Page 43 of For a Goode Time Call…
“I’m thinking that I’m really, really…interested…to experience for myself what you’re…capable of.” I pressed against him, so my breasts were crushed against his chest.
He gazed down at me. Eyes were deep and wild and inscrutable, and I felt him breathing hard, deep. “Best listen to the rest before you decide that.”
“Did you rape her?”
He flinched as if struck. “What? Fuck no!”
“Did you beat her up?”
“No, Cassie, I did not.” His voice was angry and tight.
“Did you intentionally physically, mentally, or emotionally abuse her or hurt her?”
“No.” A pause. “She got hurt, but it was an accident.” His voice was so tight it sounded close to snapping.
“Hurt how?” I shook my head. “Wait a minute, though. My point in asking is that is the only reason I’d be hesitant about anything with you…if you’d intentionally, out of malice or cruelty, hurt her.”
“I didn’t.”
I snuggled closer. “Then no matter what happened, I’m not afraid of you. Or your past.”
He sighed, deeply, painfully. “Like I said, you’d best hear me out.”
“Okay, continue.”
“We, uh. We messed around like that, what she called teaching me, for a while. Few weeks, a month or two maybe. I think finally her patience with waiting for actual sex wore out, and she decided it was time. But she told me she wanted to take a backseat from then on, in terms of who was in charge, was how she put it. In charge. Meaning, she didn’t want to be…the aggressor, I guess. Starting things. She wanted me to do that.”
I nodded. “I get that.”
“Okay. Well. She said she wanted us to move to the next step. But when I was ready. And that when I was ready, I should lead the way.” He sighed, swallowed hard. “I was nervous, I guess. I waited, thought about it. Made sure I was ready. I mean, I hadn’t been, like, waiting for a specific reason, you know? Like, I wasn’t saving myself for marriage. I just was…scared of getting hurt again. Rejected. Elise had made it pretty obvious she wasn’t going to reject me, so I felt comfortable going for it.”
A long, long pause.
“Obviously, we’d done plenty together, up to that point. So she knew…me. What I was like. What I looked like.” He sounded…embarrassed, or something like it. “I ain’t a small guy, not in any way. Okay? And she was well aware of this. Seemed to be pretty appreciative of it, if you know what I mean.”
I bit my lip, laughed silently. “Yes, Ink, I can imagine.” I threaded my fingers into his beard. “Nothing about you is small, so I can…well…imagine, that you’re just as…big…in other ways.” I buried my face in his chest. “I have to admit, I’ve thought about that.”
He stared at me. “You have?”
I let my palm rest on his chest, and then drift to his stomach. “I’ve thought about it quite a bit, lately especially.” Swallowed my own nerves. “Thought about when I’m alone, and…worked up.”
He let out a slow, controlled breath. “Dammit, Cass.”
“What?” I asked, endeavoring to sound innocent, even as I laughed under my breath.
“Making it hard to think.”
“Maybe you don’t need to think.”
He closed his eyes, breathing evenly, as if tightly controlling himself—his hand was gripping my waist, fingers dimpling my skin between shirt and pants. “Cass…you don’t know what you’re asking.”
“Thus the story of Elise, I take it.”
He nodded.
“You accidentally hurt her? Like, she wasn’t ready for…um. All of you?”
He shrugged. “I…no. But there’s more to it than that. Up until that point, she’d been encouraging me to just be open and honest with her about everything. What I was feeling, what I wanted, what I liked. To not hold back.”
