desperate whore

You step forward and the door closes behind you.

"I really like you." you say, deciding that this might as well be the night you abandon any shred of subtlety you had left. "I know you know that. This isn’t new information. But I’m saying it out loud because I keep waiting for you to do something about it and you won’t."

He leans against the kitchen counter. Crosses his arms. His face is doing that thing it does when he’s trying to be gentle with you.

"We’ve talked about this."

"Hmmm, no, I don’t think we have. I don’t remember. I must have blacked out."

"How much did you actually drink?"

"Seriously, stop fixating on if I’m drunk. I liked you before the wine!"

He almost smiles. It ghosts across his mouth and disappears. "Go home. Drink some water. We can—"

"No! Tell me why. And not the bullshit about timing or not wanting to ruin the friendship or whatever diplomatic thing you’ve rehearsed. Tell me the actual reason."

He goes quiet. The kitchen clock ticks. You watch something move behind his eyes, a calculation, a door he keeps deciding not to open.

"You don’t want this."

"I literally just told you I do."

"You want what you think this would be. Dates. Sex. Waking up together. The version of me that makes you dinner and walks you home." He uncrosses his arms and grips the counter behind him instead, knuckles tightening. "You don’t want the rest of me."

"What else is there?"

The clock ticks again. Twice. Three times.

"I like hurting things."

He says it flat, factual, the way you’d tell someone you’re left-handed. Just a thing that’s true about him that he’s clearly said out loud before, maybe in this exact kitchen, to other people who stood where you’re standing and heard it and left.

"I probably like it more than I should," he continues, still in that flat voice. "I like making someone cry. I like the sounds they make when they can’t take any more and I force them to take it anyway. That’s the thing I’d want to do to you." He looks at you. "That’s why I keep saying no. Because of course I’d love to have you. Ruin you. Turn you into my little fuckpet who comes when you’re called and begs when you’re not. I think about it all the time. But I doubt you can handle what comes after."

Your mouth is dry. Your heart is pounding and the wine has burned off completely. You are viciously, painfully sober.

"Hurt me, then."

He stares at you. It’s the first time you’ve ever seen him caught off guard. "I don’t think you get it."

"No, I do. You like hurting things. I’m volunteering to be the thing." You take a step toward him. Then another. "Hurt. Me."

"You don’t know what you’re asking for."

"So show me."

He doesn’t move for a long time. Long enough that you start to wonder if you’ve finally found the line, the place where wanting him runs out of road. His jaw works. His eyes scan your face like he’s looking for the crack, the tell, the moment you’ll flinch and prove him right.

"Come here," he says.

Your feet carry you forward. He takes your wrist. His grip is different from anything you’ve felt from him before. Every other touch he’s given you has been careful, considered, a man holding something he’s afraid to break. This is not that. His fingers close around your wrist like he owns it.

He walks you to the couch. Sits down. Looks up at you with an expression you’ve never seen on his face. It’s calm and hungry and it makes your knees weak.

"If you want to know what I am," he says, "we start here. This is the floor. The gentlest thing I’ll ever do to you. If you can’t handle this, we stop and we never talk about it again."

"And if I can handle it?"

That almost-smile again. "Then we have a very different conversation." He pats his lap. "Now, come."

"What exactly am I doing?"

"Lay across my lap."

You stand there for a second, your brain scrambling to reconcile the man who makes you dinner and the man who just told you to drape yourself across his thighs. They’re the same person. They’ve always been the same person. You just didn’t have the full picture until now.

You lower yourself onto him. The position is ridiculous and vulnerable, your face hanging near his left knee, your ass in the air, your skirt riding up your thighs. His hand settles on the small of your back.

"I’m going to spank you," he says. Like he’s telling you tomorrow’s weather. "If you need me to stop, say 'red.' I’ll stop. No questions asked. Understood?"

"Yes, Sir. Understood." Sir. You're not sure where that came from.

His hand slides from your back down over the curve of your ass. Over the skirt. Slowly, mapping the terrain. His fingers find the hem and push it up over your hips, bunching it at your waist. Cool air hits your skin. You’re wearing thin cotton underwear and you feel absurdly exposed.

His palm rests against them, sitting there. You can feel the heat of it, the size of it, the weight. He doesn’t move. He’s letting you feel what’s coming. The anticipation is its own cruelty, your whole body bracing for a thing that won’t arrive until he decides it will.

"Breathe," he says.

You hadn't realized you stopped. You exhale.

He pulls his hand back. And brings it down.

The crack is louder than the pain. It takes a full second for the sting to register, blooming hot across the lower curve of your right cheek, and by the time it does he’s already rubbing the spot with his palm, slow circles over the place he just hit, soothing the burn he caused.

"That’s one."

"That wasn’t bad," you say, and your voice comes out shakier than you want it to.

"I said this was the floor."

The second one lands harder. Left side this time, a sharp clap that jolts your hips forward against his thigh. The sting is brighter, meaner. You suck air through your teeth.

"Still okay?"

"Still okay."

Three. Four. Five. He spaces them out, unpredictable, shifting where they land. The meat of your ass, the sensitive crease where it meets your thigh, a quick sharp slap to the outside of your hip that makes you yelp. After each one his palm returns to rub the heat in, spreading it, and the contrast between the sharp sting and the warm pressure of his hand afterward is doing something to you that you weren’t prepared for. You are getting wet. Noticeably, undeniably wet, and if he looks down he’ll be able to see it soaking through your panties. You should be embarrassed about that, but at this point you don't have much shame left.

As if sensing it, he hooks his thumb under the waistband of your panties and tugs them down. The cotton peels away from the swollen heat between your legs and you hear him exhale, just once, controlled but not entirely steady.

He doesn’t comment. You’re grateful for that.

Six lands on bare skin and the difference is day and night. No fabric to absorb anything. Just his hand and your ass and a smack that echoes off the walls. It’s a sting that burns so deep it makes your eyes water. You dig your nails into the back of his thigh.

"Can you keep going."

"Y-yeah, I can."

Seven. Eight. It's getting harder to count because he’s stopped pausing between them. A rhythm now, consistent and merciless, nine-ten-eleven-twelve-thirteen-fourteen, his hand landing again and again on skin that’s already burning, layering pain on top of pain until the individual slaps stop being distinct and blur into one continuous, searing heat. Your ass must be scarlet. It feels scarlet. It's practically radiating.

Your eyes are watering. Your hips are squirming on his lap and you can feel his cock hard beneath you, pressing against your stomach through his sweatpants. The knowledge that this is turning him on, that your pain is doing to him what his voice and his hands and his stupid beautiful face have been doing to you for months, sends a flood of arousal through you so intense your thighs clench.

He stops.

His hand rests on your burning skin. You can feel it pulsing under his palm, and the soreness is alive and radiating and deeply, unexpectedly good. His fingers drift lower. Graze the inside of your thigh, where the skin is soft and untouched. You shiver hard.

"You’re dripping," he says quietly. Almost reverent. Finally acknowledging it. Confirming something he probably hoped but didn’t dare assume.

"I have been the whole time."

His fingers trail higher. Barely there. Tracing the crease of your thigh, close enough that you can feel the warmth of his hand near your pussy. You make a sound, something between a whine and a plea, and your hips push back toward his hand.

He pulls his hand away.

"Not tonight."

You almost scream. "What!?"

"Tonight was the floor." The man who cooks you dinner is back, layered over the man who just made your ass burn until you cried, and the combination of the two is so disorienting you feel drunk again. "You took it well. Better than I expected."

"Then why are you stopping?"

"Because if I touch you there right now it's not going to stop at my fingers. We'll build up to it. But I want the first time I fuck you to hurt a lot more than this." He pulls your underwear back up, gently, over the raw tender skin, and the cotton against the soreness makes you hiss. He tugs your skirt down. Pats your hip.

"Up."