“I don’t know,” I say. God, my voice sounds so weak! No, that isn’t entirely true. My voice doesn’t sound weak. I sound weak. “I just… A man like you…” I try to look at the floor again, but he still has my chin and I may as well try to move a mountain. “Men like you don’t have to settle for girls like me.”
“What do you mean, girls like you?” he asks. There is so much restraint in his voice. I mean, it’s like he’s fighting back a great deal of anger.
I can’t turn away and as much as I don’t want to vocalize things, I say, “Overweight. Dumpy.” I manage to hold back tears as I say, “Guys like you don’t settle for fat girls.”
His eyes narrow and his voice is dark when he says, “I don’t ever want to hear you call yourself that again. In fact, I don’t ever want to hear you say mean things to yourself ever again.” His words are kind and sweet, but I swear to God his tone of voice is absolutely appropriate for threatening someone with great bodily harm.
I swallow hard and say, “Okay.”
“You’re not overweight,” he says sternly, “And you’re not dumpy or fat. For God’s sake you’re fucking beautiful and if you ever say anything like that again, I swear the spanking you get will make the last one feel like a walk int the fucking park!”
How can I be terrified of him, grateful to him, and desperate for him all at the same time? I don’t understand it, but I nod and say, “I won’t. I promise. I won’t.” I imagine I must sound like one of those low-level criminals he lets off the hook with a promise not to keep breaking the law.
He pulls me to him suddenly and kisses me fiercely. I can feel my body respond. Actually, it’s like my whole being responds and not just my body. I kind of melt against him and even though all of the emotions of the last several hours don’t exactly disappear, it almost feels like he just takes them over. It feels like they don’t belong to me anymore. My problems are not his concern, not mine.
When the kiss ends, he says, “Yes, you will. You’ll keep being vicious to yourself but every single time I catch you, you’re going to deal with me. I don’t care what the hell it takes, Mack, but you’ll learn. You’ll learn to see yourself how I see you, and by God, until then, you’ll wish you did.”
I swallow hard and since I don’t really know how to respond, my mouth just takes over and I whisper, “Yes. You’re in charge.”
I think I might just shrink into a ball of stupidity at the words, but he nods sharply and says, “In this department, I am.” Then he kisses me again, another one of those kisses that tells me he most definitely is in charge. He’ll be my self-esteem until he can force feed me some of my own.
He finally pulls his mouth away and asks, “Have you eaten?” I’m too breathless to speak so I just shake my head. “Are you hungry?” Again, I shake my head. “Good,” he says, “Then we don’t have to waste any time.” He kisses me again with the same savage ferocity and then just lifts me up like I weigh nothing. I feel like I’m a spectator in my own life as he carries me up the stairs to my bedroom. I don’t feel like a spectator when we’re naked on the bed together, though. I don’t feel like a spectator at all.
This time is different. There’s still a great deal of extraordinary passion but the urgency isn’t the same. This time, it’s more exploratory. That’s not the right word but the point is the first time was wonderful and the culmination of ever-growing desperation that just couldn’t be restrained any longer. This time doesn’t have the overpowering urgency to it. This isn’t me finally getting what I desired for so long. This is more like me discovering that I get to keep what I desire, that it isn’t some kind of an anomaly.
After we make love, and this sure as hell feels more like making love than just fucking, even though I wouldn’t think of such a crass term for the way I gave him my virginity because it doesn’t fit, he leads me to the bathroom. As we shower together, it feels like I discover an entirely new definition of intimacy. His hands move over my body building a lather, and I guess even my self-destructive mind allows me to feel like when the water washes away the soap, it washes away a lot of my fear and uncertainty with it.
After the shower, he shows the same careful attention to drying me off as he showed with the body wash in the shower. By the time I’m dressed, it’s like the world is gone. It feels almost like there is nothing in my mind other than the sight of Grant and how he makes me feel. I know that’s exactly what someone expects from and eighteen-year-old girl mooning over a guy in her complete inexperience, but it doesn’t feel shallow. It doesn’t feel like it’s driven by my youth. I know what shallow, youthful feelings are like. No matter how wonderful a crush might feel, it’s always shrouded in uncertainty, worry, and a general tendency to review every second for mistakes or misinterpretations.
I don’t experience that at all right now. Instead, everything feels gone except for Grant, and that includes all misgivings, potential or real. It includes all worry and fear. It includes anything that might cloud the perfect joy of seeing him getting dressed and not once taking his eyes from me. It includes anything that might otherwise distract me from how this man is a force of nature, but his eyes don’t storm when they regard me with kindness and placid determination.
Once he’s dressed, he extends his hand to me, and I take it. As he leads me from the room, I ask, “Where are we going?”
“I’m cooking you breakfast,” he says, “At my place. I’m going to make breakfast just like I would have if I didn’t have to go deal with French.”
“French?”
“Donald French,” he says, “The drug dealer last night.”
I almost giggle as I say, “It’s still night.”
He swats me playfully on the ass, but still hard enough to make me gasp. “You gonna start with that attitude already?" he asks. “I’m going to make you breakfast in the morning. After.”
“After what?” I ask.
I already know the answer. I just want to hear him say it.
“After I take what’s mine again,” he says, his voice a low growl.
What happens at his place can definitely be described as fucking. There’s a lot of love, of course, but other than the fact that it feels good to get fucked into oblivion by the man I love, there’s little that can be described as romantic. Grant takes what’s his and I willingly give it, begging him over and over not to stop, please don’t stop, don’t ever stop.
When he finally does stop, I am shivering from what could either be four separate orgasms or one orgasm with four different peaks. It’s hard to tell where one orgasm ends, and another begins when the orgasms don’t really end but just roll right into the next one without softening at all. Suffice it to say that when it’s over, I feel better than I ever have in my life and drift to sleep in his arms with a smile on my face that I still wear when I wake up in the morning.
Grant makes me eggs, sausage links and pancakes for breakfast. I stare at his powerful, naked body and wonder how on Earth I can be so lucky. When I tell him this, he kisses me tenderly and says, “We’re both lucky, Mack.”
When breakfast is ready, he sits across from me and asks, “So how is the journalism thing coming?”
I shrug and say, “Okay, I guess.”