Thump, thump, thump goes the bed on the wall.
Oh no, I’m going to come.
He begins to moan, deep and guttural, and I smile into the mattress.
Here he goes. I can feel it building.
He hisses loud and holds himself deep, and then he cries out as he jerks hard.
In the final showdown, he pumps me so hard that I might just break.
I cry out as the last of my resilience is stolen from me.
I slump onto the bed, my eyes filled with tears.
He drops his head to my back, as if collecting himself, and then he reaches up and releases the handcuffs.
Without a word, he gets up and walks into the bathroom.
I pant to myself.
I sit up and put my head into my hands.
What was that?
I get up and walk into the bathroom to see him with both hands leaning on the bathroom vanity. He’s staring at his reflection in the mirror, his chest rising and falling as he tries to catch his breath.
He’s wet with perspiration, his hair and eyes wild.
He looks up, and his cold eyes meet mine. He tears off the condom and throws it in the waste bin, as if disgusted.
What?
I don’t know what’s going on here but this is fucked up.
I turn to walk out of the bedroom and down the hall. I hear him marching out after me.
“Don’t you leave me!” he cries.
I turn to face him.
He’s panting with crazy fear in his eyes.
“I’m working on it.” He shakes his head. “I’m… I’m working on it.” He stammers. “Don’t leave me. Please.” He begs, “I swear, I’ll change.”
My face falls.
And I thought my demons were bad.
I go to take him in my arms. “It’s okay, baby,” I whisper. He drops his head to my shoulder, and I hold him.
He’s distraught. Close to tears.
“It’s okay, I’m not going anywhere,” I tell him.
He holds me so tightly, and he seems distraught over it.
“It’s okay,” I whisper against his hair. “It’s okay.”
We stand like this in the hallway for a long time-his head in my neck, and my arms protectively around his shoulders-until we have to move. “Come on, let’s have a shower and wash this oil off,” I whisper up at him.
His haunted eyes hold mine. I lean up and kiss him softly. He screws up his face against mine.
Whatever has him scared must be bad. He’s petrified that I’m leaving.
“Come on.” I lead him down to the bathroom, and we get into the shower. He takes the soap into his hands and begins to wash the oil off my body in silence, leaving me to stare up at him.
I don’t know what the hell just happened, but I’m not pushing him.
Whatever it is, he’ll tell me when he’s ready.
He washes my sex, and I wince. His face falls. “Did I hurt you?” he asks quietly.
“No.”
He clenches his jaw as if stopping himself from saying something.
I kiss his big, beautiful lips. “It’s okay, baby.”
“Nothing about this is okay.”
I hold his face in my hands. He looks so sad and lost as the water beads on his face in the steamy room. We wash each other in silence, and we eventually get out. He dries me off first and then himself, and we get into bed.
I hold him in my arms. Tonight, it’s different. His head is on my chest.
We lie in silence as I run my fingers through his hair. Every now and then, I kiss his forehead in reassurance.
“It wasn’t her fault,” he whispers into the darkness. I frown. “I was too much for her.”
I don’t want to throw him off before he tells me what he’s talking about, so I choose to stay silent.
“In the months leading up to the divorce, I couldn’t…”
Helena. He’s talking about Helena.
I kiss his forehead again, trying to encourage him to open up.
“She was small, I was big. I liked it rough, she…”
“Didn’t?” I murmur.
“She kept pulling me up during sex. In the end, I…” He pauses, and I know that the memory is still painful. “I was so scared that I was going to push her too far that I couldn’t turn my mind off.” He kisses my breast, and I hold him tightly.
“She wanted vanilla. I needed chocolate.”
I exhale as the jigsaw puzzle finally falls into place.
“You stopped having sex with her,” I whisper.
“I was just trying to get my head around it. Every time we would have sex, I couldn’t come. I was too controlled-too in my head. In the end, I didn’t even want to go there. It was too stressful for me. I’d have anxiety for the next two days, worrying that I’d been too rough with her.”
I hold him tightly. “Baby,” I whisper.
He blames himself.
“She started to think I didn’t find her attractive anymore.”
“Did you?’
“Of course, I did. I loved her.”
My heart constricts. Ouch.
“We fought.”
I kiss his temple as I brush the hair back from his forehead.
“I started going away for work. I thought the distance would make us better.”
“Did it?”
“She thought I wanted to get away from her-that I didn’t want sex because I was seeing someone else.”
My heart drops. I already know how this story ends.
He stays silent for a long time, lost in his own thoughts. “In the end it turned out our gardener had the vanilla she needed.”
That bitch.
“This is why you protect her… because you feel responsible?”
“She was hurt.”
“She went to another man, Sebastian.”
“Because I couldn’t-”
“Because she couldn’t,” I cut him off.
He exhales heavily.
“Is that why you like call girls? Because you know they can take it rough? Because you know that there is no chance you can hurt them?”
He stays silent, and I know that it is.
I think for a moment, and then I smile. “Maybe this was God’s way of saving you for me.”