Grace Unchained

4: Ruled By Body

"Marcus Cato Lowell," he intoned, his face comically serious. "My father was a classics major in college. He was a big Cato the Elder fan."

" 'If you are ruled by mind you are a king, if by body, a slave,' " quoted Grace, the words tumbling out before she had the chance to be self-conscious.

"Just so," said the newly identified Marcus. "That was one of his favorites, actually. Whereas mine was always 'Wise men learn more from fools than fools from the wise.'"

They were seated in leather chairs in his bedroom, drinking coffee. Marcus had produced a pair of luxurious robes from a closet, which she had wrapped herself in gratefully after emerging from the bathroom. She'd had to do quite a bit of clean up, afterward, a part of the process she hadn't expected. But then, she'd never had unprotected sex before. The realization, in hindsight, that she'd just had sex with a strange man without the benefit of a condom was still setting off alarms in her mind. The act went contrary to everything she'd ever been taught, and certainly everything she'd ever done.

She was hardly a virgin, but neither was she incredibly sexually experienced. Her first time had been in her sophomore year of high school, with a boy she'd thought she'd been in love with. It was fast and dry and the idea of it was a lot more fun than the act itself: the naughty, anxious thrill that she was being bad.

Her parents hadn't been prudes: they'd talked to her about sex like an adult, with the implicit expectation that she might try it, at some point, before she was married. Or at least, with the resigned knowledge that they probably couldn't stop her from trying it. But like many other parents of their generation and class, they expected her to do it in the way that was socially acceptable to them: in college, when she older, with the man she was going to marry.

Kevin Rockland was a nice boy, and he didn't have to talk her into it. It had been a mutual decision, two young people satisfying a mutual curiosity that seemed to be the obvious next step in their little romance.

Grace had enjoyed the fact that she was no longer a virgin, but the more she had thought about it, the more obvious it became that whatever girlish butterflies she'd felt in her stomach for Kevin were not real love. She wasn't sure what to expect after sleeping with him, but it hadn't been the stone cold realization that she never wanted to do it again. The butterflies had sputtered out, when they were supposed to have swarmed into something even greater. It wasn't a negative feeling, not truly—in fact, realizing it made her feel more grown up than she ever had before. It wasn't tragic, or depressing; it was just the way things were.

Kevin had taken it harder than she might have wished, but in the end they'd parted as friends. Because Kevin was a nice boy, and despite the roiling emotions she could see in his eyes, nice boys didn't argue when girls told them they were breaking up. Which was maybe why she'd chosen him in the first place, she saw now.

She must have made a face, because Marcus was looking at her wryly across the carpeted space between them. His eyebrows were arched and attractive over the rim of his cup. She didn't know why she noticed things like that.

"What is it?" he asked. "Tell me."

"Nothing," she said, taking a drink of her own coffee.

"Tell me," he said, more commanding this time. Grace sighed.

"They told me—they tell us—not to act too..." she trailed off, not wanting to finish the sentence.

He put his cup down and folded his hands in his lap. "They told you not to act too smart," he said. Grace nodded.

Would he think she was arrogant, now, for having assumed that what she'd just said was, indeed, something smart? Or would he only think she was a weakling for failing to own it, and regretting it as she obviously did?