"But you're my girlfriend!" I insisted.
"I am," she agreed, waiting until I sat before lying down so her head was in my lap.
Of all the things she could've done to make me relax? That may have been the best. The smile on her face only helped, and when she reached up to tangle her fingers with mine, I realized this was okay.
"So, did you kiss him, or did he kiss you?" she asked.
I wrinkled up my nose and admitted, "I kinda taunted him into kissing me."
"Oh, do tell?"
"I gave him the kind of look you do!"
And she squealed in excitement. "Yeah? Did he completely cave? Just turn all gooey and crawl at your feet?"
"No! He... " I had to look away because I could feel my cheeks heating up again. "He kinda pushed me against the wall and kissed me really hard."
"Too hard?"
"Just right hard," I assured her - and then stopped.
"Do not panic now," Lessa teased. "Meri, it's okay! Look, Omden and Drozel have a rather mismatched relationship. Omden likes sex occasionally. Drozel likes it all the time. I'm somewhere in the middle. So, between the two of us, we keep him pretty happy - and he does the same for us. Even better, I get Ommy to go with it, and that man?" She rolled toward me a little. "Omden is the nicest, sweetest, smartest man I know. He will giggle with me about everything, and he's a really good friend."
"Yeah? What about me?"
"You are my girlfriend," she reminded me. "And you are soft, gentle, and amazingly beautiful. You, unlike Omden, like clothing, so you understand my obsession with all this stuff. Combined, I think I'm a very lucky woman."
"So it's okay that we kissed?"
"That," she said, "depends on you. Meri, I know what Gideon did, and Drozel thinks he's going to scare you off. He's worried he's going to do something too close to what your abuse was like - "
"No!" I gasped, cutting her off. "He wouldn't!"
"He could by accident," she said.
Which made me shift, all but forcing her to sit up so we could talk about this face to face. Just to make the point, I shook my head.
"He. Could. Not." And I pulled in a breath. "Lessa, Gideon hurt me because he wanted to. It wasn't an accident. He hurt me, I told him he hurt me, and he said it was his right. Can you imagine Drozel doing that?"
"No..."
"And if he did," I continued, "what would Omden do?"
"Probably kick his ass."
"You?" I pressed.
"Cut off his fucking tail, and he'd be lucky if I didn't go for any other appendages too!"
So I thrust my arms at her. "See? Drozel would never do what Gideon did."
"But are you ready for a man?" she asked. "Meri, I'mnottrying to stop you. I'm just trying to figure out what I need to know to help you, because I am completely okay with this idea."
"What do you mean, 'ready?'" I asked.
Bending her knee, she turned sideways so she was almost sitting on it, then she scooted as close to me as possible. "Sometimes, it's hard to want something that's been used to hurt us," she explained. "Sex, Meri. Shit, everything. You said he pushed you against the wall, right?"
I nodded quickly.
