Page 30 of Kept By the Kraken

“You told me you think I’m fierce.” She laughs, but it’s a self-deprecating sound. “I think you’re the only one who sees that. I don’t even see it most of the time. Daniel lost interest after I turned twenty-one. I was in grad school and busy. I gained weight and he hated the changes. That was the first year he had an affair.”

“Fucking idiot. Like I said.” Penelope’s body is heaven. Soft and round and so fucking sweet.

She looks down at me, her violet eyes ablaze. “Yeah, fucking idiot.”

I squeeze her hips and run my hand along her belly. Her body is enough to sink into and get lost. She squirms atop me, but before she can protest, I ask, “What happened?”

Penelope sobers, looking at a spot behind my head. “I spent nights in the library a lot then, always working until they closed. It was near winter exams, and I was studying for a comp test. Our house was in one of the older neighbors on the edge of campus and I would walk home. This one night, I wasn’t feeling well, and I decided to come home earlier than usual. I saw him tuck a woman into an Uber. They kissed through the window, and the way he looked at her… I’d never seen him look at me that way.”

“You left him?” I tug her chin, forcing those eyes on me.

“Yeah,” she huffs, “eight years later.”

The look I give her is full of compassion. “Bad cycles are hard to break.”

“You don’t think that’s weak?”

“I think it sounds like you had enough and left to find something for yourself.”

She shakes her head, unconvinced, and squeezes her eyes tightly. “Want to know something awful?”

“I want to know everything about you.”

“Boy, for a man who started with botched bondage, you’re smooth.” She tugs on my beard, and I wrap my hand around hers.

“I want to know you.”

She takes a steadying breath and looks me in the eye. “Part of me thought it was my fault. He was critical of how my body had changed, what I was studying, the ways I failed to take care of our home. About everything in my life really, but especially the bedroom. I talked to him once about some of my fantasies. After the first two years we were together, we didn’t have sex often and I never came. My mind was always somewhere else, and I couldn’t connect to the moment.”

The words spill out of her, fast now, though they hurt to hear.

“When I told him I thought I was into kink and wanted to explore, that I wanted him to restrain me and take charge so I could focus on feeling and get out of my head, he said what I wanted was sick. He told me I needed to master vanilla sex before I could graduate to kink. I was devastated. I thought that if I could just be what he wanted, if I could prove that I was a good wife, then he would realize what he had and how much he loved me. It took me too long and a lot of hours in therapy to realize love doesn’t work that way.”

I sit up and take her with me, pulling her into a hug. “Your needs and fantasies don’t make you sick. They’re a part of you. A beautiful part that I can’t wait to explore more of. And you’re right, it doesn’t work that way, but it’s easy to believe a lie and to feel it’s truth.”

“Like that you believe you should protect your family. True. And they died. Also true. So with that logic, you failed?”

“Yes,” I grit the word, hating where this conversation is headed.

“But that’s not true. The blame for their death is on the warriors who took your land. No one else.”

“That doesn’t feel like enough.” No matter how good it feels being with Penelope, it doesn’t change that I should have protected my family.

“Let’s test the logic.” She pulls back from our hug, eager now and talking with her hands. “Daniel wasn’t satisfied in our relationship. True. And he sought connection outside our marriage. Also true. I used that logic to say it was my fault he cheated because I failed.”

“No,” I grumble, reaching for her.

She scoots away on the couch.

“He was an asshole who was too stupid to realize the treasure he had. I almost made the same mistake with you.”

“Correct.” She pushes her hand into the air in victory.

I crawl toward her and she scoots back again until she’s flush with the couch arm. My knee nudges between her legs, my body crowding hers against the armrest. “And we should discuss the fact that you ran toward your captor, not away like you should.”

“Correct.”

“Why?” I tilt her chin until she meets my eyes.

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