Kissing Through a Pane of Glass by Peter Michael Rosenberg

I went too far. Jo was just reaching her peak when I dug my nails into the insides of her thighs, and she cried out in pain, pulled herself away from me and started to cry.
     
    ‘What’s the matter with you?’ she cried. ‘What have I done?’
     
    Embarrassed, I feigned ignorance. ‘What do you mean?’
     
    ‘Oh Michael, don’t do this to me! Tell me what I’ve done! ’ She was sobbing pathetically, but still I held my ground.
     
    ‘Really, Jo, I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
     
    ‘You hurt me.’
     
    I blushed. ‘Oh honey, I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I didn’t mean it,’ I lied. I should have been struck down.
     
    I held out my hands to her. ‘Come here. Please, love, I m sorry. I must have got carried away. Here, let me kiss it better.’ Jo moved, reluctantly, towards me. I could see the blue-black bruises already forming, scored with red fingernail marks, the damning evidence of my cruelty. I felt sick.
     
    I stroked her hair, I cuddled her and tried to comfort her. I apologised again and again. I promised her I would be more careful, that I would never do it again.
     
    I kept my word. I never did hurt Jo again. We abandoned the position, and with it desire seemed to fade. Before long, all the pleasure and excitement had disappeared completely.
     
    Two weeks later, we said goodbye for the final time.
     

Chapter 12
     
    Liana turned away, buried her face in her hands and started to cry.
     
    Some people manage to live their entire lives secure in the knowledge that the world behaves in a certain prescribed fashion, that there are rules and regulations, that everything has a set pattern. These people may occasionally be surprised, but they are never shocked. Even when they see a news report that ten thousand people have been killed in an earthquake in some remote Latin American country, and they tut-tut and say, “Shocking”, even then they are not really shocked. They know about earthquakes, they know about Third World countries, they know that these things happen. They are not shocked; if anything, they are grateful, grateful that it didn’t happen here.
     
    But that too is the way their world works; earthquakes happen in remote Latin American countries, not in downtown Surbiton or Purley. The sun rises in the east, leaves fall off the trees in autumn, the price of cigarettes always goes up after the Budget - this is their world - they have no concept of shock, knowledge of what it is like to have their world give up any pretence of familiarity; for the earth to give way beneath their feet, metaphorically or literally; for the rules to stop applying; they’ve never suffered emotional earthquakes.
     
    Lucky bastards.
     
    Liana was crying; not just crying, but sobbing, and I was scared. Not just scared; I was terrified. I did not know what to do. Suddenly I felt like a small, pathetic child; I wished there were someone I could turn to for advice. But there was no one. I was all alone, six thousand miles from home, in bed with a complete stranger, and I was completely helpless.
     
    I had no idea what had brought on this outburst and even less idea of what I should do to console her. How she could have imagined that I might hit her was beyond me, but such was the fear in her eyes that I did not dare touch her lest she interpret this as a further threat.
     
    I lay there for several minutes, totally baffled, motionless, whilst the beautiful creature who had been my path to ecstasy sobbed like a hurt child.
     
    This wasn’t what I’d expected, this wasn’t how it was supposed to be, this wasn’t in the rules. My heart was beating too fast, my palms were wet, my brow cold and clammy, my mouth dry; reactions that were not so dissimilar to the rush of lust I had experienced earlier that day when I had first laid eyes on her, only now these feelings were not of delight but of fear. My overriding response was that of an unhappy little boy; I didn’t want this, I didn’t I