"If this is your rage, Anita, it's awful. It's worse than almost anything I've ever felt. It's like being crazy. So angry, almost all the time. I can't believe it's something that was in you."
"Not past tense, Richard, trust me. I had to embrace what I operate on a long time ago."
"What you operate on, what does that mean?"
"It means that at the heart of me, is this deep, seething, bottomless, pit of pure rage. Maybe I came with it. I know my mother's death helped fill it up. But as far back as I can remember, it's been there."
He shook his head. "You're just saying this to make me feel better."
"Why would I say something that wasn't true just to make you feel better?"
Anger filled his eyes, like magic. One moment trustworthy brown, the next moment serial killer dark. "Thank you, thank you very much, for reminding me that I don't mean shit to you anymore."
I shook my head, and let my hands fall into my lap. "If you meant nothing to me, Richard, nothing at all, we wouldn't be in this room alone."
"You're right, you're right. I'm sorry. I just get so angry, so angry." He tried to rub his arms, but the bloody scrapes hurt.
"You said you wanted to lick the wounds, go ahead. It won't bother me."
"It will bother me," he said.
"No, Richard, licking your wounds would make you feel better. You'd enjoy it, and that's what bothers you. Not the wanting to do it, but how good it feels when you give in to it."
He nodded, staring at his hands. "I tried to embrace my beast, Anita. I really tried."
"I felt you feeding on a deer. I felt how happy you were in wolf form. It felt like you had embraced it."
"When I'm in animal form, yes. But it's being human on the outside, and not human on the inside that gets me confused."
"Does it get you confused, or Clair?"
He gave me a look that wasn't exactly angry. "I thought you didn't hear the fight."
"I got one word when she was screaming at you— animal. Am I wrong? Was she complaining about herself and her beast?"
"No, you got it exactly right." He laid his hands in his own lap, and his eyes were back to being sad, like someone had hit a switch. Angry, sad, angry, sad. It was like some sort of demonic baby hormones. "She accused me of raping her." His voice was soft when he said it.
I gave him very wide eyes and let just how impossible I thought the idea was to show in my face.
He gave a very small smile. "Just the look on your face now is worth something. You don't believe it, just like that, you don't believe I could do that to her."
"I don't believe you would do that to any woman, but that's beside the point."
"No," he said, and his voice sounded more relaxed than it had since he entered the room, "that's not beside the point, not for me. After what a bastard I've been to you, that you still believe in me, that means a lot."
I wasn't sure what to say to that. If I agreed that he'd been a bastard would that start a fight? If he thought I believed in him, was that going to give him the wrong idea? I mean, not believing that Richard would rape someone didn't mean that much to me. He was a decent person, that's all.
"I'm glad it makes you feel better, but remember, I saw the beginning of the lovemaking session. You can't rape the willing, Richard."
His eyes looked haunted, as if there was something I'd missed. "She said that I always make love like it's rape."
That made my eyebrows go up again. "Excuse me? Tell that to me slowly, because it made no sense fast."
He looked up at me, and there was something in his eyes, some demand, something he wanted me to say, or do, but I didn't know what. "Do you mean that?"
"I mean, explain what she meant by it."
"She said, I'm always so rough, that it's like rape. That I don't know how to make love, that I only know how to fuck." His eyes looked raw, as if the pain in them had been skinned naked to shine out of his face. It hurt me to see it, but I didn't look away. I gave him my eyes and let him see what I thought of what Clair had said.
"Is she still your girlfriend?"
"I don't think so."
"Good, because I'd hate to say she's crazy if you were still going to date her."
"Why is she crazy?" he asked.
"What kind of head job has she done on you, Richard? Rape isn't a word that anyone should use lightly."
"She didn't use it lightly," Richard said, and the small smile was bitter. "She meant it."
"How?"
He looked at me, and the pain was still raw. "Did I ever hurt you when we were together?"
I started to ask, "emotionally, or physically?" then decided to just ask, "You mean physically?"
"I mean did I hurt you when we made love?" He shook his head. "I'm sorry to ask you this. I don't have a right to ask, but I didn't know who else to ask. I knew you wouldn't lie, because I was your Ulfric, or because you didn't want to hurt my feelings. I knew that if I asked, you would give me a real answer."
I looked at him and hoped I didn't look as amazed as I was feeling. After everything we'd done to each other, all the fights, the hurts, and he still trusted me. He trusted me not to lie, not to make it worse than it was, or better than it was, but to tell the truth. I wasn't sure if I was flattered or insulted. I decided to be flattered, because anything else would have pissed me off. But the amount of trust he was putting in me scared me, not for me personally, because he was right, I'd give him the truth. But a lot of people wouldn't. A lot of people would have used it as an excuse to twist the knife a little deeper. He was damned lucky I wasn't one of those people.
I opened my mouth, closed it, stroked my hands down the silk of the robe, and finally had to look away from those pain-filled eyes while I tried to think how to answer. Not truth or lie, but how to say it.
He stood up, suddenly, abruptly. "That's alright, I shouldn't have asked."
"Sit back down, Richard. I'm just trying to think how to say it, so it doesn't sound stupid."
He stood there, his face all set to be angry, as if he didn't believe me.
"Fine, stay standing, but you asked if you'd ever hurt me when we made love, right?"
He nodded.
"Yes, and no."
The scowl turned into a frown. "What does that mean, 'yes and no'?"
"It means that Mother Nature has made it almost impossible for you to be anything but rough, unless you're very careful."
He frowned harder. "I don't understand."
Of course he didn't, of course he would make this as embarrassing as possible. "Richard, you are aware that you're well-endowed, right?" I felt the blush start creeping up my neck, and there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it. I'd always blushed fairly easily, but I'd seldom hated it as much as I did in that moment.
"Raina said I was. It was one of the reasons she wanted me for the movies."
"You didn't know you were large before Raina?"
It was his turn to blush. "I was a virgin before Raina."
I shivered, and the look on his face was so raw, that I said out loud, "The thought of a virgin with Raina is just frightening. She was one very sick puppy."
He nodded. "I know that, now."
"Did you know it at the beginning with her?" I asked.
"I didn't have anything to compare it to," he said.
I had an idea. Raina had been his first lover, and Raina had been into sadomasochism on a scale that made a joke out of safe, sane, and consensual. She'd done porn, hell, snuff films. She'd been one of the scariest and most twisted people I'd ever met, and I'd met a lot. Richard had nothing to compare it to, what exactly did that mean?
I tried to lead up to it, obliquely, my version of subtle. I went back to my original point. "You're big, Richard, which means when you're making love, unless you're careful it can hurt."
"I did hurt you," he said, and he sounded desolate.
"I didn't say that."
"Yes, you did."
"Richard, listen to what I'm actually saying
, don't editorialize in your own head, okay?" I stood, so I could pace. This was not a conversation for sitting still.
"I'll try," he said.
"Good enough." I came to stand in front of him and tried again. "A lot of women don't like their cervix bumped during sex."
He gave me that puzzled frown again. How did I end up giving my ex-fiancé sex education? How does anyone end up in these kinds of conversations? Just unlucky, I guess.
"If you go too deep, you reach the end of most women. You bump into the end of the vagina, you hit their cervix."
He nodded, then said, "I always come to the end."
I made a voilà gesture. "That's my point."
"What's your point?"
I put hands on hips because either he was being deliberately obtuse, or he really wasn't getting it. "You're big enough that you always bump someone's cervix if you're in a position that allows all of your... penis to go inside her. I can't be any plainer, Richard, so please make the connection here."
"You mean it hurts them," he said.
"Yes."
"It hurt you," he said.
"No. I like having my cervix bumped. I have a whole different kind of orgasm from it, so I don't mind."
He was frowning again, but more like he was thinking. "You're saying that if you didn't like it, that it would hurt."
"It would just hurt," I said, "because in some positions, with someone as well-endowed as you are, it is a sort of pain. But for me, and I'm betting for Raina, it was more pleasure than pain." I hated putting myself in any category that contained Raina, but I would have bet good money that I was right.
"I hurt you, but I didn't?"
I sighed. "Look, this is an area that I've only recently embraced myself. Sometimes my pain and pleasure centers get confused. What would hurt most people feels good to me, at least during sex." It was my confession, so I didn't have to meet his eyes, since it was my pain and not his.
"Me, too," he said.
I looked at him. "Well, that would explain a lot."
"What do you mean by that?"
"The sex was always great, Richard. Even when everything else was going to hell, the sex never stopped being great."
"You mean that?"
I nodded. "Yes."
He smiled, and it was almost a real smile, except for that flinching in his eyes. "So you think I was too rough for Clair, because of my size?"
"And your technique is vigorous."
He gave that frown again.
"Richard, haven't you ever been with anyone where you weren't as... vigorous?"
He gave me a look that said more clearly than any words that the answer was no.
"Okay, a friend of mine told me that men are ducklings, they tend to imprint on their first lovers. Which means they tend to make love the way they are first trained to make love. You were trained by a woman who was a sexual sadist and made porn movies, violent porn movies."
He looked shocked, then horrified. "You're saying Clair is right. I was too rough. I did hurt her."
I shook my head. "Did she ask you not to be so vigorous during the lovemaking?"
"She never asked about my... technique at all. She just blew up and said I was too rough. That I enjoyed making her beast come. That I enjoyed her clawing me up. That I enjoyed making her a monster. That I always made love like an animal no matter what shape I was in."
Eeeah. I said what I was thinking, "Did Clair mean to hurt you as much as possible, or was it just an accidental hit?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, that if I were trying to hurt you as much as possible, I couldn't do better than that."
"I think she just meant it. I mean if I'm having sex rough enough for Raina, then how can it be anything but rape to anyone else?"
I shook my head and waved a hand in front of his face, so he'd look up and at me. "Don't ever use the word rape to me again, Richard, because you don't do that. If you're with someone who likes sex the same way you do, then it's just good sex."
"But rough," he said.
I shrugged. "You don't start out rough, but yeah, you usually end up there, but it was never anything I didn't want to do. All Clair had to do was ask for what she wanted, but she treated you like so many women treat men, like you should be able to read her mind. You aren't a mind reader, Richard, just a man, and men are usually less able to read a woman's mind than another woman is."
"I'm not a man, Anita, I'm a werewolf. I'm an animal."
I grabbed his upper arms. "Don't let me hear you say that, ever again. You say animal like it's a dirty word, Richard, it's not. But until you own that it's not, don't let anyone make you feel that bad about yourself."
He smiled then, a little sad around the edges, but it was a real smile. He touched my arms with his hands, and I pulled away. I was so not going to hug and make up. I would help him through this, if I could, but we were not a couple anymore.
"If I didn't hurt you, then why did you pull away just now?"
I hugged my arms tight and paced a little farther away from him. "You came here for truth, fine, here's truth. We're not a couple anymore, Richard, but that doesn't mean I don't feel... oh, hell, I don't want you to get the wrong idea."
"And what would that be?" His voice was back to being guarded.
"You were very clear at my house yesterday. I was in your head, Richard. I know what you were thinking, what you were feeling. I was there inside your head."
"Then you saw what I wanted to do to you." He turned away, so that all I could see was the back of him in jeans, and the jean jacket that was a few shades bluer than the jeans. His hair was beginning to have waves, but it still looked shorn to me. "It was sick, Anita. I wanted you afraid of me. Having you afraid while I fucked you, would have been... would have—"
"Just flat done it for you," I finished for him.
He turned and looked at me. His eyes were desolate, as if something in them had died. "Yes, yes, exactly."
"Richard, every lycanthrope I know is a little confused about the fear response, food, and sex."
He shook his head, and it must have been too vigorous, because he winced. "But no lycanthrope I've met, except for Raina and Gabriel, thought fear was an aphrodisiac."
"Since I've met some of the same lycanthropes that you've met, I know that's not true. What is true, is that Gabriel and Raina were the only ones willing to admit it to anyone and everyone."
"No, no," he said and stalked toward me, his anger starting to rise in a warm prickling wash. "No one else wanted what they wanted, not like that. Not the real thing."
"Aha," I said, then apologized for saying aha, "but the point is, you said not the real thing. I've met a lot of shapeshifters who are into the bondage and submission scene, but it's a game with rules. Safe, sane, consensual. There are safe words, and once that agreed-upon word is uttered, then it stops, it's over."
"There was no word that would keep you safe from Raina and Gabriel."
"Exactly, Richard, exactly. But you can enjoy the game without doing what they did."
He grabbed for me, and I tried to be out of reach, but in the end, I had only a shadow of his speed, not the real thing. He got one wrist instead of two, but he still got one. He jerked me a little toward him, not hard, but enough that I planted my feet and set up for not being pulled any closer. Just principle, instinct, nothing personal.
"What if it's the reality I want, Anita? What if the reason Raina liked me so much was that I'm just like her?" He didn't hurt me, didn't do anything but keep holding my wrist, keep me, so that I knew I couldn't get away, easily, if at all. I was stronger than a normal human, but I wasn't as strong as a real lycanthrope.
I let out a breath that was even, and my voice sounded normal, but I couldn't help it. I started with, "Let go of me, Richard."
"You're afraid of me," he said.
"No, but you aren't my boyfriend anymore. You don't have the right to touch me without permission."
"The fact that you're trying
to pull away, and I know you can't, excites me."
There was a time in my life that I would have argued, but we'd argue about it later, if we needed to. I didn't repeat my request, because I wasn't sure what would happen if I upped the physical stuff. I knew I didn't want to find out, so I talked. "All you need is a submissive of your very own who likes to play these games, and you're all set, but I am not your anything, so let go of my wrist." Okay, I couldn't not ask again.
He let go of me, so abruptly I stumbled a little. I guess I'd been pulling harder away from him than I thought. Fancy that. I resisted the urge to rub my wrist. Never let them see that they've hurt you. It's a rule. "You're nothing like Raina, Richard."
"Yes," he said, "I am."
"I carry her munin, remember, I've had her in full technicolor glory in my head, and I've been in your head, too. Trust me, you don't think like she did."
"Sometimes I fantasize about horrible things, Anita."
What I wanted to say was, I wasn't his mother confessor, but I didn't, because I didn't know who else to send him to for this talk. Who else would I trust? No one. Damn it.
"So don't we all, Richard, the difference isn't what you think, it's what you do about it. Most of us know the difference between fantasy and reality. We know that what works as pretend doesn't work in the real world."
"What if I want things that would hurt other people?"
I so didn't want to be having this talk, but looking into his face, I knew that this was part of the demon that had driven him to nearly destroy himself, and us. "If it's going to permanently maim, scar, or kill someone, you don't do it. Outside of those parameters you talk to your lover and see what they want to do. What they're willing to do."
He was frowning at me. "No maiming, scarring, or killing, and everything else is okay? Just like that."
I shook my head, "No, everything else that your partner says 'yes' to, is okay. If you're on top, dominant, then you have to hold it together and make sure it's all safe and not too scary."
"I want it to be scary," he said.
I shrugged. "I said, 'not too scary.' Through... friends, I'm beginning to understand that a little fear goes a long way as foreplay."
"You don't mean friends, you mean Nathaniel."
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