Chapter 78
We were just about to take a shower when something I’d been waiting for finally happened:
Roberto got undressed.
Like earlier with his cock, I thought maybe he’d been hiding his body because he was embarrassed.
Maybe he was pudgy…
Although that didn’t seem likely, given his lean, sculpted face.
I didn’t have much to go on other than his face; the only other visible parts of his body were his hands. (Well, them and his gorgeous cock.)
Everything else he kept hidden under his perfectly tailored suit.
If he was a bit overweight, it wouldn’t have bothered me in the slightest.
However… just like with his cock…
Reality exceeded expectations.
By quite a bit.
When he pulled off his shirt, I just stared.
His body was lean and muscular – more wiry soldier than bodybuilder.
Large biceps… firm pecs…
And his six-pack abs were so pronounced that they cast shadows in the candlelight.
Despite my very recent mind-blowing orgasm, I started getting aroused all over again.
And then he turned around.
His shoulders were broad, and his back was powerful –
But the skin across his shoulder blades was streaked with dozens of crisscrossing scars.
Some were long tracks…
Others were small gouge marks.
They were old and healed over, but the sight was still alarming.
He hadn’t mentioned that he liked being beaten or whipped –
So where the fuck had they come from?
My mind immediately leapt to the worst possibility:
Child abuse.
“What’s on your back?” I asked as neutrally as I could.
“Scars,” he said, not looking at me as he pulled off his pants.
As I walked over to him, I took an appraising look at his lower half.
Powerful, muscular thighs…
Well-developed calves…
And a hell of an ass under his black boxers.
Stop, I reprimanded myself.
Focus.
I gently touched the scars.
“What are they from?”
“Women.”
Maybe he had lied about enjoying being whipped.
He wouldn’t be the first man I’d met who was ashamed of his desires.
“What the hell did they use on you?” I asked. The former dominatrix in me was curious. “It’s not bad enough to be from a cat o’ nine tails – ”
“Their fingernails,” he said as he pulled off his boxers.
Oh FUCK.
His ass was perfect… muscular and round…
And his cock, now soft, swayed long and thick from his soft thatch of dark hair.
FOCUS, MEI-LING.
“Is that some sort of a flex?” I asked, trying to tear my gaze away from his nether regions.
“What do you mean?”
“Are you trying to say you’re so amazing in bed that they couldn’t help themselves, and gouged wounds in your back during sex?”
“Would that surprise you?” he asked with a half-smile.
I didn’t want to give him a big head…
But I couldn’t lie, either.
“Given how you just made me feel for the last half hour… no, I guess not.”
He surprised me with a laugh and a kiss. “Actually, no, it’s not that. I asked them to do it.”
“You didn’t mention that you’re into pain.”
“I’m not.”
“Then why did you have them gouge their fingernails into your back?”
“Control.”
He spent the next few minutes explaining that he used pain as a way to have control over his body.
He claimed that he didn’t like pain; he just craved the control that it gave him.
I’d seen things like that in my time at De Sade.
Just not quite as… extreme as Roberto’s case.
I brushed it off and played the flirty coquette – because I liked him, and because I wanted him, and because I really wanted to fuck him again.
But in my head, a quiet little siren was going off:
Red flag, girl.
Roberto Rosolini is fucked UP.
On the other hand…
So was I.
Maybe we were a better match than I could have imagined.
We had sex in the shower, which was amazing.
Then we had sex again in bed, which was fucking fantastic.
When he asked me to dig my fingernails into his back, I complied – mostly because I wanted to come so badly, I would have done anything he asked.
But after he came – all over my belly and chest, which I liked – I suggested a second shower so I could clean off his cum.
“I agree,” he said. “I don’t want to get any blood on your sheets.”
When I saw what I’d done, I kind of freaked out.
I’d literally gouged his skin in half a dozen places, and blood was trickling down his back.
He laughed and reassured me that he’d wanted it.
I’d had plenty of clients whom I’d done worse to as a dominatrix –
But they liked the pain.
They got off on it.
Not Roberto.
He got off on control.
And that was the first inkling I had that Roberto wasn’t just fucked up…
But that he might be dangerous.
Lots of red flags…
But it didn’t keep me from wanting him.
In fact…
It made me want him more.
All the red flags, though, receded into the distance as we lay in bed together afterwards.
I asked him playfully if he’d learned everything he’d done to me from the sex worker he’d lost his virginity to.
While he said ‘yes,’ he implied that she’d taught him over a period of time.
When I pressed further, he said, “I paid Vittoria enough that she could stop working at the brothel. I was her sole client for a couple of years.”
Now I was intrigued.
“So you had a relationship with her?”
“More or less. I would call it an ‘arrangement.’”
“Did you love her?”
He didn’t answer, and I immediately regretted prying.
He might have felt shame over having a long-term relationship with a sex worker.
However, if he was ashamed about it, that would have bothered me immensely.
I’d been a sex worker when I was a dominatrix.
And I had many friends who were sex workers still.
Judgment from men about how they lived their lives –
How I had lived my life –
It reminded me of my father.
How he had slapped me, belittled me, and disowned me.
Let’s just say that judgement was a gigantic turn-off.This content is © NôvelDrama.Org.
In fact, it would have been a deal-breaker…
And I really didn’t want things to end with Roberto. Not yet.
Besides, it was none of my business.
“I’m sorry, that was too personal – ”
“It’s fine,” he said. “No… I can’t say that I’ve ever been in love.”
Uh-oh.
Another red flag.
Mid-twenties and never been in love?
It was a lot more common – and not as serious – as having your back gouged during sex, but it was concerning nonetheless.
“Never?” I asked.
Roberto floored me with his answer.
“No. But… I cared for Vittoria. And she cared for me. That was enough. She was the only woman I slept with the entire time we were together. And I’m fairly sure she was faithful to me.”
The tenderness with which he spoke about her…
His obvious respect and warmth for her…
It surprised me.
It also made me ashamed that I had doubted him.
And…
To be honest…
I felt a little jealous.
Which was utterly fucking ridiculous.
Roberto had even said our first night together, If you told me about the first guy who got to sleep with you, I think I might go mad with jealousy.
I had made fun of him for it –
And yet here I was, getting gnawed at by the green-eyed monster.
That twinge of jealousy also made me insanely curious.
“What happened?” I prodded. “Did you break up?”
“Unfortunately, no. She’d had a traumatic life before we met and was an addict. Opioid pills – oxycontin, mostly. I paid for her to go to rehab, and she stayed clean for a year, but she relapsed. She didn’t tell me when she started using again. Maybe she was ashamed. Maybe she didn’t want me to stop her… I don’t know.” He tried to smile, but his pain won out instead. “Sometimes people’s demons get the best of them.”
He told me how she had overdosed and died…
And even though it was years ago, and he said he hadn’t loved her, I could hear the grief in his voice.
As he spoke, I heard the deep humanity and empathy in his voice…
And something in my heart broke for him.
The wall I’d been building for years – the wall I used to keep out other people, to keep them from hurting me –
It suddenly toppled down.
In that moment, I felt utterly exposed and vulnerable…
And I wanted him more than anything.
We kissed…
And we made love.
Not just sex – not just fucking –
But making love.
The sex before that had been amazing…
But this was different.
Roberto touched a place deep in my soul I had never let anyone else near.
As he looked into my eyes, and I cried out for him to come inside me, I felt something I’d never experienced before:
The overwhelming desire to never let him go.
As I drifted off to sleep in his arms, part of me wondered if I’d made a terrible mistake letting someone in past my walls.
But the rest of me didn’t care.
I just wanted him…
And I didn’t care what the price was.
I found out too late that I should have cared about the price…
Because when it came time to pay, it nearly destroyed me.