Fifteen Layers of Steele

Chapter 18

After a rollercoaster of a night, and one steamy hot "sex therapy" session, Christian and I spent the rest of it laying together and talking more about ourselves. Being too burnt out to really move, we didn't even bother to put the rest of our clothes back on. I found that spending time together like this, so close and personal with nothing in between our bodies after such a deep and connecting experience was so wonderful and relaxing. It really brought us together. Every day I was learning something new about the joys of touch that I never knew existed. It amazed me how so many different types of feelings can be conveyed through it; anger, lust, love, care, sympathy, fear, joy, jealousy, and much more. As a person who has spent most of her life only experiencing the base level of it— the direct feeling of contact with a surface— it made me begin to wonder if there is another type of sense that humans have. One thing was for sure to me though, and that was that touch contained two types of levels. The first level was what I experienced in day to day life. The "feeling" of something, such as soft, fuzzy, slimy, cold, wet, scratchy, etc. The second level was what I was experiencing with Christian. The ability to feel and convey a person's inner feelings and intent through it. It had been so long that I forgot such a thing could be done.

I realized that it wasn't the base level of touch that I was afraid of. This is why I could carry on with my day to day life, only fearing the contact that came from humans. It wasn't touch itself that scared me— it was the feelings that humans conveyed through it that did. Having only ever had such a negative experience, in my mind these other wonderful kinds of touch didn't exist. That's why it was only something to be feared. I never knew what I was losing out on by being too afraid to put up with the dark side of it. These wonderful moments that made all the suffering worthwhile.

Over the following three weeks we would spend a day going to the dance studio, then the next practicing sex, and then dance again, and so on and so forth with the occasional date night out. Although things turned out okay in the end last time, Christian still felt worried that he had pushed me too far, and so he only kept our engagement at a normal level. He wanted to spend more time just getting me used to having sex with him and doing intimate things before moving on. We explored all kinds of positions, new areas of each other's body, and different ways of touching. Mostly we were just taking the time to enjoy the sex rather than overthinking it too much. Doing that really helped to deepen our bond, which he and I both believed could help me move on more easily to more intensive things. (It also helped this noob gain some more experience before going HAM.)

It did bother me, though, that he wouldn't try anything that he wanted. I knew that he had things that he was keeping from me, and I wanted to know what they were. He did say that there were more "rounds" of sex therapy after all, and that butt slapping bit gave me a small idea as to what he could have meant. Having fallen more in love with him, I also wanted for him to be happy, and if I was the only one feeling satisfied in the relationship then that made me unhappy. It would have been fine with me to try it out again, but he refused. I could really see how much he actually did care. He's been putting my feelings above his, making sure I could have a good and properly paced recovery. Both when having sex, and when not, he always treated me with love and compassion. Negative emotions I had towards men were swept away. The way he took care of me made me feel like a princess. For a while it was really nice and all, but now that I was mostly cured, I wanted to spice things up a little bit.

Somehow it came out that Christian was miraculously still a virgin. My mind was blown by this fact for so many reasons. The bra incident made me suspicious, but I later thought that maybe he just wasn't so great at removing them, as even I struggle with those damn things sometimes. He had just been so good in bed, even during our first time, that I thought it was impossible that he had never done anything before. It made me so self-conscious about my inexperience. The thought of him having been with another person—or multiple persons—really hurt, so I was relieved to find that I no longer had to be. Knowing that I was the only one he has ever touched made the experience and our relationship so much more special. Despite having the opportunity countless times, he had said that it was just because he had never found the one. Now that I knew that he believed that I, the dorky outcast, was that one person out of all the thousands of people he's encountered over the course of his life, I cried so hard. How could someone as pathetic as me be that important to him?