“I’d really, really hurt her. Too rough. Too much.”
“She never said anything? Never told you it hurt, never sounded like she was in pain?”
He shook his head. It may have been a trick of the moonlight, but it seemed like there were tears on his cheeks. “She was limping. Crying. She didn’t say a word to me. Just dressed, wouldn’t let me near her. Left. Never came back. Left all of her stuff—clothes, money, books. Everything but her purse and camera bag. Left. Never saw her again. Found a PO Box in her name, a few weeks later, and sent her stuff to her.”
“Ink—”
“There ain’t’ no excuse for what I done.” He swallowed. “I just lost control, and I hurt her.”
“You didn’t—you couldn’t have known. She never told you to stop or to be a little more gentle. She told you to not hold back.”
“She told me she knew I wouldn’t hurt her, so don’t worry.”
“And then you hurt her, and she…” I shrugged. “Reacted unkindly.”
“Reacted like anyone would being hurt by their sexual partner.”
“No.” I touched his jaw. “No, Ink. I’ve had partners get a little too rough before, and it’s a matter of just asking him to be a little more gentle. And really, the guys who have done that were selfish assholes to begin with, and not thinking of me in the first place.” I held his eyes, but he didn’t want to look at me. “Ink, look at me. Listen. If a woman is excited, if she’s really enjoying it, if her body is ready, she can take…well, a lot more than you might think.”
“You weren’t there—”
“Obviously not. But you want to know what I think?”
He nodded. “Yeah, I do.”
“I think she got scared. I think you’re more than she was expecting. Physically, and just who you are. I think when you really let go, like she thought she wanted, it was scary for her. She wasn’t ready for it. Didn’t know what she was asking for. I think she faked how bad she was hurt to make it your fault so she wouldn’t have to feel bad.”
He tilted his head to one side. “Maybe.”
“Think about it.”
“I am.” He nodded. “I was…loud. Wild. I mean, I wasn’t…uh. I wasn’t, like, pounding super hard. You know? Like, I wasn’t so lost in things that I wasn’t aware of how much force I was using.”
“You would never hurt anyone. Even letting go, you wouldn’t.”
His eyes flicked to mine. “You think so?”
“I know so. Down to my bones.”
“You barely know me.”
“I know you better than you think.” I swallowed. “We may not have known each other a long time, Ink, but the time we’ve spent together has been…intense. Personal. Real. Quality counts for as much as length of time, if you ask me.”
“I hurt her, Cass. No way around it.”
I shook my head. “I think she twisted things to hurt you because she was scared. And then she ghosted because she was ashamed.”
“Cass—”
“No. I don’t buy it.”
“I’m telling you the truth.”
I moved up so my face was closer to his. “I know you are, Ink. I’m not questioning you, I’m questioning her.” I rested my head on his chest. “So after she left, you…what?”
He sighed. Stared up at the sky again. “Shut down. I was so upset, so angry at myself, so ashamed, so…rejected, in a way, that I just…shut down. Put the part of me that had anything to do with women, with sex, dating, all of it, put it all in a box, locked it up inside me, and never opened it again.”
“Oh, Ink.” My cracked heart broke for him. “Ever since?”
He nodded. “Couldn’t handle the thought of hurting anyone else. And the way she left, it was rejection. Worse than Elizabeth Grace. Compounded on it. She had told me she wanted everything I had to give, and all I ended up doing was hurting her so bad she left most of her belongings behind. How do you come back from that? After everything else I had been through in life, that was the last straw. I shut it down. Focused on tats.”
“You never dated again? Never did anything with anyone again?”
He shook his head.
“It’s been years, Ink.”
He nodded. “Yeah.”
I waited, but he didn’t seem inclined to fill the silence. “Maybe it’s none of my business, but when you say you shut down everything to do with sex, does that include…things on your own?” Why was I tiptoeing around it? “Meaning, you stopped masturbating, too?”
He just nodded. “Everything. Just shut it down. Cut it out of my life.” He glanced down at me. “And then I met you.”
I bit my lip. “And something about me woke it up, huh?”
He let out a slow breath. “Yeah. Hell if I know what.” A laugh. “No, I do. It’s that I’ve never been as attracted to anyone the way I am to you. Physically, but also just who you are. I dunno.”
“But you’re still…”
“Keeping that part of my life shut down is automatic now. Habit. Ingrained. And the fear and the self-hate that comes with it, it’s as strong as it’s ever been.” His brow furrowed. “You’re strong, Cass. But you’re tiny.”
“And you’re even more afraid of hurting me, because I’m short.”
“Not just short.” He wrapped his hands around my waist. “I can touch my thumbs and middle fingers around your waist.”
“You have the biggest hands I’ve ever seen, by several orders of magnitude.” I put my hands on his, keeping them in place on my waist. “But yes, I’m a small person.”
“I know you’re strong. I can see exactly how strong you are. Physically, sure, but mentally, and emotionally, too. You’re strong. I’m not at all doubting you.”
“You just don’t trust yourself.”
He shook his head. “Not at fuckin’ all, babe…”
He hadn’t engaged in any kind of sexual or romantic activity of any kind, for years.
Fear of rejection cuts deep; memory of rejection cuts deeper yet. And clearly, the fear of being hurt is as powerful as rejection, but the memory of having hurt someone is more powerful than just about anything.
I wanted to take it away. Make him feel better. Restore his ability to trust, both himself and others.
To trust me.
To trust himself with me.
Where do I even start?
He was looking at me sideways. “I know that look.”
I snorted. “What look?”
He tapped the tip of my nose. “The one you got on right now, Little Sparrow. It’s a look that says you wanna try and fix me.”
I just smiled at him. “I don’t think ‘fix you’ is the right way to put it. You’re not broken.”
He frowned. “Feels like I am.” He lifted up to lean on one elbow, gazing down at me. “Here I am, got a gorgeous, talented, smart, sexy woman interested in me, wanting me. Can’t bring myself to do shit all about it, even though I feel like I’m fuckin’ dyin’ for wanting you. I just don’t know how to get past my fuckin’ damage. How to let go of the…the vise grip my shit has on me. I want to, Cass. So fuckin’ bad, I want to let go and just be with you. But I don’t know how.”
“I don’t want to push you into anything you’re not ready for, either.” I sat up, and shifted to sit on his lap, wrapping my legs around his waist, resting my arms on his shoulders, toying with his long fall of thick black hair. “But I guess I just wonder if…” I trailed off, not sure how to say it.
He tilted his head to one side; he brushed an index finger through my hair, over my temple and behind my ear, then down my jawline to my chin. “Wonder what, Cass?”
“If maybe you and me could…sort of ease into things, somehow.” I dragged my fingers down through his beard. Tugged on it. “As I see it, your hold up is two different but related things. One, you’ve been rejected so harshly and in so many different ways, you don’t trust me to not hurt you and reject you—deep down, you’re afraid of that happening. Part of you worries it’s inevitable
, that I’m just going to do that, somehow, at some point.”
“Cass, I don’t—”
I touched his lips. “I’m not offended by it. Your life has forced you to put that up as a defense. I get it. I have issues like that myself. This thing with you is a lot, and it scares me. I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing with you any more than you do. I just know I like who you are, I’m attracted to you physically, and I want you. I want how I believe you can make me feel—physically, at least, if nothing else.”
“You got more balls than I do, then.”
I shook my head. “No. I’m afraid of getting hurt. But I’m already hurt, Ink. Rick hurt me, bad. The accident fucked me up. My dad fucked me up. Life fucked me up. But I’m more afraid of getting stuck than I am getting hurt. I’d rather go through life hurt and broken than stuck in place forever because I’m too scared to move forward.”
He winced, brow lowering. “Shit, Cass. That’s pretty fuckin’ harsh.”
I covered my mouth, aghast. “God, Ink, no—I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean that as anything about you. I swear I didn’t. I was just talking about me. That’s been my philosophy my whole life. Guys have hurt me before, and I just refuse to let it shackle me to the past, to the hurt. I guess I liken it to dance, to performing. I’ve twisted my ankle in rehearsal and I just refused to sit out the performance. I performed an entire weekend’s worth of shows with a badly twisted ankle and broken pinky toe, because I just fucking refuse to sit out, to let pain stop me. I won’t do. Not on the stage, and not in life.” I stroked his beard, from cheekbone to chin, down through the long silky mass. “I didn’t mean it as a criticism of you, I promise I didn’t.”
“But that’s what I’ve done, ain’t it? Let it stop me. Let it hold me back. Let it keep me down. Been stuck.”
“You’ve been through things I can’t imagine, Ink. Don’t judge yourself.”
“Kinda hard not to.” He sighed. “You’re somethin’ else, you know that?”
I just laughed. “So I’ve been told.” I toyed with his beard some more. “So, being afraid of rejection, that’s the first part. The second part that’s got you all knotted up and locked down, as I see it, is that you don’t trust yourself. You said so. You’re afraid you’ll lose control again and hurt me.”
He nodded. “Terrified of it.” He closed his eyes, pain written on his face in every line. “You shoulda seen her face, Cass. Pain. Fear. Not just fear, outright terror. Like I was…like I was a monster. Like I’d…done somethin’ horrible to her. I don’t know how to even wrap my head around it. What makes it hurt so bad is that I thought, until I saw her face, that it was good. For her. For us. I thought—I thought she wanted me, all of me. But when I let that out, all it did was fuckin’ wreck her. And that wrecked me.”
I settled closer, burrowing against him. Feeling his waist wedge my thighs open, feeling his powerful body against mine, over and around me. I ached to be touched—but instead, I buried my face against his neck. “What if we just…what if I just did this…?”
I kissed his neck. His throat. His cheekbone.
“What does that feel like, Ink?” I whispered.
His eyes were closed, screwed up tight. “Like heaven itself is kissing me with the lips of an angel.” He swallowed hard. “Makes my heart pound so hard it hurts. Makes my stomach do flips.”
His hands rested on my waist. I put my hands on top of his, pushed them down, so he was cupping my hips.
“Don’t think, okay?” I kissed his cheekbone again, and he gasped at the touch of my lips. “Just feel.”
“Tryin’.”
I slid off of his lap, settled in the grass beside him, sitting on my feet. Pressed a hand to his chest, and he complied by lying on his back, stretched out. He looked at me, wondering, curious, hesitant.
“I’m just going to…do whatever I want, okay?” I rested a hand on his chest. “For me. Because I want to do it. I don’t want, need, or expect anything from you. Since the moment we met I’ve been curious about this, about you. Wanted to know what it would feel like to touch and kiss and do things with a man built like you. So this is for me, okay? All you have to do is lay there and let me have what I want.”
“Cass…”
“I mean it.”
“Think I don’t see what you’re doing?”
“What am I doing?” I asked.
He tucked his hands under his head, elbows flared out. “Showing me that you want me. That I can trust in the fact that you want me.”
“Is it working?” I asked, grinning.
A shrug. “Dunno yet.”
“Then let’s find out, shall we?”
He sighed. “I’ll try.”
“That’s all I’m asking. Just try. Just let me touch you. Because I want to.” I smiled at him. “Do you believe I want to?”
“Yeah, I believe that.” A pause. “What I don’t think I believe is that you don’t want anything in return.”
I laughed. “Of course I do. But only what you want to do, when you want to do it. For now, this is what I want.”
“This, being what?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I haven’t decided yet.”
I rested a hand on his chest. Roamed the broad expanse of his chest, tracing the myriad tattoos. Bent over him, touched my lips to his skin. Flicked my tongue against his flesh, over a tattoo of a salmon. Let my hands explore his waist and stomach, and my lips descend in tripping kisses from chest to belly.
I glanced at him—his eyes were closed, but his face was twisted in an expression that seemed equal parts rapture and distress.
Resting my face on his diaphragm, I touched one leg. Just above the knee. Tugged the leg of his shorts up, baring his thigh. So many tattoos, mostly animals, nature scenes, or abstract lines, glyphs, and runic shapes. All tangled and jumbled and woven together into a tapestry on his skin. I ran my hands over his thigh, feeling the muscles at rest there. Rumpled the leg of the shorts up around his upper thigh, on both sides, tracing and touching each thigh, the tattoos, and the muscles.
Then I let my fingers walk up to his belly. A sunburst was done in wavy lines radiating out from his belly button, a piece that was clearly older than most of the others, done in either thread or poke-and-stick, which I wasn’t sure. The wavy lines of the sun merged with other curves and angles and dots and lines, all disappearing under the waistband of his shorts. I was curious, if nothing else, how extensive the tattoos were, between thighs and belly button. I looked up at Ink again, gauging him; brows furrowed, jaw clenched. Breathing hard. Utterly still.
“Try to relax,” I murmured.
He drew in a deep breath, his enormous chest filling and then his belly going taut. He held the breath. Let it out slowly, and some of the tension bled out of his features.
At least until I tucked three fingers under the waist of his shorts and drew them downward. The tension returned then, with interest. But yet, his belly drew in, and his butt lifted, letting me tug the shorts down past his buttocks.
He was bare underneath.
Not exactly slack, but not aroused yet, either.
And fucking enormous. Even at rest.
I bit my lip, hard. Ohhh god. Oh god.
So big.
Curled in a comma shape against his belly and hip. Lighter in shade than the rest of him. A close-trimmed thatch of curly black hair around it. Tattoos, runic and tribal, around the pubic area, down each thigh—his manhood was unmarked, however.
“Everyone’s question is if I have tats on my dick.” He laughed. “I like tats, but not that much. Hell no.”
I just huffed a small laugh, and traced the designs on his thigh and lower belly. His laugh faded quickly. I glanced at him again—eyes open, now. Watching me. I let my fingers dance around his belly button, thigh, back around, in a circuit. Avoiding what I wanted to touch. My finger ached to wrap around him, to feel him engorge under my touch. God, so beautiful. I wanted him. Wanted to climb onto him and see how much of hi
m I could take, feel him split me open and drive me to screaming orgasm. It would take no time, even without any foreplay. I was so worked up right now, that a single touch to my center would make me come apart.
God I wanted to fuck him so badly.
But I held this all back, kept it relegated to the back of my head.
I wondered if he could see it on my face, if he could read me that well. I knew it showed. I wasn’t very good at hiding my emotions—as a dancer and performer I was trained to let my emotions show, to emote. And as a person, I just couldn’t hide my emotions—they boiled too strong, too close to the surface.
Palm gliding over his thigh, up to his belly, I paused in my avoidant circuit, hand coming to rest just below his belly button. Preparing to touch him.
His eyes flicked open, and his hand rested on mine, stopping me. “Gotta tell you something, Cass. Gotta admit it.”
I met his eyes. “Okay?”
“I…that drawing of you.” A long hesitation. “The story I told, of you in the waterfall…I’ve got that image in my head. Can’t get it out. I’ve been thinking about you for days, can’t get you off of my mind. Drew that sketch of you naked, and…I just couldn’t stop myself from thinking about you. Picturing you naked. In that waterfall. Looking at me. Wanting me. Touching me.” His eyes met mine. “I was in the bathroom when you came over.”
“Yeah?” I had a feeling I knew where he was going with this. Had suspected as much.
“I was…touching myself. Thinking about you.” He closed his eyes. Seemed embarrassed. Upset about it. “Couldn’t help myself. Felt dirty for it. Like I was using you.”
I slid upward, toward his face. Bent over him. Gazed down at him. “Look at me, Ink.”
His eyes opened. “Thought you oughta know.”
“You jacked off, thinking about me, naked, touching you?”
He nodded. Pained. Upset, still. “First time I done that in…years. Since before Elise.”
“Want to know what I think about that?”
He nodded again. “Yeah, I do. The honest truth of it.”
I put my lips near his ear. “Good.” I pulled back, smiled at him, a helplessly aroused, sensual smile. “I’m glad you did that.”
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