Page 88 of Maid in America

With that, he groaned and, like he had all of the time in the world, he slipped inside of her slowly, deliberately, giving her every thick inch of himself.

She moaned long and loud. With his free hand, he slid the frosted door open and turned her head with the other, forcing her to look at herself in the bathroom mirror.

“I want you to watch yourself. I want you to see in your pretty little face what my fucking cock does to your body when I’m inside you.”

Her eyes fluttered. His dirty talk was driving her wild, his cock filling her up. She squirmed, trying her best to milk an orgasm from his body.

“No. You don’t fuck me. I fuckyou. Understand me, Aphrodite?”

She nodded, face pink beneath his firm grasp.

“I want you to watch me fuck that pretty little cunt of yours.”

She watched intently as he fucked her hard against a wall of white tile. With every plunge of his hips in the mirror, she transcended to a new level of pleasure. She watched as the sight of her own orgasm made her shudder even harder. When she did, he released her and quickened his pace. She caressedBarrett’s tensed neck muscles in their reflection, eyes never straying from the glass as he came inside of her.

34

Chastity lay on thepillow next to Barrett’s, watching the steady rise and fall of his chest, his body utterly relaxed and depleted. Her core ached from a long night featuring multiple rounds of sex.

No, not sex.

By the end, there had been something more. Something that felt intimate and gentle yet powerful in a strangely unknown way.

There had been something that felt likelove.

The prospect of love…reallove…truelove… made her overjoyed and sick to her stomach simultaneously. She was in a free fall, unsure where she would land and what her ultimate destiny might be. Tears welled as she thought about a future with him, trying to balance pleasing another person anddiscovering herself at the same time, a delicate balance, to say the least.

She wondered about the medication her therapist had suggested and felt a swell of guilt.

Barrett had chosen to be with her as she was, but what if she decided to take the medication to balance the intoxicating mania and devastating lows?

What if it changed her?

What if she became something he didn’t recognize orlike?

Would she be the same person?

Would it be fair to drag such a new relationship and a caring man through it all?

Would it be fair to show someone one side of you, to let them fall deeply for that person, only to radically change later?

He hadn’t yet seen the endless hours of sleeping, the depression that impeded her basic ability to function some days. He hadn’t watched her scrounge her way out of a crushing level of debt, debt she put herself in with impulsive spending to temporarily alleviate bouts of sadness.

The psychiatrist said it would take time to dial in the medication and that it would be a challenging few months getting started.

Would this gorgeous man, who could have his pick of any woman in a thousand-mile radius, stick around to see her through it all?

She thought back to the look in his eyes when he was inside of her in the shower. It wasn’t the look you give a one-night-stand, she should know. It wasmore.

Laying back, she peered through his skylight at an endless sea of stars, feeling jealous of them all. Stars didn’t have an impossible decision to make. They could merelyexist.

Tears drenched the pillow as she turned back to his sleeping face, memorizing every inch of his face. She had made her decision. And it was the hardest thing she would ever have to do.

35

When Barrett awoke, hestared out his skylight at a dawn sky feathered in magenta and indigo, struck by the pleasant notion that, for the first time in many years, he was not waking up alone.

Reaching the other side of the bed, his hand fell through the space where Chastity should have been, patting fabric no longer warm from the touch of her body, now cold, vacant. The idea that she might have once again fled in the night without so much as a goodbye physically pained him.

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