Read Online It Stings So Sweet by Stephanie Draven - Free Book Online

us, Nora, I’d let them all go hang.”
    “Thenwhat keeps us apart? Is there something else you don’t think you can give me?”
    “A child,” hesays. “After the miscarriage, I swore to myself that I’d become a better man. That I wouldn’t touchyou again until I was worthy of you. Well, I’m not. And after last night, I don’t know that I everwill be. I
hit
you, Nora. And I
enjoyed
it. So we can’t simply return to the way things were, pretendingthat I’m not going to crack one day and do it all again. Because I will. I don’t know how tolove you gently.”
    How is it that he won’t hear me? That he won’t understand. “I never askedyou to treat me gently!”
    “Listen to me. If we stay together as other men and women do, I’lllook for excuses to yank at your clothes, to bite at the back of your neck and turn you over my knee.What I want is wrong and it’s sinful. I am a depraved monster inside, Nora.”
    If there wereanything near enough, I would throw it at him. “Stop saying that!”
    “Oh, for the love of God,I don’t need your pity. I’m not one of the poor orphans at your charity house.”
    “It isn’t
pity
, you horse’s ass. I’m insulted. When I went with you that first time, when I let you put yourhands up my skirt, let you bed me, I thought that I wasn’t a virgin. But I was. Because you were thefirst man to ever touch me. Truly touch me. Or at least, the first man to touch what was really insideof me. Everything about myself that I’d been afraid of came awake in a moment, and it wasn’t ugly.I’m not twisted and ugly inside, Jonathan.”
    He stands up, rounding the bedpost to face me.“I never said you were.”
    “You say it every time you call yourself a monster. Because if you’rea sick and sinful and depraved man for what you want to do to me . . . what does that make me forwanting you to do it?”
    His eyes narrow. He exhales sharply from his nose. He looks away.
    “
Oh
,” I whisper, both hands to my face in despair. “Oh. You
do
think there’s something wrongwith me.”
    He takes my hands, pulls them gently from my horrified face, and clasps them in his.“It’s just . . . I used to see men beat on their women on the farm. Drunken sots, big fists, lotsof tears. I’d see those same women go back to those men. Make excuses for them. Just like you’re doingfor me.”
    “We’re not like that,” I say, wishing there were words for it. “If I’d asked you tostop last night, would you have?”
    “Of course.”
    “Then it’s play. It’s a game.”
    “Gameshave rules,” Jonathan says.
    “Then we’ll make some.”
    He hesitates, as if tempted. “Peopledon’t . . .
do
this, Nora.”
    “How do you know? Maybe they do. Just not, perhaps, in the middleof a party. And maybe they don’t. Maybe no one in the world plays these games. Maybe that’s why wewere drawn together out of anybody else in the whole world. We’re perfect for each other.”
    “We can’t just do anything that feels right to us.”
    “Why not?” I stare at him, hard, waitingfor an answer that doesn’t come. “Why not, Jonathan?”
    The more we argue, the more sure of myselfI become. The certainty spreads through me, limb by limb, transcendent. I know myself as I’venever known myself before. And I can say all the things that have been caged inside my head. “Our wholemarriage, I’ve done nothing but try to hold on to you, Jonathan. I’ve done so very many things I’mnot proud of, not the least of which was withholding from you the truth of my own feelings.
I loveyou
.”
    His expression lightens and I see that he believes me. He reaches for my face and I lethim kiss me. It feels so right that I cannot bear to deny it anymore. My palms skid down his barechest, stopping to lace my fingers through his. And then I say the most difficult thing I’ve ever saidin my life. “These hands have never hurt me. But
you
hurt me. You’ve hurt my heart and you’ve hurt . . .