Page 77 of Our Secrets and Scars

She quivers around me as her head falls back against the wall. Her lips fall open, and water pours in, but she doesn’t close them. Like me, she’s lost to the sensation of us joined together. So, she just catches the water in her mouth and lets it flow down her chin like a waterfall.

“You’re not allowed to come until I tell you to, okay?” I tell her, gripping her chin and tilting it down to empty her mouth of the water.

I fill the space with my tongue, furiously attacking her with brutal kisses. I’m a man on the edge of humanity—more of an animal than a human. Every time I’m with her, it’s like I lose my capacity for sentience. Every movement I make is governed solely by biological instinct. To fuck her, to give her my cum, to put a child inside of herso that we will be forever tied to one another.

The sheer insanity of it makes me wonder if this is what other men experience when they’re inside a woman. But then, I think it can’t be possible. Because if they do, I can’t understand how anyone could ever have more than one sexual partner.

Because this, being with Kinsley, making love to her like it’s my last day on this earth, is overwhelming in its intensity. It’s all-consuming to the point that the world around me ceases to exist and all that I know is her. Her smell. Her touch. The taste of her skin. The noises she makes and the trembling of her body. The sight of her pleasure and the sound of her name. The stark exquisiteness of her scars.

“Can I come?” she gasps. “Oh, God, please can I come?”

“Not yet, little one.”

Her head drops, and she bites down on my shoulder hard with the effort of her restraint. It’s the perfect kind of pain. Tingles erupt through my body, lighting little fires in their path.

My control is snapping. It lessens with each and every snap of my hips until I’m shuddering and yelling, “Now, Kinsley. Come right fucking now.”

Together, we shatter in a burst of stardust and falling embers. And all the while, we cling to each other, holding on tight as the orgasms tear through us. I don’t know how long it lasts, but by the time it’s over, my legs are threatening to give out. I set Kinsley gently back down, and she looks up at me, wide-eyed and dazed.

Something about her is different now. The smile on her face is easier, and the gold flecks in her eyes glow even brighter. She stands prouder, confident, and more self-assured. It’s like she’s finally lost the burden she’s been dragging around behind her since the accident when she was fourteen.

“You have no idea how proud I am of you,” I say.

She blushes and shrugs her shoulders as if none of it is a big deal.

“Thank you for trusting me.”

“Thank you for showing me I can,” she answers, rising to her tiptoes to press a grateful kiss to my lips.

And though her words should make me happy, my heart falls at the sound of them. Because when the truth finally comes out, she’ll wish she never trusted me at all.

Twenty-One

Kinsley

Weekspassbyintechnicolor. Bare trees replace golden leaves, only to be strung with Christmas lights when December finally rolls around. Snow falls from the clouded sky like confetti, and on more than one occasion, I pull Holden outside just to dance with me as snowflakes tumble to the ground around us.

Life is good.

Last weekend, Holden and I didn’t leave his apartment once. We spent the entire forty-eight hours making love and eating takeout in bed with no clothes on.

And not once did I wear makeup.

For the first time since I was fourteen years old, I left my face bare while in the presence of another person. At first, it was all I could think about. I’d try to hide my scars with my hands or position myself so that my hair would cover them. But eventually, I reasoned that if Holden had already seen them and yet still desires me with the same fervor he did before, then there’s hardly a point of suffering just to prevent him from seeing them again. So, I stopped trying to hide them, and after a while, I forgot that they existed.

I’ve never felt so free.

My skin, now it’s finally been able to breathe, is the freshest it has ever been. My pores are clear for the first time, and my eyes no longer sting from the chemicals in my liquid eyeliner.

And I have Holden to thank for it all.

Never could I have imagined his reaction to seeing my scars. It was better than any daydream and more inconceivable than a lie told by a small child. But he meant the words he said. I could see it in his eyes, how true they were. And he proved it over and over that night as he made love to me, never once looking away from my face.

He made me feel beautiful. Really, truly, unconditionally beautiful, and that’s something I’ve never experienced before.

Even before the accident, no one ever looked at me like he did in the shower that night. And yeah, okay, pubescent boys aren’t the most poetic with their words, but it wouldn’t have gone unappreciated by anyone for them not to refer to same-age girls as “hot pieces of ass.”

“You ready?” Isla asks, swiping mauve lipstick across her mouth before blowing a kiss at herself in the mirror.

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