Salvation (22 page)

It took a few more blinks for this to register. “Oh.” I turned my head and realized my face was directly next to his crotch. “Oh.”

I sat up. “Sorry. I was asleep.”

He laughed. “You don’t have to be sorry. I didn’t suspect for an instant that you’d put your head there to torture me.”

“Do you feel tortured?” I felt a familiar swell of affection, so I wrapped my arms around his neck.

He pulled me into his lap. “Maybe a little. Do you suppose there’s anything you can do to save me?”

I adjusted my legs so I was straddling his lap, so I could kiss him more easily. We kissed for a while, nothing too urgent or intense, just our lips gently brushing and our tongues tangling playfully.

“Don’t let me distract you from the game,” I murmured, punctuating the words with little kisses.

“Could never happen. I’m completely focused on the plays...and the strategy...and the...and the...” He was too busy kissing and caressing me to finish his sentence.

I sighed in pleasure at the feel of his hands on my back, my bottom, my thighs. I was wearing a t-shirt and yoga pants as usual, and the thin fabric did nothing to dull the sensations from his touch.

After a few more minutes, I could feel that he’d moved from the pleasant state of arousal to the urgent state. He was rocking his hips up into me as we kissed, and his mouth was no longer gentle.

“Do you want to go to bed?” he asked, tearing his mouth away at last. He was flushed as he gazed up at me hotly.

“No need to go to bed.” I stroked my way down his chest and belly until I reached his groin, and I massaged the bulge of his erection. “I think we can probably manage on the couch.”

I felt the same low-level of anxiety I’d been feeling for the last couple of weeks, but my body was aroused and I wanted to be close to Gideon. I wanted to have sex.

He was perfectly amenable to staying in our present location, but he tried to move me off his lap and lay me down on the couch.

I knew why, and I didn’t want him to have to do it. He was in pretty bad shape by this point, and there was no reason why he had to take the time and effort to get me off first, the way he did every time. Most men didn’t have to go to such trouble every time they had sex, so he shouldn’t have to either.

“No,” I said, clinging to his shoulders so he couldn’t move me off him. “I want to do it like this.”

“We can, but I wanted to make sure—”

“You can do me afterwards, if necessary.” I smiled down on him provocatively. “But maybe it won’t be necessary.”

He definitely liked that idea. I could see it in his face. And I realized he might have been disappointed that I could never come from intercourse, that I could only come when he went down on me.

Just another thing that wasn’t fair to him—but something he had to deal with because he was with me.

I felt a strange, heavy sinking in my gut, and it didn’t go away, even when we removed enough clothing. Even when he scooted down to make the position easier. Even when I lifted myself up and then sank down, sheathing him inside me.

He hissed in pleasure as I tightened myself around him, and then he pulled my head down into a kiss.

We kissed for a long minute, longer than I’d expected him to be able to wait. I could tell he was having trouble holding himself back. When he began making little jerks of his hips up into my weight, I pulled away from the kiss and braced myself on his shoulders.

Then I began to ride him.

It was pleasant enough for me, but I was never going to come. I knew it immediately, and it just added to that heaviness in my stomach. I knew what would happen. We would do this for a while. Then he would ask me if I could come. I would say “no,” but that I wanted to watch him come. Then he would come, and he’d be disappointed. And he’d spend a lot of extra effort to bring me to climax afterwards.

I just didn’t want that. I didn’t want that story to play out. I wasn’t going to let it happen that way. Gideon deserved more than that.

He was holding my hips and rocking up into my motion, and his eyes were crawling hungrily over whatever parts of me he could see. I could tell how much he loved this, needed this, wanted even more of this. And I hated myself for not having enough to give him.

I started to huff as I accelerated my motion, and he let out a helpless groan of pleasure. He was muttering out his normal refrain of “Yes, baby,” “So good,” “So sweet,” “Fuck, yes,” and “Just like that.”

I could sense in his body that he was getting close to the edge, so—without even thinking it through—I intensified my huffs to choppy, sobbing sounds.

His hands clenched in the flesh of my ass, and we rocked together in a primitive dance. “Oh, fuck, baby. You feel so good. Do you think you can—” He broke off the question with a rough gasp as I tightened my inner muscles around him.

“Uh huh,” I whimpered, moving over him almost wildly. I was getting tired and felt kind of sick, but I was going to give him this anyway. “Oh, God, gonna come. So hard.”

I bit off a loud exclamation, so it would sound more realistic, and clenched around him as hard as I could. He let out a muffled roar and jerked up into me, coming as powerfully as he thought I had.

I was gasping for real when I could finally ease down the motion and slump against him. He was gasping too, and he tightened his arms around me, mumbling out things I couldn’t hear and couldn’t understand.

The heavy feeling in my gut was oppressive now, but I made myself ignore it. Women faked orgasms all the time. For a lot less reason than I had. It wasn’t a big deal. There wasn’t anything wrong with it. And I’d do far more than that to make Gideon happy.

“That was so good,” I murmured, stroking his hair and lifting up enough to look down at his face.

I was rewarded by the naked satisfaction, somewhere between possessiveness and awe, reflected on his face. “That was better than good.” He lifted a hand to cup my cheek. “Did you really come?”

For just a moment, I thought he’d caught me out, but there was nothing questioning in his expression. “Couldn’t you tell?”

“I thought so. Just wanted to hear you say it.”

I giggled, although I didn’t feel like it, and leaned down to whisper in his ear. “You made me come so hard.”

He laughed and pulled me into another hug, and I told myself it was worth it. If I could make him this happy, anything was worth it.

***

“D
on’t you think you should tell Gideon the truth?”

The question was from Dr. Jones at one of our appointments the following week. I’d just spent twenty minutes spilling out what was going on and how anxious I was about everything and how I felt like such a failure since there was no reason for me to be spiraling down this way.

She’d listened without interrupting and then thought for a minute before asking the question.

“What?” I replied.

“Don’t you think you should tell him the truth?”

“About faking orgasms?” I did feel kind of guilty about that, but I was convinced it wasn’t that big a deal.

“About everything. About what you’re really feeling. About what you’re really afraid of.”

I stared at a spot in the air just past her shoulder. “I’m afraid of everything.”

“No, you’re not. And the fear that’s driving you now, the fear that’s making you so anxious, is not the same fear that used to drive you.”

“Gideon already knows all my issues.”

“He doesn’t know this. You’ve been hiding it from him. Don’t you think you should tell him?”

I swallowed hard, suddenly feeling tears burn in my eyes at the thought of having that particular conversation with Gideon. “What good would it do, except hurting him?”

“It would give him the chance to tell you the truth too.”

Stupidly, tears started to slide out of my eyes. I swiped them away with my fingers. “He always tells me the truth.”

“But does he always tell you the whole truth? Do you let him?”

“What do you mean? I never stop him from telling me things.”

“Not directly. But maybe you do it in other ways. Maybe you already know you’re not going to believe him when he tells you. Maybe he doesn’t feel like he can really say it yet. Do you think that’s possible?”

I tried to think through the question. I really did. But it was too hard, too confusing, made me too emotional. So I ended up mentally pushing it away. “I don’t even know what you’re talking about. Why do you always just ask me a bunch of leading questions? Why can’t you just tell me something straight out, so I can actually start to feel better.” I was still crying, and my tone was rather rude.

She didn’t react to the rudeness at all. She just offered me a box of tissues. “I could tell you that every woman deals with this stage of recovery after rape differently, so there’s nothing unnatural about what you’re dealing with. I could tell you that a lot of women have trouble with intimacy for a long time afterwards—not just physically, but emotionally. I could tell you that, but I think you already know it. And I don’t think it will make you feel better.”

I sniffed and mopped my face with a tissue. I nodded to acknowledge her words.

“The thing is,” she continued, “sometimes knowing isn’t enough. Sometimes we have to
do
something to feel better. Sometimes we have to change.”

“Well, what do I have to do?”

She gave a graceful half-shrug. “I can’t completely answer that for you. But I think a good place to start is to tell Gideon the truth.”

I sniffed. And then sniffed some more.

“Diana, sometimes the loudest voices in our heads are telling us lies. Sometimes they tell us that we’re broken, that we’re not good enough, that we’re not worthy, and because of that we can never really be loved. Sometimes the lies are so loud they’re all we can hear, but that doesn’t mean we have to believe them. It just means it’s even more important for us to hear the truth.”

The tears were coming again, so quickly I had to grab two more tissues. When I’d gotten the emotion under control enough, I managed to say, “It’s not as easy as that.”

Dr. Jones leaned forward, her eyes unexpectedly kind. “I know it’s not easy. I know how hard it’s been for you. I know how much you’ve had to fight for every step forward you’ve taken. But you’ve fought every fight, Diana. You’re not in the same place you were when I first met you six months ago, but you’re acting like you are. And I think this—this one thing—isn’t as hard as you’re making it. You need to tell Gideon the truth. And you need to
hear
him when he tells you the truth too.”

***

I
thought about what Dr. Jones had said the whole night after the appointment, and then the whole day after that. At first, I was persuaded I should hash things out with Gideon, but the more I agonized in my mind, the more I was convinced she didn’t really understand what I was going through.

The anxiety didn’t go away.

On the Saturday, Gideon’s team at work decided to have a spontaneous cookout, since it was a gorgeous, unseasonably warm day for early December. He invited me to come, and I had absolutely no reason to refuse.

Of course, I needed to come. I was his girlfriend. It was the job of a girlfriend to go with a guy to his work functions.

Whether she wanted to or not.

Just so it’s clear, it wasn’t that I didn’t want to be part of Gideon’s life. I wanted that more than anything. I always made sure he shared with me about his work, and his family, and his day, and his dreams, and anything he wanted or needed. I didn’t want to be cut off from this important part of his world, but I kept brooding on what it would mean.

Gideon was so proud of me, and he assumed everyone else would see what he saw. But they would know everything that had happened, since they’d been involved in the operation, the arrests, and the trials. They would know, and I had this lingering dread that Gideon would see me differently when he saw me through his coworkers’ eyes.

I made myself ignore this fear, since I knew it had no logical foundation. And I put on a cute, stretchy t-shirt and flattering jeans. I also worked on my makeup so the others would at least think I was pretty. And I made sure not to say anything that would give Gideon a clue that I hated the idea of going to the cookout.

The afternoon wasn’t bad. There was a volleyball game beginning when we arrived, so we joined in. I’m okay at volleyball—not great but not embarrassing—so I could mostly not draw attention to myself and enjoy Gideon’s obvious competitive camaraderie with his friends.

We all sat around afterwards, drinking beer and grilling burgers, and I kept a smile on my face and tried to fade into the background.

I knew his coworkers and their spouses watched me sometimes, checking me out, but I wasn’t actually put on the spot. Until after we ate.

I had gotten up to collect some plates and napkins to throw in the trash, and Gideon wasn’t in his place when I returned. I stood next to the benches stupidly, wondering where he’d gotten to.

Then an arm slipped around me from behind, and a head tilted down to kiss the side of my throat. I knew it was Gideon. I
knew
it. But my heart still jumped up into my throat.

I managed to hide my reaction this time, and I didn’t pull away when he kept his arm around me and pulled me back against his front.

“Are you having a good time?” he asked, his voice low so only I could hear.

“Yeah.” I made myself smile, but I was fighting the instinct to yank myself away from him. I couldn’t stand the feel of his body behind mine.

He knew I had problems with him coming at me from behind, but I made myself not feel resentful about his forgetting. It wasn’t his fault. He thought I was fixed. He thought he could finally let down his guard. Not be on edge constantly for fear of triggering one of my issues. I wasn’t going to take that away from him. If I made a fuss, he would start to scrutinize my every move and then he couldn’t relax and enjoy regular life like any other man.

“We can leave whenever you want,” he said, planting more little kisses on the side of my neck.

“No hurry. Whenever you’re ready.” I turned my head to look up at him, and he kissed me on the mouth.