“Perhaps this is how we help each other, and we don’t know it yet.” Honeyed wisdom floated his comment, a magical river she longed to drift down on an unhurried voyage.
Tenderness swelled to high tide, filling her dark crevices with gold. For that alone, she cherished Brian. The words he spoke enhanced his tragic aura and artistic allure.
“You said help each other, and here I was thinking I was the one helping you,” she said.
His eye contact, fiery with passion and conviction, held her steady. “The energy here isn’t going in one direction, and I believe you know that as much as I do.”
She nuzzled his shoulder. The busted disaster of gory clumps making up what remained of her heart gathered together, fusing into one center mass. A lost memory of wholeness, nostalgia for a place that perhaps never was, made her hurt with a yearning ache.
“What are we doing?” She swallowed the threat of more words before they tumbled from her in inappropriate declarations of feelings or expressions of gratitude involving the repair of her ruined heart. Not okay to feel big emotions for Brian. Even less okay to heap them at his feet.
Brian searched behind her eyes. A precision in his look let her know he’d found what he was looking for. And the scariest part? She should have been afraid, entering retreat mode.
But instead she longed to open for him, unfold her petals like a flower starved for sun.
“I see you. I do see you.” In his whisper lived sensitivity she’d long since deemed impossible for a man to possess. “Looking for someone to care for you.”
But before she gave up and gave in, succumbed to the temptation to give her entire self to him, Helen closed her battered blossom. Too risky, too dangerous to bloom. Best to hold back, for even she didn’t suffer complete awareness of the gangrenous ugliness haunting the depths of her soul. Not safe to flaunt her scars.
She shut her eyelids, snipping the tie of their communion and retreating from a fright he guided them toward. He led the dance with supreme skill, though, a fearlessness that coaxed her to melt into his arms and weep.
She owed him some attempt at honesty. “I have a really hard time being vulnerable. Being one-hundred percent there with another person.”
A lifetime of residue shoved into her breastplate, pressurized and ready to burst as she spoke more. “So basically what I’m saying is that there are things I can’t give to you. I’m not saying you want those things from me. I suppose I’m warning you is all. When you say you see me, I’m warning you that there is a lot of garbage you don’t see.”
“Nothing about you is garbage.” In dim light approaching darkness, he spoke a lullaby, everything she hadn’t known she needed. Or didn’t want to need. “But if any part of you, physically or emotionally, isn’t comfortable, we can stop. I promise I won’t be upset or act sulky or passive-aggressive. If you’ve had enough, just say the words. Please don’t feel like you owe me sex.”
Helen opened her eyes, avoiding locking his for fear she’d cry. Instead of surfing a wavelength with Brian, travelling to a place where she might find herself raw, she fixed a hard stare on the tin-stamped Fleur de Lis tiles gridding the ceiling. Metal plates, arranged in neat rows and columns. Oh, to be as tidy and ordered as that stupid ceiling pattern.
But she was chaos, not order. This man, this wonderful person, she’d put him at risk with her reckless choice. If she ruined him, she would never forgive herself.
She refused to pull the plug on their impending intimacy, though, for a not-inconsequential part of her burned to follow him to the precipice of her abyss, her secrets. Helen couldn’t give him much beyond the physical union of bodies tangled in bed, but lovemaking represented a small gift of care.
“I don’t feel obligated in the slightest. I want to be here, with you. So much. But this has to be just sex. Nothing complicated or ambiguous, no caveats. Anything more could confuse the situation, confuse our goals.” Translation: anything more than sex would scare her too much. The epiphany darted out before she could plug its escape hole.
“Well, then, allow me to show you great sex. If that’s what you want.” The soothing note in his timbre shifted to a randy, gruff burr. Still, the rich way he said the word “sex” rendered such a base concept inadequate to describe or do justice to their impending act.
Enough analysis. Helen reacquainted herself with her good old buddy snark. “You do realize you’ve asked for my clear consent a good three times. The only thing you’re missing right now is a shirt that says ‘Feminist’ across the front.”
“I’d wear it. What can I say? I’m in the ‘consent is sexy’ camp.”
“Consider it given with the utmost enthusiasm.” Steering their encounter back on the amorous track, she flashed her best seductress’s grin.
He replied by dropping a quick kiss to the tip of her nose, a subtle gesture of affection tendered in nonverbal whimsy. “I’m glad.”
With a swift physical transition, deft but not methodical, Brian moved his lips to Helen’s. He brushed her mouth, savoring. Then, in a show of dominance that stole her breath, he molded his mouth to hers and took her with his tongue. The waltz began as he explored the inside of her and she replied in kind.
His cock thickened, growing back to full readiness while they kissed. Soon he was as stiff as a poker, pushing into the crease of her thigh in rhythmic hip thrusts. Sucking her lips while thrusting dry, Brian moaned into her mouth and closed his hand around hers, interlacing fingers, and squeezed their palms together.
She welcomed
