That made my eyebrows go up again. "Excuse me? Tell that to me slowly, because it made no sense fast."

He looked up at me, and there was something in his eyes, some demand, something he wanted me to say, or do, but I didn't know what. "Do you mean that?"

"I mean, explain what she meant by it."

"She said, I'm always so rough, that it's like rape. That I don't know how to make love, that I only know how to fuck." His eyes looked raw, as if the pain in them had been skinned naked to shine out of his face. It hurt me to see it, but I didn't look away. I gave him my eyes and let him see what I thought of what Clair had said.

"Is she still your girlfriend?"

"I don't think so."

"Good, because I'd hate to say she's crazy if you were still going to date her."

"Why is she crazy?" he asked.

"What kind of head job has she done on you, Richard? Rape isn't a word that anyone should use lightly."

"She didn't use it lightly," Richard said, and the small smile was bitter. "She meant it."

"How?"

He looked at me, and the pain was still raw. "Did I ever hurt you when we were together?"

I started to ask, "emotionally, or physically?" then decided to just ask, "You mean physically?"

"I mean did I hurt you when we made love?" He shook his head. "I'm sorry to ask you this. I don't have a right to ask, but I didn't know who else to ask. I knew you wouldn't lie, because I was your Ulfric, or because you didn't want to hurt my feelings. I knew that if I asked, you would give me a real answer."

I looked at him and hoped I didn't look as amazed as I was feeling. After everything we'd done to each other, all the fights, the hurts, and he still trusted me. He trusted me not to lie, not to make it worse than it was, or better than it was, but to tell the truth. I wasn't sure if I was flattered or insulted. I decided to be flattered, because anything else would have pissed me off. But the amount of trust he was putting in me scared me, not for me personally, because he was right, I'd give him the truth. But a lot of people wouldn't. A lot of people would have used it as an excuse to twist the knife a little deeper. He was damned lucky I wasn't one of those people.

I opened my mouth, closed it, stroked my hands down the silk of the robe, and finally had to look away from those pain-filled eyes while I tried to think how to answer. Not truth or lie, but how to say it.

He stood up, suddenly, abruptly. "That's alright, I shouldn't have asked."

"Sit back down, Richard. I'm just trying to think how to say it, so it doesn't sound stupid."

He stood there, his face all set to be angry, as if he didn't believe me.

"Fine, stay standing, but you asked if you'd ever hurt me when we made love, right?"

He nodded.

"Yes, and no."

The scowl turned into a frown. "What does that mean, 'yes and no'?"

"It means that Mother Nature has made it almost impossible for you to be anything but rough, unless you're very careful."

He frowned harder. "I don't understand."

Of course he didn't, of course he would make this as embarrassing as possible. "Richard, you are aware that you're well-endowed, right?" I felt the blush start creeping up my neck, and there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it. I'd always blushed fairly easily, but I'd seldom hated it as much as I did in that moment.

"Raina said I was. It was one of the reasons she wanted me for the movies."

"You didn't know you were large before Raina?"

It was his turn to blush. "I was a virgin before Raina."

I shivered, and the look on his face was so raw, that I said out loud, "The thought of a virgin with Raina is just frightening. She was one very sick puppy."

He nodded. "I know that, now."

"Did you know it at the beginning with her?" I asked.

"I didn't have anything to compare it to," he said.

I had an idea. Raina had been his first lover, and Raina had been into sadomasochism on a scale that made a joke out of safe, sane, and consensual. She'd done porn, hell, snuff films. She'd been one of the scariest and most twisted people I'd ever met, and I'd met a lot. Richard had nothing to compare it to, what exactly did that mean?

I tried to lead up to it, obliquely, my version of subtle. I went back to my original point. "You're big, Richard, which means when you're making love, unless you're careful it can hurt."

"I did hurt you," he said, and he sounded desolate.

"I didn't say that."

"Yes, you did."

"Richard, listen to what I'm actually saying, don't editorialize in your own head, okay?" I stood, so I could pace. This was not a conversation for sitting still.

"I'll try," he said.

"Good enough." I came to stand in front of him and tried again. "A lot of women don't like their cervix bumped during sex."

He gave me that puzzled frown again. How did I end up giving my ex-fiancé sex education? How does anyone end up in these kinds of conversations? Just unlucky, I guess.

"If you go too deep, you reach the end of most women. You bump into the end of the vagina, you hit their cervix."

He nodded, then said, "I always come to the end."

I made a voilà gesture. "That's my point."

"What's your point?"

I put hands on hips because either he was being deliberately obtuse, or he really wasn't getting it. "You're big enough that you always bump someone's cervix if you're in a position that allows all of your... penis to go inside her. I can't be any plainer, Richard, so please make the connection here."

"You mean it hurts them," he said.

"Yes."

"It hurt you," he said.

"No. I like having my cervix bumped. I have a whole different kind of orgasm from it, so I don't mind."

He was frowning again, but more like he was thinking. "You're saying that if you didn't like it, that it would hurt."

"It would just hurt," I said, "because in some positions, with someone as well-endowed as you are, it is a sort of pain. But for me, and I'm betting for Raina, it was more pleasure than pain." I hated putting myself in any category that contained Raina, but I would have bet good money that I was right.

"I hurt you, but I didn't?"

I sighed. "Look, this is an area that I've only recently embraced myself. Sometimes my pain and pleasure centers get confused. What would hurt most people feels good to me, at least during sex." It was my confession, so I didn't have to meet his eyes, since it was my pain and not his.

"Me, too," he said.

I looked at him. "Well, that would explain a lot."

"What do you mean by that?"

"The sex was always great, Richard. Even when everything else was going to hell, the sex never stopped being great."

"You mean that?"

I nodded. "Yes."

He smiled, and it was almost a real smile, except for that flinching in his eyes. "So you think I was too rough for Clair, because of my size?"

"And your technique is vigorous."

He gave that frown again.

"Richard, haven't you ever been with anyone where you weren't as... vigorous?"

He gave me a look that said more clearly than any words that the answer was no.

"Okay, a friend of mine told me that men are ducklings, they tend to imprint on their first lovers. Which means they tend to make love the way they are first trained to make love. You were trained by a woman who was a sexual sadist and made porn movies, violent porn movies."

He looked shocked, then horrified. "You're saying Clair is right. I was too rough. I did hurt her."

I shook my head. "Did she ask you not to be so vigorous during the lovemaking?"

"She never asked about my... technique at all. She just blew up and said I was too rough. That I enjoyed making her beast come. That I enjoyed her clawing me up. That I enjoyed making her a monster. That I always made love like an animal no matter what shape I was in."