When he returns, I’m on the rug, pulling the shirt down over my thighs. Somewhere between pacing, sitting, and pacing again, I lost track of the hours.
Cristiano walks in, and the room shifts with him. Cigar smoke clings to his jacket, liquor beneath it, sharp and dark. Without looking at me, he locks the door, shrugs out of his jacket, and drapes it over the desk chair. His tie comes loose next and drops after it.
Then he looks at me.
“Come here.”
I cross the room to where he waits near the couch, my bare feet quiet on the floor.
His palm settles at my lower back. The heat of it reaches me through the shirt. The smell of smoke and whiskey wraps around me as he steps closer. He studies my face the way he studies everything, like he’s reading a document he hasn’t finished with.
“Did you eat?”
“Yes.”
“All of it?”
I nod.
His hand shifts to my hip, brief enough to feel almost careless. Then his fingers tighten, and he turns me around, walking me forward.
The leather arm of the couch waits at hip level.
“Bend over.”
Air catches high in my chest as I bend over the dark leather. The arm presses into my stomach and my hands brace on the seat, the shirt riding up my thighs.
“Further.”
I stretch forward until my chest meets the cushion. My hips tilt up. My fingers curl into the leather.
He gathers the shirt and pushes it up my back. Cool air brushes my skin. He palms my ass through my panties, squeezing once.
“Stay.”
I stay.
He pulls the panties down my thighs. I lift my feet when he tugs them off, and he drops them somewhere behind me. Then his palm spans the small of my back and presses me down.
“I’ve had a long day.” His voice is low. Rough at the edges from the liquor. “And you’re going to help me with that.”
He leaves me bent there. Behind me, the nightstand drawer opens and closes before his footsteps return.
A lid snaps open. Then he touches me where no one has touched before.
I flinch. My hips jerk forward against the couch arm.
“Stay still.”
I go still, fingers digging into the leather cushion.
He presses lube against my tight hole. Cold and slick. One finger circles, pushing gently. The sensation is foreign. My body resists, clenching tight.
“Relax.”
I try, though relaxation feels impossible with him pressing there, circling, working the lube into me until the tightness begins to give. I breathe through it, face pressed into the couch cushion.
“Good.”
The word lands like a reward I hadn’t let myself expect.
He adds more lube and pushes past the first ring of muscle. I gasp into the leather. The stretch burns, my body clenching hard before it begins to yield.
“Breathe.”
I breathe.
He works inside me with small strokes, opening me slowly before adding more lube and pressing in a second finger. The stretch sharpens, and a whimper slips out before I can stop it.
He pauses. “Too much?”
I shake my head against the cushion. It’s not too much. It’s just new. Everything with him is new.
He scissors his fingers, stretching me until the burn blurs into a heat that makes my thighs tremble. I’m embarrassed by the wet, slick sounds as he works me open. I’m embarrassed by how my body responds. My pussy aches, empty.
“You’re doing well.”
The liquor roughens his voice, all smoke and exhaustion.
He withdraws his fingers. Behind me, leather slides, then his zipper lowers. More lube slicks over my hole.
The head of his cock presses against my opening.
I tense. My fingers dig into the leather.
“Push back.”
My body resists, but I try. I press back against him, and the head slips past the first ring of muscle. The stretch is sharp and full. An overwhelming sense of being opened.
He doesn’t move. His hand grips my hip, holding me still.
“Breathe.”
I let out a shaky breath. My spine unwinds one vertebra at a time.
He pushes forward. Slow. Inch by inch. Every bit of him sinks into me, stretching me around his cock. My mouth falls open against the cushion, soundless, the fullness too strange and deep to do anything but tremble.
His hips meet my ass. He’s fully inside.
My thighs shake. Impaled. Owned.
“Good.” His voice is rough. His fingers flex on my hips. “That’s it.”
He withdraws. Slow. The drag pulls a whimper from my throat. Then he pushes back in. Deeper this time. The angle shifts, and heat flares low in my belly, heavy and spreading until my pussy clenches around nothing.
He sets a rhythm. Not fast. Each thrust rocks me forward against the couch arm. The leather goes slick under my hands. Bent over and held open, I have nowhere to go, nothing to do but take it.
His hand slides up my spine. He gathers my shirt in his fist, pulling it tighter against my back. His other hand spreads my ass cheek wider, opening me to his view.
A spank lands on my ass. The sting blooms warm. I gasp into the cushion.
“Arch your back.”
I arch. My spine curves, tilting my hips higher. He drives in deeper. A low sound breaks out of me. The fullness rides the edge of too much and not enough.
Another spank. The other cheek this time. The sting melts into the heat spreading through my lower body. My nipples rub against the leather through the thin shirt. Every part of me feels awake.
“Present for me.”
I push back onto his cock. I don’t think about it. The movement happens before thought can stop it. He groans. His fingers dig into my hip hard enough to bruise.
He picks up the pace. Each thrust is harder now. The sound of our skin meeting fills the room. Wet, obscene sounds.
I’m wanted.
The thought lands strange and quiet in my mind. Useful. Wanted. Here for his desires. My hands unclench from the leather. I stop bracing and start meeting him. Small movements. Pushing back when he thrusts forward. Taking him deeper.
He reaches around my hip and brushes my pussy. I jerk, overwhelmed, but he only cups me there, possessive, feeling how wet I am without doing anything about it.
“You like this.”
It’s not a question. I don’t answer. My face warms.
He fucks me harder. The couch arm digs into my stomach. My teeth sink into my knuckle to muffle the sounds I can’t hold back. Whimpers and gasps and small keening noises I’ve never made before. The pressure builds in my lower belly, a tight coil that winds and winds but doesn’t snap.
He doesn’t let me come. He doesn’t try to get me there either. This isn’t about my release. It’s about his. The knowledge settles inside me with a shameful steadiness. I don’t have to perform. I don’t have to earn anything. I just have to be here, bent over and open, my body ready for him to take.
His rhythm stutters. His grip tightens on my hip. He buries himself deep and holds. A low groan. He pulses inside me, his release filling me with slow warmth.
He stays there. His breath is harsh. His hand relaxes on my hip.
Then he pulls out slowly, and the empty slide makes me shiver. His cum slips down my inner thigh.
I don’t move. I stay bent over the couch arm because he hasn’t told me I can move. My face presses into the cushion. My body is warm.
He walks away. Water runs in the bathroom.
His rules hold me. His authority holds me. His attention holds me. Stay where I put you. Don’t move until I tell you. Eat when I give you food. Sleep where I say.
There must be something wrong with me, because it feels like relief.
Footsteps. He returns. A warm cloth presses between my cheeks. I flinch, but he doesn’t stop. He wipes me clean with efficient strokes, the same way he did before. No tenderness in it. Just ownership.
“Stand up.”
I push myself off the couch arm. My legs shake. I straighten slowly. The shirt falls back down my thighs, rumpled and damp.
He stands in front of me. His trousers are refastened. His shirt is still open at the collar. A strand of hair falls across his forehead now. Stubble darkens his jaw.
“Are you hurt?”
I shake my head. My voice won’t come.
He cups the back of my neck. His thumb strokes the knob of my spine. Just once. Just enough to make my eyes sting.
“I need something to call you.”
The question lands differently this time. Not an interrogation. Not a demand flung at me while I’m on my knees. Just a man looking at the woman in his room, asking what to call her.
I want to tell him, and the want scares me more than the sex did.
I shake my head.
Frustration crosses his face, but he doesn’t push. He doesn’t threaten. He only holds my neck a moment longer, the silence too charged to be empty.
“Fine.” He releases me.
He turns away. His fingers go to his shirt buttons, working them open. I watch his hands move down the placket, white fabric parting over his chest and the dark hair there. His stomach is solid, a thin line of hair trailing from his navel into his waistband.
I should look away. I don’t.
He pulls the shirt off his shoulders and drops it on the floor. The muscles in his back shift as he walks toward the closet.
His hands go to his belt. The leather slides through loops with a soft hiss. He folds the belt in half and sets it on the dresser. Slacks next. He steps out of them and leaves those too.
He’s left in dark gray briefs, thighs thick and hair-dusted, calves roped with muscle. He looks like a weapon even half-dressed.
He closes the closet and turns. I’m still where he left me, by the couch.
“Take that off.”
My hands go to the hem. I pull the shirt over my head and hold it against my chest. A useless modesty. He’s already seen everything. Had everything.
“Give it to me.”
I hold the shirt out. He takes it and drops it on the chair. I stand naked in the middle of his bedroom. The dim bedroom light catches across my skin. I resist the urge to cover myself. He hasn’t told me to hide.
He crosses to the bed. Pulls back the sheets. The mattress is high. The bedding is heavy, expensive. He sits on the edge and removes his watch. Sets it on the nightstand. His briefs remain.
He looks at me.
“Get in.”
The words don’t register at first. I stare at him. At the bed. At the space he’s made beside him.
“Now.”
My legs carry me forward before my mind catches up, all the way to the bed. The mattress is high. My knee sinks into the mattress, the sheets shifting under my weight as I crawl toward the space he indicated, acutely aware of how I look. Naked on my hands and knees on his bed. My breasts hanging. My hips swaying with each movement.
I settle on the sheet where he gestured. The fabric is soft against my knees. Softer than anything I’ve felt in years. I sit back on my heels.
“Lie down.”
I lower myself onto my side. The mattress gives under my shoulder. The pillow is thick and smells like him: shaving cream, clean skin, and the warm male scent beneath.
“Under the covers.”
I pull the sheet over my body. Then the blanket. The weight of them presses me into the mattress. Softness seeps into my skin. My muscles unknot one by one. I didn’t realize how desperate I was for comfort until it finds me.
He lifts the covers on his side and slides in. The mattress dips under his weight. I feel him settle beside me. The bed is large but his presence fills it.
I lie still. Barely breathing.
The lamp clicks off. The room falls into darkness cut only by the thin strip of light under the bathroom door.
I stare at the far wall. Sleep requires surrender. Sleep means closed eyes, slack muscles, a body that can’t run. Sleeping beside a man like him means all of that while he’s close enough to reach me in a single motion.
The sheets rustle. He shifts. His arm slides across my waist.
I flinch. My body jerks away before I can stop it.
His arm tightens. He pulls me backward across the mattress until my spine meets his chest. His arm locks across my stomach. His legs tangle with mine. His chin rests against the top of my head.
I’m pinned against him, curved to his body, my ass pressed to his hips and his arm a bar across my belly. His breath warms my hair.
I can’t move, can barely breathe. My ribs feel too tight for my lungs to expand.
“Stop fighting.”
I’m not fighting. I’m frozen. But he must feel the tension coiled in my body. The rigid spine. The hands fisted against the mattress.
His hand flattens on my stomach. His palm is hot. His fingers spread wide, spanning from my ribs to my hip. He exhales. His breath moves my hair.
“I can feel you thinking.”
I don’t answer. Speaking requires air. I don’t have any.
“Close your eyes.”
I close them. The darkness deepens. My other senses sharpen. The sound of his breath. The steady rhythm of his heart against my back. The weight of his arm across my body. The warmth bleeding through the sheet into my skin.
“You’re safe here.”
The words land wrong. I’m a prisoner in the bed of a man who pushed his fingers inside me, bent me over, used my tight hole, and told me I was his. Safety shouldn’t exist inside capture.
But nuance means nothing against the arm anchoring me, the chest warming my back, the legs tangled with mine. Heat and weight and closeness sink in, and my chest loosens without permission.
His arm around me feels like a boundary, not a cage. His breath on my hair makes my eyes sting. I hate that I’m lying in his bed with his cum still inside me and some part of me wants to press closer instead of pulling away.
His hand shifts on my stomach, a barely there stroke he probably doesn’t know he’s giving me.
“Relax.”
I try. I uncurl my fingers from the sheet. I let my muscles loosen. I take a breath that reaches my lungs.
“That’s it.”
His voice is low. Rough with exhaustion. He’s tired from whatever he did today. He’s holding me because he wants something warm against his body while he sleeps.
The thought makes me feel chosen. Not for love or kindness, but for warmth. For presence. He could have chained me to the rug again. He could have left me on the floor with the blanket.
I’m useful to him. Right now, I’m warmth. A body beside him. Something to hold.
The shame and the relief tangle together until I can’t tell them apart.
His breathing slows. His arm grows heavier across my stomach. His body relaxes against mine in increments. The tension bleeds out of him and into the mattress. His hand goes slack on my belly.
He’s falling asleep.
He’s closing his eyes and releasing his vigilance while I’m pressed against him. While I could reach his throat if I tried.
He knows I won’t.
He’s not worried. He doesn’t think I’m dangerous. He trusts me.
My eyes burn. I blink against the sting. I won’t cry. Not here. Not in his bed with his arm around me. That would be weakness and I’ve already shown him too much.
I study the room in the low light. The shape of the desk. The outline of the closet door. The ceiling I can barely see. I count the things I can identify.
The rhythm of his heartbeat steadies against my spine. Slow and even. His breath moves my hair in small pulses. His body surrounds me. Warm and solid and inescapable.
The fear stays in my chest, familiar and patient, but quieter now beneath the weight of his arm, the heat of his body, the simple fact of being held.
I try to be small. I tuck my chin. I hold myself as still as I can. A good body. A body that doesn’t cause trouble.
His arm shifts. His hand slides up my ribs. His palm settles over my breast, over my heart. He can feel it beating. He can feel how fast it races.
“Sleep.”
The command is soft. Barely a murmur. He’s half-gone already.
I let my eyes close. Darkness closes around me, along with his body, the sheets, the blankets, the arm holding me in place.
My breathing slows to match his. My body softens against the mattress. The tension drains out of me in pieces.
Against my chest, his fingers curl in a small adjustment he isn’t awake enough to notice.
I let myself sink into him a little, enough for my spine to press fully against his chest, for my hips to settle against his, for the space I was holding between us to disappear.
He makes a sound. Low and rough. Approval or contentment or something between. His arm tightens once, briefly, and then relaxes.