all of it, to you.
Yours,
Doug
Derrick and Ben were grunting and cursing as they carried the ready to assemble furniture up to Ben’s apartment, soon to be her apartment, so Marley took Karito in to see Allison.
“I can’t believe I’m going to be working with you and living one floor below you,” Allison said. S
he didn’t sound all that happy. In fact, she sounded like she was about to hand Marley a list of rules. Another list of rules. “Hi, Karito.”
“At least you sound happy to see my girl,” Marley said. “An’ I don’t want any bossy stuff out of you aroun’ here.”
Allison raised her eyebrows, her face disbelieving. “Did you just say that to me?”
Marley flipped her hair back. “I’m just as much here as you.”
“You mean you have just as much right to live here as I do,” Allison corrected her. Marley could always count on Allie.
“You said it.”
Allison laughed. “Oh, what are we going to do? We can’t be together all the time! We’ll kill each other.”
“Don’ worry, chica. I’m never going to see you here.”
“Why?”
Marley smiled, happiness blooming through her body like it always did when she thought of her new life. She leaned in close and shook her head from side to side, looking Allison in the eyes. “Because I’m gonna be making that man out there so happy every minute, I won’t have time to see you.”
Allison smiled widely, and Marley gave her a huge hug.
“Stop that!”
“I love you!” Marley said. She loved everyone today.
“Of course, you do,” said Allie. “I love you too. Now let me go.”
She bussed her boss’s cheek and turned to Karito. “Are they done yelling out there?”
“They’re talking nice now,” her daughter said, her sparkly sneakers dancing on the tile. “Can we go up?”
“Yes. We’re going up now. Bye, Allie!”
“Bye, Allie!” sang Karito, and together they went up to see the results of their day’s shopping.
The guest room was painted pale purple, and the men were studying a pile of white pieces of wood. A bed, a dresser, and a big oval mirror all waiting to be assembled. A perfect princess room for her little girl. She beamed at Ben. Her man looked up at her, sweat on his face, and grinned back.
“You better have a nice meal for me tonight,” he said. “I’m working up an appetite here.”
Marley walked over where he was kneeling, sorting out screws and whatnot. She trailed her fingers over his shoulders.