Coed Love Story Ch. 07

Nicole sat up on the bed with her pretty features contorted. "Come here, let me see." "I said it's fine, leave it!" he snapped at her. He still carried minor scars from a previous girlfriend that had tried to use a whip and failed miserably. It was unclear to him if it was his relationship with that woman that he didn't want to talk about or the sex acts they got up to.

" What is going on with you, Peter? It's me, you can tell me anything. Did you get into a fight or something?" She was trying to be sensitive, since his guard was clearly up. Strangely enough, she wanted to help him; she wanted him to need her, physically and emotionally, so she could be the bigger, better person among the two of them.

He gave a dry chuckle. "No, not a fight. It's a scar from a whip. It was an experiment and it failed."

"Failed how? Looks like it was a successful whipping to me. Why the fuck would you want that?" She couldn't grasp the situation; pity rose, like bile, up her throat.

"One thing led to another. We had been together a while, we understood each other. I thought I could trust her with this. Turns out I shouldn't have..." His voice trailed off. It felt ironic to talk about misplaced trust to the one person who had turned his life upside down, for better or for worse.

"Trust who with what? You're not making any sense right now. Can you just come out and tell me what you were thinking when you asked a rando to whip you?"

He took an audibly deep breath and approached her on the bed. His body was screaming at him to grab her and shake her until she figured it out. No, she would never figure it out on her own; her path to "empowerment" hadn't run through the deep dark woods of humiliation and pain, like his had.

"I can't give you an explanation that's going to make sense to you, OK? All I have is my own experience of how I went through life and it's a pretty fucked up experience I've had. I can't just put it in a neat little box, with a pretty bow on top, and make it digestible for you! Especially since you're the reason I turned out this way. So, thanks for fucking up my life and very sorry I didn't turn out the way you expected me to be.

"I have no clue what happened to you after we broke up. I have no fucking clue who this person is that almost made love to me for hours and is now turning into the biggest douchebag I've ever hooked up with! Clearly, I missed something. Why don't you tell me who you're supposed to be?"

His eyebrows rose at the "douchebag"; it wasn't exactly the insult he had been bracing for. In his head, Brad was a douchebag for stealing his first love from him, Oliver was a douchebag for rubbing Ivy's affection in his face, but Peter, a douchebag?

"I'm supposed to be broken," he said in a soft voice, realizing where he went wrong with his outburst. "I was supposed to live out the rest of my life being bullied and dying an almost virgin. However, fate had other plans for me... You remember the videos you apologized for? They aroused me and put me in a trance almost; I would cry, but continue to jerk off - couldn't stop myself, in private or in public. Nobody prepared me for the type of pervert that I was, that I am!"

"That.. hardly makes you a pervert, Peter." Her tone matched his now; she wanted to hear the story, the whole story.

"Well, as it turns out, I liked being called a pervert. Somebody walked in on me at the college library; she had me figured out at first glance, while I was running around clueless, and force fed me the meaning of life, which apparently is a lot more complicated than the number 42." His infatuation with Ivy, while never transforming into love, had run deep. To that day, it was still difficult to talk about how much she had meant to him, so he deflected.

She stayed on point, latching onto the part that was more interesting to her; "A girl? I never saw you with a girl on campus."

"You wouldn't have seen us together. Not until graduation day, when she gave me my diploma." His eyes met Nicole's and he was back to smiling again. He wanted to catch her reaction, if there was a reaction.

"Your diploma... Your dean? You fucked her? The petite Korean professor?" It was hard to tell if she was shocked or impressed.

"Ahh, fucking was mostly off the table. And I was mostly under the table." His boyish grin returned. "Professor Park was a strict Mistress, which got me into trouble more than once for trying to be a power bottom; but, we were happy for a good while, once she figured out how to train me to be her pet."

Nicole wasn't completely oblivious, but her and Brad's adventures had always skimmed around the contours of BDSM, without really committing to the lifestyle. It had always seemed a bit extreme to her. The image of Peter in front of her didn't fit into the leathery sex dungeon world in her mind.

"So that makes you submissive, right? You like being dominated?" He nodded quietly, expecting she would have more questions on the subject and calculating just how much he wanted to tell her.

"But I didn't dominate you, humiliate you or hurt you... You orgasmed just fine without any kinks." Her naivety further shone through. He had to stop the inbound smug grin before talking her through things. Of all the things they needed to be discussing, the realities of a BDSM relationship were low on the priority list.

"Let's think back on a few of our highlights from tonight. Did you do anything you didn't want to?" She shook her head no. "Did you think it was going too fast at any point? Did I even touch you without you asking me?" Again, she quickly shook her head no.

"Did you get what you wanted when you wanted it?" She thought on this a bit longer. Peter watched her bite her lower lip while replaying their night. Finally, she nodded.

"It's fair to say you were in complete co-" She cut him off with smile and shook her head no. "Can you stop being so serious? I'm sore all over and exhausted from all the orgasms you so generously gave me. I want to spoon and sleep. So, obey me, sub!" She even snapped her fingers with a regal air.

He sighed dramatically to disguise the real sigh within it. He was running out of time to get out of the corner he had backed himself into. Defeated, he joined her under the sheets and cuddled her close to him.

Anything else he could say would expose him for the liar he was. He had a feeling angry sex was not in Nicole's vocabulary and he didn't want to find out for sure.

At any rate, she fell asleep quicker than he could make up his mind to talk to her.

***

The morning sun was kind to Peter, giving him a head start to wake up and organize his thoughts before his ex woke up in his bed. He even had time to make coffee and brought two steaming mugs back to bed, just in time to watch Nicole stretch and sit up.

She looked more innocent first thing in the morning, more like the girl he had known and loved practically his whole life, well at least his prior life. As she emerged into wakefulness, the overt sex appeal reclaimed her face and Peter noted she no longer looked as attractive to him.

While he had no problem with female sexuality, he had come to understand that it existed innately. It was the blatant overdoing that suddenly turned him off, despite how hot he was for her the night before.

The passion had been real, but it had been fueled by pride and a bit of revenge. He could have spared her the pain he was about to inflict on her, had he not been so hungry to prove himself to her in the only way that mattered to her, in bed. And on the couch and in the shower...

"Oh, thank you! That is exactly what I needed right now." She took one of the mugs from him and slowly sipped the dark liquid. Caffeine quickly diffused through her veins. Her eyes sized him up in the natural light; he was still attractive, even in his pajama bottoms.

"I mean, there is something else I could use right about now." She was staring openly at his crotch. He smiled a weak smile before shaking his head no. Oblivious, she continued in a playful tone, "You can't say no to me. You have to do as I ask."

"I don't take orders... not from you." He finally blurted it out in between sips of coffee. "There's only one person I trust with that power."

Nicole's eyes grew. She knew the serpent's poison would sting, she thought she was prepared. She tried to shake it off. "No worries. I was just asking for a morning quickie and maybe some breakfast on the side - not a relationship. You can relax now, OK?"

She got out of the bed and started gathering her clothes. His shirt, which hung loosely on her, was discarded and replaced with the soiled underwear from last night, then covered up in the somewhat wrinkled business-wear she had worn to the event the day before.

When she turned around, Peter was also getting dressed, but he had the luxury of having clean clothes at hand. "Your Mistress, or whatever, can have this back, I guess." She undid the bun and tossed him the hairband she had found. He pocketed it.

The way she was talking, he was far from relaxed. Ivy had de-mystified a lot of the female psyche for him, but she had rarely lost control. It was easier for him to unravel the layers of armor, of sex appeal and confidence and empowerment, around Nicole and to see she still carried her heart on her sleeve despite becoming a slightly better liar than before.

As a teenager, he had genuinely loved her and felt his non-sexual affection would protect her as she grew out of her self-consciousness. Not only had she not grown out of it, she had selfishly trampled on his heart, mistaken sexual frenzy for empowerment and not cared who got hurt by her journey towards self-realization.

Across the room, she looked at him and saw the changes her first love had endured since college, which had made him into a pervert, a liar, a cheater and a coward. A good lover, no doubt, but with no control over his own life, always at someone else's mercy...

A very square peg and a very round hole - neither of them could accept the life the other had chosen for themselves.

***

There was a small mirror hanging by the front door. On her way out, Nicole stopped in front of it to look at herself. A long, long time ago, she had only seen ordinary hair, ordinary eyes and ordinary freckles in the mirrors. That morning, she knew she looked gorgeous, even if she was about to do the walk of shame out of her ex's apartment.

Although his poison still hurt where he had bit her, she was too proud to acknowledge that. Her last thought echoed loudly before she slammed the door behind her, "I don't know what I ever saw in Peter."