I can't and I can.

I slept like a baby. Perhaps exactly like a baby. Because I had the oddest dream, in which I had a clammy ass and it needed drying by someone wiping my ass over and over. I couldn’t understand why I would have had such a dream. Perhaps it was an association, of being under care by the women so well?

Ah well... sometimes dreams can be like that, inexplicable...

Anyway, I quickly pushed it aside. I might have been stressed yesterday, but my worries were far from over. Sophia asked to talk to me about Ambra.

“Her language lessons are progressing well. She is devouring the books we found in a local school. She is quite smart. But as soon as she was able to form small sentences, she was asking about you and eh...”

I frowned, because Sophia looked visibly embarrassed. I gave her some time to find her words again, before I asked her gently:

“About me and?”

“Her words, not mine... ‘How does he like to fuck? In my ass or in my cunt?’” Sophia whispered.

“Ow...” I was stunned.

“Alex, she thinks...”

“She thinks I saved her just to be able to... eh...?”

“I don’t know. Either she thinks you are her new... eh... owner, or she wants to please you in any way she can?”

I groaned. I sighed heavily. Trying to find an explanation on my own, to tell Sophia.

“Look, either of them are bad. But to be honest, I have heard of this behavior before, that people with a history of long time ****, will look for a way to match the experiences they had with entirely different people. They think the whole world turns around sex. That love and sex is the same. Worse, even, that to show their love is to show they are willing to do everything, however humiliating it could be. In the hands of unscrupulous men, the **** they were so used to, could simply recontinue. It is a form of cognitive dissonance they cannot live with. Or they cannot adapt to it. That a man could care, protect, but not ask for sex, even deny it. They simply cannot understand it.”

“So... Even when she was abused...?”

“Yes, as a form of protecting their mind, long time abused girls or women, boys or men, could experience any kind of long term ****, sexual or not, in the end, as a form of love. It is one of the only ways to adapt. To fuse the pain with love. After they are freed, the fusion remains in their mind.”

“So, how do we...?”

“I don’t know, except, we will have to repeat teaching her that sex is not love, and in this case that I don’t want to have sex with her, but that I still love her. Perhaps first, she will see me as an exception to her rule, then eventually see her past as an exception... Also another thing is that they have fused pain with sex... which means if they ask for and get sex, they will find it normal that it has to be painful and, or degrading, they could even long for it.”

“Shit... How on earth are we going to deal with that?”

“With a lot of patience... And a lot of care... And perhaps by limiting her movements, to not encounter men who don’t have the scruples to resist.” I finished.

“As her commander I can at least do the last thing. Forbid her to get out of the forest, be accompanied at all times by squad members... But keeping in mind they cannot ever... No, they won’t... But... eh...” Sophia was thinking out loud.

“But?” I asked.

“Alex, you have to see, that our section members love each other very much, and that you, and others, love and have sex at the same time...”

“I know. I just said that sex and love are not the same, but in most healthy relationships there is no escaping the fact that sex comes with love.”

“So...?”

“The difference is that you don’t have to fuck in order to get love. It is not a transaction.”

Sophia was very silent after that. For a long time. I started to think I knew she was thinking about. Slowly she started sobbing quietly. I took her in my arms, I felt compassion for her.

“Oh Alex, we...”

“I know... you made a mistake... But not everyone knows or is really fully aware of it. And you had the bad luck to fall in love with me... I have trouble with it sometimes... I am sometimes not aware of it... You couldn’t have known.”

And let’s face it, Alex, barely any people know. It is one of those fucked up notions in catholic religions that in order to maintain a ‘healthy marriage’ the woman has to give herself intimately to make sure her husband would care for her. It has simply been engrained in our western culture for a very, very long time, and in a lot of countries it still is. Perhaps in all countries, as it is the exact same notion in other major religions. Is it any wonder that women make the same mistake over and over again, until they are confronted with a man, like you, that doesn’t comply with that notion? That thinks that physical intimacy needs to be fully agreed upon, that it is no transaction at all, but simply a way to enjoy each other, with the express focus on each other?

“And I forgive you for it. It was an easy mistake to make. Only a few men don’t respond to the notion that in order for them to give love, they need assurances of sexual discourse of any kind in the past, present or in the future.”

Sophia kept sobbing, but in the end she couldn’t keep quiet about things she had on her mind for some time now:

“Oh Alex, I had fallen in love with you, but I keep falling in love with you. You said you still care for me and I know you still find me attractive, I realize now that it is not enough to love me back, but is there a chance you could...?”

It was perhaps not the best time to kiss her, as she was crying and at the same time professing her love for me. But I did kiss her lips softly. She was surprised but she responded my kiss, tenderly, with her eyes still brimming with tears. I kissed her cheeks, trying to dry her tears, but ended up making her cry even more.

Everyone around us had fallen silent. Then we heard various people saying different things:

“About time...”

“Finally...”

“Ow...”

“How cute...”

Almost embarrassed we broke the kiss.

“Aheum, right, eh... Sophia...?”

“Eh... back to work?”

“Eh... perhaps it is the best for now...”

We split up and in a fake frown I said to the people around:

“Come on... back to work!”

I couldn’t stop myself from grinning while I said that, but nevertheless, the others dispersed quickly trying to find something to do, as I did the same.