I strip carefully in the bathroom as all my muscles still ache, and I look at myself in the mirror, immediately noticing something different.
I’m not sure what it is.
It’s like my skin is glowing, my eyes are brighter, and my lips are fuller.
I feel heat flushing up my body as I remember Kaden’s mouth ravishing me as he took my body hard and fast.
I’ve heard about people having a look about them after amazing sex but I guess I have never had it myself.
I notice a dark shadow on my throat and on my shoulder and run my fingers over the bruising, remembering the way it felt to have him sucking, marking me as his.
Only I wasn’t his.
The warm water of the shower helps me forget.
After a long shower, I emerge from the bathroom under a veil of steam, wrapping a towel around my scrubbed pink body and another around my hair.
Olivia is already on the sofa and holds up two tubs of pure chocolate sin and smiles.
“Now come and tell Aunty Nic all the filthy details.”
Laughing as I sit down, I take the offered tub of ice-cream and tell her everything.
Between large mouthfuls, I start from the beginning when I first bumped into him at the gym and fell on my ass, and finish at how I had snuck out before he had woken up this morning.
She stares thoughtfully into her own ice-cream tub.
Finally she says, “So… If I were to hold out my arm, could you show me exactly how long…”
“Olivia!”
“Sorry,” she says, not really looking all that sorry, “Okay, exact measurements of his genitals aside, did he say anything, you know, after?”
“Nope,” I reply, “He just looked up at his own reflection in the ceiling mirror.”
Her mouth falls open.
“There was a ceiling mirror…” her words fail on her lips and she waves for me to continue.
I love Olivia and I know she’s trying to be sympathetic but I also know that it’s been a while since she’d been in a relationship too.
I wish I could view sex the way she did - the way most guys did - as a fun and pleasurable pastime…
But I’m not like that.
“So he lies there, staring at the ceiling, not saying anything,” I try to remember his expression, “I mean if he looked exhausted or even if he just fell asleep, I could have understood but… he looked sort of angry or annoyed. I wanted to reach out and touch him but it was like a gap split the bed in two.”
I take another mouthful but my throat feels swollen.
The truth is sitting heavy on my chest and I can feel my eyes prickling with fresh tears.
“I don’t think I was very good...”
“At sex?” Olivia asks.
I nod, “I don’t think I did enough… things. He did more things than I did.”
“Did you let him do the things?”
“Yes! He was really good at all the things he did. I get the feeling he does it a lot,” I expel a long sigh, “Maybe he thought I’d be more exciting or inventive. Maybe he has had so much sex that it’s boring to him.”
Olivia doesn’t look convinced, “Did he seem bored while you were having sex?”
“No, he didn’t seem bored and he came for a long time. But maybe that’s normal for him. I mean, he’s a handsome billionaire – he would have access to supermodels and actresses and…”
Olivia slams her ice-cream tub on the coffee table, and then snatches mine to do the same. She slaps my hand when I reach for it.
“Maybe he wasn’t bored or annoyed. Maybe he was confused. You said you felt like you two connected and not in the naughty sexy way.”
When I open my mouth to argue she shushes me.
“Maybe you’re right about the doing it a lot with supermodels,” she continues.
“Not helping.”
“But maybe he felt that connection too, maybe that’s something that he doesn’t get very often. Maybe sex for him is usually a fun distraction and maybe it was different with you. You’re pretty amazing, you know.”
“What does that matter?”
“I’m saying he was angry because he felt something.”
“Feeling something makes men angry?”
“Definitely,” Olivia smiles, “He is a man that is always in control. He owns everything that happens around him. So when he can’t control how he feels, he becomes angry and confused.”
“Really?”
“Absolutely. But he wasn’t angry. He was scared.”
I’m not convinced but I let her pull me into a hug all the same.
We spend the rest of the weekend watching teary romance movies and consuming the last three bottles of wine in the apartment.