Free Exposed by Jessica Love Page B

closer, so did I, and we finally came together, our bodies arching as one, Mark thrusting as deeply as he could, me to receive him.
    We lay there for at least several minutes. Finally Mark asked if I wanted a drink.
    “I’d love a bottle of water,” I told him. He got up and found his clothes and walked downstairs to the bar while I started getting dressed. I was sitting on a bar stool putting on my shoes when a man sat down beside me.
    “You are really beautiful. Why do you do this?” he asked. I suppose he thought he was trying to pay me a compliment.
    Because my brain circuits were under the influence of a massive bath of endorphins, I didn’t really react. I wasn’t interested in a debate with this guy. I remember seeing his face while Mark and I were playing our games, and I remember seeing the hunger there.
    “That’s an odd question. Why are you here? Why did you watch?” I asked.
    “It’s not the same thing,” he said. “I’m not trying to offend. I’m just trying to understand why a woman so beautiful would want this, or need this,” he said, gesturing around the dimly lit room, which was starting to become a bit dingy in my eyes.
    I realized then that there was more than a little bit of judgment in his question — and a whole lot of hypocrisy.
    “Because I like it?” I said, then realized the question mark I’d added to the end of the sentence was cowardly. “Because I like it,” I repeated, this time with emphasis on the word.
    “Well, if you like being a slut, I suppose you just do,” he said, standing up and walking away as he saw Mark get to the head of the stairs.
    “Who the fuck do you think you are?” I asked in a louder voice, but he moved quickly into the crowd and disappeared. I guess I was shocked, though I don’t know why. I know I was hurt, and I don’t really know why that was, either. Of course what we were doing would cause judgment. But to sit there and watch, get aroused, maybe satisfy himself, and then come up and slam me like that?
    Someone stopped Mark on the way to where I was sitting, nodded in my direction. Mark smiled and nodded, but I could tell he was edging away, trying to get back to me.
    “Several people thanked me for our sharing,” he said as he sat down, untwisting the top off the water bottle he’d pulled from the bin of ice downstairs.
    “Not everyone was that generous,” I said and took a swig of water.
    “What’s that?” he asked, his voice still a little languorous from his orgasm.
    “A guy came up after you left and called me a slut.”
    “Really?” Mark said. “Who?” He scanned the crowd around us.
    “He’s gone now. But he was getting off on us along with everyone else. I saw him.”
    “Really,” Mark said again, but now in that voice he uses when he’s starting to think deeply about things.
    I love the way Mark thinks, most of the time. When intrigued by an idea, his voice gets that tone, and he looks off, his eyes not seeing anything in this time or place. Instead, he’s looking at ideas that line walls in the castles of his mind, as if they’re paintings. Often when he comes back, I’m delighted with whatever it is he’s found.
    Not this time.
    “I suppose, from within his framework, he might be right.”
    “Mark!” I gasped, nearly choking on my water.
    The tone of my response brought him back from his interior world and into mine, with a crash.
    “Not in absolute terms, of course,” he said.
    “In whose terms?” I asked. “Yours?” I asked to put him on the defensive. I was pissed and took the opportunity to sting Mark as I’d been stung by the judgment of the stranger.
    “Of course not. I was just considering the word ‘slut,’ how he meant it, where he’s coming from. It was just an idea,” he said.
    “I’d like to go home now,” I said, standing up from the bar stool.
    “Jess,” Mark said, with a patient-but-impatient tone in his voice; an apology that wasn’t, really, implied but not spoken. He