“How did you find out?” she quietly asks me, continuing to stare forward.
“Someone found the pictures, but don’t worry, they’ll never get out,” I assure her.
“I’ve heard that before. They always get out,” she says and shudders a little more.
“Not this time. Believe me.” I peek at her through the corner of my eyes and she’s biting her lip while playing with her fingers.
“So…you probably think I’m a big skank?” she asks.
“Never. Why would I think that just because some jerkoff took advantage of you?” I grab her hand, relieved when she lets me.
“Those things I did…”
“Are the same things you’ve done with me,” I finish her sentence, not wanting her to feel ashamed or feel guilty.
“Yeah, but I let him take the pictures.”
I squeeze her hand. “Come back with me. It’s too fucking cold out here,” I say. When I stand up, she follows my lead and I wrap my arms around her. Silence envelops us as we walk back to the cabin, each one of us lost in our own thoughts. I want her back at the cabin because I’m still planning to do what I intended in the first place.
I open the door for us when we get back to the cabin and she moves to sit on the couch, but I firmly pull her toward the bedroom. We enter the quaint room with a king-sized bed in the middle and a nightstand on either side. I make my way into the bathroom and start to fill the tub with warm water.
I look back at her standing in the doorway. “Go ahead, take off your clothes,” I instruct her.
Fumbling through the cabinets, I find some bubble bath that someone must have left behind and pour it in. Glancing at her, I’m happy to see that she listened to me and is disrobing.
After the hot water fills the tub, I shrug off my own wet, cold clothes and put them in a pile on the floor. She’s staring down at the ground, stepping out of her jeans, and I wait patiently before offering her my hand.
She takes it gently, hesitantly allowing me to guide her to the tub. I step in, never letting go of her hand and wait for her to join me. “Sit down,” I request, and then scoot in behind her, encasing her body with my arms as the water rises above us. Her skin feels as soft and silky as always. I hope this wasn’t a bad idea, having her talk to me in the bathtub with both of us naked. But it was so cold and I noticed she was already shivering on the walk home.
“Will you tell me?” I ask.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I want to hear about it. But Jessa?” She turns her head to look up at me. “After this, it’s over. We won’t talk about it unless you want to. I don’t care one way or the other, but for both our sakes, I think you should tell me what happened. And don’t hold back, because it won’t change anything for me,” I admit to her, hoping it relaxes her as much as possible.
She smirks up to me, obviously surprised by my reaction, and then lays her head back on my chest. “Jason is his name,” she starts talking and I involuntarily tense just from hearing his name. The thought of some other guy’s hands on her kills me.
“So, we’d been going out for some time when he asked me to take the pictures. I agreed, thinking they would be between the two of us. And they were, until a month or so later. We were at a party and I ran into an old boyfriend. It was nothing. I was just catching up with him. I think his girlfriend was actually at the party as well. But Jason was always jealous, never wanting me to show any attention to anyone but him. We’d been fighting a lot recently about his jealousy. When I hugged the old boyfriend goodbye, Jason lost it from across the room. It started with bottles and cans being thrown against the wall, but quickly escalated to furniture being turned over. His friends tried to stop him, but his rage was so intense it scared me. I begged him to stop, and even told him I loved him.” She stops talking and anger hits my veins. I hate the fact that she told someone else she loved them. A selfish part of me hoped she’d never said those words to anyone else.
“Anyway, he didn’t care. His friends eventually got him to leave the party and I hitched a ride with a friend. The next morning when I woke up, my phone was maxed to capacity with texts and voice messages. Within hours, the whole town knew what had happened. Social media can be as fast as lightning when the gossip’s juicy,” she finishes.
“Anything else?” I ask. I can’t help the feeling in my gut that she’s still holding something back.
“I hid out for a semester and then transferred to Western in the fall.” The hesitation in her voice tells me there’s more to it, but I don’t want to push her too hard for fear she’ll retreat from me.
“I’m sorry, Jessa,” I say and she squeezes my hand tightly. I hug her and kiss the top of her head. “That guy’s a jackass.” I can’t even say his name. “He took advantage of you. You did nothing wrong.”
“Doesn’t it bother you? Weren’t you mad when you saw the pictures?”
“Yes,” I honestly answer. “What bothered me most was thinking about you doing those things with someone else, not that you allowed him to take pictures. Don’t get me wrong, it pisses me off that so many dipshits saw you without clothes on, but it changes nothing for me,” I wholeheartedly admit.
She turns around and looks at me with a serious expression on her face. “What I have to say next might,” she says, staring right into my eyes. “After it happened, I tried…I tried to kill myself,” she reveals and instantly sits up, taking her touch with her.
I nod my head, trying to think of the right thing to say. She’s kind of throwing me for a loop here and hitting a little too close to home, although the circumstances were very different. I look at her and the apprehension that fills her face is too much for me to take. The thought that she could have never entered my life becomes unimaginable to me. I want her to know how I feel, even if it’ll be the end of me.
“I’m glad you didn’t succeed,” I say, squeezing her tight against my body.
“Why?” she murmurs into my chest. I pull her back, holding her arms in my hands.
“Because I would’ve never fallen in love,” I finally divulge, and her body crashes into me. “You did get what I just said, right?” I shyly ask, not missing the fact that she said nothing back.
Picking up her head, she giggles and says, “I love you too, Grant.” And just like that, our feelings are laid out on the table or in our case the bathtub. I can’t fight it any longer; I just pray like hell it doesn’t end like it always has for me.
“God, I love you.” I kiss her on the lips, bringing her on top of me.
“Show me,” she requests.
“I fully intend to. Jessa, tonight I’m in charge. You’re mine now, and I want to cherish you like the goddess you are to me. Are you okay with that?”
She nods her head, smirking up at me. I stand up and step out of the tub, grabbing a towel from the shelf. I hold it out for Jessa and she steps into it as I wrap it around her body before grabbing one for myself. After I walk us out of the bathroom, I lay her down on the bed, following closely behind. I slowly move my lips over hers, gently kissing her before nibbling on her bottom lip. I trace my hands up and down her ribcage, making her shiver slightly. She places her hands on the back of my head, working her fingers through my hair. Letting my lips travel to her chin, along her jawline, and up to her ear, I whisper, “You’re beautiful,” and she arches her back into me in response. Taking a short break from sucking and nibbling on her neck, I let my tongue lick its way down to her breasts. Wrapping my mouth around her peaked nipple, I suck it into my mouth before I find her other nipple and mimic what I did to the first.
The moans and whimpers escaping her mouth are making it a struggle to keep up the slow pace, but she deserves for someone to worship her body. I give her butterfly kisses down her stomach, letting my fingers lead the way. Her whole body shakes when my tongue flicks over her clit. Sitting up, I admire her body and notice that the nervous look on her face is one she’s never possessed before. It strikes me that she’s self-conscious about being this intimate.