Chapter Fourteen

 

 

 

The next few moments tested Mary’s ability to contain herself. She’d had a feeling she would get a reaction from Peter as soon as she proposed her idea. She just hadn’t expected it to be so funny.

“I, uh… How did you…? What?” he exclaimed in bewilderment.

“You heard me. You know what I said. I’ll say it again really slowly, just in case you didn’t hear me right. Let’s…have…sex,” Mary said in a tone that left no room for ambiguity.

Peter had a look on his face that reminded her of a child who’d just seen an R-rated movie for the first time. Oddly enough, she remembered him making a similar face when they’d raided her brothers’ porno stash when they were kids. For a man who carried himself with such strength, it was pretty hilarious.

His reaction aside, Mary remained dead serious. After saying it out loud, she suppressed any lingering doubts. For something like this to work, she couldn’t have reservations.

“Um…I’m still going to need some context here,” Peter said, gathering his composure just enough to form coherent sentences.

“I know. I just needed to gauge your reaction first,” Mary said.

“I’d say you’ve got it. I’m pretty sure I’ve made an ass of myself already, so can you help me make sense of this?”

He sounded overwhelmed, having been caught completely off-guard. Mary held up her hands, encouraging him to settle down. He was probably making all sorts of assumptions, most of which weren’t nearly as crazy as what Mary had in mind.

“Bear with me here,” Mary said, still dead serious. “We’ve established a few hard facts. First and foremost, the way we kissed each other was different from all the other times we’ve kissed someone. With me so far?”

“I want to say yes, but doing so means I admit to having that urge,” Peter said, being careful with his words.

“Are you going to tell me you haven’t?” Mary asked with a raised eyebrow.

“I’ll…let my erratic body language answer that.”

“Fair enough,” she said. “Now look at that kiss again. You said it yourself. You took the exact opposite approach. Not just a different approach—the exact opposite. We even agreed that meant something. Still with me?”

“Yeah…for the most part.”

“And if it did mean something, then maybe we should take it even further. We’ve felt what happens when we flip the script on a kiss. Now, I want to see what happens when we do the same with sex.”

“Sex? As in the very thing we’re addicted to?” Peter said.

“Exactly!” affirmed Mary.

He remained baffled, and rightfully so. A kiss was one thing, but sex added a few complexities, to say the least. Lucky for him, Mary had already formulated a plan.

“It goes like this. You take the initiative in the sex. More importantly, though, you keep it. From foreplay to climax, you set the tone, the action and everything in between. In turn, I’ll accept it. I’ll trust you to do what needs to be done to ensure we’re both satisfied.”

“By initiative, you mean…” Peter said, still probing for details.

“I mean most of what you think I mean. You tell me what to do. You tell me how we’re going to do it. It may mean me sucking your dick. It may mean you nibbling my ear, pinching my nipples or slapping my ass. I don’t know. You’re in charge. I’m just going to be a good girl and listen.”

“So…you want me to dominate you?”

“No, it’s not like that,” Mary said, rolling her eyes. “I’m not talking full-blown BDSM here. This isn’t about you dominating a woman or me being dominated by a man. This is about us doing something we’ve done before in a completely opposite way—a way that, for some reason, we’ve avoided. Maybe a part of that reason has to do with why all the sex we’ve had before left us feeling so empty.”

It still sounded crazy, especially when she said it out loud, but Peter seemed to pick up on her line of thinking. He might be entertaining thoughts on how he would go about it, which definitely had appeal on some levels. Even so, Mary could tell he was hesitant.

She looked back briefly toward the window, the storm outside still raging. The spectacle had helped inspire the idea. As Mary watched the rain fall, she recalled the details of that inspiration.

“As sexual a woman as I am, I’ve been exceedingly uptight in my approach to sex,” Mary said. “I use only one tool in a very specific way to fulfill my desires. I’m always the one to set the tone—always having to control the situation. It’s like trying to fix a watch with a hammer. At some point, you need another tool to get the job done.”

“And I did the same thing, albeit with a different tool,” Peter said, following her logic. “I had to cede control to the woman to be the lover I thought she wanted me to be, but I was never the lover I wanted to be.”

“In other words, we’ve only ever run half the race—seen only one side of a coin. In the same way too many sunny days can cause a drought, we’ve ignored other parts of our desires. We created that void that we’ve tried to fill in all the wrong ways. We created the cycle that turned our desires into full-blown addictions.”

“So, to end that cycle, we should listen to those other desires. But what if that only leads to another cycle? One where we just crave a different kind of sex?”

“That’s a distinct possibility,” admitted Mary. “That would tell us that our addictions go way beyond sex. I’m talking about the kind of addiction where wires get crossed and medications are needed.”

That was a scary thought and one Sister Angela had warned every addict about at their first CHAOP meeting. Some forms of addiction were genuinely clinical, requiring both therapy and medicine. However, these were among the more severe cases. This didn’t feel to Mary like one of them. It felt like something that was more personal than medical.

“I’m not ready to accept I’m in that kind of trouble just yet. I don’t think you are, either,” Mary said.

“We’re still risking it, though,” Peter said.

“We’ve already taken plenty of risks over these past few weeks. This one is definitely the biggest to date, but it might give us the biggest reward.”

“How big?” he asked.

“One that will reveal whether this is just a relapse…or something far more meaningful,” Mary said.

Another round of thunder echoed from the raging storm outside, as if nature itself was telling them the importance of the moment. Mary had made her decision. Still standing in the center of the living room, she shifted her gaze back to Peter, who had yet to make his choice.

There was no more shock or confusion. He now seemed to be giving her idea serious thought. It had to appeal to him on some level, if only as an opportunity to have sex with another beautiful woman.

However, she still remembered how he’d pushed her away that night they’d reconnected. Mary didn’t doubt that Peter might do it again. He had just moved back to Hartman County, just begun his treatment for sex addiction. This could either derail that effort completely or spare him the year of misery Mary had endured.

She couldn’t tell which way he was leaning. Usually, whenever Mary offered a man sex, his reaction was pretty predictable. This was uncharted territory, which only proved that her idea had merit.

For once, a sexual situation was completely out of her hands. For all she knew, Peter might decide to kick her out and make her wait out the storm in the hallway. She braced herself for whatever came, hoping that he would make the right decision for the right reasons.

The air grew tense. Peter remained conflicted. He just kept staring at her, as if he were looking for signs. Finally, his demeanor shifted. A smile crept across his face as he made his choice.

“Okay,” Peter said with as much certainty as Mary had shown earlier.

“Okay?” Mary asked.

“Yes. Let’s do this. Let’s have sex. Let’s see what comes of it.”

“Great,” Mary said with a profound sense of relief.

The hard part was officially over. She and Peter were on the same page. Now, it was time to see just how much more difficult this would get.

“So…do you need a moment? Do you need to set the mood or get into character?” Mary asked.

“No. That would defeat the purpose. I’m ready when you’re ready,” Peter said.

There was no going back now. Mary was going to have sex with this man. She had no idea what it would do to her, to Peter or to their friendship. It would either be a major relapse for a couple of hardened sex addicts or the start of something truly profound.