30
GWEN
It wasn’t fair to compare Sebastian to Troy. I wasn’t trying to. But everything about this interaction was so different than anything I’d ever experienced.
Troy and Ryan were the only men I’d experienced.
One of them didn’t understand what the words “no” meant. The other stopped wanting me this way shortly after I could legally buy a pack of cigarettes. He’d only made advances after I found leaked photos of a teenage girl he’d gotten from some kid in his discord chat. When I’d been infuriated and disgusted, when he thought I would leave, then he’d give me affection.
That sex was always passionate. Angry and sensual at once. Up against the kitchen counter. In the shower as I washed away my smeared mascara, dodging the skin he’d cracked open when I told him I’d go to the cops. Under the blankets first thing in the morning when I had lain awake all night, debating if I could survive on one income.
It’d been full of apologies. Excuses and rationalizations. Rationalizations that, in those moments—when I’d been so emotionally deprived, so afraid of staying, just as afraid of leaving—I’d convinced myself were true. The emotional tormentpaired with the physical pleasure had been a spell I couldn’t escape.
But this, sex with Sebastian, was intimate in a way I’d never felt. When he was unbuttoning my jeans, he looked up too quickly and head butted me square in the nose. Laughing, apologizing, he asked if I was okay, if I was sure I wanted to do this, and I kissed him in response.
Now wasn’t the time to think about Troy, but it was more than the simple things that were different. The way he kissed. Troy’s tongue had always felt like a worm crawling into my mouth. Sebastian kissed me deeply, hard, but never invasive. It was like the clouds meeting the moon. Like two things that belonged together touching briefly, then sliding freely to the next touch.
When Troy had trailed his hands down my body, when he held me in his arms, they were like iron locks. Sturdy and strong. Unbreakable. Even in the most intimate of moments, he held me so tightly I wasn’t sure if I could ever escape.
But Sebastian’s hands on my body felt like the water in a heated pool after a hike through the snow. They were everywhere, cradling me, holding me. But free-flowing. Soft yet powerful. As he peeled off my layers, as his weight came down on me, I didn’t even for a second fear that I would never be able to leave. That if I did change my mind, if I didn’t want this, I would be stuck beneath him.
People always said that comparison is the thief of joy. In this moment, comparison was salvation.
It didn’t have to be the way it had always been. With Sebastian, intimacy, sexuality, wasn’t a bargaining tool. It wasn’t a manipulation tactic. It wasn’t a lock, or a rope, or, worse yet, a noose.
This was something cosmic. Something I’d read about in books, something I heard other women talk about, but I’d never realized existed in the flesh.
Once the clothes were gone, and the heat of his bare chest radiated into mine, it all dulled.
The memory of Troy’s hands where Sebastian’s were now. The sickness in my stomach at the thought. That sensation of being locked in chains.
It was gone.
Right now, there was heat, and there was touch, and there was pleasure, and there was safety. Those were the only words I could use to describe these feelings, and yet, they didn’t even come close to what I felt in this moment. I’d felt heat, I’d been touched, and I knew pleasure, but not like this. Not with him.
With him, everything else vanished. Even our bodies. My eyes were closed, his lips on mine, and at one moment, my knees were in the blankets, legs spread around him, and then cotton sheets cradled my back, and then it all vanished.
Was there flesh at all here? Had I died and made it to the afterlife? Was this heaven?
Because I felt all of this. All of him. The smoothness of his skin, the definition of his muscles. Each of his gravelly groans that floated into my ears or from his open mouth to mine. The salt of his sweat popped on my tongue. That citrusy smell of his cologne mixing with his natural musk filled my lungs. Every rock of his hips, every wondrous place he massaged within me, every grasp of his calloused fingers.
I felt all of it, and I knew each individual sensation. But when they all came together, I couldn’t tell where I ended and he began.
We were one within two. Our skin, our flesh, were two streams that opened into the same ocean. For a moment, onlya brief moment, that thought had my heart falling and my stomach spinning.
Reality. I needed a tether to reality.
But when my eyes opened, our foreheads were pressed together. His fingers threaded through my hair. He held on to the back of my neck, lips parting to meet mine. The second they did, that falling sensation stopped. Now, the spinning was around me. Rather than nausea, it was the touch of intoxication after a few drinks. A blissful buzz that left all my limbs tingling, heat blossoming at every point where our bodies met.
Those hazel eyes. Only the thinnest rim of brown around the pupil, brightened by the deepest shade of verdant. A pale blue ring encased it all.
Until now, my favorite color had always been red. Not anymore. That thin rim of brown stretching into emerald with a smoky blue edge. That was, and would be from now until forever, the most beautiful collage I’d ever beheld.
They were a portal to another dimension. That cosmic one where our bodies, our spirits, our souls, merged down those free-flowing rivers into an ocean that could never separate us. No matter how hard we tried, bits of him and pieces of me were within one another now, and no schism, no rift, could pull us apart.
One of his hands traveled down my bare back. The other came for my cheek. He held it closely, softly. Like I would break if he wasn’t careful. Like I was the most wondrous thing he’d ever had the pleasure of embracing, and he had to handle me like the finest work of art.
“I don’t know how I ever lived without you, Gwen Kane.”
