I stiffened, and things got a bit awkward as he tried to move me, and I couldn’t quite anticipate what he wanted. Finally, I laughed somewhat nervously and just asked, “What do you want me to do?”
“Turn around, put your back to me, and just lie back,” he said.
“What, like with my head in your lap?”
“Exactly. Only if you want. No pressure.” He held up his hands and the look in his eyes, says he meant it. It eased my nervousness and made it an easy choice. I lay back and put my head in his lap. He put a hand to the top of my head, smoothing some of my hair back from my forehead. I had it in a messy half-loop bun.
“You ditched the wig,” he said.
“It was getting sad,” I replied. “I was thinking about dying my hair.”
His gaze drifted up from my eyes to my hair and he grunted, an almost sound of disapproval, and said, “Please don’t.”
I smiled and asked, “Why not?”
“Because it’s beautiful – you’re beautiful, just the way you are.”
I think my mouth went a little dry.
“No one’s ever said that about me,” I whispered.
“Fuckin’ idiots. All of them,” he said back, his eyebrows raised as though to dare me to argue.
I loved the smoldering look in his liquid brown eyes and how it set my heart to racing. I smiled, reaching up to cup his lightly stubbled cheek, and he closed his eyes and leaned into the touch like there was no place he would rather be in the whole world right now.
“I come with a lot of baggage,” I warned him softly, swallowing hard around the sudden lump in my throat.
“Don’t we all?” he asked, opening his eyes. He stared down at me and slicked his fingertips along my hair and sent a tingling rush over my scalp. “You accepted me and my sordid past, baby. Not a lot of people would have helped me, let alone would have seen it through to the end the moment they found out I was an ex-con.”
“There are a lot of people in prison for things they didn’t do,” I said.
Before he let me finish, he shook his head and said, “But I did do—”
“No, I know that,” I said. “What I was going to say, was there are even more in there that don’t deserve to be based on the circumstances… I know that you did it,” I said. “I also know that I would have done the same thing.”
He smirked then and chuckled, shaking his head. “You wouldn’t have,” he said. “You’re too good for that.”
I looked away. “I’m not,” I declared, knowing that if I could hurt or kill my rapist, I wouldn’t hesitate. I would hurt him, murder him, in a heartbeat. Not just for me, but for anyone else he had done this to. For anyone else that he was going to do this to in the future.
I closed my eyes as the emotions welled up from the deepest, darkest parts of me and filled the space behind my eyelids.
I trembled finely and covered my face with my hands, the trembling turning to quivering, and then to shaking.
“Shhh, let it go,” Mace soothed and brushed a hand over my hair, and I did, because for the first time in a long time, I felt safe when not alone.
Thankfully, the crying jag was swift and over by the time the kettle started to scream.
We drank our tea and talked of other things – lighter things to balance out the dark and to chase the shadows away. I needed that, and I think Mace knew I needed that. For someone with such a rough exterior, he was, at least to me, incredibly generous and kind. I couldn’t say it was because of what I’d done. I think he was always this way. I just don’t think anyone from the “citizen world” as he liked to call it, had ever given him the chance to be soft around them.
I understood that, somewhat. As a Pagan, as an outlier and outcast, I guess I’d chosen a gentler path. Something akin to the lone wolf howling at the moon until the rest of my Burner tribe had howled back.
“I found a place among them, but I guess I hadn’t wanted to or wasn’t necessarily ready to completely give up on the rest of the world,” I murmured to Mace. I sat curled on the opposite end of the couch, my knees up, cup cradled in my hands as we talked over our tea.
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to; if you’re not ready,” he said and put his big warm hand atop my foot, rubbing over it, pressing slightly with his thumb. I jumped slightly at the initial contact, and closed my eyes, sinking into that touch, fathoms deep and sighing in a mix of frustration and relief.
“No, I do…” I said. “I really do.”
“Why you think?” he asked, and I sighed again at the monumental task of climbing this particular mountain.
“Because I need you to know it’s not you,” I answered.
“I know that, beautiful.”
He sounded so sure, but it wasn’t cocky or anything. I couldn’t tell you what it was, but it wasn’t that.
“I haven’t been with anyone, like that, since…” I averted my gaze and felt my cheeks color. I’d never been embarrassed by talking about sex before. This was new and uncomfortable, and I didn’t like it.
“Nothing has to happen tonight,” he said, tapping the top of my foot. I looked at him and met the sincerity in his gaze. “We can just go to bed, and I can hold you, and call it good. I’m good with that.”
“You actually
