“So that morning when I… ate you out…” I swallow thickly. “Do you mean you haven’t had penetrative sex in four years or…”
“Before you, I hadn’t done anything with anyone for almost four years. Sunday was the first time in alongtime that anyone but my own hand or a toy has touched me, made me feel good, made me cum.”
I shut my eyes tight, a mental image of Giselle naked and writhing on her bed, a silicone toy vibrating against the soaking pink satin seam hidden between her legs, forming in my mind’s eye before I can stop it.
My cock twitches in my shorts, thickening against my inner thigh but I drag my focus away. This isn’t the fucking time.
Forcing my eyes to open again, I swallow, hard, and fix my eyes on Giselle’s pretty sky-blue orbs.
“If I’d have known—” I start.
Giselle shrugs, with a soft, but faux, smile playing across her lips, effectively cutting me off.
“Is it too personal to ask why?”
With that same fake smile on her face, Giselle shakes her head. “I don’t mind you asking, Hudson. I—um—I chose to become celibate after my ex fucked up the way I felt about myself. Mainly, my self worth. It’s taken a long time to unravel the mental blocks he planted into my mind.”
Lifting my head, I swallow down the red-hot anger beginning to build through me. How fucking dare that guy hurt Giselle. Although, really, am I much better after everything I’ve done?
“What happened between the two of you?”
Giselle tenses up in my arms, a sure sign she’s uncomfortable with revisiting her past. It’s instinct to move my palms to rest on her upper arms, feeling the goosebumps ripple there. When she doesn’t shrug me off, or push me away, I move my hands down an inch or two, passing her flesh in what I hope is a soothing manner.
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t—”
“No, it’s fine. I-I knew Adam for what felt like pretty much my entire life. We went to the same school, from being three years old, all the way up to being adults. Or…” She huffs out a deprecating laugh. “What wethoughtwere adults; at that age you think you know everything don’t you? When reality you know nothing at all.”
I bob my head in agreement, remembering how at eighteen I thought I had everything figured out.
“Anyway,” Giselle continues, dragging in an unsteady breath, her ribcage brushing mine. “I’d always fancied him, but so did every other girl in school, with his floppy fringe and the way he’d bunk off classes to go smoke behind the bike shed.”
I let out a huffed exhale from my nose at her description.
My childhood couldn’t have been any more different. Unlike thisAdam, I spent most of my time never daring to step a foot out of line.
We already had enough going on at home – Mum’s remission from breast cancer, mixed with Grey’s skiing accident – that I never wanted to cause more of a fuss for my family than I had to. I got on with things, silently, never uttering a word because I didn’t want to cause any more stress.
“He asked me out when we were seventeen. I-I gave everything to him. Every one of my firsts, and I, naively, thought we’d be childhood sweethearts, following in the footsteps of my parents. As we got older, Adam became more interested in going out to clubs and bars and I… wasn’t. But I trusted him, so I sat at home while he went out and I’d wait up until he’d stumble back home, held up by his friend’s arms because he wasthatdrunk.
We’d been together for about four years, before I received the first message from another girl. After that, they all just started to… stream in. He’d been sleeping with other women for almost two years of our relationship, bribing his friends not to let it slip to me.”
Giselle’s top teeth sink into her plush bottom lip as her eyes line with silver.
“It took me four years to realise Adam never wanted a forever with me. With my body yes, but not with… me. We had a massive row when I found out. I felt sick to my stomach, and I remember thinking I needed to call the Sexual Health Clinic straight away and book an emergency appointment. Every lie he’d fed me over the course of us being together came spilling out that night. How he never saw us being together for much longer anyway, he didn’t see marriage and kids for us in the future even though we’d had a thousand pillow conversations about it, how he’d fallen out of love with me a long time ago, but he kept me around for my body.”
The knots in my stomach tighten, bile rising in the back of my throat.
Shit.
I watch Giselle’s tongue darts out to wet her lips, her body finally relaxing beneath me. “I’d just turned twenty-one when we broke up, and I had no fucking clue who I was, so a friend of mine loaned me a self-help novel she’d been devouring.
“I fell into a rabbit hole of learning about meditating and its mental benefits, which then lead me into reading a passage about celibacy. I had no idea what any of it meant I first, but I just knew I needed to work on myself, you know? For the longest time my own body didn’t feel likemine,like it didn’t belong to me, because I’d given myself over to Adam time and time again, not to mention the other people he’d been sleeping with… It was a no brainer to become celibate; I didn’t want to get involved with anybody new because the hurt was still so raw and it’s not like I can’t take care of my own… needs.”
A genuine laugh bubbles up, drawing a smile of my own simply at the sound of Giselle’s joy.
“It took a little while, a few years in fact, to figure out who I am and rebuild a new version of myself after the pain I’d experienced, before I felt ready to get back on the dating scene… but… um… the thing is, I didn’t actually anticipate how hard it would be to find somebody who doesn’t run for the hills when I lay my soul bare for them…”
Giselle tails off, leaving her words to hang in the air above us.
