“Oh, right. What made you start doing this?”
“It was easy to get trained, and I needed the money. Just a bonus to find out that I actually enjoy it.”
“Fair reasons. You’re good at it.”
“Is that a compliment?”
“Shhh. Never happened.”
He can hear the little smile in her voice at that last question and tries his best to loosen up while her fingers continue a massage light as hummingbird wings.
“I don’t get these feelings anymore,” she admits, never halting her wandering strokes. “They’ve always been few and far between to begin with, but they have to be with someone I trust. Someone I want touching me. Then, all these little tingles fan out like a headgasm.”
“Headgasm,” he repeats, amused.
“It’s a legit word. You’ll see.”
Maybe he will. Maybe he won’t. But either way, this is pretty damn nice. There’s something tender in the way she touches him. His body craves it even if his mind is at war with his emotions, telling him to sink into this and enjoy it because there’s no telling when he’ll ever be this lucky again, and then her fingers sneak under his head to scrape light across the nape of his neck, and it’s like nothing he’s ever felt.
Pinpoints of pleasure fan out from the contact point, sparking across his scalp like static and down his spine in a rolling wave. He gasps, rolling his head a fraction to chase her touch like a cat begging for another scratch.
She was right. It’s a headgasm. That’s most definitely a word now.
“Fuuuck.” He exhales when she goes still, her hands framing his head on either side. “I see why that’s your favorite feeling. It’s mine now, too.”
Her soft hum of approval has him melting, and if someone told him a couple of weeks ago he’d be here enjoying this, he’d have laughed. Not him. Not ever, yet here he is finding himself capable of something he never assumed he could be.
He’s trying hard to forget that she felt that one particular scar on his chest, though. No way it didn’t rise up to meet her fingers. The urge to explain somehow is unrelenting, as if he has any idea what to say.
He traces its location over his shirt. “I know you felt this.”
“It’s not my business. You don’t have to talk about it.”
“My father wasn’t violent. It wasn’t his style. He was too controlled for that sort of behavior. Used to say that if we resorted to overt violence, then we’d better kill our opponents because leaving them wounded would be worse.” Theo pauses, remembering that night as if he were a teenager again. “Me and Oliver were fighting, and I knocked one of his teeth loose. We always fought verbally, but physical fights were rare, though he did give me a concussion one summer…anyway, there was blood everywhere. Everywhere. When our father found us, he hit me so hard my bones shook, and then dragged me into the library and beat me with his belt right across the chest. Not the back, he said, because he wanted me to see it when I looked in the mirror to be reminded of my error. It healed, but there’s always gonna be a mark left behind…or seven. That’s when I really understood that he had a favorite and it wasn’t me.”
She goes quiet before dragging his hand backward across her thigh, pushing his fingertips into a round puckered scar he can feel over her pants. “This is from the pellet of a BB gun. Not real bullets, but they still hurt. Still cut deep on bare skin.”
“Who the hell shot you?”
“Husband number one. On purpose. He said it was an accident, but we both knew better. He was high. He only ever did things like that when he was high as a fucking kite.”
“Jesus.”
This has to be hard for her, like it would be for him, but she’s showing him anyway. Likely hoping it’ll ease the sting of knowing what she’s discovered.
He may have moved on for the most part when it comes to what he suffered most of his life, despite the occasional flinch, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy to talk about it or that showing anyone isn’t a struggle. He’s hiding just as much as she has been, the two of them opening up little by little with each new exchange that leaves them stronger instead of even more broken.
“We’re more than what’s been done to us,” she says softly. “But I still wish I could knock your father’s teeth out.”
He huffs. “I wish I could drag your ex up from the grave and do the same.”
“We’ll both have to settle for imagining such things.”
Slowly, he sits up and turns to face her, taken aback by how close her face is to his own. He’s going to gather his courage and kiss her this time. Fuck it. They are stranded in the middle of nowhere. If ever there was a time to throw caution to the wind, it’s now.
When she pulls away to gaze over him and out the window, whatever bravery he’d stored up drops to the floor along with his heart.
“No, that’s not it,” she offers in reassurance. “There’s someone out there.”
