Each time her thighs begin to shake—there,there, the taste of some release,almost there—Aleksandr draws his fingers away, touch lightening to something so faint it feels painful. So careful to not let his ring brush against her, excruciatingly mindful to not let enough friction build. A booming thud of blood rushes to her head, a slow-fast spiral of pleasure rising and receding along her spine.
Every time the car stops at a red light, the muffled noise of standstill downtown traffic, nighttime crowds, Lili wants to scream.
Clumsy, she finally tries to reach for him, palming at the outline of him in his trousers.
She hears the shape of his laugh, cold. It makes her crave difficult things: dark, brutal—release, roughness; bleach that could wipe away the buzz of half-complete thoughts:Why isn’t he touching her more?
“What’s wrong, Lili?” His voice is so low it draws a further ache in her abdomen. “Is there something you want?”
A dangerous tightness has slipped under the shape of his vowels and slope of his consonants, she registers distantly. Confused and overwhelmed, she buries her face in the crook of his neck, trying to breathe.
A grip instantly tightens in her hair.
“No,” Aleksandr reprimands, pulling her head back. “You’re going to have to use your words.”
She attempts to say something, she does, but words are hard—words are disappearing—words,words—
Just a bit harder, his hand moves just a little faster, the flex of his fingers barely conjuring friction with how wet she is. The hitch of her soft moan breaks into a sob. Kept on edge for too long, pleasure starts slipping away from her. She tries to catch it with the curl of her toes, tears rising, the seize of her fingers in his shirt.
“Words, Lili,” he growls. She’s never noticed, not really, how he says her name—intimate, like he’s undressing her—but now laced with this tight heat of near-anger, this harsh texture of almost-bitterness, like she’s done something wrong.
Before she can gather her voice—before she can gather the strength retreating to the edges of her and assert that hewillgive this to her, she hasn’t done anything wrong—the car slows to a stop. A frustrated sound escapes her throat.
A suit jacket is thrown over her shoulders. Rain gleams on wet pavement, a hand in hers, the balance of her heels on cobblestones. Pressed into his side, she can’t see much beyond the blur of what she’s trying to hold onto in her body.
The elevator dings open, the familiar loft, comfort of that wide-open room. Led down the hall, into his bedroom, with the relief that finally, they’re here, finally home.
Her body seems to follow a few seconds before her mind, or a few seconds after: distilling, drifting—disoriented with frustration—disconnecting, then jolting back, sudden and sharp, in time to the hot, hard press of his mouth against her skin, leaving open-mouthed kisses on top of her breasts—
Silk slips off her shoulders, and her dress pools at her feet. She’s reaching for him, but he won’t kiss her lips. Alcohol, the looseness of her thoughts, the skip of shame and neediness cloud into something noxious—why doesn’t he seem to want her like she wants him?
“Sasha,” Lili whispers, grasping at his name. She’s enough, isn’t she? She can ask this, can’t she? “Sasha, please... kiss me—I need you to—”
His mouth crashes onto hers, but there’s nothing kind to it. Nothing like earlier at the party, his fevered response to his Russian diminutive on her tongue. It’s a filthy kiss, intended to shut her up; like he’s cutting anger on her, like he wants to hurt her, and the threat of that intention—oh, it unfurls something damaged inside of her. Something that aches to be harmed, again and again. Bruises that want to be pressed, scars that want to be bitten. Shewantshim to hurt her.
Not letting him pull away, Lili tugs at his shirt, scrambling and clumsy. Aleksandr takes over fast, pulling his shirt over his head, not bothering with the buttons, as she gets his belt undone, tripping backwards towards the bed, dragging him with her. Before she can grasp anything like control, Aleksandr pushes her against the sheets, wrenching her wrists away from him.
He pins her down, forcing her legs apart, and she tries to kiss him, her back arching with how much closer she’s trying to get to him, but he shoves her back against the mattress; it’s like he doesn’t want her to touch him. He grasps her knee, hitching it high on his waist—blur of heat, breath, darkness, she’s disoriented; naked, dress discarded, underwear gone at the restaurant—the strain of him pushing her other leg open, the hardness of him against her, and Lili opens her mouth to say something—what’s wrong?—but he thrusts into her, almost all at once.
She lets out a high, ragged gasp—surprise, force—head falling back against the pillow. The grunt ripped from his throat, as he pulls out of her, and tries to thrust into her again—the shatter of hunger, the cascade of pain, clench of her body—it makes her feel animal, used. She tries to grasp for him; she wants to feel obliterated. But bracing his arms over her, tightening his hold on her wrists—trapping her—Aleksandr lowers his mouth to her ear.
“Let me in, Lili,” he says, and there’s cruelty in his voice. “Don’t you trust me?”
No—not that—no, she can’t—she can’t answer that. Ideas like trust, like falling.Please, she thinks,please just push me.
Instead of answering him, or listening to the struggle of her body telling her to slow down, she tries to adjust her hips—tries to let him in further, because whatever he wants to do to her, she’ll find a way to take it. But rather than working with the weak movements, these attempts she’smaking—her helpless, frustrated sounds as she tries to take him—he shoves into her again. It bleeds over her vision, the force wrenching her shoulders.
In the rough overwhelm, it creeps into the corners of her mind—the sense that something is off. That look in the rain, that tightening restraint in the car; this isn’t like that first night, or the morning after her birthday. There’s something else here.
“Does it hurt, sweetheart?” A dark, tight murmur against her ear. His voice—it threatens to uncover meaning. Eloquence in pain, and she doesn’t want that; what she shied away from in the shower weeks ago, what she uses sex to escape, not embrace. She wants an agony that wipes her clean, swallows her whole; that doesn’t push her to examine the texture of that hurt inside of her, uncover its twisting roots.
Lili starts to struggle for it, straining against his hold on her wrists.
But another harsh thrust makes her cry out. Then he’s inside of her, all of him. Slick with sweat, her body can’t figure out how to understand this mess of pleasure and panic, as he fucks her past the remaining resistance, into the give of her body—feeling that glimmer of pleasure build again, grasped in the car—teetering between hurt and hunger, she keeps trying to lean into the roughness, the anonymous agony—but it keeps growing, this depth reached that could make her cry, this complicated release—this darker pain she does not want.
“I thought you liked it when I hurt you, Lili.” There’s a wretched intimacy to his words. It tears a moan from her throat, becauseyes, she does,she does, except—hurt her,yes, give her suffering at his hands, but don’t make her feel her own pain. That’s the deal, that’s their exchange: pull her out of herself, don’t push her deeper into the threats carried within her own skin, the shadows behind her anxieties and aspirations, the fear that laces her thoughts, the lack that aches inside of her, a scream she’s never let out.
“Aleksa—” A hoarse sound cracks in her chest. She’s close to begging him to fuck her harder, begging him to leave her alone. Part of her only wants to give and give, until she’s gone.
