Chapter 28: Trust

She raised her eyebrows at me.

“You don’t mean...?”

She nodded. “Fuck me in the arse, Paul. Ram it through my back door. Bugger me. Bum me. Use the tradesman’s entrance. Plug the chocolate pipe—”

“Okay! I get it,” I said, grinning as I wondered how long she’d spent looking up all those euphemisms on the internet. “I get it, Ness, but are you sure about this? You know it can hurt like all bloody hell, right?”

She nodded. “From experience. But what if it’s done right, huh? What if it’s done with care?” She sat up, then climbed off me and lay on her side, propping herself up on her elbow. I shifted position to mirror her and gently stroked her hip.

“Look,” she said after taking a deep breath. “James and his friends...” She closed her eyes and shuddered. “They used me. I was nothing more to them than a few convenient holes. They didn’t care about me and nothing they did to me was done with care. Steve was the same—or he wanted to be. But he was never quite as ruthless as James could be. Still, that whole time, I had things done to me, and not with any love or care or even a thought for how it might feel for me. All any of them thought about—all they cared about—was how good it felt for them. My arsehole would be tighter, right? So that must be better, although I’m not sure that’s really true. Honestly, I think they were more interested in being able to brag that they’d done it than in actually doing it, do you know what I mean?”

“Yeah, I’ve known a few people like that.” An image of Del Stevens flashed across my mind before I pushed it aside.

“When we first got together—and let’s not kid ourselves by pretending we’ve been anything other than boyfriend and girlfriend this past couple of months—when we got together, that day in London really, it was because we both had pretty fucked up issues and we thought we could help each other to work through them. Right?”

I nodded. Now wasn’t the time to argue the toss over what our relationship was and wasn’t.

“And it’s worked, pretty much. Wouldn’t you say? I mean, we went out on a pretty hot date tonight, and we both knew where it was going, but have you heard from that voice in your head at all? Even once?”

“No. I haven’t,” I admitted. “I haven’t heard from her for a long time, truth be told.”

“See. It worked for you, me and you being together. Oh, I know it was more than just that. I know I’m not some bloody miracle cure or something, but us being together—even when we kept telling everyone and each other that we weren’t really—us being together helped you. You always said you weren’t ready for a relationship, and I think maybe you believed that, but I think really you were scared of a relationship. Scared of maybe getting hurt again. That’s why we kept saying we weren’t really together, even though we were. If we said we weren’t together, then you couldn’t get hurt if it ended. Right?”

“But it is ending,” I said, touching her face. “After tonight.”

She smiled a cute little smile. “Maybe not after tonight, exactly, but certainly, yes, come September we’ll be just friends rather than boyfriend and girlfriend, and you know what, we’ll have downgraded or whatever without either of us getting hurt. We’ll break up and still be friends. Right?”

I shrugged. “I guess.”

She slapped my arm. “Hey, we better still be friends. Maybe even ... No, I can’t go there. But the point is, you have proved to yourself that you can have a relationship and not get hurt so maybe when the right girl comes along—and she will come along, Paul, mark my words—when she comes along you’ll be able to have a relationship and call it a relationship and not worry about getting hurt or any of that crap. You know, like a normal person.”

I didn’t answer.

“But for me, it wasn’t about getting hurt, it was about trust. I trusted James, at first, and he didn’t just betray that trust he completely disregarded it. It left me scared of trusting anyone again, scared that they might do the same. So I needed to know if I could trust again. Not just trust a guy, but trust myself to find a guy worth trusting, know what I mean?”

I shrugged. Again.

“You’ve shown me there are guys worth trusting and I’ve proven to myself that trusting someone and being in a relationship with them doesn’t mean letting them do whatever the hell they like to me, no matter what. You’ve shown me I’m worth more than that, that I’m better than that. I’m not some dumb blonde with a tight pussy that a guy can walk all over, you know?”

“Yeah. You’re definitely worth more than that.”

She smiled. “And tonight? Again it had different meanings for each of us, but was important for both of us, you know? For you, you needed to believe that sex doesn’t have to be all about handing out the best experience a girl has ever had.” Her smile shifted into a lop-side grin. “Okay, so this was the best experience I’ve ever had, but, honestly, I haven’t exactly had too many good times to compare it with. But, I don’t think you were consciously trying to make it that way, were you?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so. I just did what felt right, you know? Like downstairs, I just got the impression that was how you wanted it, so that’s what I did. With Mands and her friends, I always felt like I was trying to prove something. I knew they would go and compare notes and if I didn’t give one quite as many orgasms as another then she’d end up feeling short-changed or something. I guess all the time it was about the reputation I had. All about The Paul Robertson Experience.”

“Exactly!”

I smiled. “You know, I always said I hated the idea, but I was damned if I wasn’t going to live up to the reputation. I guess that makes me sound like I have a huge ego.”

“It makes you sound like a guy. Tell me you weren’t aware of what the other guys thought of you. That deep down it didn’t matter to you that everyone thought of you as a sex god.”

My sheepish grin said it all. “So what about you? What was tonight about for you?”

Her eyes widened and she said, “You have to ask?”

I nodded. “Getting your Paul Robert—”

“No!” She slapped my arm playfully. “Okay, maybe. A little. But only because it was a way to prove that sex could be good, you know. That it could feel good for me.” She shook her head. “After James and his friends and then Steve, I was like ... I don’t know ... I felt as if sex was all about the guy getting his rocks off and there could be nothing in it for me. That’s one of the reasons I went to Amanda in the first place, you know? I figured that all these girls were raving about how good The Paul Robertson Experience was and I couldn’t believe they weren’t just bull-shitting, because it had never felt good for me. Ever. So I wanted to find out if it could. Then I got scared. And I’ve been running scared ever since. Putting it off and putting it off again.

“Paul, you have no idea how many times I almost just jumped your bones over the past couple of months. I’d get close to wanting it and Gen would tell me to go for it and then I’d back out again.”

I reached out and stroked her cheek again and she nuzzled her face into my palm with her eyes closed.

“I’m glad we did it,” she said, quietly. “I’m glad we did it like we did downstairs, and I’m glad we did it like we did up here. I loved them both, but...”

“But what?”

“But I think I might have a submissive streak or whatever you call it. Don’t get me wrong, it was great to sit on top of you and be totally in control, but downstairs ... The way you hovered over me ... I felt so ... powerless. So ... dominated. And it felt...” She closed her eyes and shuddered.

When she opened them again, she rolled those big blue eyes up to stare into mine. “I’m serious about this, Paul. Tonight, you’ve shown me that sex can feel good. That it can feel great. So now I want you to show me that even this, this thing they did to me that was so painful you can’t believe, this thing that used to leave me crying for hours afterwards, that even this can feel good with the right person.”

I nodded my understanding. “Okay.”

She leaned forward and kissed me. “Thank you.”

After another long, passionate kiss, she jumped up off the bed and scampered from the room saying, “Back in a sec.”

“Ness, where are—” But she was out of the room before I could finish the sentence. She returned holding what looked like an extra-large tube of toothpaste.

“Lube,” she said, holding the tube up for my inspection. “I’ve done it with and done it without, and let me tell you, there’s no way I’m ever doing it without again. Spit and Pussy Juice, as James insisted on calling it, just isn’t good enough.”

“I didn’t know they sold that stuff in Boots,” I said with a smirk.

She dropped onto the bed and slapped my chest. “Silly. I got it from that kinky lingerie place on the high street. Same place I got my bra and knickers from actually, not that you took any time to appreciate them.”

I shrugged. “Sorry. I had other things on my mind.”

“More important things. Much more important. Perhaps I should model them for you properly one night.”

“Maybe.” I held my hand out. “Okay, give it here.”

She passed it over with a grin then got on all fours, her arse sticking up in the air and her head right down resting on her arms. “Lube me up, baby!”

I rolled away from her and put the tube on my bedside table, out of her reach.

“Hey! What are you—” I held my finger to my lips to silence her.

“I’ve only done this maybe half-a-dozen times. Maybe a few more, I can’t say I kept count. And only once since I got back from the States.”

She flopped onto her side. “Really? Who with?”

I grinned. “A Gentleman never tells.”

“Spoilsport.”

“Yes. I am. But the point I’m trying to make is that the one thing I’ve learned from the few times I’ve done this, it’s that you need more than just lube to make it a good experience.”

“Don’t I know it! They lubed me up and still hurt. But you’ll be gentle, right, so it’ll be fine.”