They say I could catch any girl I want to, my friends, as they laugh and drink. Perhaps it’s true but I never feel like it. We meet at one club or another to carouse and I look sullen. Mostly because that’s my look, I can’t help it. I am sullen. Pouty, brooding brat that I am.

Each bitter-sour beer erases this.

“Dance with her dance with her!” they shout and I do, awkwardly, hiding my wrists.

See, I am familiar with endings, too much so.

It’s beginnings that startle shut and refuse to follow. Momentum falters, fails to build; I deflate like a sad party balloon.

It’s the beginnings I dread in this confrontation.

This woman is too young, neophytic, not ready for a ‘space case’ like me. She needs a young idealist, a romantic with zeal for this life. Or someone older, or at least stable. I smile wanly and dance with her anyways, buy her a drink, and disappear into the crowd.

The kind of woman I’m looking for won’t be in this club but an old-school bar or even better a café. She’ll know poetry and murmur it like sweet heavy honey…

“En mi cielo al crepusculo eres como una nube y tu color y forma son como yo los quiero. Eres mia, eres mia, mujer de labios dulces y viven en tu vida mis infinitos suenos…” (Neruda, Love Poem XXI)

But meeting this woman has not happened and I do no know how to make it- or her- happen so I dance and drink until I no longer remember my happiness is a performance. I am a great performer. The actor that can get so lost in the role her forgets that these are illusions is the master.

And I strive for perfection in this like in and all endeavors.

I think I notice her first but then she seems to have been glancing my way as I do so. It’s one of those moments when we look at the other at the esact same moment and I jerk my eyes away, embarrassed at being caught, blushing as if I’ve swallowed a star. Two immediate opposite compulsions rip through me: to look again and run away.

I do neither, frozen, and act nonchalant. I sip my rum and coke. I feel- or think I feel- her eyes bore through my backside. I can tell, just from that glance, that she’s a strong Dom, the type that pulls submissives to them just by the way they stand. And it’s true, because I want to do is crawl up to her and roll over- belly-up- for her approval.

Then I watch the bartender’s face twist in alarm and I feel breath stir the tiny hairs on the back of my neck- hairs of what’s left of my hair, from my fauxhawk. I shiver. My crotch shivers. I am caught, utterly. But, if it is her- of which I can be sure- then she cannot know it. There are rules, complex and unspoken, in this night court. If I submit too soon, too readily, then it’s as bad as never playing at all.

There is a small cough and a long, lean-muscled arm reaches past me. I stare at the complex whir of tattoos in blatant admiration.

“Hey, babe, another water?” the bartender only calls the women he knows babe.

“And a Jamison for her.”

I cringe. A shot. Of whiskey.

“You sure not a rum and coke?”

“No, Jamison,” she drawls, sounding bored.

He pours out the shot. I scrounge up courage, to turn around or take the whiskey, I’m unsure. But, regardless. It’s rude to keep her waiting so I turn, shot in hand, and muster up a weak grin.

“Thanks,” I yell over the music, and down the shot. I temporarily suffocate under the astringent liquor, throat closing around it. My eyes water, I feel hallucinatory under the flashing lights. Her eyes are green.

I swallow and resurface. My grin returns, still shaky. She returns it, toothy like a shark for a moment.

“I’m Auggie.”

“Molly?”

“Auggie. Short for Augustanna.”

“Auggie.” I pause, tonguing it. “I’m Sylvia, but most people call me Silver.”

“Sylvia.”

“Yes.”

She nods, then with cock-sure deliberateness takes my leash.

I look up at her, letting my fear peak through.

“Sylvia?”

“Yes?”

“It’s okay.”

She runs her fingers over the heavy chain links, look at me. At me. I can’t meet her gaze and instead study her attire. She is about six feet tall wearing the engineer boots she struts in, covered in buckled straps and rivets. She has on black jeans that are impossibly tight, making her legs look skinny. Emo-boy jeans. Her belt has a double row of pyramid studs. Wallet-chain. She has on a fitted short-sleeve black dress-shirt, with pockets on the arms and breast, and epaulets. It’s unbuttoned half-way. She has a collar that reads “Rexxx,” the three exes a probable pun. Or a boast.

More than her forearms have tattoos. I see birds with wreaths on her collarbone. I could only imagine the rest of her…

“Sylvia?”

Back to her face.

“Let’s try dancing.”

She leads me to the dance floor. The whiskey has already burned its way into my veins and knocks me loose.

I am entirely unused to dancing with other people, which requires either instinct or skills very different from dancing alone. Solitary, I could almost be impressive; with someone else my brain forgets to direct my feet, thrown into an overdrive of other thoughts. Panics. She moves into me and I gasp.

Leaning close, she whispers “Don’t worry, I’ve seen how you dance. Just follow my lead.” This would sound both cheesy and creepy as hell except for her tone, which is friendly- in a dark, forceful way.

And then she tugs hard on my chain and I forget everything; my lower, reptilian brain takes control of basic processes and the rest is paralyzed in shock.

Shock, and pleasure.

In the strangest way I am reacting without pause or consideration; this comforts me even more, and I find myself letting go. Of control. Self-consciousness. Fear. It’s erotic like no one can believe, like sex itself. Arriving in a place where nothing else matters and intimacy, being expected, evaporates insecurities. At least temporarily.

At least, how sex should be, is supposed to be. What alcohol or anonymity can hint at. Shame disappears momentarily as one truly surrenders to the act, no longer focusing or hiding but allowing impulses and responding to them. Appreciating.

She pulls on the chain and I to her, the connection a feed of subtle commands. My whole posture changes; one moment I was coolly aloof, and now I am grasping the chains as if pleading for clemency, a groveling and frightened slave searching for some hint at mercy. Things I would have considered flashy and embarrassing become a necessity, a gift. We are acting out the song, Depeche Mode’s “In Your Room,” as it happens. I drop to my knees, crawl forward on aching muscles, clutch at her belt. I look up at her face, begging.

When I see her expression- not shock, but desire- I burn. My cheeks, my cunt. I am too deep in the role to feel mortified. As the song ends my cheek is pressed to her crotch and her hand rests on the back of my head in both approval and acceptance. Possessive and freeing.

Only as the music cuts towards the next song do I hear sudden applause and cat-calls. My blush deepens and my whole body jerks back infinitesimally. The new song- a VNV Nation- starts throbbing and Auggie laughs. She takes a step and helps me up.

“A performance like that deserves a drink,” she chuckles and drags me along to the bar. I drink whatever she ands me- a tequila sunrise- and she leads me out back to the patio.

When she lights a cigarette my eyes finally leave the ground.

“You look utterly abashed.”

I smile despite myself. “A bit.”

“You did wonderfully.”

“Good, because I’ve never done that before.”

“Coulda fooled me,” she drawls, then inhales. I notice, more by smell than anything, that it’s a clove. I suddenly long for one. Auggie sees this and proffers the filter to my lips. It is sweet. Distracted just by the taste I don’t realize that she’s put her mouth around the cherry and I cough as she shotguns me.

She laughs, “You are getting pretty drunk.”

I wipe my eyes and curse, giving the back of my hand a dour look as I see the eye-liner smudged there. I hand the clove back to her. “Not that… maybe a little.”

She shakes her head and takes another drag, exhaling it like a luxury. I’m staring again, at her mouth, at the blue smoke she lets drift lazily out. Too suave, too sexy. I take another sip of tequila and lick my lips.

Shit. I am drunk.

She holds the cigarette to my lips, and as I drag a ragged breath in I can feel her fingers, can detect a fine roughness on the tips. I want to lick at them, examine them with the exacting instrument of my mouth. Somehow I manage to keep my composure and I resist. It pains me to do so.

The smoke plumes out of my nose.

Auggie shakes her head slowly and gives a chagrinned smile. “What am I going to do with you?”

I wonder if I have a say.

She snubs out the butt and jerks her head towards the building. “Let’s give it another try.”

* * *

She squints at me for a moment and says “This is crazy.”

I am panting, pushed up against her apartment door. She is fiddling with keys and pinning me down. My hands run up under her shirt and wife-beater, which I’ve untucked. At the feel of her warm, soft skin I moan deep in my throat, mouth shut.

Is it the alcohol moaning, or months of abstinence?

I am dizzy so it doesn’t mean either. It could be both.

She lets me in and words flow unintelligibly out of me and back. I have no idea what I’m saying, only that it’s urgent. We part to painstakingly unbuckle and unlace boots, unbutton and unzip jackets. I don’t even know how my jacket got on me; she must have done it. Then we move to unbuckle, unzip, untuck, unfasten each other. Layers of clothes, once so artfully and flashily placed, become tedious unending obstacles. I feel as frustrated as a five-year old on Christmas and she is the really big box.

And then- it’s amazing- we’re both undressed and fumbling on her bed. The sheets are smooth and soft and nice and I can only think of her skin. She’s painted entirely with tattoos, swirling indistinct in the semi-gloom. The length of her surprises me: clothed, I couldn’t appreciate how thin and lank and bony she is. Yet not fragile. Muscular; in fact, her musculature stark. I stare, stop to watch the ripple of her movements.

Stopping.

She gets very still and her face clouds with hurt anger. I return her gaze, puzzled.

“Did I do something wrong?” I squeak.

“Stop staring at me,” she growls.

I can’t help looking directly at her. My head spins with alcohol. I feel nausea, partially from fear alone. “What do you mean?” my words slur. I take a defensive scootch backwards.

“Fuck. Cancer, okay? I had cancer. Two years back.”

I get more confused. “Cancer?”

She viciously grabs my hand and holds it against her breast.

It’s only now that I realize: she’s completely flat-chested. “Oh!”

“Yeah,” her voice is filled with venom, a poison of pain I intimately recognize.

My fingers escape hers and drop down to the patina of heavy scars. My eyes close and mouth opens.

“Oh…” it’s more pleasure than realization. She suddenly digs into my wrist and my eyes open in surprise. She’s still glaring at me but the eyes are assessing, guarded. Hopeful, even.

I grin and lift my hand away. I turn myself so that my back and left side are exposed to her. I take out hands and run them along the ragged lines there. It takes her a moment but then she touches them herself, tentative. Her hand is warm, slightly calloused. If I could purr I would.

“What…”

“My father was visiting me at night but then I fought back and he tried to kill me,” I babble. Perhaps it’s easier to admit to drunk, maybe I think cancer’s the worse deal. Maybe I’ve said it enough that the words have lost meaning to me.

Her eyes get all big, her hand freezes as if the scars and my admittance have turned it to stone. This fills me with panicky disappointment; in a shaky effort I lean forward and kiss her. Part of me fearfully waits for her to push me away.

Suddenly we are the same wounded animal, looking for the expected disgust, rejection.

But tonight, it doesn’t come.

* * *

I wake to roiling terrible nausea and pain. It wakes me so suddenly and completely I cannot ignore it and it is imperative I get up and tend to it. My legs tread through a tangle of sheets; my body thrashes.

Then my brain catches up long enough to realize. I don’t know where the bathroom is. Or where I am, well not quite. Or where she is… Auggie? Can that be true?

The hang-over sickness swamps me and suddenly all I care about is the bathroom. With my eyes cracked and my hands fumbling I get up and start searching. I stop dead in my tracks when it dawns on me that I am naked, and a pair of spring-luscious green eyes are watching me.

“Right over there, room next to the balcony.”

I scurry over and shut the door, too green to be red.

Throwing up is humiliating and relieving; I feel toxins rush out. Too many still circle my blood, my head throbbing with massive dehydration-pain. I heave and heave and finally rest my forehead and cheek along the sink, my arm flapping forward weakly to flush the noxious remains in the toilet. The porcelain is cool.

“Feel a bit better?”

I start with an agonizing convulsion. Her voice, though it sounds like a warm dry towel after a cold shower, echoes through my gravel-ridden head. I peek up and she’s holding a glass of water at me, and she is naked, too.

“It’s room temperature: nothing to startle your weak stomach.”

Before I can reach for it she places it on the floor and walks away. I take it and sip from it gratefully and slowly. I drain it, then get back up on shaky legs, refill it from the sink, repeat, repeat. I pee noisily and embarrassment doesn’t seem to end. I wash my hands and wipe them off on the only towel in sight. I stare at my face. How pale it is and the bruises under my eyes and… neck! I groan, but I still savor the pleasure they must mean, pressing my fingers in to feel residual pain.

The incidents of last night are foggy at best.

I take the glass and meekly exit the safe haven of the bathroom. She- Auggie- sits in the bed, a crisp white undershirt and boxers keeping her covered. I can’t move from behind the door.

Her smile is beneficent and she grabs a thin flannel top-sheet and approaches me. Blood pours over my entire face and body; I hope she will hand it to me. But she doesn’t. She wraps me and her gentleness surprises me as much as the intimacy of the gesture. She steers me back to the bed, hands on my shoulders.

“You’re… you’re being awfully nice,” I croak.

“Were you under the impression that I’m not nice?”

“No, no! Just. You don’t know me.”

“I know you enough,” she says in a serious voice that, if we were talking about something else like politics, would scare me. Her gaze is stern if worried.

The worrying is the more startling aspect.

She stands up and I notice how I already miss her hands on me. “I’ll make some brunch. Some good food will fix you up.”

A sound peeps out of my mouth, and I must look green again.

“No, just simple stuff, well, you’ll see,” she laughs, then leaves.

I slump back down down into the cocoon of body heat trapped where she was lying. Bad habits, the kind I get when I’m in love, burble up: I inhale her scent on the pillow, the bedsheets. I rub my cheek like a cat, burrow deeper. My hang-over fades away, as does consciousness.

“Hey… time for some oatmeal, time to wake up,” her voice wends through a dreamy swirl. My body reacts slowly before my mind even wakes up. It’s her hand on my spine, making those ubiquitous comforting wide circles. I inhale hugely, stretch aching everything.

Then she touches about my scar.

If my brain was awake, perhaps I wouldn’t recoil like a struck child, the way I do. My eyes snap open, shame floods. I tingle with it. Turning around, I’m fully expecting her shock, her confusion.

“I’m sorry. I should have checked with you,” she murmurs, looking for all the world guilt-ridden.

“Why… say it like that?”

“How much of last night have you forgotten?”

Silence.

In truth, not much. In truth, a lot. It depends on how one quantifies or qualifies the memories. They exist in haze.

Prominence, a flash of something behind my eyes. I sit up carefully and look at her directly for the first time this entire post-sex morning-after. She sits down next to me, eyes locked with mine, confusion deep there. I turn, face her squarely.

My palms slip under her undershirt and scrape upwards; I pull the shirt off, right there in the mid-morning sun. I watch her nostrils flare, jaw clench, eyes dilate in fear. Fear of vulnerability. Her lips part, then go into a tight furious line. Her face is a war of outrage. Mine remains still as a calm pond.

The very fact that she hasn’t stopped me tells me enough.

I break out stare-down and study her chest. She’s covered where once there were breasts with tattoos. There are two birds holding some green banner or bough between them; a sailor’s tattoo. The rest are heavy swirls of black tribal symbols; but they cannot and do not cover the thick surgical scars from where the mastectomy’s been performed. I wonder to myself if she’s kept of made them thick by choice; I imagine some cosmetic work would clean it up. I wonder why she hasn’t had reconstructive surgery. I wonder how sensitive the nipples are.

Over her heart is a very real-looking tattoo of another heart. My fingertips touch it, find the skin inviting underneath. I trace line after line, as if absently puzzling over characters of Japanese kanji calligraphy.

In truth, my reactions haven’t changed. They’ve intensified, gaining depth and force. The scars, so heavy and obvious, attract me as no breast has. I lean forward, my breath fanning hotly over a nipple. I go to mouth it…

“Enough!” she hisses and stands up. She’s the red one now. “God, it’s too much! Too much.” She picks up her shirt all too quickly, rushes to the kitchen.

My eyes track her departure, a whimper on my denied lips. I curl up under the blankets to hide how snubbed I feel. And… dirty. Something like shame wells up inside me. I feel wrong, as if I’m perverse. But I know I am! And so is she! I’m sure I espied o-rings bolted to the legs and headboard of her bed. I’m not crazy; last night at the club she exuded dominance, maneuvered me seamlessly into submission. I tear up, a ridiculously insecure thing to do when it comes to a one-night-stand. As far as I can tell.

The covers are pulled back and she kisses me.

Is she bipolar or something?

Her lips on top of mine, she whispers “Too much. Too good to be true. Too good….”

“Not with vomit-breath.”

Her laugh’s all in her throat. “You’re right, that’s the hitch.” She sits up. “But, thank goodness, we can fix that. Time for brunch.”

Her kitchen is neat with plenty of cupboards and counter-space, open and well-lit. There’s a small dark-wood table with steaming cups and bowls.

Oatmeal, tea, water, toast, orange juice. Heaven. She seats me, sheets and all, and pours me a cup of water, still smiling foolishly, as if chagrinned. Me, I’m lost again; this is improbable, it’s fantasy. This doesn’t happen.

And I say as much, through a mouth of oatmeal.

“I’m sure it’s morning-after glow. Relief that things aren’t awkward. I don’t know, I’m just happy. I don’t usually take someone home, and if I do and she freaks out, I just…”

“Yeah.”

I eat the toast and it is delicious, wheaty and buttery. I take tentative sips of the orange juice and though it’s pulpier than I like it’s also sweeter and tarter and more orange, it must be fresh-squeezed and not at all from concentrate. The oatmeal is solid and sits reassuringly in my gut. The tea is too hot but smells good.

“Do a lot of girls freak out?”

“Most all of them.”

“Oh.”

We glance at each other, me shy, and maybe her as well. Then I study my oatmeal; do I see flaxseed?

“Well,” I continue, voice meek though I try to sound cool, “today’s your lucky day.”

“Really? And why is that?” She sips her tea, but I see a quirk in her lips.

“I may in fact have a bit of a scar fetish.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, I just might.” Looking nonchalantly at my cuticles.

Instead of pleased, she looks sad. “Is that all you see?”

Pain and panic ripple through me and I am astounded at it; so soon, and already this depth of empathy? My words have become clumsy, the poorest choices. “That’s not quite what I mean. Uh…”

“That the scars don’t freak you out?”

“Yeah. Yes.”

“You don’t miss there being breasts there?”

“Not really, no.”

She winces at my bluntness.

I try again, grasping, “What I mean to say is… breasts are nice, they are, and I have my own. Fuck. Okay. I don’t need you to have them to find you attractive; there’s a lot of other things that I like. On you. Jesus, why do I sound so stupid? Okay, so far the women who’ve seen you naked, they had expectations, that you should have breasts because they find that comforting and feminine; but I don’t necessarily need or want you to have breasts because I just don’t… boobs aren’t my thing. I like your muscles and your tattoos and your eyes and your mouth and how you’ve been looking at me like you could just eat me or beat me or love me all at once and…”

So caught up in defending myself, eyes locked on my food, I didn’t see her come to my side and she kisses my neck, tongue lapping up to behind my ear. I inhale sharply and kind of moan.

“You’ve made yourself understood,” she purrs.

I shiver. “Whenever someone talks like that, all low and whispery, into my ear, it goes down my spine right to my crotch.”

“Oh… really?”

“Yep,” my voice cracks. “I like people who fuck with gender expression; I like the grey-areas. I like strength, masculinity, not that I’m saying you re very masculine, but god you’re hot…”

“Hmmmm…” she literally hums gutturally right next to my ear as her hand goes under the sheet and toys with a nipple.

I’m panting. Mouth gummy with oatmeal and orange juice, and I wonder if that makes it gross to kiss her. I manage to get the glass of water to my lips and drink it, swishing some, running my tongue over my teeth. Is this okay? Passable?

I turn my head slowly and her lips brush from ear to jaw to cheek to mouth, which is waiting for her hungrily. Her tongue has only to knock and I open the door.

All of this nothing like a one-night thing.

She kisses me hard, frustration and anger and lust and affection transmuted in how she’s pressing into me. And in that way that needs no leading we both stutter ourselves back into her bedroom, the sheet slipped off in the hallway and forgotten as my modesty.

Who the fuck cares?

My stomach still feather-light despite the oatmeal I feel nervous of humiliating myself by throwing up. Laid down on my back with care, she breaks the kiss and looks at me, really looks. It’s unnerving. She rests a palm delicately on my abdominals.

“Perhaps we should be careful not to upset it,” she says ruefully, eyes twitching from me to her bed. And just like that I chuckle, things that should be awkward are easy and I reach up. I take her shirt off. She bends over me and I feel the silk of her, bumps of rib, solidness of muscle.

What makes her so thin? Was it cancer, or has she taken to a monkish life, like I’ve tried? The fluidness of her moving over me… my hands can’t grasp enough. So my thighs hug her hips, my calves and the soles of my feet finding her legs, rubbing against them.

She gets sounds out of me even I haven’t heard. It’s as if my throat has opened up like my cunt, and speaks the same simple language of need and now and thank-you. She’s curled above me like Nuut the Egyptian goddess of the sky and it’s good she’s so tall. She gnaws at my neck, my shoulder, round-about to a breast that feels so heavy on me. I don’t think of it’s weight until it’s in her hand.

“You’re right; you do have your own. Plenty.” She gives the nipple a viscious bite that makes me yelp, and then sucks. My feet plant into the bed with an audible thump as I arch into her with pleasure. Our bellies touch, and it doesn’t embarrass me. It turns me on, the friction.

“I’d think you too tired,” she tells my chin as she moves back to my mouth. “But no.”

I remember I have hands, and as she bites my lip and pulls it into her mouth I rake my blunt nails across her back, trying, trying to get some kind of grip. I think I hear her groan, think I feel her push into my fingers.

Absolute frenzy, nausea forgotten.

Amid all the sucking and tearing and teeth, she gets me fully on the bed, head on pillow, blankets kicked to the floor. I snatch at the elastic band of her boxers and tug demandingly. “Off,” I croak.

“Ask nice,” she growls, and I am reminder of just who’s in control.

I give a frantic whimper. My knee comes up and digs into her crotch.

She pins my leg down with hers. “Beg.”

And I do, without thought. The pleas just bleed out of me as I writhe under her. When I go to pull them off, she just grabs my wrists and holds them down.

“Say it; say the words.”

“Please. Please take your boxers off.”

“Ask properly.”

“Please, sir!”

She grins at this. “Why do you want them off?”

I sputter. Then, blushing mortified, “I want to… to touch you. There.”

“Where?”

“Your cunt. Sir.”

Her jaw clenches. “Don’t move.” She stands up. I want nothing more than to prop myself up and watch her do it, but I obey. She settles on top of me again, and grinds her hips into mine. I feel scratchy pubic hair and go a little nuts. I want to flip her over. I try and can’t.

“Sssh,” she soothes suddenly, “Calm down.” The pace changes erratically; she knows she’s gained control over me. A whine builds in the back of my throat, barely leashed, as she studies me in the daylight. The whine is fear. “Sssh…” It’s sing-song, meant to comfort me even as her fingertips discover more and more of me; the softness of my stomach, the size of my breasts, the curl of my body hair. The whine sustains itself if quietly.

I screw my eyes tight, head to the side, mortified. I’m not frantic enough to pretend I’m not myself, that she can see me.

When I can’t sense her touch anymore I wonder if she’s come to a similar conclusion to my own. Instead, the mattress right besides my head sinks, and her thumb-pads brush over my eyelids.

“Are you okay?” That worried tone.

I faintly nod. How do I explain: this is why I’m celibate.

She sighs and squirms around so that she’s lying next to me, green eyes meeting my blue. Her hands take mine, long thing fingers weaving over and through mine, explore prominent knuckle-bumps before settling.

“You don’t like being looked at?” It sounds like a statement.

“Why would I? Even you’re self-conscious.”

She pauses before replying; “I do. I do, because I’m missing a fairly major piece of anatomy. But, since you’ve made it clear you don’t mind that, I’m less so. I guess you don’t feel the same way.”

“I think I can’t possibly see what you do.”

“Look in a mirror. But, you’re right, you can’t. Needless to say, I rather like what I do. Am seeing.”

Before I can question her, or turn away, she takes my hands and runs them down her abdomen, towards the obvious point. When she kicks a leg over my waist and our hands are there, I am dumbfounded. My nostrils flare. I look down, but there’s no point in that because I can’t see anything; then I look back at her earnest face. The expression seems strained, or focused. On what I’m not sure. She gives a kind of grimace, a smirk.

“You see? I can’t think of a way you could deny I’m attracted to you, find you attractive. I’m dripping the evidence all over you.”

My fingers slip inside her and she gasps.

“Actually… I’ve wanted your hands there all this time. I’ve just been afraid. To cum too soon, and humiliate myself.”

“Humiliate yourself?” I mutter, distracted. Trying to restrain myself, make a slow rhythm.

“Yes.”

“Cum now, It’s…” I can’t finish, can’t tell her how it’s such an ego-boost. Flattering. More than that. And that it’s okay.

And she does cum, all over my fingers, tightening with a short, jagged cry that sounds a bit like “Fuck!” but maybe it’s “God!” Her body- thighs, arms, teeth, head- all dig into me. I feel my blood pound to a hollow aching hole, sympathy quivers- making me moan.

I can see how I got these bruises.

Her breath scalding on my shoulder, onto sweat. My heart is a fast, dull throb in my chest, jugular, ears, cunt. I am a bundle of experiences firing through me and drowning out everything else. Her thigh scrapes against my waist; the sensation is unbelievably erotic. I arch into her with a gasp. I feel like some neophyte, like it hasn’t been mouths since the last time, it’s been another life. One I can’t remember, what with the fire of her breath erasing it.

I can’t be so naïve as to think my past is gone. Even now, wrapped up in her body, it sits like an iron weight on the back of my head. I can taste its blood-like tang.

She kisses me innocently, insistently, and I return to her.

“Crazy,” she’s husking, catching her breath.

“Mmm?” is my only attempt to ask.

“Just… intense.”

“Mmm.” I’ve become nonverbal. Focused on the weight of her, the friction.

Her fingernails drag along my spine and I arch into her again. That dark and conquering part of her swarms back; her neck bite is one of ownership, of claim. A strangled scream rips out of me before I can hide it. Even as she laps at the spot it stings and aches. I wonder if she’s broken the skin.

“And what about you?”

I’m not sure what she means, but she doesn’t wait for an answer. Her pelvis knocks forward, we roll, I’m on my back. Her vulnerability is gone. Belly exposed, mine becomes apparent and my body shakes to fight it. I struggle and she holds me; this struggling isn’t in itself a refusal. I want this.

And she can see it; she understands.

Bending over me, her tongue traces against the whorls of my ear. “What do you want?”

I am silent for a moment, for the question is enormous. Her teeth clamp down delicately.

“Tie me to the bed.”

She straightens and nods. It is done with quick precision and these nylon ropes are loving. Without feeling chafed I am secured to the bed and can’t move. My muscles aren’t taut, but there isn’t real wiggle-room. She knows.

She doesn’t ask what else I want; she’s figured it out and with reverent hands and mouth moves down my torso. My head propped on a pillow I can watch her; and before now, before her, I couldn’t. But I am now. Too aroused to feel self-conscious. My thoughts shriek “Faster! Faster!”

Her tongue just once against my clitoris is all it takes. The tiny whimpering moans become one keen; I try to double over, to arch, to bring my legs together and hands down to keep her there. The absolute hold of the ropes makes this impossible, and intensifies the orgasm.

She only waits patiently for me to settle; then she continues. Auggie knows her torture, and as her fingers trace over my labia, as she breathes, my nerves singe. She goes slowly and I thrash about because it’s almost too much. She seems so fascinated with my anatomy. I don’t remember the last time I’ve cum so much; last night?

Of course it won’t be like this again, it can’t, momentum dwindles and I’ll have to acclimate. But for this moment I’ll let myself be taken.

Even as it mortifies me, sounds leak out: my panting, the moaning an octave higher than my voice. That pre-orgasm pressure builds and builds and then she sticks her fingers in me and I scream. I never, never scream. And I do. It careens out of me bodily. I know I’ll have rope-burns. I am shaking.

She is laughing; she is groping my ass; she is biting on my inner thigh. I am cumming and cumming, hard into her face, and I am speechless.

We’re going to need a second breakfast.