"I guess you could say I had kind of a fucked-up childhood," Guy said, entirely unprompted. Tess lazily turned her head to look at him, a drowsy smile slowly spreading across her face at sound of his warm, husky voice. She wanted to roll over and cuddle up to the older man, but she was so exhausted that her whole body felt like it was made of lead. She settled for resting her pale fingers against his flushed skin and listened to him talk with a gleam of adoration in her bright blue eyes.
He didn't continue immediately, though. Whatever impulse had prompted Guy to introspection, it seemed to be warring with an equal reticence to open up to Tess. That wasn't entirely surprising--they'd only known each other for a few short hours, after all--but she was astonished at how deep and intimate their connection already felt. She didn't want him to worry about holding back, not after everything they'd already shared. Tess gave his wrist a gentle, encouraging squeeze, and was rewarded with a rueful smile from Guy in return. "Sorry," he murmured. "Just going over some bad memories."
He rolled over, resting on his side and putting his hand on his head to look at her. "I mean, Mom and Dad pretty much split the day I was born, right? Only they didn't, because I was in the picture and Dad knew he couldn't just abandon me. Not after all he and Mom did to have me. Mom really wanted a kid, but she didn't want this particular kid, if you know what I mean. She resented him so much, but they stayed together for ages. Physically, at least."
He reached out and traced little patterns onto Tess's belly, inscribing random swirls and squiggles against her bare skin with his fingernails. "But just because Dad wasn't going anywhere doesn't mean he really raised me, you know? I was born in '66, and guys didn't change a lot of diapers back then." Tess was a little surprised to hear that Guy was in his fifties; apart from a touch of gray in his dark beard stubble and a few laugh lines at the corner of his eyes, he looked like he could be a man in his early forties. Even knocking ten years off his actual age left a pretty big difference between them, but Tess didn't care. She was discovering she liked older men.
"He left most of the child-rearing to Mom--lots of business trips out to the West Coast, plenty of location filming abroad... I think I saw my dad more on television than I did at home." Tess reached out sleepily and put her hand against his chest in sympathy. She hadn't realized that Guy's father was someone famous, but she'd read all about what it was like to be the child of a celebrity. No wonder he was messed up. (No wonder he was so handsome and charismatic, a little voice whispered inside her head. Tess felt a little tingle between her legs.)
"But Mom, well... she had her own hang-ups, you know? Every time she saw me, it reminded her of all the messed-up shit Dad did to her, and all she wanted to do was lash out or split. She never hit me or anything--not that I can remember, at least. I was a baby for some of it. But she was always leaving me with the neighbors for hours at a time, sometimes even days. And man, did we have some fucked up neighbors." He chuckled mirthlessly. "And I mean Fucked. Up."
Tess nodded sympathetically, even though she couldn't quite get her mind off the way that his fingers continued to trace over her sensitive skin. A languorous sigh escaped her lips, but she kept her eyes firmly fixed on his smoldering gaze as he continued. "They were all really old, just these ancient childless fuckers who acted like I was the son they never had. Sometimes they even called me by a different name. I guess they thought I should have been an 'Adrian'." He grimaced, clearly disliking the taste of the word in his mouth.
"They never said anything about it--not openly, you know? But I could tell they didn't want Mom raising me. They were all lousy at taking care of kids; hell, for all I know, that's the only reason Mom stayed in the picture. I wouldn't put it past them to kidnap someone." Guy shuddered, goosebumps raising all over his arms at the thought. "It was just a creepy fucking vibe. They were always really possessive, and I remember being convinced every time I stayed with them that they weren't going to let me leave. They were just going to hide me the next time Mom came back to pick me up and tell her she never had a kid, and she was just going to believe them because she never really wanted me anyway." Tess gently caressed his chest, nodding solemnly at his words. She tried not to think about how lovely his voice made even the saddest story sound.
"And... I dunno, they didn't have a television, and they didn't have any toys, and they didn't have any kids' books--they just had these big freaky old books with all these weird woodcuts in them of people screwing each other. Multiple positions, a dozen or so partners, goats and serpents... you know, that whole weird medieval orgy bullshit. I probably wasn't even supposed to be reading them, but there was nothing else to do and they didn't stop me." He gave Tess a rueful smile. "Probably how I got such a fucked-up attitude to sex, right?" She wanted to tell him she liked his fucked-up attitude to sex, but something told her this wasn't the time.
"I think that was the closest my Mom ever got to really showing me that she loved me. One time--I couldn't have been older than three--she dragged me over to the neighbors so she could get away from the sight of me for a little bit, and I told her I didn't want to go. And she asked me why, which was a big deal when you were a kid, y'know? People never kids why they want something, or don't want something, they just tell you to shut up and do it anyway." Tess felt the tingle between her legs getting a little stronger; she knew it wasn't the sort of thing a grown woman was supposed to think, but something turned her on more than a little about Guy telling her what to do. She squirmed slightly on the mattress, unable to stop her hips from wiggling just a tiny bit.