I pushed my way inside her with my tongue first. I’d get more later, but for now I just needed inside her body in any way I could manage to get there. I needed her acceptance of me more, though. She was still spitting mad but I felt her response the instant we connected. She was still my girl, and we both knew it as I held her jaw and took her mouth hard. Lips, tongue and teeth working together to send a very specific message. You’re mine, and I know you want to be mine.

I was just getting started on taking her. This session would conclude in one way, and only one way—with my c**k buried inside her sweet cunt in an orgasmic frenzy.

There were no apologies for what I did next, either. I took her. I took what was mine and had my way with Brynne.

She stuck with me the whole distance in body for sure. The spirit part would have to be considered later. Shag first, talk later had worked for us before, and I felt confident it would now.

I hauled her up and carried her to our bed. She looked up at me with blazing eyes as I laid her out, stripping open that silky robe and freeing her hair from the clip. Her chest heaved and her ni**les budded up tight as I shucked off of my clothes and got naked, my c**k so hard it might shatter when the spunk erupted the first time.

I was about to find out, and more than willing to take the risk, because there would be a second time and possibly a third. We would be at this for a while.

I covered Brynne’s gorgeous naked form, which only I should ever see, and f**ked her. I f**ked her hard. She f**ked me hard right back. We f**ked until we both came. And then we f**ked some more, until we didn’t need to anymore. Until there was nothing left but to fall into tangled sleep after all the orgasms, both of us spent physically from the pleasure that had burned us with its heat, and drugged us with its smoke . . . into utter oblivion.

 The nightmare woke me up. It was an old one where I see the video of myself and wish I was dead. It is still such a dreadful image that’s seared into my brain, and has stayed with me intact throughout the years. I don’t think it was even possible to remove it; I was doomed to carry that image with me throughout my life. I wondered, not for the first time, if the three of them ever thought about that video after the fact. I hadn’t known the other two at all, but did Lance ever have a morsel of regret for what happened to me? For how sad my life was after they did their deed? Did he ever even think about it? Ugly. So filthy and ugly.

I tried to have a quiet breakdown in the middle of the night, but Ethan hears everything. We’d had some explosive sex and released some anger and frustration through our bodies, but the main crux of the problem was still flapping in the breeze like a signal flag. Nothing much had been resolved.

Ethan stirred beside me and drew me close. I felt his strong arms wrap around me and his lips kiss the top of my head. He stroked over my hair and held me as I wept.

“I love you so much. It kills me to see you sad. I’d rather have you mad at me than hurting like this, baby.”

“It’s okay. I know you love me,” I whispered in between sobs and wiping my eyes.

“I do,” he said with a sweet kiss. “And I’m sorry for how I acted with that photographer today,” he paused, “but I still loathe the process and I don’t want you doing it anymore.”

“I know . . .”

“So you’ll stop posing?” There was hope in his voice. Too bad I was going to crush it.

“I don’t think I can, Ethan. I can’t stop—not even for you.”

He waited after those words left my lips. The words were painful to say to him but he had to hear it from me. The truth is sometimes hard to bear, and I imagined this would be so for Ethan, but I wanted him to get the uncensored version. I owed him that much.

“Why not, Brynne? Why can’t you stop modeling? Why won’t you do it for me?”

Those bastard tears showed up again. “Because . . .” I blubbered, “because the pictures I take n-now are so—s-so b-beautiful. They are . . . just something beautiful of me!”

Ethan held on to me while I cried. He seemed to get that this was breakthrough territory for me. I wish Dr. Roswell was around to witness it.

“They are. You’re right, Brynne. Your pictures are stunningly beautiful.” He kissed me softly, his tongue moving slowly against mine. “But you’ve always been beautiful,” he murmured against my lips.

Ahhh, but he was wrong. Ethan had never seen it so he did not know what I absolutely knew to be the truth. “No. You don’t understand me.” I wiped at my tears. “It’s okay, but you don’t understand why I need to have those beautiful pictures of myself.” I sighed heavily against his chest, my fingers starting to twirl around a pectoral muscle.

“Explain it to me so I can understand, then.”

I don’t know how I got the words out, but I managed it somehow. Through the tears, which grew stronger, and because of his quiet strength and patience as he held me and stroked my hair, I finally told another person my horrific truth. “Because the video of me was so very . . . ugly. The images were ugly. I was ugly in it! And if I have something beautiful to replace the ugliness with, I can let go of my experience a little more each time I create something new.”

Ethan rolled me underneath him and propped himself above me, holding my face up to his. “There is nothing about you that is ugly,” he told me.

“Yes. On that video I was.”

He got quiet, his eyes flickering back and forth as he studied me. “Is that why, baby? Is that the reason you tried to . . . kill yours—”

“Yes!” I sobbed into Ethan’s strong chest and let him hold on to me. He knew my truth now. My hang-up. My dysfunctional quirk. The motivation that drove me on a daily basis and that I assumed would stay with me forever. I prayed he could accept me in spite of it.

He held me for a long time without speaking. He was pondering what I’d shared. I’d learned it was his method; that Ethan was incredibly honest and blunt with his opinions and needs, and a deep thinker.

“It’s not the photography process that I hate. I get that you are all professionals doing a job. The photographer is just using you as the object of his art. A breathtaking image that is you.” He stroked his palm down over my hip. “I know that guy today wasn’t after you. He was seeing your body as art.”

“Simon is also incredibly g*y as opposed to just regular g*y, in case you didn’t notice.”