Page 261 of Assassin

Then, the panic set in.

Still, he wasn’t embarrassed by the act of sex, as much as horrified by not giving the man a choice. He felt like he violated him.

Seeing him struggle, Poe put his hand on his leg, and Gamble stared at it.

“Hey, Mate, I’m a safe place to hide and talk. Just say it. I’m your therapist.”

Gamble tried to find the words.

“I’m afraid of my emotions,” he said. “I trusted a woman, and…”

He closed his eyes.

“So being near me doesn’t scare you?” he asked.

Gamble shook his head.

“Have you ever had a relationship with a man before?” he asked.

Again, he shook his head.

“Okay, so after what happened before, what has you the most rattled. That you were up close and personal with a man, or that you felt something again.”

That was easy.

He’d liked that dream a little too much, and now he was questioning everything.

And Gamble didn’t understand it.

He was straight, and he liked pussy, but ever since Storm, he couldn’t even think about a woman without dry heaving.

She took that away from him too.

His dead wife stripped away his masculinity, fatherhood, and now, his sexuality.

Now, he was faced with the fact that he wasn’t completely broken. He wasn’t dry heaving when he woke up and saw what had happened.

Oh, he’d been scared that this all turned him into a rapist, but he wasn’t repulsed.

This man made him feel safe, and he didn’t understand any of it.

Poe watched him.

“Again, I’m a safe space.”

Because the man was his therapist, and he knew it would stay between them, he was honest.

“That I felt something while in bed with you.”

Poe had to stay in doctor mode, or the persona beneath the letters after his name would be a little too happy that the man found pleasure in it.

That wasn’t the point.

Period.

Poe kept pushing on.

“So are you planning to shoot yourself because you felt something while in bed with me, or because you think you sexually assaulted me?”

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