He did not smile. He just looked at me, dead level, and said, “From now on, your orgasms belong to me. You do not come without my permission.”
The words hit me. My whole body flushed. I felt my hands go clammy, my breath stutter.
I said, “Do I get punished for last night?”
He shook his head. “No. We hadn’t signed yet. But now we have.”
He pushed the paper toward me, and this time, I wrote the rule in my own hand:
Angela does not come without permission from Pietro.
He took the pencil, signed under it, folded the paper, and set it in the folder.
He stood.
He came around the table, so close I could smell the soap and the starch in his shirt. He looked down at me. I could feel his heat, but he didn’t touch me.
He bent and kissed my forehead, just once. It felt like a blessing.
He said, “Not yet. We do this right.”
I nodded.
He left, this time to the guest room, closing the door behind him.
I sat at the table, both hands on the folder, and stared at my name in black ink.
Angela.
I let myself sit in the feeling for a while, the calm after the signing, the certainty of the new architecture humming in my bones. I thought about what it would be like to see him in themorning. I thought about what it would be like to ask for things, and have someone say yes, or no, and mean it.
I thought about the future for the first time in two years, and for the first time, it felt real.
Chapter 9
Pietro
Iwokeuponthecouch with the weight of the room changed. For the first time in two years, my body felt like it belonged to me. I had slept five hours straight, an actual block, not a series of fitful wakeups and half-memories. My heart was still working, slow and even.
No nightmares.
Not even one.
Not even for a second.
No standing at the window counting how many headlights passed, or how many times I could clench and unclench my jaw before it cracked.
I rolled to my side and checked my hand. The bite she’d given me had closed up. The skin was pink, but clean. The teeth marks left a shallow ridge, like she’d written a message in Braille. I flexed it, made a fist, let it go. No pain.
Weirdly, it felt good that she’d left a mark. Matched the one she was fast leaving on my heart.
The apartment was still. The radiator kicked once, then settled. Outside, the city floated in its own blue haze, the river going glassy between two slabs of concrete. I got up, checked the perimeter, then ran the coffee through.
While the coffee filtered, I opened the fridge. Last night, I’d made sure it was stocked. I lined up the eggs, the spinach, the two kinds of bread (one for her, one for me), checked the expiration on the yogurt, then closed the door and wiped the handle even though it didn’t need it.
I waited. Not long.
She came in wearing the same grey sweats from yesterday, the ones that made her look smaller, her hair back in a rough knot, no makeup, no nothing. She stood in the entry for a second and scanned the room, the way she did whenever she entered a new space: cataloguing sightlines, searching for tells. When her eyes landed on me, she didn’t look away.
