I sit with it in the dark.
I caress her face with the back of my fingers. Her eyes flutter open under the sliver of moonlight filtering through the window.
“Saint,” she whispers softly.
I lean close. My lips hover over her soft lips. Lips I’ve been dying to know what they feel like.
She lifts her chin, giving me permission.
“If I kiss you, Amy. I taste all of you.”
She furrows her brow. “What do you mean?”
I lean closer so she can decide to push me away. “It means I taste those lips and the ones between your legs. It means I’m going to fuck you with my tongue.”
I lean back so I can look into her wide eyes and give her time to decide.
She swallows thickly. “Is that what you want?”
“For now, it’s what you can handle.”
She stays silent for a few seconds.
“A simple yes or no would suffice.”
She nods. “Yes.”
For a second, neither of us moves. The room feels too small around her. Around me. Around the yes she just gave me, sitting between us like something alive.
I look at her and hear more than the word. I hear every no she was forced to swallow. Every time her body stopped belonging to her. Every moment some man decided her silence was the same thing as permission.
“You understand what you just gave me?” I ask.
Her throat moves when she swallows. “Permission.”
My hands curl once at my sides. “No.” My voice comes out rougher than I intend. “Permission can be taken back. I need you to know that before I touch you.”
Something shifts in her face. Not fear. The fragile disbelief of someone who has never been allowed to trust an open door.
“You would stop?” she asks.
My jaw tightens. The question offends something violent in me. Not because she asks it, but because someone made her need to.
“I would tear my own hands off first.”
Her breath catches. I stay where I am. I don’t touch her. Not yet.
I run my gaze over her oversized shirt until she pulls it over her head. My eyes lock onto all her scars, and I’ve never seen a woman so beautiful before.
She wears them with pride. They are part of who she is.
She moves her hands over them, and I stop her, shaking my head. “Let me.”
She does.
Her fingers find my hair, the tips of her fingers over the strands I keep tied in a bun, as my lips graze the elevated scars on her soft skin, memorizing them. The pain, from whoever inflicted them, the ones I know she didn’t deserve.
Her breaths come in and out faster than before.
