Twenty-Three

"I DIDN’T know... I was drunk,” he continued to explain himself. “I was angry about something that night and I took it out on you. I didn't mean to hurt you, Arianna. Do you hear me?"
Of course, she could hear him, but she couldn’t speak as she tried to control herself.
She didn’t want him to see her tears, her shock at finding out someone like Señorito Enrique would apologize for hurting someone like her.
He pulled her closer again, tightening his arms around her shaking body. But his image remained behind her eyelids as she closed her eyes and willed herself to calm down.
His presence, the warmth of his body, the familiarity of his smell... was threatening to crush her sanity.
Why was he acting as if he cared? It was making her feel things she didn’t have a right to feel.
The relief to know he wasn’t angry at her was overwhelming but she could finally breathe.
Again, she remembered how gentle he'd suddenly become when, despite his drunkenness, he’d noticed how frightened she was. She took deep gulps of breath and the sobs subsided.
Now she worried about wiping her tears off so he wouldn’t see them.
A few moments passed, and she tried to push away. He instantly loosened his grip but he didn't let her go. She was again able to raise her eyes to his, making sure he was real and not a figment of her imagination so she wouldn't feel terrorized.
He was real.
He was staring back at her, those eyes... that could be icy and cold one moment, then would fire up in fiery emotions the next.
Fiery emotions were where he was at the moment.
She gulped. He didn't look angry. He looked...
She heard him groan her name.
"Arianna... I’ve made you cry."
She raised a hand to swipe the wetness away with the back of her hand. “I was just relieved you’re not mad at me,” she said in a trembling voice. “I was so s-scared!”
“No! I’m not mad. Never. Don’t be scared of me.”
Then he bent down and kissed her.
Arianna was again frozen in shock. But in the next moment, her whole body melted to his body against her better judgment—no, she couldn’t even think. The command of his lips was overwhelming. There was no chance to push away, and there was no explanation when her mouth acted on its own accord and kissed him back.
His arms tightened around her again and the kiss only got deeper… hotter. She was burning. She was reacting in the very same way she did that night...
Their lips didn't stop the emotional kissing when he lifted her from the floor to carry her up to the stairs... to the very same bed they shared then.
He’s taken over her will.
He took over everything.
She didn't stop him when he took her clothes off her body, and she watched when he stripped himself naked.
When he opened her thighs so he could cover her body with his own, she obeyed with shameless anticipation.
She closed her eyes when his hand reached down and his fingers tested her wetness.
When his mouth covered hers in his delicious branding, she kissed him back with a yielding moan.
There was no fear, instead, she arched towards him when his mouth covered a nipple, his fervent hand kneading the other breast, her body all his.
She writhed against his body with wanton eagerness when he rubbed himself against her.
And when his cock finally pierce her, she groaned at the forgotten sensation of the utmost pleasure she had ever experienced, a sound of ecstasy that reverberated in the room as if it had its own power.
No, she hadn’t forgotten. This was more intense. This was more blissful than the last time.
It wasn't just terror that Arianna remembered of that night. She remembered bliss and a sense of security. She remembered feeling special the whole time his body covered hers and his arms held her down.
She remembered a sense of belonging while they rocked against each other in the race to the climax. She felt powerful when she fought his kiss with her kiss, and he succumbed over and over to the passion.
She couldn't remember direct pain or shame in his bed after he’d let go. His whispers adored her, his body worshipped hers.
The pain came when she had wondered if it was her or a distant lover he showered those words to. How could a man act like this tenderly, this passionately, with a stranger?
But there was no doubt he cared for the body he was possessing. That he cared how she felt, and that she was with him all the way... not hurting, not ashamed, and willing.
The fear was only because she might have imagined it all and that when he realized who she was, he would hate her with all he had.
The shame was because she dared to take pleasure in what was dirty and immoral.
"Arianna... oh god... you feel so good..." His whisper was harsh and passionate as he continued his slow thrusts, as he took her again, over and over. "I couldn't stop myself... I couldn't... oohhh... Arianna..."
She was moaning, too. She didn't know what to say but she couldn't help expressing the pleasure she felt in his every thrust. She couldn't not revel in every passionate kiss... she couldn't not let him know how he made her feel.
She buried her scream in his shoulder when she reached her first climax.
But she couldn't call his name. She couldn't. She knew who she was, and who he was.
Even in the mindlessness of sex, she couldn't forget... especially when this time, he was ready. He put on protection after that, and they rode in bliss until the end in each other's arms.
As she lay in his arms afterward, body satiated and brain numbed, tears fell from her eyes again.
Sobs started to escape from her throat, and the Señorito was stunned.
"What's wrong? Did I hurt you? I thought you... you had liked it, too," he protested, confused.
She was nodding her head, then shaking it. She couldn't speak.
"Then why are you crying?" he asked, bewildered. "Do you hurt somewhere? Please, tell me..."
*I'm not a bad woman... I am not a bad woman...* it kept repeating inside her head. It was what she wanted to say.
That first night was just one time and should have never been repeated.
But why did she give in to him the first kiss? Why did her body melt against him like it had no bone to speak of?
Why didn't she fight him off?
Instead, she participated as if her whole heart was on it.
Why?
She shook her head again.
"I don't understand. Did you like it?"
She nodded, still crying.
Then she stared at him, saw the glimpse of a smile on his lips before it was replaced again by bewilderment.
He had arrived at the point that she wasn't suffering from physical pain, but an emotional and mental one.
"Tell me what's wrong," he said in an incredibly kind voice that she abruptly stopped crying, though the tears continued to flow.
"I-I'm not a bad woman," she finally blurted out. She did not want him to think he'd treated her badly, or the experience was so bad that she was crying like she’d been beaten up.
"Of course, you're not," he retorted in a tone as if the light of her logic was as dim as the light on a broken post.
"I'm not bad," she repeated.
"But you are not." He looked confused again. "I'd been observing you in the last month and you are..." He sighed. "You are one of the best persons, I think, I'd ever met."
"I'm not a... w-whore."
"Who said—" He was stunned.
He was staring at her, and then his face flushed angrily. She got scared again, but then... he suddenly hugged her.
Tight.
"You're not... you're not. Don't you ever say it. I don't ever want to hear that from you, do you hear me? You're not that."
She didn't know if he even understand. But his embrace, and that soft voice that was hoarse and troubled and comforting, brought a kind of caress to her heart that healed pain.
She closed her eyes as she buried her hot face in his chest. She suddenly felt so tired.
But something changed. Her mind was tired but not foggy. It was like the incredible weight that suffocated her chest every time she thinks of him before had disappeared.
Like she was allowed to take a break.
She yawned, utterly exhausted.
"Close your eyes, beauty," he urged, holding her tighter in his arms. "It'll be alright."
She complied. No, she had no choice. She was too sleepy.
She wanted to escape, too.
She closed her eyes and in the next moment, the world around her disappeared…