I can't help the moan that escapes my mouth at the taste of her tongue against mine, and my hips pulse reflexively up to meet hers. But before I can reach the heat emanating from her core, she grasps my neck in her hand and pushes me away, pressing...
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"I want you, Valencia. I want all of you."
His words rang through my head on repeat like a broken record.
I didn't know how to respond.
I sat, staring at him, at a loss for words.
A faint whisper of my name brushed my ears, over, and over, and over again.
"Valencia?"
Finally, his voice registered through the fog. My eyes lifted up from the cheap white iron table and fluttered toward his. Those deep, mossy green eyes were locked onto mine. An expression that I had seen before yet still haven't been able to decipher.
I was once so positive that this expression was pity.
The same pity that I saw when I dared to look deeply into the mirror.
That was the secret I carried tightly to my chest.
Every time I looked in the mirror, I saw a different manifestation of myself.
In some cases, I saw a gorgeous Black woman. She was strong and confident. She brought the most powerful men to their knees before her. She showed them the various ways that pleasure could become pain. This manifestation was the one I hid behind. Her strength shrouded me in a cloak of protection that I had never found in anyone or anything else.
Yet despite her irrevocable strength, she would always force her way through. The little girl I managed to push into the recesses of my mind, until she pushed and pushed and pushed her way through.
She demanded attention.
I would resist. Constantly.
Until I couldn't resist any longer.
"Valencia?"
His voice brought me back to the present.
I looked into those gorgeous green eyes, and I remembered every single moment we had together.
But I remembered most how I felt when I first saw him.
The curiosity.
The need to know more.
It was the first time that every single part of me was at peace.
The child, the woman, and the trauma.
Every single manifestation of myself surrendered to the back of my mind when I was with him.
Was I ready to let that go?
I still hadn't answered. I just watched.
Slowly, trepidatiously, with trembling fingers, he reached a hand out to mine. I hadn't even noticed that I held my tea cup in a vice grip.
Those oddly large yet soft, smooth, silky fingers brushed against my own.
