Varian Krylov (40 page)

Now and then he stopped their kissing, nuzzled against her, looked into her.

Even now, even though he'd seen and touched her scars, even though she was panting and throbbing from the need coiling in her belly, she was scared she'd still chicken out.

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Feeling his hardness pressing against her thigh, her legs flexed tighter together. And when his touch wisped down, over her scars, over her quivering belly, and teased delicately over her mound, she stiffened despite her best effort to be soft for him.

Galen's fingers slipped away, his tongue slipped from between her lips. He smiled sweetly, trying to read her.

“It's so good to touch you again, Vanka. To feel you against me. To kiss you.”

He stroked her cheek and brushed a gentle little kiss over her lips. Looked into her eyes.

“For tonight, we can just stay like this. If you're not ready for more.”

“No.”

She was surprised at the panic that crashed over her. She shifted, desperate for the reassurance of his stiff cock against her thigh. To know he was only being careful of her, not looking for an out.

“I want to. I do.”

“Good,” he laughed softly.

“Just . . .”

“What?”

“I don't want to be touched first. Please, just come into me.”

“All right.” He gave her a tender smile and another soft, lingering kiss.

When he moved over her, when he touched her leg, she made an effort to open, to welcome him to her, but it was like her body was frozen, rigid and unresponsive to her will. Slow and gentle, Galen nudged her knees apart with his, and settled, lightly, carefully, between her legs.

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“You're sure?” he whispered, and she nodded.

He took her mouth in a tender kiss, slowly going deeper, deeper, stirring up that viscous heat in her belly until her blood was pounding in her veins and her breath was coming in urgent little gasps. Then their kiss dissolved and, looking into her, holding her in his cradling gaze, Galen went into her.

Somehow, it startled her, feeling his warm, living hardness inside of her. She caught herself stiffening and faintly gasping, swallowing, trying to even her breathing.

“Vanka?”

She gave him a smile—probably small, probably wavering, but still—and touched the small of his back. She'd be all right. In a minute, she'd be all right. With her hand at the small of Galen's back, she coaxed him.

Wrapped up in each other's gazes, even as they kissed, he moved. Slow. Gentle.

All down her body she felt his muscles shuddering with the effort. And inside her, that warm, living connection, their bodies joined.

And the slow progress of his body into hers didn't hurt, not after that first shock of penetration. It didn't feel like an assault, an evisceration, the way it had felt all those weeks earlier when she'd tried sliding her fingers inside. It was fine. She could do this.

His muscular thighs flexed between hers, and he groaned a little as he sank into her, his back muscles shuddering under her hand as he withdrew, then pushed into her again.

A soft, wet kiss.

They never broke their gaze, eyes locked together as if they were clinging to one another over the upturned belly of a capsized boat.

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“God, I love you, Vanka,” he sighed, his voice shuddering, his eyes going wet and bright.

That look, the feeling of him inside of her, the feeling of being naked with him, touched by him, all of it surged up under all the love she felt for him.

“I love you, too.”

She was so taut, and shaking even though she was trying to be soft, to melt into his kisses, his caresses, that she hadn't realized at first that Galen was shaking, too.

Cupping his face in her hands, she kissed him. When she released his mouth, she sank into his gaze again. So bright with hope and need. So warm. Safe.

His body against hers, inside hers, strong and warm. In every breath she smelled him, tasted him. He was all she heard, all she felt. There was nothing but them.

When he shuddered and groaned and his gaze went hectic, she realized. She was moving under him. With him. Against him. But then she forgot what she was doing, lost in his eyes and the feeling of need swelling and their touch provoking and answering that need.

When her pleasure ruptured and spilled through her, she cried out and shook, as startled as wrapped up in the rapture . She'd never guessed she would, this night.

And Galen. After. So happy he seemed near tears, and paralyzed. Until she coaxed him with her hand at the small of his back, moving her body against his, and he gave himself up to her.

“Is this all right?” he asked in a whisper, when their breathing had calmed, when their taut, shuddering bodies had begun to soften. “Staying with you like this? A little longer?”

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He was still inside her.

“Yes,” she breathed back.

“What?” Galen asked, grinning back at her helpless smile.

“I was so scared I wouldn't be able to . . .”

“Be with me?”

“No. I mean, it was hard, baring myself to you. Because . . . well, lots of reasons.

I think you know them. But, no. Making love again, like that. That's what I meant.”

“But you and Khalid . . .”

“No. Not like that. I would have, if he'd asked it of me. But he never did. Probably he knew . . . But I wouldn't have said 'no.' I wouldn't have denied him anything.”

They nuzzled, kissed, touched.

“You don't want me to?”

He drew his touch away from the scar he'd been tracing with his fingertip. It was a weird sensation, his touch gliding over all those damaged nerves. What was hard, though, was the idea of him making himself touch her there, so she wouldn't feel bad.

“I don't mind. But you don't have to.”

He smiled, and went back to caressing her, tracing over the pattern of wounds.

“You know, I imagined, lots of times, how you'd look. How I'd react, the first time you let me see. I even looked at lots of photographs, women who'd had mastectomies, so I'd be used to the scars, the way a woman's body looks when her breasts are gone.

Because I didn't want any glimmer of surprise, anything, to hurt you.

“But looking at you was nothing like looking at those pictures. When I first saw,”

he said, looking down at her chest, then up again to meet her eyes, “it hurt, almost a 384

physical pain. Since you finished chemo, you've gotten so strong again. Sometimes I almost forget what you've been through. But seeing your scars, they reminded me of your hurt. How you've been cut apart. What you gave up.”

It was important, not keeping herself back from him, putting parts of herself off limits. But it stung when he sank down to brush his lips over the two biggest scars.

“But your scars are beautiful. I mean, I look at them, and I want to kiss, I want to touch, I feel this tenderness for them. You know how when you love someone, when you've been with them a long time and you know all the little lines and curves and planes of their body, how you look at little parts of them—the corner of their mouth, the back of their hand, the little crease where their earlobe meets their jaw—and you can feel like you're in love with that little piece of them? Maybe soon, I'll look at your scars like that. But right now, it's this feeling I've never had for a part of someone's body, before, because they promise me you're well. That you get to live. That we get to have a long life together.”

Her love for him was swelling up in her chest, the way it did sometimes, an ache she wanted to hold on to.

“You're so good, Galen. For a long time, I didn't know how good you were.”

“I'm not so good, Vanka,” he said, grinning.

“Look what you've put yourself through. With Khalid. With me.”

“No. That's just me trying to have what I want. There's nothing especially good in that.”

He smiled, and for a while they kissed, relearning how to be close to each other like that.

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She'd thought she'd be relieved. Maybe hopeful. She hadn't dared to hope she'd be happy.

And she'd imagined Galen would make her feel loved. That in time she'd believe he'd accepted her broken body, that she'd eventually feel at ease with him. But she hadn't hoped to feel beautiful. Not as a lover, with him. Not when she wasn't in her role of the androgyne.

But as they kissed, as they roused each other, looking and touching and kissing, as she slipped astride him and took him inside of her again, she did. She felt beautiful.

And happy. Maybe the happiest she'd ever been.

The End

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ABOUT VARIAN KRYLOV

Since her girlhood in a sunny coastal town in California, Varian Krylov has nurtured a love of words and a curiosity about the deep, dark forces at work in human nature, especially sexuality, and how they often paradoxically twine with our tenderest impulses. Her stories tend to explore the sometimes fine line between what arouses, and what frightens, what we’re driven to, and what we’re ashamed of. You can find more about her here.

If you enjoyed HURT, you might also enjoy:

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ABDUCTION

By Varian Krylov

For years, college student Devan Astor has penned erotic stories based on her dark fantasies, but when she’s abducted, she is faced with the real terror of being at the mercy of a cruel stranger. She flees, but in the remote cabin where she takes refuge, will she encounter a danger even more frightening than the kidnapper who is still hunting her? At the end of her ordeal, will she be left scarred by the experiences that so closely match her own fantasies, or will she discover fulfillment she never imagined?

Warnings: This title contains elements of non-consensual sex, anal sex and m/m sex.

Review from Kyraninse at Night Owl Reviews (4.5/5 - TOP PICK!)

“I really enjoyed…(this)… Not only is it remarkably executed but the psychological profiles of the characters are mesmerizing and their desires and needs sharply poignant… Varian manages to be descriptive without being cloying, her writing almost clean in its efficiency… I will look forward to Varian’s works in the future…”

Excerpt From ABDUCTION:

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He knew she would let him do anything, have anything. Anything. It was that thought—that he could do what he wanted—that made him so hard, so hot, rather than any particular thing he could think of actually doing. That this strange, quiet girl would let him touch her, take her, look at her any way he liked, and yield to any thing he might do with nothing but breaths and sighs and that look of hers.

Somehow her pigtails seemed perverse. He wanted her hair loose. Quietly, calmly, like a child with a doll who will neither judge nor protest, he took one pigtail in the loose circle of his fingers and worked her wet hair free of the elastic band. Then he did the other. He put the bands around his wrist and, with both hands, combed his fingers through her wet hair until it hung heavy and wet in thick strands over her shoulders and down her back. But he missed the nape of her neck, pale and whisped with baby-fine hairs in two Vs, so he twisted her hair up in one hand and drew it up, bending her head forward, elongating the back of her delicate neck, making the pale skin go taut over the smooth rounded curves of her spine.

Christ, he hadn’t even really touched her yet, and he was rock hard. What was it with this girl?

He leaned into her, let his face brush against her neck, heard her suck in her breath, felt her quiver as his chest pressed against her back. Breathing in the smell of her skin, feeling the heat of their bodies warming the wet cloth between them, seeing the tiny hairs—the soft blond down of her ears—he was momentarily aware of how on, how tuned into every sensation his body was in that moment, as if he could taste and see and hear molecules of air, of rain, of her and he felt oddly happy.

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It was exciting to touch, to run fingers along the bare wet gooseflesh of arms, to peel the wet, sticking sleeves back to reveal her upper arm and the first hint of her shoulder, to brush his lips against her there without kissing, to think of licking and biting her tender flesh, to feel the excitement of anticipation, the little twinge of denial.

The t-shirt she had on was soaked and clung to her like gray skin, and he took in the shape of her tits, her dark areolae, her hard nipples, the vague ripple of ribs, the slight hollow of her belly. He came to her, his body pressing her, his thigh parting hers, getting a little sigh from her as his leg pressed against her cunt. After that little noise she turned her face away and closed her eyes, and he smiled, amused by her shyness. He leaned into her, her body soft and trembling, mouthed her ear, felt her panting breath with his chest, and whispered,

“What do you want, Devan?”

One of her wrists he let go, let his hand come down into her hair to feel its heavy thickness between his fingers. Her other wrist he brought down, down, and pressed her hand to his hard, aching cock.

“Is this what you want?”

She only answered with a breathy sigh, her eyes closed, her lips parted.

Still holding her hand to his swollen cock, barely moving it over him, he mouthed her ear again, gently bit her jaw just beneath it, kissed her neck, breathing in the smell of her hair and her skin as he tasted her flesh. He heard his own excited breathing, panting against her face, her neck, her jaw, tasted his own saliva as his mouth moved back to the places it had been already, tasted the salt of her skin—salty chin, jaw, neck, cheek. Strangely so, when her ear hadn’t been, or the smooth neck beneath, under the 390

canopy of her wet hair. Not thinking, just feeling, feeling his way around her, he tasted the rain dripping from her chin, trickling down her smooth cheek, wetting her lashes.

But the rain on her lashes was all salt…

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