Splinters of You (Retired Sinners MC #1) - Anne Malcom Page 0,86

at me, for a longer time than was comfortable. And when a man like Saint was staring at you, it was uncomfortable from the second it started. That was fully clothed. He was staring at me while I was completely naked, in every sense of the word.

“And trust me, I write about good sex,” I continued, unsure why I was even still speaking. Why I was sharing this with him. I was proverbially shooting myself in the foot, wounding me when I needed to be at full health for this battle. The one waging between us.

But I kept talking.

“Well, the number of religious groups that send me hate mail wouldn’t classify it as good sex in the eyes of the Lord, but then again, I wrote about spirits, demons, and the Antichrist, they weren’t apt to like me anyway.” I shrugged. “Though, the rest of my pagan readers seemed to enjoy it. I hated it. Writing about something that was about as real to me as the demons clawing up from the bowels of the earth, that was not fun. And now you’re showing me that good sex is not fiction.”

He moved forward to grasp my hips. “Ah, neither are demons, baby. And I can show you that too. Another day.” His fingers grasped my panties, yanking at them. “For now, I’m going to show you what great sex looks like.”

And he did.

Twice.

It was a perfect moment. As moments went.

And, as moments went, perfect moments weren’t really that rare, if you knew where to look for them. If you learned to understand perfect wasn’t some Hallmark bullshit.

And my kind of perfect was always going to be different from other people’s.

The water, not still, because to me that wouldn’t be perfect. I needed my waters with a little wild. Some waves.

But it was still glossy enough to show a warped reflection of the sky above. The full moon. Stars almost choking the night sky.

A full-bodied red in my hand, the buzz from which I was feeling.

So yeah, a perfect moment.

Which was, of course, why I had to ruin it.

“There’s a reason why I was such a…” I trailed off before I said the word bitch. I never called other women that word and especially not myself. I found it was mostly used to try and bring down assertive, powerful women, make them feel ashamed of their power. No woman wanted to be known as “the bitch.” We wanted to be liked. It was a weird, almost chemical, urge.

I was pretty okay with people not liking me now.

I had to be, since a crapload of people spent a lot of time on the internet, talking about precisely why they didn’t like me.

And for the most part, I didn’t care what they said.

But, I wanted Saint to like me. And even though I was curled in his lap, his hand lazily moving up and down my back, underneath my sweater, I wasn’t sure if he actually did like me.

I wanted him to like me so I wanted him to understand me.

“The first time we fucked,” I continued, refusing to refer to myself as a bitch. “There’s a reason I was so passionate about the condom thing.”

“One way to put it,” he said, sipping his own wine.

I stared out at the waves. “Only one man has been inside me without one.” I kept my voice even, cold. I’d recited this enough to be able to say the words without shaking. Without tears. To fool the world into thinking I’d overcome what had happened to me. Had regained control over my trauma.

“He didn’t have my permission,” I said.

Saint’s body tightened. Well, it had already been pretty stiff at the mention of the other guy thing. I figured he might be the jealous type. Something that definitely should’ve turned me off. Something that didn’t. Even right now.

Waves came off him. Of menace. Of danger.

“Rape is an ugly word,” I continued. “People feel uncomfortable around it. The second the word enters shared air, people flinch back. I like that. A word can never embody what kind of horror it’s describing, but I think it comes close as any word can go.” I paused, not looking at him. “I have this thing. The first thing that happens when I see meet someone for the first time. It comes before I think about their appearance, their weight, clothes, fashion sense, any of that. It’s just a word. It’s like the writer in me demands to be in control for