“It’s okay,” she says in a ragged voice. “I understand. I blew it. I don’t deserve—”

I kiss her. Just once. I know I can chalk it up to a mistake, say it was done in the heat of the moment. I can still end us. But then I kiss her again, and her mouth is so unbelievably perfect that I can’t help kissing her again, deeper. As soon as I taste her, I know it’s over for me. I can’t lose this. I understand what she was going through now. She’s finally being open with me, just like I’ve been demanding from the start. It’s hard for her but she’s trying anyway, and that means everything to me. I forgive her. I’ll risk anything for her. I kiss her with everything in me. Maybe I’m too rough, but she welcomes me. She kisses me back like she’s been starving without me.

When I release her mouth and kiss my way to her neck, she shivers and asks, “Are you kissing me because you feel sorry for me?”

I bite her neck and slide my hand between her thighs. I touch her the way she showed me. “You think I do this when I feel sorry for someone?”

Her shoulders hunch forward, and her hips press sharply against my hand. Her mouth falls open on a soundless gasp.

“Do I have that right?” I ask, even though I think I know. She’s drenching my fingers as she tries to get closer. “Is that good?”

Instead of answering, she pulls me down for a long kiss. Her hips undulate against my hand as she licks at my lips, sucks on my tongue, making needy little sounds that drive me out of my mind. She touches me hungrily, my face, my scalp, my shoulders. Her nails scrape down my back, hard, but not enough to break the skin, and every muscle in my body tightens. The instinct to lower her to the bed and drive into her is almost overwhelming.

The only thing stopping me is the brightness of the room. When we were together before, the darkness wasn’t just for her. It protected me, too.

When she grips my ass over my towel, the cloth loosens precariously, and I barely manage to catch it with my free hand before it falls.

She doesn’t seem to notice the conflict going on inside me. Her movements are urgent now, urgent but frustrated. I can feel it in the way she’s touching me, like she’s looking for something, trying to say something.

“Tell me,” I say.

She kisses me harder as she trembles in my arms. I feel the press of her nails on my shoulders, feel the moisture flooding my hand, the tension in her body. She’s close. But unable to fall.

“What do you need?” I ask her. I’m down for trying any kind of kink as long as it involves her and me together. I just need to know what it is in order to give it to her.

“I need—” She hides her face against my neck without finishing.

I whisper in her ear, “Ass play?”

“No,” she says in surprise. “I need …” But she presses her face closer to my neck. “Why is this so hard?”

“Should we shut the blinds? So it’s like before?” It’s a little wrong, but I want her to say yes.

She looks up at me, and tears gather in her eyes as she shakes her head. “I want to do this when it’s not dark. I want to be able to tell you when I—but I—I’m still so afraid—” Her chin wobbles, but she draws in an unsteady breath as a fierce light shines in her eyes. “I need—” She draws in another breath. “I need—” She wraps her arms around my neck and hugs me tight for a long shivering moment.

“I promise I’m down with it,” I say.

She kisses my jaw and whispers in my ear, “I need you to fuck me.”

Her words send a shock wave through me—that word in particular, because I know how difficult it is for her to say. My skin flashes with heat before an odd sort of hyperawareness claims me. It feels like everything’s been leading to this moment, now.

I pull away from her, and I bring my hands to the towel around my waist. She’s let me in all the way. I need to do the same. This broken body of mine isn’t what it was, but it’s what I have. It took me into hell and back. I can’t be ashamed any longer.

Keeping my eyes on her face, I bare myself to her.

THIRTY-SEVEN

Anna

QUAN’S BODY IS INK AND LEAN RUNNER’S MUSCLES AND MASCULINE lines. He’s beautiful.

His arousal juts out proudly, and it pleases me at an elemental level. That’s a response to me. I’m the one he desires. The other part of him, the part that causes him so much self-consciousness, looks more or less the same as other ones I’ve seen in real life and in pictures. Perhaps it has a more uneven appearance. But I accept it, just as I accept him. Just as I accepted my imperfect violin.

I didn’t expect this. I wasn’t trying to make him do this, though I should have realized this was the natural consequence of what I was asking.

His trust humbles me and honors me. It makes me love him more.

“Can I touch you?” I ask, reaching toward him but stopping before I get too close.

“Always,” he replies.

When he takes my hand in his, I expect him to wrap my fingers around his sex. But instead, he guides me to a small raised line on his inner pelvic area, one of the places on his body that isn’t covered with ink.

“That’s the only visible scar left from the surgery,” he says.

I run my fingertips over the two-inch mark. It’s difficult to believe something so small had such a large impact. Because of this cut, because of that surgery, he’s here with me now.

Bending down, I press my lips to his scar. I want him to know that I’m not disgusted, that I’m grateful for this scar, that I love it, that I love all of him. I brush my cheek against the firm length of his sex so he can witness my affection, then my other cheek. He’s soft as velvet but burning hot. I press a chaste kiss to the head.

“Anna, you don’t have to do that,” he says in a gravelly voice. “I know you don’t like—”

“This isn’t a blow job. I’m just kissing you,” I say, but then my lips part and I run my tongue over him. Once I’ve gone that far, it’s the most natural thing in the world to take him into my mouth.

He flinches like I’ve electrocuted him. His chest billows. His stomach muscles ripple and tense, making the waves inked into his skin roll like real waves in the sea. But when he touches my face, his fingers are unbearably gentle.

As I suck on him, teasing the tip with my tongue before taking him deeper, his gaze doesn’t waver from me. I’m pleasuring him, but we’re doing this together. Neither of us is alone. I’m not just an accessory for his masturbation.

And unlike the other times I’ve done this, I find myself enjoying it. His hoarse sounds excite me. The barely contained violence in his body excites me. His every response excites me.

He didn’t push my head down and take from me, knowing I couldn’t refuse. He let me choose. And because of that, I could choose to give. That completely changes things.

I don’t count the seconds as I caress him with my mouth. I don’t hope for him to finish quickly so that I can do something else.

Instead, I feast my senses on him, getting drunk on the feel of him, his taste, his clean scent, the sight of him, the sound of his gusting breaths. Something awakens in me. I get wetter between my legs, and a sense of emptiness expands until I ache with it. When he pulls free of my mouth and takes my lips in a hard kiss, pushing my back to the bed as he covers my body with his, I’m almost mindless with wanting.