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As moans climbed up my throat and tremors rocked my legs, I bowed against the tile wall of the shower as near-scalding streams raced across my skin. Faster and harder, I demanded pleasure from my body, some buried piece of me coming back online after months of feeling dead to the world. Because I had been.
I had died in that house.
Had died to me, to what I loved.
To this. This raw, primal need tofeel.
When Eric fucked me, it felt like I was an inflatable. Disposable. Easy to pull out when he needed something, and stuff to the side the moment it was less convenient. There for his use, a sloppy kiss before he collapsed afterward if I was lucky, and an ‘it’s faster if you let me watch’. This wasn’t the sexy, I-want to-see-you-orgasm kind of dirty talk, either. It was an I-don’t-give-a-shit-to-try kind of demoralizing entitlement.
I deserved more.
It was the Noel before him that was awakening now. The one that lived to dance and sing and be free. The one that loved sex—thatreallyloved sex—and craved that carnal release for a body I’d learned to love, that stirred now. I’d forgotten. I’d let him make me forget. Make me feel shame where there once was none.
No more. Never again would I feel shame over being a sexual woman. For beingalive. No more questioning what I deserved, or diminishing my needs because I was asking ‘too much’.
The bar for the bare fucking minimum had officially been raised.
My breath came out in a desperate little moan as my orgasm raced forward. And for a beat, I pictured Jameson.Jameson, who promised women a good time, if nothing else, and imagined it was his broad palm driving me home—
“Holy shit!” I cried out, a sob tearing up my throat as pleasure nearly buckled my knees.Steel-blue eyes, that wry, satisfied smile, that big, broad, tattooed body.Panting, shaking, and somehow satiated and simultaneously starving, I stood under the water, letting it wash away the last of that broken shell I’d inhabited back in Florida.
Little did I know there was no washing away a past like mine.
* * *
“Hey, girl!”Kara sang when I came in the door to Grizzly Grind the next day. Kara was sweet, young, and epically competent. I trusted the seventeen-year-old to open on Sundays above most of my twenty-somethings. The place was nearly empty—save one customer waiting at the end of the bar, and another waiting at a high-top table—but disorganized with the lingering touch of the first morning rush. Grinds littered the counter, catch cups lined up beneath the machine, our drip coffee basket still lined, filled, and waiting.
“How are you today?” she chirped.
“Great, thanks!” I was. Despite being entirely confused by thewhat-the-fuckthat was alone time with Jameson, that freaking orgasm had done something to me.
Freed me.
I felt like I was walking taller, all on my own.Suck it, Eric.I don’t need no man.
Brex and Rhyett were on the first flight out to Anchorage this morning, heading back for a home-honeymoon back in their own bed in Florida. I offered Kara a bright smile, and asked, “How areyou?”
“Tips were epic for opening shift, so I’m a happy little clam.”
“Good!”
“How’s Brin?” she asked as she snatched the coffee bin to slide it into place.
Purse stashed below the counter, I turned on the sink to wash my hands. “She sent a picture with Giddy!”
“Yay! Oh, I’m so glad they’re finally safe. Sheesh, that was a long labor.”
Brin had valiantly labored for over forty hours to bring baby boy Gideon into the world, and we’d breathed a collective sigh of relief when her husband, Paul, texted the group chat.
“Well, she has a lifetime to hold it over his head,” I pointed out, earning a giggle as she poured water into the machine.
“Make sure to tell her that.”
“I’ll do just that. Can I help you with anything?”
“Nope,” she said, holding up a to-go cup. Kara’s dirty blonde hair swept into a cute fishtail braid down her back, the tips gold with a beautiful balayage. Drip coffee now in hand, her hazel eyes glittered as she smiled, her heart-shaped face pinking as she handed the drink over to a very attractive young man in a Coast Guard uniform. “Oh. There was a man that was looking for you.”
My stomach flopped like a half-cooked pancake. “Uh,Jameson?”
