He grinds his hips into mine, his body hitting mine with the most delicious friction. I want to hold on. I want to enjoy this as long as I can. Forever. But it’s too late. It feels too good. I can’t wait one second longer, so it’s with his third thrust that I come apart.
All the buildup of the last several minutes hits me like a tsunami. Waves of intense bliss roll through me, all through me. It tingles in my legs, throbs in my belly, squeezes in my core. Blood and pleasure rush through me in a hot release, like the bursting of a dam.
As my body contracts around his, Rogan growls, dropping his face into the curve of my neck. “Holy mother of God you feel so fucccc— Uhhh!” He sounds savage. Out of control. And I love it.
He pulls out of me, returning quickly to thrust sharply into me. Hard. Deep. He tilts his hips, reinvigorating my body’s response to him. I wrap myself around him. I’ve never felt such powerful, consuming pleasure. My ears even ring with what’s happening inside me.
After a few seconds of more intense spasms, Rogan pushes back onto his haunches, ready to chase his own peak. He presses my legs up and out, leans back and pounds into me. It isn’t until he reaches between us and circles his fingers around the base of his cock that my eyes follow his. He’s touching both of us at the same time, his long, thick erection disappearing into me like a jackhammer. It’s shiny with my juices, the noises decadent and intimate.
When his eyes rise back to mine, I see in them what I’m feeling. Something hot and wild, something that makes me want to bite and lick and savor. I don’t know how, but I find myself climbing as we watch each other, our bodies still colliding with a nearly brutal force that’s the most delicious thing in the world.
Then I see his body tense, the muscles in his neck, in his chest, in his abdomen straining as he stiffens. His breath comes in several harsh gushes that sound like an animal getting ready to attack. Seconds later, he flexes against me and I feel the first pulse of his body inside mine. It’s as though he’s massaging me from within and without and it’s more than I can bear.
My second orgasm washes over me in a series of unexpected ripples. I milk him and he presses against my walls and we drag each other deeper.
Finally, Rogan collapses onto me, both of us drained and boneless. As my heartbeat quiets and the ringing in my ears subsides, I hear him whispering against the side of my neck. “Incredible. So incredible.”
Over and over and over, he vocalizes the feeling that roams on a circuit through my head.
“Don’t ever forget this,” he says. “Don’t ever forget how beautiful you are.”
I won’t tell him, but he need not worry about that. I will never forget this moment, this night.
Or this man.
• • •
I feel like myself, yet not at all like myself. Not at all like the woman I’ve come to know. I’m not the child born as Kathryn. I’m not the old Katie, known to her friends as Kat. I’m not even the Katie I’ve been for the last five years. Right at this moment, I feel like a new creature, like a melding of all the lives I’ve lived—so separate, so different, yet ones that have come together to make me whole for the first time since I was a girl. I feel like I’m finally at peace with who and what I am.
Rogan is asleep behind me, his front pressed to my back in the best kind of spoon. His warm breath is tickling the scarred side of my neck. It’s not as sensitive as the skin around it, but because I normally have the area covered with my long hair, it’s not stimulated very often either. For that reason, the sensation of having someone’s breath touch it is distinct. And liberating. And enough to keep me awake to enjoy it.
“What are you smiling about?” comes a rough yet soft voice from behind me. My smile grows.
“How do you know I’m smiling? You’re supposed to be asleep.”
“I am? You should’ve told me,” he teases, nuzzling me with his scratchy chin. I shrug my shoulder automatically because it tickles. “Please don’t hide from me like that.” His voice is audibly pained, like my action was a grave insult to him.
I turn to look back at him, reaching up to stroke his cheek, noting the worry in his eyes. The curve on my lips turns tender. “I’m ticklish. That’s all.”
“Oh. My bad.” His face relaxes into the lopsided grin that I love so much and he pulls me in closer, hugging me tighter with his strong arm. “I just don’t want you to think that they bother me or that they’re all I see when I look at you or touch you. I’ve felt that way before and it sucks balls.”
I settle back in against him, cradling my head on my folded hands as Rogan’s fingers rub soothing circles on my stomach.
“Felt what way?” I ask.
“Like my scars are worse than what they are.”
“Your scars aren’t that bad, though.”
“To me they are. I just learned a long time ago that I couldn’t let them, or that part of my life, ruin everything for me. I had to fight to survive, yes. But I also had to fight to live. To have some kind of happiness in life.”
His tattoo. Fight to survive. Fight to live. Not just a tattoo. A credo. His credo.
I pause, debating the wisdom of asking the questions that are burning to be voiced. I mean, I did just share a huge piece of myself with him. And not only the physical; I shared the hardest part. But that doesn’t mean that he’s at a place where he will feel comfortable sharing with me. In a way, my hand was forced. His is not.
Before I can talk myself into or out of asking, Rogan starts to talk again. So I let him.
“I wasn’t always comfortable with violence. I wasn’t always a fighter. The first few years, when Kurt was just a baby, things were pretty good, pretty normal. It was after Mom died that it all went to shit.”
“What happened to her?”
“Cancer. We didn’t have much money and she always put her needs last. Eventually it cost her her life.” I’m quiet while Rogan is quiet. I don’t know if he needs time to collect himself, but I’m giving it to him anyway. I feel the storm of his story brewing, like an uncomfortable static in the air. “He didn’t start drinking or anything. That’s what the social workers always thought—that he was a mean drunk. But he wasn’t. He was just a mean son of a bitch, period. He didn’t need anything to bring it out. Life did. Just life. When Mom died, she took the only good in him with her.
“I was ten the first time he hit me. He was mad because I’d left my basketball outside. He found it when he came home from work. I was watching cartoons with Kurt and he walked in the door and threw the ball at me. Hit me right in middle of the face. Smashed the shit out of my nose. I started crying and he walked over, jerked me up by the arm and punched me in the stomach. Told me to stop acting like a little pussy bitch. Told me I wasn’t tough enough, but that he’d make me tough. Tough like a man.”
My hand is pressed to my mouth and my eyes are squeezed shut. Too easily I can picture a young Rogan, abused and grieving, struggling to make it from one day to the next.
“It only got worse after that. The older and bigger I got, the more creative he was. He’d burn me with lit cigarettes if I didn’t wake up on time, he’d whip me with my football cleats if I missed a catch, he’d slice at me with a box cutter if I ran from him when he was mad. And there was nothing I could do. He told me if I told anyone about what happened, he’d kill Kurt. I believed him. And I think he would’ve done it. But I knew as long as I was around, he’d never lay a hand on him.”
My stomach sloshes with nausea at the pain, at the heartache. At the betrayal and the loneliness he must’ve felt. I have to wait a few seconds, swallow a few times so that my voice doesn’t reflect my inner turmoil.
“You mentioned social workers . . .”