There’s a tentative pause before she answers, “It’s just things that you keep from me…ways that you extend yourself to people. When you do, it brings them into our bubble.”
I exhale deeply. I know what she’s hinting at. That fucking Tara. I know it was wrong to keep that information from her. I knew that the moment she discovered my helping out Tara and her baby, she’d go ballistic. Rayna can’t begin to understand the weight of responsibility that has always been placed on my shoulders by those less fortunate. I’ve always had the burden of providing for others.
Although her father betrayed me, I couldn’t ignore the fact that Tara had no income and apparently, neither did her father. It didn’t matter that she, too, had betrayed me. I’d gotten over that shit the minute I learned of it. Sadly, I felt relieved that I’d finally gotten my “out.” I was happy as hell to walk away from that relationship.
Tara’s a brat. She was raised as a trophy child. She was privileged, trained to be delicate and high maintenance. She’d never even gone to school after I met her. I’d always believed that was because her parents never pushed it once my relationship with her became official. She didn’t have to do shit but create expectations for me to live up to. My decision to help her and her baby out financially was wrong. Though before Rayna’s blow up over it, I didn’t understand just how fucked up it was.
“I have a secret to share,” Rayna’s timid voice breaks my attention.
I turn to her, “Spill it.”
“It’s a little embarrassing,” she whispers as her cheeks heated up. I don’t know if I should be concerned or not, but my patience are already wearing.
“Brimm, I can see you want to tell me. Go on,” I command a little harsher than the mood calls for.
“Okaaaay…” she sings, unable to wipe the burning grin from her face. I wait, something that I’ve vowed to do for Rayna when she needs it. But she finally speaks.
“Wait. This is top secret—extremely sensitive information that I’ve only shared with one person!”
I’m stumped. I have no damn clue what’s going on in that busy, incommunicado mind of hers.
“Okay, now it will be two people.” I raise my eyebrows to show that she needs to get on with it already.
“You gave me my first vaginal orgasm.” Rayna’s widened eyes reach mine. She can’t gain a hold of the grin that’s plastered her face.
“Why are you so embarrassed by that?”
“What? Why wouldn’t I be?” Her goofy smile dissipates slowly as her brows folds together. “Wait…did you know already?”
I don’t want to answer that. I don’t want to fuck up the moment. This trivial fact is a lot for my lady to share. But I don’t want to lie either. “Of course, I did.” I plant a kiss on her forehead to keep with the pillow talk mode we’ve just found our way to and to soften the blow.
“Huhn?” her big eyes tell me she won’t drop the subject.
“Yes, Brimm, I knew—well, I knew you hadn’t been touched in the ways I had touched you—”
“What! What’s that supposed to mean?” Rayna jumps from my enfold and into the air. She’s now sitting up, peering down on me for an explanation.
“What are you doing? I’m cold now.” I try hiding the humor in my voice.
“Explain, Jacobs!”
I rise to rest my weight on my elbow. “Okay…okay. Just come back down here. I was comfortable.” I fail at hiding my humor.
She doesn’t move. “Tell me, how could you possibly know?” Rayna is not dropping this. The answer is not a topic a man wants to take on with his woman. It can get very hairy.
“Brimm, baby, you do know I’m damn near forty years old, right?”
“What does your age have to do with how you knew that before you, I’d never had a vaginal orgasm?”
Damn.
“Because I’d been with enough women to know the depth of their sexual experience—”
“And?” she spits, interrupting me.
“…and I knew what your walls were telling me, which was that you were in need of a deeper release. An internal release, not topical.”
Rayna’s head dips back in a hard laugh, exposing her beautiful neck. Her laugh has always been infectious to me. I watch raptly as it takes some time to slow her mirth.
After some time, with glazed eyes, she gazes over to me, “Azmir, are you serious?”
“I’m serious as hell. You like to keep contained, but your body withholds nothing. I could tell that you were afraid at first, but you’d never tell, which was cool. You didn’t know me very well back then.”
As I speak, Rayna lowers herself back to the bed, taking to her pillow. “Yeah, that feels like years ago. I can’t believe we’ve only known each other less than a year…and we’re getting married—”
“…first week in March. Yup,” I conclude that thought. She doesn’t need to focus on how little time we’ve known each other. Just on our forever.