Love Me For Me

by Lauren Hawkeye

  I froze when he circled me, his fingers coming to rest lightly on the nape of my neck.

  Slowly he combed his fingers through the long strands of my hair, gathering them together. Once he’d secured it with the elastic, he pressed a kiss to the side of my neck, then moved in front of me to survey his work.

  “I like it when your hair is pulled back like this. That way I can see your face.”

  I froze as I realized that around him, I didn’t mind having my hair back.

  I didn’t feel any need to hide.

  “Let’s get started.” He ordered. I tried not to gawk at his ass when he bent to pick up a second pair of boxing gloves. He strapped them onto his hands, and I couldn’t help thinking that he looked ridiculously hot.

  I, on the other hand, felt awkward and unsure.

  “What—what do I do?” I looked down at the yoga pants and plain T-shirt that I was wearing. It occurred to me belatedly that I could have dressed up a bit to come over here.

  “Just hit it, Serena.” To demonstrate, Alex pulled back an arm, then swung at the bag. It rocked under the blow and he grinned, satisfied.

  “Is there a right way?” I was pretty sure I’d never hit anything. Like, ever.

  “You’ll figure out pretty quick what feels good and what doesn’t.” Alex punched the bag again, sending it swaying. “Don’t over think it. Just do it.”

  I felt dumb. I was sure I was going to embarrass myself. But it seemed important to him to show me this part of his life, so I sucked in a breath, drew back my arm, and swung at the punching bag.

  I felt the blow reverberate all the way up my arm, but the bag barely moved. I growled with frustration.

  “Again.” Alex stepped back, out of the way of the bag, and gestured for me to go once more. I scowled at the bag, its black surface taking on an existence of its own for me.

  Drawing my arm back again, I tried to let go of all of my worries, my self-consciousness, and let my gloved fist fly. My teeth snapped together as my fist connected with the bag, and to my delight it actually moved, swaying back and forth on its mooring.

  “Awesome!”

  I looked over to find Alex grinning at me, his eyes bright. “Again.”

  I swung again, and then again. Each time I did the bag moved a little bit more, and I got a bit more confident.

  I punched the thing until my arms and shoulders burned, and my heart beat rapidly against my rib cage. Sucking in air, I shucked the gloves off.

  “Good, huh?”

  Startled, I looked up to find Alex leaning against the wall, watching me. I felt like I should have been embarrassed by the way I’d all but forgotten he was there, but the adrenaline had hit me, and I felt too damn good.

  “The best.” I bent, placing my hands on my knees, trying to catch my breath. “How did you get into this again?”

  “Tripp taught me.” As usual, a slight shadow crossed Alex’s face when he talked about his past, but it was gone almost before I noticed it. “He taught me because he thought I needed to channel some rage. I gave it a fighting chance because exercise makes insulin work better. The more physical activity I do, the less insulin I need.”

  “You think I have some rage that needs to be channelled?” I was joking, but my smile froze on my face when I realized that I actually felt a lot better now than I had an hour earlier... before I’d beaten the shit out of the punching bag.

  “I refuse to answer that one,” Alex started, crossing to me with a bottle of water in hand. “Because I just saw you beat the crap out of that punching bag. You’re a dangerous woman, Serena.”

  I tried to scowl, but couldn’t help grinning. I took the water and chugged half the bottle before giving it back.

  “You look hot,” He mused, rolling the plastic between his hands.

  “I am.” I grimaced as I pulled my sweaty T-shirt away from my chest. I was a mess after the workout, and I hadn’t exactly been dressed up when I arrived.

  “I can help.” Without warning, he upended the remainder of the water on my head. Though the water was room temperature, on my heated skin it felt icy cold, and I shrieked as the rivulets worked their way down my neck and into my shirt.

  “Alex!” His eyes dropped to my chest quickly before returning to my face, and I became painfully aware that the shock of the cool water had beaded my nipples into hard little points.

  His eyes darkened, and I warmed with a heat that had nothing to do with the boxing I’d just done.

  “Serena,” His voice was rough with desire, and it made me shiver.

  “Yes?” My nails bit into my palms. I was surprised that the water didn’t simply steam off of my skin.

  “I’m going to kiss you now. Okay?” His words were husky. I had barely nodded my assent when he pulled me to him, his hands sneaking up beneath the hem of my damp T-shirt to splay over my back.

  I moaned as his tongue flicked across my lips, demanding entrance to my mouth. I parted my lips, and he boldly explored my teeth, my tongue.

  When I was breathless, he fisted his hands in the long hair of my ponytail and pulled back, just enough to look at my face.

  “I just can’t get enough of you.” His words were puzzled, his eyes full of wonder. “I don’t know what it is, but every bit that you give me, I just want more.”

  This time I closed the distance, cupping his face in my hands and pressing my mouth to his. I moaned when he slid his hands from my hair to my waist, supporting me as he gently lowered me to the floor, rolling so that I straddled him as he laid full length beneath me.

  It spoke of how well he’d gotten to know me that he didn’t even try to take my shirt off, instead sliding his hand beneath, cupping my breast through my bra.

  When my fingers toyed with the hem of his shirt, however, tentatively inching it upwards, he made no protest, helping me get the cotton over his head and off.

  I sucked in a breath when his torso was bare. I’d seen it before—the night I’d run over here, upset by the phone call with Felicity came to mind—but this time it seemed different.

  This time it felt—almost—as if he was mine. Mine to explore. Mine to taste.

  Mine to touch.

  Tentatively, I reached down and placed my fingers over the start of his tattoo, on the right side of his chest. I saw the sharp inhalation in the movement of his chest, but he let me stroke my fingers over the swirled lines, across his pectoral and up to his shoulder.

  The day I’d first met him, I’d thought it strange that someone so athletic, so handsome, would mar his skin with tattoos. Now... now they seemed like a part of him, like he would be naked without them.

  Bending, I pressed a kiss to one of the dark swirls that decorated the place where his shoulder met his arm. He moaned softly, and emboldened, I moved my lips down the trail of ink.

  When I reached the place where I knew his scars started, I stiffened, waiting for him to tell me to stop.

  Though his body tensed beneath me, he said nothing, did nothing to stop me. My heart pounded as I realized the trust he was giving me.

  I wanted to give it back. I wanted it so badly.

  I just wasn’t ready. I still didn’t know if I would ever be.

  I shook the thought out of my head. I wanted to explore this unexpected gift that he’d given me.

  Lifting my head, I looked down at Alex’s face. His eyes were at half mast and fixed on me.

  I looked right into his eyes as I traced my fingers over one of the puckers of his scars. There was a minute flinch, and then he relaxed, letting me dance my touch overtop of the mark.

  Slowly I trailed my fingers to the second scar, and then on to the next. He let me put my mark on every scar on that arm, and then again on the other.

  His eyes, dark with something that I couldn’t quite identify, when I’d stroked my fingers over each scar hidden with the tattoo on his arms he rolled over onto his stomach, his shoulder blades jutting out from his back like angel wings, stretching the skin and the tattoo that co
ntinued there, exposing yet more small, round scars.

  My heart broke a little as I counted them. What had caused them? I couldn’t ask, not unless I was ready to share my own story with him.

  I touched every one, as if with my fingers I could release the pain that had been present when they appeared.

  He stayed still, stoic and silent as I explored.

  Once I was satisfied that I’d discovered every mark that he’d tried to hide with the dark ink of his tattoos, I bent and press a kiss to his spine, in the hollow between his shoulder blades. When he rolled beneath me, I braced myself on my knees, sinking back down onto of him once he again faced upward.

  He reached up, cupped my face with his hands, and drew me down to him. The kiss was slow and deep, drugging me with the raw emotion beneath it.

  When he wrapped me in his arms, pulling me down so that I was cocooned against his chest, my heart stumbled in its rhythm. I pressed my cheek to his chest and listened to his own pulse, steady in his warm chest.

  We both had far too much baggage for this relationship to be a good idea. But right now, as I lay cradled in his arms and felt his breath whispering though my hair, I didn’t know if I could possibly stay away.

  ***

  Time passed slowly, and yet too fast, as Alex became a habit. Bit by bit, I began to feel almost normal, like any other girl on campus.

  Though neither of us spoke of our pasts, the connection between us was palpable.

  I was so emotionally stunted, I prayed daily not to screw it up. Emotionally stunted... and sexually frustrated. I couldn’t hold back a wry smile as I jogged to the students union building for my afternoon yoga class.

  Alex was an expert on making me writhe against him with just one kiss. I wanted him more than I’d ever wanted anything, but every time I tried to move further than half naked petting, he would tell me to be patient.

  I knew that the short, hard orgasm he’d pulled out of me the night of the foster benefit was only the start of what it would feel like with him, and I wanted the rest of it so badly I could taste it.

  Groaning to myself, I hoped that the yoga class would help remove some of the sexual frustration from my mind.

  “Sorry, sorry.” I was out of breath. Maddy was waiting outside the locked room, her long black coat done up right to her chin.

  “No biggie.” She shrugged, nonchalantly, moving away from the door so that I could open it.

  “Looks like it’s just us again today, huh?” I asked. Given her standoffish behavior during the last class, I wasn’t entirely thrilled with the prospect.

  To my surprise, she smiled at me, and I saw none of the hostility that had been present before.

  “I’m actually glad. I was hoping you could work with me on the crow pose again.” Pulling an elastic from her pocket, she raked her long dark hair back into a sloppy bun, then shrugged off her coat. “I’ve been working on it at home, but I think my posture’s off. I can hold it, but I can’t really let go, you know?”

  I did indeed. I unrolled my mat on the floor and waited for Maddy to do the same. Lots of people practiced yoga, but in my experience few were ever able to move beyond struggling to hold the postures and actually experiencing the practice for what it was.

  Centering. Balancing. Not so different from what Alex did for me.

  We worked through the postures that we started each class with, warming up our muscles for the trickier stuff. After the locust and the frog, I was feeling the burn of my muscles start to push everything else out of my head. A glance up at Maddy showed me that she was nearing the mental place where she could focus on her breathing, rather than her physical discomfort.

  I slowly moved from my knees to my feet, careful not to disrupt her.

  “Let’s try the crow now.” I suggested. Flowing between the positions gracefully was one of the hardest things about yoga, and Maddy stumbled a bit as she transferred her weight. But, I liked the way she clenched her jaw and worked through it, slowly shifting her weight to her hands.

  “There.” I reached out to help her adjust the curve of her spine, then snatched my hands back, remembering the way she’d reacted last time.

  Her eyes flickered to me, and she wobbled a bit.

  “It’s okay.” She said. Hesitantly I reached out and helped her position her back. The wobbling stopped, and I felt a sense of satisfaction as she closed her eyes and inhaled deeply.

  The lesson lasted for another twenty minutes, during which I mostly left Maddy alone. When I rose from the corpse position, feeling slightly more centered than I had at the beginning of the lesson, I found Maddy sitting on her mat, waiting for me.

  “You seem... ah... a bit more relaxed than you did last time.” A bit less bitchy, the voice in my head added, though I would never have said it out loud.

  The other girl’s face flushed.

  “Last time I was here I was dating an asshole.” Her voice was quiet as she shuffled off of her mat and began to roll it up. “Brett Anderson. He said he knows you.”

  I froze with my water bottle halfway to my mouth, something murky gathering in my gut.

  “We went to high school together.” Brett Anderson had been star of the basketball team. He was golden haired and gorgeous, and with him I’d allowed myself to get lost in a crush while he thrust between my thighs.

  Instead of being careful with the self destructive girl I was, Brett had told everyone who would listen about the dirty slut who had let him do whatever he’d wanted. One of the first boys I’d turned to when I’d begun my downhill spiral, he couldn’t be blamed for my actions, but neither could he be thanked.

  All I’d needed was one morsel of kindness. Instead he’d used me and walked away with cruel intent. I hadn’t thought about him since I’d started college.

  “Does he go to school here?” My mouth dry, I screwed the lid back on the bottle of water. I told myself it didn’t matter, which at its core was the truth.

  I wasn’t that girl anymore. I was stronger.

  It still hurt.

  “He’s on the basketball team.”

  I couldn’t help closing my eyes for a long moment. Of course he was. Cause sometimes karma blithely ignored the asshats of the world, and punished everyone else.

  I bit down on my tongue hard enough to hurt as Maddy’s wide eyes, framed with dark spiky lashes, watched me warily.

  I was not that girl anymore. Brett could spread all the stories that he wanted, but he could only hurt me if I let him.

  “He always did like to talk.” Forcing my lips into a wry smile, I reached for the long woven bag that I kept my mat in.

  Maddy barked out a laugh and did the same.

  “You mean he lies.” Her thin eyebrows rose to the ceiling, and my forced smile became a real one. “When he found out you were my yoga teacher, he made sure to... ah... tell me stuff. Stuff I don’t think actually happened, but I got jealous. I’m sorry for that.”

  My smile faded. I resisted the urge to shake my hair in front of my face.

  “Some of what he said was probably true.” I might be different now, but I couldn’t pretend that my past was anything other than what it was. For a moment I panicked, wondering if any of the school teams ever hung out together—namely, Brett’s basketball team and Alex’s football one.

  I didn’t care what anyone else thought of my past... but Alex wasn’t just anyone.

  “Maybe.” Her mat back in her bag, Maddy shrugged back into her pea coat, then turned to face me. “But he didn’t have to tell it the way he did. He wanted to hurt us both, and there didn’t seem to be a point. Not cool. So I dumped his ass.”

  I opened my mouth, then closed it a bit. Maddy had dumped her boyfriend because he’d been telling... well... the truth about me?

  I was floored. My own mother couldn’t stand up for me, yet this girl I barely knew had.

  Nothing my discomfiture, Maddy nodded curtly, then turned towards the door. I swallowed, tried to speak, and had a hard time getting the wo
rds out.

  “Um. Maddy.” My voice was hesitant. She turned, waited.

  “Maybe we could grab a beer or something sometime. If you want.” God, that sounded so lame. It wasn’t like I was asking her for a date.

  It had been a long time since I’d tried to make a friend. Kaylee didn’t count, because we’d been forced into each other’s lives as roommates, and along with it she’d decided we were going to be best friends.

  She was a force to be reckoned with.

  I held my breath, not sure if I’d done something dumb or not. When Maddy smiled back at me, relief was a big wave washing over my skin.

  “Cool.” She grinned, then saluted me. “Great class. See you next week.” Then she was gone, and I was left grinning like a fool.

  It was a baby step, I knew... but it felt like a giant step towards getting my life back.

  ***

  “It really doesn’t bother you when other people drink around you?” The small pub that sat just off the edge of campus was small, dark and at this time of night, incredibly loud.

  I was snuggled tightly into a tiny booth where the table was scarred with initials in hearts. The upholstery on the seats was cracked, dried out with age.

  Only a month earlier, I would have been overwhelmed to the point of discomfort by the settings. Instead I was quite cozy, tucked beneath Alex’s arm as he toyed with the ends of my ponytail.

  “It really doesn’t.” To demonstrate, he pushed the green tinted cocktail that I’d ordered closer to me, his fingers slipping in the droplets of water that beaded the glass.

  As I picked it up for a sip, he added, “It especially helps when you order girly ass drinks like that.” He shuddered with exaggeration, and I smiled up at me, not even a bit annoyed.

  “A vodka slime is not a girly drink.” I held the straw out to him to taste—he would have the occasional sip of alcohol, I’d noted, but wouldn’t ever consume an entire drink.

  Consternation crossed his face.

  “Chicken?” I smirked. He raised an eyebrow at me in that dark, oh so sexy way he had, and a shiver ran up my spine.

  It was so blessedly normal, I thought, as I watched his lips close around the bright red straw. I felt a wash of heat as he sucked, thinking of how his lips would feel on my skin.