Indulgence (125 page)

“Fuck. That’s horrible.”

“Yeah. Pretty damn horrible. And you said you’d been
married?”

“Yeah. That was pretty damn horrible too.”

“What happened?”

“Something pretty damn horrible. Very damn horrible.”
There’s a war of some sort going on behind his eyes, and I want to know what it
is. Even though he’s not touching me, I can feel him growing tense. It takes a
few minutes, but I finally figure out what it is.

It’s pain. And I want to take it away. I want it to leave
him and never come back. What in the world could this woman have done that
makes him shiver as he speaks of her? My mind goes into overdrive trying to
come up with something, then I just decide to go for broke. “Jaz, whatever it
is, you can tell me. It’s okay, I promise.”

“It may not be.”

“It will be. Do I come across as that judgmental?”

He shakes his head. “No. But it’s a lot to take in.”

“So give me the benefit of the doubt, please?” How can I
make him feel comfortable? “I trust you. Can’t you trust me?”

“But this is . . .”

“Have I done anything – ANYTHING – that would keep you from
trusting me?”

Another shake of his head. “No. You’ve done nothing but be
up front and straight with me.”

“Then have a little faith in me, can’t you? I promise you
won’t be sorry.”

The expression on his face goes from confusion to pure
dread. Then, like a lightning strike, he stands, grabs my hand, and says, “Come
on. I can’t put this off. It’s not fair. You should know.”

“Know what?” comes rolling out of my mouth as he drags me
along, and I notice something else odd: He’s stroking himself through his
jeans. What the hell? This isn’t making sense. Pulling me through a doorway,
we’re in his bedroom, where he points to a comfy little armchair. “Sit.” He’s
still stroking himself like mad when I sit down, and I can see his erection
through the soft denim. In a voice tinged with sadness, he says, “I’m sorry,
but I can’t look at you when you see it. I just can’t. It’s just too much.” He
murmurs again, “It’s just too much,” and unzips his fly. Fingers on the
waistband of his briefs, he says, “If you can’t take it, just get up and leave.
Don’t say anything, please. Just leave. I’ll understand. It won’t be the first
time.” Running through my mind is the mantra,
What the hell?, What the
hell?, What the hell?
Thumbs hooked in the waistband, he pulls the front of
his briefs out and down.

All the air rushes out of my lungs and I fight to keep from
making a sound. His erect penis is right there in front of my eyes. It’s plenty
large enough, but it’s kind of twisted in a weird way and makes a bit of an
angle, and I’m trying to focus well enough to figure out what I’m seeing when
it all suddenly comes into painful focus.

Scars. They’re everywhere. They run here and there up the
length, and then back and forth too. Some are depressed, and some are raised,
most with suture marks. It’s obvious they’re not fresh; they’re well cured, so
they’ve been there for awhile. I can’t imagine anything that could’ve done that
kind of damage, short of accidentally catching it in some kind of machinery or
being attacked by a wild animal, but I’ve seen his legs and stomach, and
they’re scar-free. I’m trying to take it all in and make sense of it, and then,
without thinking, I look up at his face.

Jaz’s eyes are squeezed shut against the sight of me knowing
his greatest shame, and my heart breaks for him. A lone tear meanders down one
cheek, but otherwise, his face is blank. The thought crosses my mind,
How
many women have seen this and run the other direction? Or has he ever shown
anyone else? He said it wouldn’t be the first time, so it had to have happened
to him. Oh, god, Kimberly,
my brain screams,
whatever you do, make it
the right choice.

Something comes over me in that instant, something so clear
and pure that I know it’s the precise thing to do, and, without warning, I
reach out, grab his briefs and jeans, yank them down to the middles of his
thighs, and run my mouth down over his cock in one smooth, seamless movement. I
hear him gasp, and I grip his thighs with my hands and hang on in case he tries
to move away, but he doesn’t. Instead, his hands wind around in my hair and
something else happens, something that takes my broken heart, dashes it to the
ground, and stomps all over it.

He starts to sob. I feel his body shake, feel his tears fall
into my hair, and I don’t know if I should stop and comfort him or keep going
and honor his pain. One hand leaves my hair and grips my chin, but I grab it
with my hand and squeeze for dear life. To my great relief, he squeezes back,
and I just keep going. I’m not sucking his cock; I’m making love to it with my
lips, my tongue, my throat. I want him to know how precious it is to me – I
want him to know how precious
he
is to me. Because he is. I don’t know
how it happened, and I don’t care. He trusted me, and I want to honor that
trust. I want him to know that trusting me with this secret, this painful
truth, was absolutely, positively the right thing to do. I’ve never had a man
give me the gift of such vulnerability, and I wouldn’t dream of dishonoring
that gift.

My lips leave his hardness for a split second when I murmur,
“Oh, Jaz, you taste so good.” There’s no opportunity to go back to what I was
doing before he drops to the floor in front of me, wraps his arms around me,
and kisses me.

This kiss. It’ll be with me for the rest of my life. My
heart expands – I can feel it – and takes in his, giving it a home and a place
to rest. Softer than a snow in January, I let my fingertips dance across the
back of his neck under his hair, and he moans into my mouth. I manage to break
free just long enough to whisper, “I love you, Jaz. Nothing else matters.” His
mouth covers mine again, and I sink into the kiss like a Dane into the bog. It
goes on forever, holding me hostage to its magic, until he finally comes up for
air.

“Kimmie, I . . .”

My finger stills his lips. “It doesn’t matter. If you want
to tell me, I’ll listen. If you don’t want to talk about it, that’ll be fine
too. You, me, now – that’s what matters.”

“I owe you that. At least I feel like I do.”

It seems almost like he’s shrinking before me, and I don’t
want that. He’s a good man, a strong man, and I know he didn’t do this to
himself, so shame is the last thing he should feel. “Have other women really
run?” He nods in silence. “Bitches. Weak little bitches. And you don’t owe me a
thing.”

“Yes I do. You said you love me. If that’s true, I owe you
an explanation, at the very least.”

My hair twists as I shake my head. “Yes. It’s true. And no,
you don’t owe me any explanation.”

“Even if I can’t say it back?”

“Even if you can’t say it back.” I run a finger down his
jaw, and he tips his head toward it. That simple gesture tugs at my heart
again, and I press my palm to his cheek.

“I will, Kimmie. I promise, I will. Not right now, but I
will.”

“S’okay. I can love you without you loving me. Happens to
people all the time.”

“I didn’t say I didn’t. I just said I can’t say it.”

A gentle chuckle rolls from my throat even as my heart leaps
in my chest. “Good enough!”

“Come here.” He pulls me up from the floor after he stands,
and then pulls me toward the bed. Once I’m standing there beside it, he
undresses me, then undresses himself, and points to the bed. “In you go.” With
him right behind me, I crawl in. His arms pull me to him, and I’m awash in the
sensations of his strength, his warmth, the softness of his skin, and the scent
he’s wearing. My cheek registers the feel of the hair on his chest, and one of
my fingers meanders through the dark patch, swirling as it goes. “I was married
for a lot of years to Meredith.”

“Yeah. I remember you said that.”

“She got it in her head that I was cheating on her, but I
swear to god, I wasn’t. My job required a lot from me, and I spent extra hours
trying to make my bosses happy so I didn’t lose it. Funny thing is,” he says
with a snort, “in the end, I lost it anyway. So anyhow, I was working a lot of
late hours and she was just sure I was cheating on her, but I wasn’t. She kept
arguing with me and accusing me, just generally being irrational, and I was
getting pretty tired of it. I came home one night, I was really tired, and she
just kept yelling at me. Finally, I told her, ‘You know what? If you want to
believe that, just do. It’s not true, but just believe it and shut up about
it.’ I went in the kitchen and got myself a soft drink. I opened it and went to
the bathroom, then came back, read some paperwork, finished the drink, and went
to bed.”

Suddenly, I’m sick and terrified of what he’s going to say
when he starts again, haltingly trying to recount what happened. “I don’t
remember a lot else. I remember going to bed, but I didn’t take my clothes off.
The next thing I remember was waking up in the bed, naked, my hands tied to the
headboard, and she’d gagged me with a piece of cloth tied behind my head. She’d
pulled my shoes, jeans, and boxers off, and there was this weird look in her
eyes.”

“I don’t understand how . . .”

“They ran a tox screen at the hospital. She drugged me.
Ketamine. There’s no telling how long I’d been out, but from that point on,
time was a blur.”

I feel him tremble, and I start to shake. “Please, don’t
tell me . . .”

“Yup. She was mumbling something about how that weird
Bobbitt woman had the right idea. Then she flashed a box cutter.”

The images that roll through my mind make me sick. “Jaz, you
don’t have to . . .”

“Yes. Yes, I do. Kimmie? Please? Can I? I’ve never talked
about this with anybody except my therapist.” I feel him shudder again, and I
nod against his chest. “I remember every second of the pain. She ripped and
slashed like a maniac. Some of the cuts she did fast, and some of them, she
buried the blade and dragged it through very slowly. She was sitting on my
thighs and there was nothing I could do but squirm and scream. I finally passed
out, but not soon enough.”

“Dear god, babe. How did you . . .”

“We lived in a condo. A neighbor heard all the weird noises
and called the police. He said he’d never heard anything like it, and it scared
him.” He swallows hard, and then adds, “Sometimes when I’m alone, I can hear my
own screams echoing in my head. The pain was so intense that it was like an
out-of-body experience.”

“But your daughter?”

“Took me three days to find her. Meredith had just dumped
her on some friends. I didn’t have my phone with me. We had a landline and an
answering machine, though, and my brother went to the condo to pick up some
clothes for me and found the message. Her friend’s parents were trying to find
us because no one had come to pick her up, and when they brought her home,
nobody was there, obviously.”

“What happened to Meredith?”

“The cops arrested her. She got sent up for awhile. It took
me over a year to heal. They didn’t know if I’d ever be able . . . well, they
didn’t know how it would turn out. I’m lucky it works at all.”

My fingers swirl through his chest hair again. “Looks to me
like it works pretty well.”

“Surprisingly well.”

I take a deep breath and sigh it out. “It took a lot of
courage for you to tell me all of that. Thanks for trusting me. Have you been
in any other relationships since then?”

“Yeah. One. But she was a few years younger. She had little
kids and she and her husband decided to get back together. I think she was just
looking for some stability. But I never told her all of this. I just told her
it was an accident and I didn’t want to talk about it.”

“Then why me?”

“You’re different somehow. You’re older, not as fickle. And
you weren’t out prowling for a partner. I just stumbled across you. It’s
different. You feel like . . .” He stops. I wait. Finally, I can’t wait
anymore.

“I feel like what?”

He sighs and kisses the crown of my head. “You feel like
home.”

I can’t stand it anymore. “You said that thing still works
surprisingly well?”

“Yep.”

My best coy smile and batting of the eyelashes is directed
at him. “I don’t believe you. Prove it.”

“Is that right? Don’t believe me, huh?” He rolls to his side
to face me. “Want me to prove it, huh?”

“Yes. Sir.” I mock. “I don’t think you can really . . .”

He interrupts me with his lips, and the next thing I know,
I’m under him and he’s grinning down at me, his upper body lifted by his hands
on the mattress. “First, I think I need to return the favor from earlier.” He
kisses me, then trails kisses down my body, taking in one nipple and then the
other, letting his lips and tongue drive me wild. The downward onslaught
continues, and he grips a nipple in each hand as he makes his way toward the
prize and stops at my mound. “Soft, baby. And you smell so sweet. I’ve wanted
to taste you since the very first second I saw you.”

“Oh, is that right? Well, I guess you’ll get your chance to
. . . oh my god!” I cry out as he sucks my clit between his lips, then begins
the delicious torture. I’m so wound up and turned on that my brain starts to
hum, and I grip the headboard, trying to hang onto whatever sanity I have left.

I hear him murmur, “Over the edge, baby,” and then he
triples his efforts. I cry out again and he gives me a muffled, “Let go,
Kimmie. Let me hear how it feels.”

“Oh, god! Oh, I’m gonna come, Jaz. Please, oh, you’re
driving me crazy. Just crazy. I want it, please? Oh, please? Oh, Jaz, I, I, oh,
god, I . . .” My hips pick up the rhythm and I’m tipping out over the abyss
when he stops. “What the hell?”

“You wanted to see if it really works. Now’s your chance.”
There’s the sound of ripping foil, followed by the heat of his body and, in one
smooth, rapid movement, he buries his shaft in me.