It’s my mind, slowly but inevitably, thought by thought, denial by denial, until I can’t remember who I was before he started reshaping me into what he wants me to be.
Hook
She hasn’t made a sound in five minutes.
Not a whimper, not a curse, not even a breath loud enough to rise above the heavy silence that fills the space between us like something solid and suffocating.
That’s how I know she’s breaking, how I can tell the fractures are spreading.
Not shattered—no, that would be too simple, too neat, too final. I don’t want pieces I can sweep into a corner and dispose of like broken crockery. I want cracks that echo through her entire being, fissures that split her in places she didn’t even know were hollow until I shoved the air from her lungs and replaced it with mine, with my presence, with the weight of what I am.
And right now, in this precise moment, she is perfectly cracked in exactly the ways I need her to be.
Face pressed to the mattress, cheek against expensive cotton that’s damp with sweat and tears. Wrists still bound to my headboard with leather cuffs that cost more than most people’s monthly rent. Her back glistening with perspiration and faint pink lines where the belt kissed her skin. Her thighs parted—not willingly, not proudly, but because I put her there withdeliberate placement and she forgot how to resist somewhere between the third denial and the moment she finally begged.
God, she’s beautiful like this, spread out before me.
Not because she’s soft or yielding or any of the things women are supposed to be in these moments but because she’s still fighting even now.
Even now—shaking, humiliated, body so turned on it’s probably betraying her with every heartbeat that thunders visibly in her throat—there’s this tiny twitch in her jaw, this coil of refusal that refuses to die. Like a flame choking on the last drop of oxygen before it burns out entirely, still flickering with stubborn defiance.
I could snuff it out with barely any effort.
I should, probably, if I wanted to be efficient about this.
I don’t, because efficiency isn’t the point.
I just watch her breathe, studying the rise and fall of her ribcage because that’s what makes this fun, what transforms it from simple domination into art.
The waiting.
The knowing.
The awareness that one more inch of pressure, one more whispered command, one more deliberate press of my hand would unravel her in ways she wouldn’t come back from—and I haven’t decided yet if I want her broken beyond repair or barely held together by threads I control.
“You look pretty when you’re suffering,” I murmur, voice low and measured, laced with something darker than lust, something closer to obsession.
Her shoulders twitch involuntarily at the sound of my voice breaking the silence.
She doesn’t speak, doesn’t offer a retort or curse.
She’s learning the rules faster than I expected.
She’s afraid of what happens when she breaks them.
She should be because I haven’t even started with her yet, haven’t shown her the depths of what I’m capable of.
I drag a chair across the floor with deliberate slowness, the legs scraping against hardwood intentionally loud, dragging the sound out until it hits the edge of the bed with a soft thud. I sit—legs spread, arms resting on my thighs in a posture of casual dominance—and lean forward just enough to watch the tremble that starts in her spine and bleeds all the way down to her knees like electricity.
“You think I punished you for pressing that button,” I say, tone almost conversational, as if we’re discussing the weather. “But I didn’t. That was foreplay, a prelude to what’s coming.”
I reach for the belt I dropped earlier on the floor, coiling it slowly around my hand with methodical precision. Not because I’m going to use it again right now.
Not physically, at least.
Just as a reminder of what’s possible, what waits.
“You punished yourself the second you gave in to what you wanted,” I continue, watching her process the words. “That’s the part you don’t understand yet, the part that hasn’t clicked.”
