Utterly Crucified

Riley

I can't lie in this position anymore. Six hours of limbs tangled with Row and the pain in my back is worse than it's been in quite a few weeks. Yet I can't move from this position, either. The pain is worth the smooth feel of her skin, the cloy of her scent, the heat of her breath.

What a metaphor for us. I'm perfectly paralyzed by the pleasure and pain of her.

I've been lying here for at least an hour now, acutely aware that this is the sixth anniversary of the first time I made love to her.

Well, let's be honest. Make love is a rather mild euphemism for what we did.

We fucked. Exquisitely.

I was out on a stretch of Strut shows with her and the girls. She'd slipped me her room key so many nights before that, but this time, with the taste of her mouth lingering on mine from the night before—a stolen half hour in their tour bus when every one else was at the afterparty—I couldn't stop myself. I stood in my room, staring at that key card, downing three gin and tonics and imagining her naked beneath me.

I went to make a fourth one, changed my mind and used the key card.

She was in the shower when I slipped into her room. I watched her through the glass, singing and shampooing her hair, until she noticed me. She didn't fright, didn't scream, didn't scowl. She opened the door, slid her hands along her wet naked breasts and said, "If you're finally here, you better make yourself useful."

Everything that had kept me from her for so long went down the drain. Worries about her age, her father's disapproval, what Trace would think, my business relationship with her—none of it was more than a sticky haze that washed away the moment I stepped beneath the water with her.

I fucked her slow but hard, her back against the shower wall, her legs wrapped around me. In that moment, there was nothing between us but a desire to get deeper in one another, to lose everything but the ecstasy of longing finally met with passion. We practically clawed one another trying to claim more of each other. I barely rubbed a thumb between her legs, she began crying out and shaking violently, desperately trying to keep a slippery hold on me as we shuddered and thudded against the wall.

After I opened a bottle of champagne and we stepped out to her patio hot tub. We toasted to what she claimed was the most incredible shower she'd ever had. We analyzed our shower fuck with a sort of dark humor. I told her if her brother fired me and her fathered had me blacklisted, it was worth the one moment of her walls clenching hot and tight around me. She laughed and drained the champagne, saying, "I've waited a long goddamn time for you. If this is just one night, you have a lot more fucking to do."

We started up again in the hot tub, her leaning against the side, me taking her from behind and alternately using the jets and my fingers to make her come. When she did, I dragged her from the hot tub before I finished and had her in the bed. I'll never forget the way she looked beneath me, silent and intense and completely shocked as I drove her to another orgasm with exploring kisses and whispered words and deep, decadently slow penetration.

She'd never come like that, she told me afterward, In a somewhat embarrassed murmur. By penetration alone, she meant. She didn't understand it was more than my cock that had made her come that time. For all Row's boldness and sexual experience, she'd never been with a man who cared enough to really attend to her. To shape sex into something more than the touching of genitals, but a mutual experience of sensuality and desire and emotion.

We slept with our heads at the opposite end of the bed, because her long hair had completely soaked the top of the mattress. Just like the other two times, I'll never forget the morning fuck in the grey dawn...her clinging to the end of the mattress, me holding her head in one hand, caressing her breasts as she writhed and I took her sideways and from behind.

I think about that third time in intimate detail, as she breathes beside me, now.

She flops away from me, turning over. I hiss as I ease up onto my side and position us in that exact same position I've been remembering, spreading her thighs with my knee. Pain shoots down my spine as I push my hips against my ass.

Christ. It's honestly hard to tell if my balls or my back aches worse.

I hear Row's breathing change, and I know that she's awake, but she lays perfectly still. She makes no move at all to touch me, only lets me touch her. I stroke her hip with my fingers and she sighs. I cup her breast beneath her silky pajama top and circle her nipple She makes one tiny sound like a whimper, but she stops herself.

"I know you're awake," I bite at her ear, but even the movement it takes to flex my spine that much sends another shooting pain down my lower back and tail bone. I try to turn the grunt of pain into a growl.

"It's a nice way to wake," she whispers, and her hand moves slowly behind her, stroking my hip.

I swallow heavily, closing my eyes, trying to lose myself in her touch as it slips inside my sleep pants and reaches my cock. I kiss the back of her neck as she strokes very lightly with the back of her fingers, from balls to tip. My balls ache and there's a certain amount of swelling that's pleasurable, but by no means is there the erection that once predictably presented itself in the morning. Especially a morning I woke with my wife.

Not your wife now, mate.

The thought flashes without warning, followed quickly by an image of Row and Mostellar in a sequence of various positions.

No, I correct my brain. Of Stella and Lars. Those images aren't real. They are just a love scene from the third season.

Right. Keep telling yourself that. But I bet they are a pretty good estimation of what it looked like when that whore-swine cocksucker fucked your completely blitzed, reckless, foolish wife up into a suicide frenzy.

Okay, but that was then, and this is now. She's the woman you love and she made a mistake, and she's bloody well made amends and you've decided, mate. You're forgiving it. She's the woman you love. You love her enough to forgive.

I slide my hand between her breasts, feeling her heartbeat as I strain slightly to kiss her shoulder. I stroke down her ribs, down her belly, down her sex. She's not quite bare, just a soft fuzz of growth from an overdue waxing. She makes a sound of utter surrender as we stroke one another. Her ringless fingers come around my slightly swollen member, squeezing lightly. Stroking.

It's not the first time she's ever encouraged an erection when she was in the mood and I was distracted by something—usually work--but this time I find myself tensing against her gentle grip. The flash of fear that it's simply not going to work races down my spine. Until it hits that spot of dull ache in my lower back and stops.

I've never been more aware of the damage in my spine as that moment.

The shiver of fear racing down my spine simply fades away.

Like the thickening that was beginning to happen between her fingers is beginning to fade.

A new thought enters my mind. An element of her betrayal I've never pondered before.

Did she stroke his cock like this? With my wedding ring on her finger? Or did she have the presence of mind to take it off? No. I imagine she was still wearing it, looking at it when she decided to snort three lines at once and leave me?

Stop. Please. Just. Stop for Chrissakes.

"I'm sorry," she whispers, as she withdraws her hand quickly.

Fuck me. I said that out loud, didn't I?

I reach for her hand, pulling it back where it was. "No, no, no," I say quickly. " I didn't mean you...I meant my brain. Over-thinking. It's alright," I repeat.

It's alright, I insist to myself. It's alfuckingright.

It's not. I'm as deflated as a eunuch.

"Are you sure?" she whispers.

"Yeah," I say, but pull her thigh back over mine in a way that makes her touching me awkward. She doesn't struggle to regain her grip on me but lets her hand remain where it clenches my sleep pants. I tease apart her lower lips and trail through her wetness, drawing it up to her clit and going to work on her orgasm.

I ignore the pain in my back as I push my other arm beneath her. I hold her tight against me as I work her up.

She comes too quickly, too lightly. Just a few whimpers and a slight tremor before stilling my hand. She doesn't seem lost in the daze of aftershocks like she normally would be. I wonder if she faked it as she flips quickly in my arms, pushing my shoulders gently to recline me on my back.

There's no drunken expression of satisfaction on her face. Only concern. She's worried about me. She can tell I'm in discomfort, though she has now idea that it goes far beyond my back.

For fuck's sake. She bloody did. She faked it.

She climbs atop me, still in her flimsy sleep clothes, but puts no weight on my hips. She's merely crouching over me, kissing me frantically, dipping her hips to barely brush my cock.

I already know this exchange is over, but for her sake I let it continue as long as I can take it. It's hard to tell which is more unbearable, though. The ache in my back or the hollow hole punched in my gut. After five minutes or so, I take her head in my hands and kiss her with all the tenderness I can still muster.

"I'm sorry darling, I think I need to..." I whisper.

She stills at once, nodding.

She knew it was over, too.

"Of course," she says, climbing off me awkwardly, making sure not to put her weight on me. She wedges herself in beside me, curling her head on my shoulder as I lay flat. She kisses my shoulder, and strains to kiss my cheek as I stare at the ceiling and give her thigh a half-hearted consolation pant.

"Are you okay?" Her voice is calm. Low but sure. She's not going to cry or express any pity. She's only going to be strong and take care of me—her invalid partner.

"I'm fine," I say with the same calm voice. "Well, we rushed that a bit, didn't we?"

"It will get better," she murmurs, still kissing my shoulder.

"Right."

It will get better. She always says that. I wonder if she's nearly convinced herself, as many times as she's insisted aloud.

"It will get better," she says again.

"Well, perhaps you shouldn't fake your orgasms, Row. That would be a place to start."

That sounded quite a bit more bitter than I intended.

She's quiet, letting me know I hit the mark.

"I'm sorry," she says. "That was a bad call."

Wow. I have to give it to her; I wasn't expecting honesty in response to my accusation.

"Yes. Well."

"I felt like you were uncomfortable in that position. I wanted to...skip ahead to your pleasure," she confesses.

"Faking it might work on a fanboy, Rowan, but I know you. Frankly, it was a bit of a mood killer."

I don't know why I'm blaming her. My fucked up back and my fucked up brain were wrecking my pleasure well before she faked it.

"I'm sorry. You're right. It wasn't because it wasn't good. I was getting there, I swear. I just...I wanted to make things easy on you."

"Yes, well. Mission accomplished. You certainly didn't make it harder, did you?"

I meant as it a joke, but it falls completely flat between us. I sigh and try again.

"It's alright," I say more gently. I say the words she needs to here. "You're right, darling. It will get better."

"Yes," she agrees.

We lie quietly for maybe ten minutes. Her voice is still quite calm as she asks. "Do you want to take a shower?"

"You go ahead. I'll...I'll wait until after PT."

She nods against my shoulder. She has a death grip on my arm. "Well...my stuff is in the guest bath..."

She's fishing. She wants me to tell her to bring it in here.

"You can bring your things back into the master if you like," I say in measured tones. "Or you can cut your losses now and pack your bags. It's entirely as you like, darling."

She sits up, grabbing my face, pulling my chin towards her. "It will get better. You will not fucking do this to me. This goddamn British stoicism." She punches my shoulder lightly. "You will want me. You'll see."

Row is barking mad. God help me. I'm in love with a madwoman and this going to be fucking inferno all over again. And I can't do a thing to stop it.

I close my eyes, pulling the grin from my lips. Wanting her is not the problem. Getting head, heart, spirit and cock aligned all at once is the problem. It might be an impossible task given the roadblock in my spine, but god help me I love her ferocity.

"Mmmm. It's not so much a question of wanting you. But punch me some more, darling. Perhaps a little BDSM is the answer. You'll be the dominant, obviously—"

"Don't. Make. Jokes." She slaps my shoulder again with each word.

"Perhaps you could tie me into my wheelchair, blindfold me and tickle my feet. Wait, that's not right. Obviously that's no punishment. Let me think—"

She makes a loud cry of exasperation and jumps off the bed. She slams the door on the way out. I'm still lying with my hands folded across my chest when she returns five minutes later with a large train case of her shower things.

"Shut up!" She yells at me as I lick my lips, preparing another self-deprecating one-liner. "Just don't fucking speak to me if you're only going to make your stupid goddamn jokes!"

"Yes, Mistress," I answer obediently. She growls at me, strips naked in the bathroom doorway, throws her pajamas at me and slams the door.

I cover my face with her top, breathing her scent in.

Christ on a cross.

That's what one one of us will be.

Utterly crucified by this disaster.

And still I can't force her to leave.