Page 7 of Santa's Candy

“Yeah, thanks.” I snuggled into him, my hand on his chest, directly over his heart that beat steadily against my palm. I soaked him in, letting him fill my senses before he insisted on the explanation I didn’t want to give.

We stayed silent for a long moment, his fingers running up and down my back, the two of us wrapped in an intimacy I’d never allowed us to have before now. Yes, we’d had sex, but never basking in an afterglow. And I wondered, if I didn’t always run away, would we have had this all this time? If I hadn’t run from him, from us, after our first time in high school or that time in the autumn of our junior year of college, where would we be? Would it have changed our life paths or would we have remained the same? Would we have stayed together and not been so alone. I’d been…so alone.

“When I was seven,” I started, “my parents went out for the night and I had a babysitter. She was in her early twenties, I think. I was supposed to be in bed, and her boyfriend came over. There was so much noise from them fighting—mostly him yelling at her and getting rough with her. I didn’t know what was happening, though, and I want to see… I saw… I sawhim grab her, shake her and heard him ordering her around. It scared me.”

“You don’t think what happens between us is like that, do you?”

I didn’t answer. I didn’t have the right words. My thoughts had wrestled with our situation too much, and everything was tangled into knots. My body said no Pax wasn’t like that. Parts of my brain agreed. But other parts of my brain…they told me to run.

“He saw me in the living room doorway then stormed out of the house. She was crying and put me back to bed. And she made me promise to never let a man order me around or get rough with me. And I did. And I’ve always kept that promise. Except when you and I sleep together—when we have sex, anyway.”

Pax reared back and stared at me as if I’d slapped him.

“I’m sorry,” I quickly blurted. “I don’t mean that you’ve ever hurt me or that I’ve ever thought you’re abusive. I don’t… I don’t think of it that way. But I promised her. And… I’m sorry, Pax.”

He scrubbed a hand over his mouth and rolled onto his back, staring up at the dark ceiling. “Candy, I… I don’t even know what to say. I would…never… I mean, yeah… When we’re in bed, it brings out a possessive, dominant side of me that wants to control you and control your pleasure, but I would never ever grab you or shake you or scream at you or do any of the abusive things that guy did.”

“I know you’re not an abuser.”

“No, I’m not.”

I stared at his profile, deafening silence around us while tears burned my eyes. Every time we were together, I managed to ruin things. This time, we hadn’t even had sex. We hadn’t even gotten further than a blow job and I’d put distance between us.

My eyes closed while I took a shaky breath and tried to hold in the sob that threatened to roll up my throat.

“I promise you,” Pax started quietly, “even if we argue, because all couples do, I will not do what that guy did. I’m not like that, Candace. I don’t want a woman, my woman, to be subservient to me. Submissive in sex? Yes. But in life? No. What she wanted, your babysitter, she wanted you not to be with an abusive man who would stomp all over you, your life, your hopes, and your autonomy.”

“I know.”

“That’s not me. If you let me into your life, real life, I’ll prove it to you.”

God, how I wanted that. I could have that if I was brave, couldn’t I?

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Yeah.” I needed a minute. I needed to process what I should have intuitively already known, and thankfully, he didn’t seem inclined to rush me, even if tension rolling off him. Pax had been in my life since kindergarten. I knew him. I knew how he was.

“Okay,” I repeated again finally, mostly to myself. God, how could one moment in my life, nineteen years ago, mess me up sobadly. I was stupid to equate kinkiness in bed to being weak, to believe allowing it gave a man carte blanche to railroad me.

Thatwasn’tPax.

“I believe you. You’re right.” I took a shaky breath. “I’m…I’m so sorry, Pax. I don’t know how can you even forgive me?”

“I don’t know. Maybe, you need a spanking,” he sighed, with poorly disguised humor.

I choked a watery laugh at his levity.

“Too soon?” he asked.

“Maybe. But… Will you promise me something?”

“I promise not to be like that guy.”

“Not that. Deep down, I know you won’t be like him. Will you promise not to change how we are? Sexually, I mean.”

In a flash, Pax was over me again, and my hands were pinned to the pillow with his fingers manacled around my wrists. “Like this?”

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