Chapter 11: Enough

He stopped.

Not slowly, and not at the end of a stroke.

He stopped all at once, with his hand flat on the bed and his weight lifted off me.

"Enough," I said again, because my voice had barely been a breath.

"I heard you."

He eased out of me and rolled onto his side, and he gathered me against his chest.

He did not ask why.

He pulled the sheet over my shoulders and held me, and his heart beat hard under my ear.

His whole body was wound tight with the thing he hadn't finished, and he did not let it touch me.

I lay there with my eyes shut.

A minute went by, and then another.

My shaking slowed.

I had thought the word would feel like a defeat.

It felt like a hand on a rail.

"I'm all right," I said.

"I know."

"I didn't want you to stop because it hurt."

"I know that, too."

"Then why?"

"I'm not asking." His mouth moved against my hair. "I said I wouldn't."

I laughed, and it came out wet.

He had just proved the one thing I needed to know.

He had done it with his cock still hard against my thigh and without a single complaint.

I turned in his arms and looked up at him.

"I want to tell you why," I said.

"Then tell me."

"I was overwhelmed. And I was thinking about the dinner."

His eyes didn't change.

"I have been thinking about it all week," I said.

"You sat at the head of that table. Forty people laughed at me, and he finished the whole speech.

"You set your glass down and you didn't move."

"Elise."

"Teresa half stood up. You could have said my name."

I had held it in for ten days, and it came out calm and quiet and entirely clear.

He was silent for a long moment.

He didn't defend himself.

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