Sweet Seduction

by Anthology

  Chilled to the bone yet again, but this time in a very different place, we crawled into bed. Tyler unzipped the two sleeping bags that we had been given and made a makeshift double bed from them. Without pillows, without anchors, without anything from our regular lives, the tiny cabin felt disjointed, as if we had ascended to some place where you just showed up naked and the rest unfolded before you.

  Without a plan. I guess that’s life, right?

  “Tyler, what about you?”

  “What about me?”

  “You keep saying that I have all the control, and that this is all about me. That this is my choice. But you have your own demons to reckon with. You’ve got your own past and your own sexual—”

  He rested one palm against the side of my face, his thumb stroking the skin beneath my lower lip. His eyes narrowed with a kind of sweetness that I’d never seen. His words came out thick at first, and then he had to clear his throat to start again. “I didn’t go through what you went through—”

  “But you said—”

  He squeezed gently at my jaw, the pressure just enough to make me halt. “I didn’t go through what you went through, but yeah, I’ve got my own demons. But I got over this hurdle,” he looked down at our naked bodies, “a lot longer ago, and what you’re going through right now is special.”

  Tears filled my eyes, along with a kind of self-consciousness that came less from shame and more from a flush that filled my breastbone, spreading down across my chest and into my arms. I knew it was creeping up my neck and would soon fill my face. It was the warm sense of recognition, of surprise, of being seen. This sensation didn’t have to carry a negative connotation with it, and right now it didn’t.

  “So this is about you. You have given me everything. Let me give you something back.”

  My heart sank. “If you’re doing this because you feel like you owe me something—”

  He put his hand over the glowing pink spot above my heart, and I paused. “Not like that, Maggie. Never like that.”

  “But I don’t want to just take—”

  “You’re not.”

  “But I—”

  “You’re not,” he said, his voice stressed with a kind of urgency that didn’t quite fit the moment. “There are no selfish people in this bed,” he finally said. It wasn’t an observation as much as a declaration, the slide of his hairy legs against mine so alien, the feel of his veined arms colored and telling stories against my pale, freckled skin. The interplay of who each of us were and how our bodies appeared was like a scrapbook before it’s assembled, the many pieces all remnants of a story that you’re composing, made up of different bytes and bits of a whole that only gets put together when you decide, and of what you decide.

  So that in spite of what others may think of the event that you’re commemorating, you hold the ultimate truth in your own hands. That’s how our bodies and minds felt right now. The only part of us that had to catch up was our memories. Mine was definitely more in need of work than his.

  “May I kiss you?” he asked.

  I giggled, feeling stupidly awkward. “Of course!”

  He shook his head slightly, his eyes serious though his nostrils twitched. “There are no of courses, either.”

  “Are you going to ask me every single time you want to touch me?”

  “If that’s what it takes.”

  And then he kissed me, a second, a third, a fourth time, his hands sinking deep into my hair, both of them pressing into my scalp, sliding down the side of my neck, one finger stroking an earlobe. His tongue was lush and warm against mine, my own diving into his mouth, our lips slanted against each other, our breath hard and hot.

  My hands didn’t know what to do. I wanted to touch him, and yet I kept forgetting, as if my sense of how this worked had slipped out of gear, and all my attention had to be focused on making sure I was in the right gear, rather than on paying attention to the drive itself.

  His palm made contact with my rib, slipping back under me, fingertips tickling my spine. “May I touch you here?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  His mouth bent down to my nipple, his eyes tipping up to catch mine, and I swallowed hard, my throat tightening at the sheer openness of it.

  “And here?”

  “Yes,” I whispered.

  This time, as his mouth licked with such respect, pebbling the nipple instantly, there was no image. There was no horror. There was only this.

  He suckled, his tongue twirling in circles, and then he pulled back.

  “And this?” he said as he bent down to pay the same attentions to the other breast.

  “Oh yes,” I hissed, arching my back up to meet him. “Please.”

  I had thought about this moment for the better part of seven years. What the man I would make love with would be like. Who he would be. Whether he would understand, or whether it would matter at all. It would matter, of course, and it did in this moment, as my mind tried to reconcile what had happened to me in the past with my known self in this very moment. I transformed under his touch as his fingers strummed my skin like the delicate strings of an instrument.

  His lips brushed against my skin with a kind of restrained elegance that I would never expect from such a quiet man. Tyler seemed coiled, like a deep pressure cooker of anger lived at his core, and like his body was a casing for holding back everything that brewed inside. That same intensity was in his touch as his skin slid against mine, bare and warm, and his lips found mine again. His hands ran up from hips to ribs to breast along the contours of my neglected skin, until they rested, cradling my jaw, his body pressed hard against mine, sloped slightly to the left so I could breathe.

  Was I breathing? I couldn’t be sure. It wasn’t until his hand sunk into my hair and my heart touched his, getting as close as possible between our naked bodies. We were out of synch, my heart a half beat off from his, and it was in the space between those beats that I found the pleasure he so freely gave.

  My hands. I didn’t know what to do with my hands. The worry became a talisman, something I stroked inside myself to take me out of where I needed to be. It was a place of safety inside, as if ruminating on the question of what to do with my hands somehow protected me from the intensity of what I sought.

  Make no mistake: I sought this. I wanted this. I wanted him.

  My mouth went dry as he pulled back and in the bright light of day looked at me, one finger stroking the planes of my cheekbones, crossing over the bridge of my nose like a painter with a fine brush, memorizing lines. His eyes narrowed and I let myself study him, knowing that the only way to overwrite the memory of seven years ago was to live this moment in as much awareness as possible.

  He bit his lower lip and pulled it in, his teeth pressing against the soft flesh, his face changing as we studied each other. Our breath filled the space where our skin and our hearts couldn’t, and something in me released.

  My hands suddenly knew what to do.

  I reached down, feeling the contours of muscle and sinew, the curves and valleys of a man whose body was hardened through use and youth. He was six years younger, and yet we were ageless. And as my hands found and cradled his ass, I could feel layers of muscle built and forged through time and struggle. I could appreciate the thin layer of fine, dark hair that covered him, so different from my own body.

  He let me. He let me, and he seemed to know that in the letting, he was giving me exactly what I needed to take.

  I warmed as I touched him, my body melting, my heart speeding up, the blood pumping to places I hadn’t let it think about for so long.

  You spend seven years telling yourself that you’re damaged. Seven years trying to get to a place where you decide that in spite of being broken, you’re going to move on. And in the moment when you take action, you hope that the person you choose to forge ahead with will understand. That they’ll be there through the realness of it. But what you really hope is that you choose well.

  The trust that I put in him
was second to the trust that I put in myself. And so far as he kissed me deeply, then pulled away and trailed kisses down to my breast, hands roaming over all the skin he could possibly take with his palms, his lips now brushing my navel, I realized that not only was this moment a victory, a triumph over the violation of seven years ago. It was an even bigger victory for my sense of self. I had trusted the part of me deep down inside that knew I could trust myself, that knew I could trust him, and I had been right.

  He planted kisses on the bare skin of my belly, his body curled, muscles strong as I watched him dip down, leaving kisses along my thighs, his fingers gently parting my legs. He did it so slowly, each movement a question, and I let him. I let him because I wanted this.

  He looked up, and that was the moment when self-consciousness kicked in.

  If you didn’t count the three from seven years ago, Tyler was my third. But for this, he was about to be my first.

  “I’ve—uhm—” I said, my throat throbbing and my tongue feeling like a thousand balloons. “Are you—uhm—is that...”

  I could feel his smile against my inner thigh. “You don’t want this?” he asked, his finger stroking along the soft inner flesh, making me shiver.

  “No, no, I do,” I said, the words true and yet haunting.

  “It would be my pleasure,” he said, and started kissing his way down closer and closer.

  And then warmth, the soft grace of a gift. The gift of his attentions. He teased with the softest of butterfly movements, with the determination of a man who knew exactly what he was doing and exactly why.

  And exactly how.

  My back arched and my legs began to quiver as I sank into a level of sensation that I didn’t know my body could experience. The two minds that lived inside my head stopped existing on parallel tracks and integrated as I lost the ability to think. This was...divine, the feeling of his body against mine, of his mouth on me, of knowing that he wanted to touch and stroke and lick and lave, and use each other’s skin and tongue and lips and fingers to speak a language that could not be spoken in any other way.

  That he could use his body like this, twinned with mine, to elicit such sensual ecstasy was something I understood intuitively. I understood it intellectually. I even grasped it psychologically and emotionally, but in the abstract. He had to make love to my actual body, to minister to my flesh, to make this offering and to give me this gift, for me to understand it fully.

  In another world where the other Maggie lived, the one beaten and bloodied and broken on that college campus seven years ago, those men had used the same hands. The same lips and mouths and fingers (and other body parts) to cause pain. To wreak havoc. To use violence as a tool for domination and destruction.

  And I knew that. I knew that in the back of my mind as Tyler showed me a different way. And I knew he knew it too, knew it all. He’d been violated and defiled and objectified. While he wouldn’t tell me the details, just the fact that he knew how it felt to be turned into a lesser version of yourself by someone else’s body and will, made what he was doing right now to me, made what he was accessing in me, what he was creating between us, all the more holy.

  “What about you?” I said, a desperate clawing sense filling me suddenly. A sense of guilt. As if I had just opened myself up and he’d poured everything he had into me, and I had just gulped greedily from the cup of Tyler.

  “What about me?” He was between my legs and looked up, his eyes quizzical and hands stroking my thighs.

  “You—you—I—” I stumbled over my words. “You said—you said earlier that you had—”

  He cut me off. “I know,” he said softly, moving up my body, making it so we were eye-to-eye. “And we can talk about that some other time.” His eyes went soft and hooded, searching my face again. “But you—this is new for you. I’ve—I’m on a different path. I’m—” He struggled with his words too, starting and stopping, his hands never leaving me. His thumb stroked the soft inner skin of my elbow and then slowly moved up to my shoulder as his eyes roamed over my face, settling finally on my mouth. “I’ve been through more of what it takes to heal than you have,” he finally said.

  I frowned, shaking my head slightly. “What does that mean?” I asked.

  “This isn’t my first time since,” he said quietly. “And I know how hard this is. And I’m honored, Maggie. I’m so...honored I think my heart’s gonna burst inside my chest, and come crawling out, and kiss yours.”

  The smile that he gave me turned me into an unbroken person. All at once. Like someone waved a magic wand. And I was whole again.

  “This is about you.” His words came out like a sigh. “And the next time we make love, Maggie, it can be about us.”

  “I want to make it very clear that I’m going to cry,” I said, smiling as my mouth twisted and my eyes filled.

  “I know. I figured.”

  “It won’t freak you out?”

  “You feel what you feel. I’ll feel what I feel. Now, let me make you feel.”

  “I’m ruining this, aren’t I?” I gasped, half laughing, half choking, naked in his arms.

  “Never.” He kissed my neck and made his way swiftly back to my soft, sensitive clit. “You can’t ruin this moment with me, Maggie. No matter how hard you try.”

  That made me laugh, the feeling neutralizing my self-consciousness. For all his flaws with words, Tyler was a master in this moment. It was eerie, as if he knew exactly how to be, naked and vulnerable, wanting and real.

  And then my thoughts shattered as his mouth brought me a kind of pleasure that words can’t. It rose and fell, the sweet sense of inner pulsing making me clench until I felt like all my blood vessels were exploding.

  But they didn’t.

  Over and over, his touch was perfect. Really, deeply perfect. Except I knew what he was doing and...I couldn’t. I couldn’t orgasm.

  This is what the last seven years had been like.

  I hadn’t orgasmed since the rape. Not alone, and certainly not with a guy. Not with anyone. I couldn’t even let myself tip over into that place where you’re falling with a kind of ecstatic freedom that makes you release everything.

  That was no longer part of who I am.

  I knew this was true, just like I knew so many facts. And nothing Tyler did right now would change that, but oh—this felt so good. So, so amazing.

  It just wasn’t going to happen the normal way. Sex was supposed to be this intimate, hot, racy series of touches and kisses, of sighs and moans, of thrusts and orgasms and yet...none of that was happening right now. I was too raw. Too exposed. I lived in my head and my body as if they were two separate states of existence.

  And meanwhile, Tyler did his damnedest to be what I needed.

  I felt the sob rise up in me just as his tongue stroked the most delicious spot. Just as his fingers dug into the soft flesh of my hip. Just as his other hand splayed across my belly with heat and passion. My stomach tightened and all that was supposed to be sweaty and sexy in this moment became a convulsion of pain and outrage.

  He sensed it and came up to me, stroking my hair instead of my ass. Kissing my cheek instead of my clit. Murmuring words of comfort instead of dirty talk. For seven years I’d avoided sex because I knew it would be awkward and bizarre, broken and painful.

  It turned out I’d been right.

  “It’s okay,” he said, his body long and hard, hot and taut against mine as my chest heaved with painful, hitched cries. I hated myself in that moment. Hated what I’d just done. I’d turned what was supposed to be a romp in bed into a therapy session, and the last man on the planet I’d expected to be naked with me and holding me was a guy named Frown.

  But it turned out fate knew better than me what I needed.

  “Maggie, shhhhh,” he soothed, his voice so soft and warm, his caring only making me cry harder. I was a basket case, a naked, sobbing basket case, and his arms and murmurs wrapped me with a sense of compassion I didn’t know any man could display, much less this
man.

  He made me want him even more. Even when I shouldn’t want intimacy, I wanted this man. He held me until whatever needed to come out was finished. With a shaking hand I reached up and stroked his stubbled cheek, then kissed him.

  He kissed me back, his lips tender and tentative, the kind of kiss you give when you’re being respectful. Suddenly, though, I didn’t want respectful and tender. I wanted to feel empty and full at the same time. To keep on going until I came out on the other side of whatever this journey took me through. I couldn’t stop now. If I did, I’d be half finished. Half healed.

  Half Maggie.

  I kissed him with an urgent hunger that clanged inside me like a bell, the sound getting louder and more eager, the cacophony a strange mix with the pleasure of his heated body. His cock rose in response and yet I felt him holding back, his restraint admirable but exactly what I did not need.

  “Make love to me,” I hissed, the sound carrying across the tiny space between us like dried leaves on an early winter day, the wind careless.

  “Are you sure?” he asked, his voice slow and heavy.

  “Yes.” I shifted, my breasts and one thigh sliding against his torso, the feeling both erotic and frightening at the same time. How I could feel two completely different responses at the same time wasn’t a surprise. What shocked me was how the erotic quickly became more powerful than my fear. I nearly cried with relief, but my body was cried out.

  Maybe that was the secret. Find a guy nice enough to let me cry during sex and—

  “We don’t have to do anything, Maggie. Seriously,” he said, his mouth against my ear. He rubbed my back, carefully avoiding my breasts and ass. I wanted that touch—needed it. The absence of it made me feel hollow. I knew that my reactions didn’t make sense. Fighting that reality was holding me back. Maybe what Tyler was trying to tell me was what I’d hoped was true: