‘I want you.’ She looked at me, her cheek resting against my thigh, as she always does when she is near me. It isn’t often that she doesn’t spend an evening curled against me, or in my lap, a thigh on either side of me, her face resting on my shoulder. I think she enjoys the comfort of it, of seeing my less driven side, and basking in the calm that happens between sex or sadistic moments.

This time, however, she was on the floor, her cheek rubbing against my leg as she looked up at me, waiting for my answer to the words that clung to the air like a gossamer web. I gave her a lazy smile, my fingers reaching out to stroke the fine, spun silk of her hair that never ceases to fascinate me with its weight and glossy texture. She closed her eyes and wrapped her fingers around my wrist, pulling my hand to her mouth, nuzzling her face into my palm and pressing a kiss to the center. I felt a shiver go up my arm and resound through my back in a cascade of sensation. She noticed the effect and had a pleased smile on her face.

‘I want you.’ She repeated, louder now, taking my thumb into her mouth and sliding the pad of it over her tongue, sucking gently on the tip. I arched a single brow and she closed her teeth around it, playfully biting my thumb.

‘Biting the hand that feeds you, pet?’ I asked, still unmoving, my palm controlled purely by her own desires. She nodded her head and closed her eyes, her cheeks sinking in as she sucked harder on my thumb, her head bobbing as she tried to illicit a response from me. I pulled my hand back, and felt her grip tighten. I did not force the issue, but sat there as she attended it, noisily drawing on it as if her body craved some invisible substance my skin was providing her - my thumb serving as the teat.

I moved again and pulled harder. Her eyes opened, but she still held my fingers. My stare should have been enough to speak volumes, but she still held my wrist tight. I frowned. I curled my other fingers under her chin and sank my thumb into the bed of her mouth, pinching tightly. A strangled sound came from her mouth as the pain registered. I held her lower jaw captive. Her breath came out in great bursts against my hand. She gave a soft sound and when I remained unmoving, I felt her close her mouth, her teeth grazing my thumb as if she were considering biting me again. I felt her fingers tighten on my wrist.

I shook my head in a slow, deliberate motion. Her mouth opened again. I stared at her and then slowly removed my thumb from her mouth, her fingers falling away in silent acquiescence. She sat there for a long moment, her cheek finally coming to rest back on my thigh again.

‘Please.’ She whispered softly.

‘Please what?’ I said, sparing her a glance, my attention diverted by other things.

‘Please fuck me.’ Her fingers slid up my leg and she shifted so that she was between them, her fingers splayed on either thigh. She leaned forward and placed her lips to the zipper of my trousers, and I felt the heat of her breath as she exhaled over fabric. My cock swelled slightly in response. I tilted my head and regarded her silently. She leaned forward and drew her tongue along the fly. I could see the dampness of the fabric in the wake of her tongue. Blood rushed to my cock, my attention totally upon her.

I gave a slight nod of my head and her fingers curled into my thighs and slid upwards as her face nuzzled my cock through the fabric. I shifted in my seat and was reaching for my belt, but her fingers were already there, undoing the leather in quick, efficient movements. She pulled on one end and the belt pulled lose of my waist and she dropped it on the floor beside her. The buttons, zipper were only seconds afterwards and her fingers only paused briefly so she could spare a glance up at me before she pulled my boxers down to reveal my cock, standing stiffly at attention.

(….and this is where I call it a night because I have a 4 am wake up call. To be finished later.)

It wasn’t, by any stretch of the imagination, the most exotic sex we have ever had - there were no bloody hand prints covering most of our bodies, no smears of it on the floors or walls around us. We barely even used the knife - you used it on yourself, to taunt me, prompt me into action. Sometimes all it takes is the catalyst to spur something into motion.

In fact, we weren’t especially loud, there were no audiences gasping in horror at the ravages done to your skin, no discarded pile of sex toys or sadistic implements, no thrill driven from being discovered in some dark alley. To the casual onlooker, it would have appeared as some sort of intimidation, me towering over you, pressing you against the wall, your palm bleeding, hands pressed against the wall. It might have appeared as some sort of rape, your neck marked by my fingertips, bruising quickly as you do there.

Except it wasn’t rape. It wasn’t even that game we play. It was simply as it is between us when we leave the complicated aside and embrace each other for what we are and are not.

What is it about you that stirs my beast so? Something so root, so feral, primal in instinct I am compelled by some greater force than logic to dominate you. Dominate you utterly. It isn’t casual, but I don’t desire to rule over every sentence you make, or have you as some footstool or maid in my home. I like your temper, I like you utterly unafraid of what I can do to you - until the trap closes.

Still, fucking you against the wall last night, your legs wrapped around my waist, my clothing only moved aside for necessary reasons, your panties ripped, dangling off of your leg like you were, indeed the victim, I was utterly satisfied. I think the bruises that occurred during were more accidental than the result of some desire to hurt - odd, you know how cautious I am about easing my grip.

Kissing you and your teeth - those teeth that still have my lip sore this morning, you bitch. I can only smirk, seeing as yours looks much worse, all red and sore, swollen. I’ve become so used to you looking that way around me, that lush bottom lip that seems to trigger my baser urges even as I am racing off to some meeting.

Even when we came, so close to one another and our shuttered breath slowly returned, we stood there. Your legs hanging drunken from my hips, still quivering. My hands cupping that fabulous ass you have, feeling the moisture that leaks from your cunt that was still, reflexively, hugging my cock. As I lifted my head and kissed you, my eyes looked towards the bed, standing pristine, a focal point of the room, I could only ask….’Why didn’t we go over there?’

And we both started laughing.

Skin. There is something about skin that intoxicates me. Tan or pale, each color has its own depth, its own appeal to the eyes, the right light to make it just - utterly perfect.

The softness of it is most important. The contrast that exists under my fingertips, the differences between my courseness, your softness. I imagine the playground I can make out of your belly, like swimming in an ocean of cream, thick and warm. Wanting to rub my face over it, inhale it, sink into it for hours, days….weeks. Swallow it, taste it across my tongue, drink it down in a haze of rapture compelled only by the desire to know more of it, to know it better.

Dig my fingers into your flesh, into the tissue, not to mark, but in a seduction, a dance that only ends when you cry for reasons other than pain. It is a kiss, my kiss, the one time where I make myself equally available to you, where I don’t stand in dominance over you, but with you, controlled, perhaps, by something greater than us both.

I crave. Let me swim.

It was 10 months or so, in reality. I had just broken up with N - a vicious breakup that left us both bleeding profusely from everywhere but the places you can see. It was an ugly time and my response to overwhelming emotional pain was to simply not acknowledge its existence. I cut everything out of my life that reminded me of her, Taylor, our situation. I transferred with my job, moved far away, and changed every contact method anyone had for me. It was an immobile wall of distance that protected her from me, me from her.

I deleted those things I could out of my tangible files. Her numbers were erased, her emails were erased, her pictures gone, eradicated with a sterility of emotion of which I was newly finding myself capable. I couldn’t forget her numbers, but when I was compelled to find her, I would work.

I worked like a demon. I was promoted twice during that time, unheard of for my age, my experience, to find myself where I was, but I was hungry. My teeth had sunk into my career and I was chewing it down with a voracity that nauseates me to this day. I’d work all day, through the night, and only realize the volume of time spent at the office when the staff would return to see me, still sitting there.

I operated in a sense of suspended reality where there was no quiet time to think about anything other than work. I developed the gray in my hair during this time, it still peppers my temples as a reminder of those times - my father only started to go gray into his 50s.

When work was slow, I worked out. I suppose this could be considered a healthy step for me, if it weren’t for the pain I was seeking out of it. I didn’t go for the physical rush of exercise, I went to hurt myself enough so that I couldn’t dwell on anything else.

I didn’t write. I didn’t feel anything other than pain, not the kind I needed to feel, but the physical pain from my back, or knees or some other place where I pulled muscles, tore ligaments. I sacrificed myself for my inner sadist.

I didn’t live. I was there, I interacted, I responded, but I felt nothing other than what physical pain I had allowed myself. I didn’t sleep, I didn’t want to sleep, there was too much silence to be found in my bed. I aged 10 years in that time, erased them off of my life as if they never were - or never will be. I’ll die earlier for what I did to myself then.

It was my own personal hell. I punished myself, harsher than I would ever punish another, for failing so horribly. I failed myself, I failed N, I failed numerous others. I knew what my responsibilities were and neglected them.

It is only by pure luck that substance abuse didn’t claim me, or perhaps just some deep seeded evil I sense in them. I never drank, never touched drugs during this time - it was as if I knew how fragile my grip was holding me here.

Oh I wanted to die. I’d already climbed where I wanted to be. I had the things I wanted from my life. I had climbed the mountain, seen the top and fell from grace so swiftly that I impaled myself on my own egocentricity and self-destruction. I wanted to die, but only in the most utterly painful and time consuming way.

They sent me to therapy after an episode where I blacked out during a fit of rage. Over a missing paragraph in a contract.

I went for two months, every single day - I was on a leave of absence pending the outcome. An evaluation to determine if I still had a hold on my sanity, I suppose.

The final day, I mark as the end of my 10 months.

I’m not the person I was before or during this time. I don’t think my sense of humor has recovered. I doubt I will ever regain the optimistic edge I once had.
There are losses that I know I haven’t recognized, and may never grasp fully.

What I’ve gained.
I have gained an appreciation for the truth - emotional truth included. I never smile because someone else is smiling. I’ve learned that I am not a Deity, despite my more humorous moments of god-like arrogance. I no longer seek to gain everything I don’t have. I’ve learned that the world doesn’t rest upon my shoulders - even my own world. I’ve gained respect for my faith, despite its flaws. I don’t dwell in the past or the future, but in the moment. I’ve leaned that sadism, while a part of me, doesn’t define me as a person anymore.

And I write, even when it hurts to write.

I never waste my time anymore.