She loved the gentle rise and fall of his chest, warm and hairy on her cheek. She could feel the soft rhythmic beating of his heart. Nothing in the world could have been more comforting to her. She’d been awake the past couple of hours, just resting against him, her calm in the storm. No matter what was going on, this was the one place where none of it mattered. Just her, just him, the two of them simply existing. She used to have issues with nudity, being exposed, and the looks men had given her when she stripped for them online. She hadn’t quite grasped what the discomfort had been for the longest time. Then one day, it dawned on her.

Fully naked, exposed, vulnerable. It wasn’t any of those really. It was that when they saw her needy young body, they hadn’t seen her. Almost none of them had. They’d seen her tits, her ass, her pussy. All of it on display. But none of them had seen her. She was incidental. Unwanted bagged that came along with the holes and tits they wanted. But not him. He didn’t see those things. Well, he did, but they were incidental. She was the object of his focus. With him, nudity was just more ways for him to touch and kiss, nuzzle, tickle, laugh, and please. She had mistaken sex in the past for intimacy. Lust for love. God, how stupid she had been. Intimacy was this, in the quiet of the morning, just listening to him breathe. To have your skin warmed by theirs, with no desire for sexual gratification. Just the contact of the one person who mattered above all others. Home. No other word quite fit. Here, with him, she was home.

She only wished everyone around her could understand or feel what she felt. She got so many judging glances, withering stares, whispers, even among her friends when they saw her with a man easily twice her age. And that was from only the people in the know. Her parents, most others had no idea. She hadn’t told them because she knew what they would say, how they would act. Just more pain added to her plate, making her feel worse and worse in that hated spiral that always left her broken in a million pieces, dashed upon the floor. They could only see the age. Nothing more.

They didn’t see him cut his hands as he gathered up my shards, his patience as he glued the pieces back together, the diligence as he shaped the glass into something more beautiful, stronger than what he had found originally. They didn’t see his smile, hear his laugh, feel his warmth. They didn’t see how a single glance could make her heart flutter, make her bite her lip, or make her legs jello. They didn’t see all the times he held her as she cried or the times that he made her blossom. They would comment on how she seemed to glow lately, so much more confident, emboldened. How she seemed to be her best self. They could see all that but never question why. What had changed in her life? What had changed her?

They wouldn’t have understood why she laid on his chest, sometimes just watching him, sometimes just listening to his breathing. He was the reason. He had made her better. Unlike every man that had toyed with her, used and discarded her, unlike every boy in high school and college that had pumped and dumped, he didn’t see a toy or hole to use. He saw her as she wanted to be, not as she was. He saw not a fresh-faced, desperate, needy college freshman. He saw the woman she’d be in ten years. He didn’t want to tear her down and leave her ruined. He wanted her built up so she could be and do anything she wanted. Some 20 boys and men had fucked her, dozens or hundreds more had seen her online, and not one of them, not one, had made her feel alive, feel real, for more than just the moment. Until him. She felt glorious when they fucked, no matter what he did to her and he did a lot. But others had done similar things. It was in the moments after, the little things, throughout the day that made her shine. The kinky sex broke the crust on her diamond in the rough, but the aftercare and love throughout the day was what polished and cut her to perfection.

She felt him stir under her, smiling, running her hand gently through the hair on his chest. She smiled as he looked up at her and saw the grin on his face.

“How long were you up, watching me?” he asked.

“Not long, just a few minutes,” she lied. He knew it too. She didn’t see his hand move, just the sudden slap and burning of her cheek. It didn’t even really hurt, just a shock, like thumping a dog’s nose with a rolled-up newspaper. She whimpered as he held her chin.