I’d hurt her feelings.
She watched me for a moment, waiting for an answer, and when I failed to deliver, she scoffed angrily. “I can’t stand knowing there are answers in your mind you’re not willing to say to me. Images, memories that you think I can’t handle or think will hurt my feelings. Imagine what that feels like. Please don’t overprotect me, because it makes me feel … pathetic.” She stared at me for a second. Her eyes were begging me to understand what she was saying.
“I need to move on from what came before this. I need you to let me.”
“But I’m not talking about that.” She pushed herself up to her elbow.
I rolled to my back looking up at her. I reached for her long bangs that were hanging in her face, and I tucked them behind her ear. “If this is what you want to talk about, then I’m not sure we can avoid going there, baby,” I said gently.
When she sighed it was heavy. She was frustrated.
“Okay,” I finally said. “I don’t want another woman in bed with us. I don’t want to watch another woman eat your * while I fuck her ass, and I sure as hell don’t want to watch another man fuck you while you suck my dick. Is that what you want to hear?” I gave her a second to respond, but she just gaped at me. Yeah, I’d shocked her with that one—exactly what I didn’t want to do. I reached for her cheek, brushing my thumb along her skin as I cupped it and tried pathetically to reassure her after that bout of brutal honesty. “I don’t want to treat you like a body, a thing, a sex toy to me. I don’t want to value you for what you can give me physically. Those are the things I’ve done that I’m not willing to do with you?” I focused on her eyes, my heart pounding. “I promise you don’t want me to be that man with you, because … he fucking sucks, and he’s pathetic. Think better of me, please. Let me be more for you.” My jaw clenched tight as I waited for her to react.
When she finally nodded, I sighed.
“I’ll ask you to fuck me,” I continued. “I’ll beg you to fuck me. I’ll tell you how much I want to fuck you. But I will absolutely never truly fuck you. It will never be as shallow and pointless as that. It couldn’t be.” That last sentence came out on a whisper as I failed to keep my voice steady. “Outside of that, if there’s something you want, tell me. If you want me to buy you some sex toys, I will. If you want me to touch, lick or fuck some other hole than your * then you need only ask. I’ve told you already, I’ll give you what you need. But…” I shook my head as I looked away. “Don’t ask me to push you. I can’t do that to you. I have to know it’s coming from you and not what I want, and not what you think I want. Don’t you understand that? Don’t you understand why I need it to be that way?”
She didn’t nod. She didn’t agree. She just stared over my shoulder. When she finally did look at me, she was expressionless. “I don’t want to be shared, and I don’t want to be objectified, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want you to push me,” she said quietly, and then she bit her lip. She was being shy again even if her words weren’t. “And I need you to trust that I’ll tell you if I’m uncomfortable with something you ask for? I need you to be as open with me as you expect me to be with you? I’m a big girl, Kane. I don’t need you to handle me like I’m fragile.” She hadn’t smiled once while speaking.
When I didn’t respond, much less agree, she rolled away from me.
“Fuck,” I muttered under my breath before I reached back and turned the light off again, and then I stared into the dark as she laid out of reach. I let it go on that way for what had to have been five minutes before I moved closer to her and pulled myself up to her back.
“It isn’t just you,” I said quietly as my lips touched the back of her ear. “It’s us. Everything about us is fragile—our relationship, the way we communicate, the way we fuck. I always feel like I’m two seconds away from letting you slip through my fingers. It’s all so very fucking fragile.”
“That scares me,” she whispered.
I didn’t say a word. It scared me too.