And so, with any other woman, by now, I would have reached under her shirt, unclasped her bra, and started playing with her body. With Rachel, I hesitated even to put my tongue in her mouth.
It was not the act of someone hesitant to get intimate. It was the deliberate, strong act of someone who knew all too well what sort of hell she’d gone through and was not willing to subject her to a pace that was anything beyond “extraordinarily cautious.”
So it went for what felt like a full minute, us just kissing, before Rachel paused, curled her fingers around my jacket, and buried her head into my chest, as if listening to my heartbeat.
“You’re nervous,” she said in surprise as if she’d expected something else.
I chuckled. Nervous wasn’t the right word—or at the very least, I wasn’t willing to admit it was the right word—but it was somewhat close to how I was feeling.
“I’m not going to do anything to hurt you.”
Rachel inhaled deeply, let it out slowly, and looked up at me. Her brown eyes looked so tender and sweet right there. She didn’t look like someone who’d spent the last decade more or less in hiding. She looked like someone who’d spent the last decade growing stronger, just waiting for the right moment to emerge.
“None of you ever have, and I don’t see any reason why any of you will,” she said. “Is that why you’re not pushing?”
I had to chuckle at that. I didn’t think Rachel had it in her to call me out for not pushing for sex, but here we were.
“I just think…”
“Say it.”
Fuck it. She wants honesty; she’s getting it.
“The last time you did anything physical was probably that night, wasn’t it?”
She nodded. It was as I’d feared. I didn’t so much fear the pressure of being “the first since…” as I wondered if she would crack when we finally did something more.
“Only you know how you’d handle it, but I don’t want to put you in a spot where you start having a breakdown in the middle of anything. You’ve been through enough shit once. I don’t need you to see it twice.”
Rachel smiled and kissed me once more. It was slower, almost at a standstill, more of a soft peck than an actual kiss. It was kind of nice.
I wasn’t used to that kind of kiss. I couldn’t recall if I’d ever had something like it.
I think I would have welcomed more of it.
“I don’t know either,” she admitted. “And yes, if you’d said this five years ago, I probably would be lying to myself. Maybe even two years ago. Or a year ago. But I feel like I’m ready. Do you trust me on that?”
Honestly? No.
But there was something to be said for only finding out the truth if we kept pushing forward. Simply staying in one place without taking a risk wouldn’t do it.
“You can’t hurt me,” Rachel added as if she could read my mind, “because I trust you, Mason. You’ve always been there, whether when I was a teenager or since I came back. I’ve never felt unsafe. If I have to stop, I know you will. If I don’t have to, I know it will be great.”
Fuck.
This was unlike anything I’d ever experienced. Anyone else, I would have run for the hills and found someone with less baggage. I did not do emotions with myself well, much less someone living with the fallout of a horrible, brutal gang-rape.
But Rachel didn’t carry baggage. She carried scars. And scars were stories, an inescapable part of yourself that defined who you were. And there was something…I couldn’t believe I was fucking thinking this, but there was something beautiful about scars.
Fuck, I was never letting the boys know this. Rachel wasn’t just turning me on; she was switching my feelings on. That, more than anything, was the fucking strangest thing ever.
“OK,” I said, “but I’m trusting you to stop things if it gets bad. I don’t want to be the one responsible for—”
“Hey, relax,” she said.
And as if to prove the point, she reached out and gently nibbled on my neck. It wasn’t the most erotic thing anyone had ever done, but compared to what we’d done so far, yeah, it was pretty fucking hot.
“Take me back to your place,” she said, “and if anything happens, I’ll let you know.”
