"You're poetic when you've been drinking."
If I hadn't tasted the whiskey on his tongue, I wouldn't have guessed he was drunk. He isn't slurring. He isn't staggering. He's more relaxed than normal. A little more handsy in a slow, sensual kind of way.
"Can I touch you?" A harsh, guttural whisper against my lips.
"Yes please."
His lips part. His breath is a little more ragged. A little quicker.
Seeing his body tense sends a spike of need straight to where I am hot and aching for him.
"Would it be too forward if I stripped down right here?"
He smiles darkly. "Not at all. I think I would like that very much." He leans in, tracing his lips down my throat. "Especially since I can't get you to tell me your fantasies."
I press my hands to his chest, urging him backward until he sinks down to my secondhand chair in the Target slipcover.
I've never done this. I don't want to overthink it.
I turn down the lights, leaving only a faint glow from the lamp over the kitchen stove. There is enough light that we are not cast in darkness. The shadows dance over his face. I can feel the need radiating off him.
Slowly, I feed one button after another through the fabric of my blouse, peeling it open. Heat pulses between my thighs. He's watching me. It feels like a physical caress.
I turn my back on him, glancing over my shoulder at him as I slip the white fabric over my bare shoulders. First one, then the other until it falls to the floor.
He doesn't notice. His eyes are on me.
I am not afraid to do this. Not afraid to let him see me. All of me.
I unhook my pants and slide the dark fabric down my hips, inch by inch. His gaze follows the edge of my pants as I reveal myself.
The other night, neither of us explored much. It was raw and ragged, hidden in the dark.
Not tonight. Tonight, the lights are on. Low, but on.
And they hide nothing. I can tell the instant he sees them. The raised scar on my shoulder. The starburst on my ribs that I hid with his comforter the last time.
I knew this was a risk. But tonight, I need him to see all of me. To see the perfection I can create with my smile that hides the deeper, damaged truth.
The reality of the violence that I too have lived. Not as an adult in war. No, not that.
But as a child. As a little kid made helpless by a grown man's insecurity and rage.
I am eleven years old again, trying to find the words to tell my teacher where the bruises on my arms came from.
Or to explain to the emergency room nurse how I cut my own shoulder.
But the real hurt isn’t in the scars or the violence that caused them. It’s in the verbal cuts that I wasn’t good enough as I was. That if only I’d change who I was, I would be worthy. Loveable.
The scars are my private shame. That I wasn't strong enough to fight back. That I fell down and did not get back up. That I changed who I was, despite fighting so hard to stay the same.
I will not be that person again.
I step into the space between us and settle each of my legs on either side of his hips. My thighs are spread wide and my core, aching and wet, is separated from him by a thin piece of functional cotton that feels woefully inadequate.
He strokes his thumb over the jagged scar on my shoulder. "Looks like this hurt." The softest whisper.
"Belt buckles tend to."
He glances up sharply and there is violence in his eyes now. Restrained. The good kind of violence. The kind that lashes out to protect.
It warms the cold space inside me. And like a frozen thing seeking the heat, I cannot break away.
Josh
It is one thing to live through violence. It is one thing to be the instrument of someone else's death and to take pleasure in protecting your brothers from the evil that would do them harm.
It is quite another to see the evidence of violence etched into someone else's skin. A permanent reminder that there are things we will never outrun, will never forget.
There is nothing I can say to take away the pain she clearly lived through. I cannot make her forget it. I cannot hurt the man who hurt her.
And I'm not nearly drunk enough to do something stupid, like demand she give me his name and let me use my friends in the Army to hunt him down and make him hurt.
Instead, I do the only thing I can think to do.
I press my lips to that scar. I can feel the raised edge of it beneath my lips. The salt on her skin is sharp and tangy. Fear, laced with arousal.
People who say that scars are evidence of things you were strong enough to overcome haven't felt the weight of the shame in those scars.
I can see her wrestling with it. Struggling to keep it buried and under control.
"How old were you?"
"Eleven."
I slide my hands over her ribs. Over the starburst there and up until they are flat against her back, drawing her closer to me, until her mouth is a breath from mine.
She lowers her forehead to mine. "It was hard tonight. Going with Graham."