But…
He made his way to the crevice between my hips and my thigh. He kissed it.All the way or stop here, Lilly.
His fingers curled around my panties…
“Stop.”
I put my hands over his.
I wasn’t ready for this.
Fuck, I was not ready.
It wasn’t Cole’s fault. Really, there was no one whom I’d rather have in this position than Cole. Up to this point, Cole had been the quintessential image of a hot, lustful man who also kept control.
But call me a prude, call me stuffy, call me uptight, call me whatever… this did not feel right, not yet.
“You OK?” Cole asked.
Yeah. Yeah.
But no, not really.
Now that the heat of the moment had faded, I felt embarrassed. I’d let us get this far, only to stop? What kind of a nun was I? How badly must I have been fucked in the head to stop at this point and not, say, when he tried to grab my breasts? What must Cole be thinking of me?
What do I think of myself right now?
“I’m sorry,” I said, scooting away from Cole. “I just... I…”
“It’s OK, Lilly, it’s—”
“No, it’s not,” I said, scooting away, not just from Cole, but from the part of myself that had wanted to spread my legs and take him into me. “I... I should be wanting this. I’m a grown woman. I have no religious values holding me back. But…”
“If you’re not ready, you’re not ready. It’s not a big deal.”
I hated myself. I hated Cole for being so at ease with the situation, almost too much so. I hated us for allowing ourselves to keep hanging out in the privacy of his apartment, thinking something like this would never come.
“I’m happy to go at your pace, I just thought—”
“I’m a virgin, Cole.”
There it was.
The most shameful, embarrassing secret of all.
The secret that showed just how strongly my father had controlled me, with just how tight of an iron grip he had kept watch over my life.
I waited to see how Cole reacted. He gave no visible expression either way. He simply sat, looked at me, and listened.Like he always does.
And you didn’t want to lose your virginity to him? If not him, then who?
“I’m not ready, Cole,” I said. “And I don’t know... I don’t know that I’ll ever be ready.”
I was too embarrassed to feel sad or start crying. I didn’t feel empathy or grief for myself. I just felt red-hot humiliation. I hadn’t said no because Cole was trying to assault or rape me. Quite the opposite, given how he’d immediately stopped when I said I wasn’t into it.
I was destined to never experience the joys of sex, the pleasure of romping through an apartment naked, the intimacy and closeness that came with expressing myself with my body. That part of me had been stomped on and destroyed by my father, and it was never coming back.
“I am grateful for you sheltering me, and I am attracted to you. This has nothing to do with you. But I’m too fucked in the head. You took in the craziest person in all of Southern California.”
