TWENTY-FIVE

WHEN JACK WALKS IN THE next morning to pack, I’m showered and ready for him. For the Hail Mary pass.

“Are we going to talk about this?”

He looks at me. “Are we really going to go here again?”

I lie on the bed and spread my legs. Naked beneath my towel. “I am, Jack. Why does it bother you when I tell you I want something more intense—maybe just like the woman in the photos?”

“Because it’s not right. I don’t want to hurt you. That’s sick.”

I smirk and lick my fingers, rubbing them over myself. “Is it? It sounds a lot more like you’re trying to apply your idea of what’s wrong to a situation where it doesn’t apply. You’re fine with sex before marriage. Maybe she was into the thing being done to her—it’s called autoerotic asphyxiation, by the way—but then later thought, ‘Maybe this is a way to get some money from a man who would be desperate to avoid a scandal.’”

“Don’t you say that about her! She’d never do something like that. She’s the victim in all this.”

I shake my head, weary that it took me so long to put the pieces together.

His distance.

His worry about appearances.

The way he wasn’t that worried when I told him I was coming here and would be away from him.

“How long have you been fucking the witness, Jack?”

He has the good grace to turn red and look uncomfortable, at least. “I never planned it, okay? It just happened.”

“I’m sure.”

“She’s different. You were always preoccupied with your stories, and she was there. She needed me.”

“Wow, I’m impressed by your high standards. ‘She needed me.’” “She’s more compatible; she isn’t into the kinky things you keep trying to get me to do despite my telling you it makes me uncomfortable.”

“Some people like the darker side of sex, Jack. And that’s okay—it’s completely natural. Why can’t you do things I tell you it’s perfectly fine to do to me in bed?” I start masturbating right in front of him, because now the truth is out and I no longer care to hide. I want to drag him to my base level. “Is it because you won’t respect me in the morning, Jack, or are you more afraid you’re the one who will like it?”

His entire body ripples from a tremor, like he’s a mirage, but I keep talking, provoking, goading, because his judgment is the thing making me feel dirty and wrong—not my desires.

“Who the fuck are you to get in the way of what I want? I’m reclaiming my power as a woman. I’m not becoming less, I’m becoming stronger. Does that threaten you? Maybe that woman wasn’t a victim at all. Maybe you’re the one who insists on seeing us that way. Do you have issues with strong women who know what they want, Jack?”

He reaches me in two large strides and crashes into my body, making us tumble across the mattress and fall off onto the floor. “Don’t you talk about her.” He lands on top and pulls my hair, biting the skin of my neck, and I moan beneath him and tear at his pants, freeing his cock.

“All I ever wanted was you.” I open my legs, spreading them as wide as I can, like Anaïs opening hers for Henry Miller, but there’s not enough room between the bed and the wall, and I bend my knees, spreading like butterfly wings.

He shoves his cock inside me and my butterfly wings flap for him.

It’s so much, it’s everything, like getting fucked by a rockslide or a wildfire: dangerous and overwhelming and a lover unleashed.

“Is this what you want?” he grunts, rutting into me in time to his hot breaths.

“Yes.”

Every movement of his hips jerks me up higher, giving neat little friction burns all up my ass and back.

“You want me to just use you like you’re nothing?”

Yes. I claw at his back, at his biceps, at his thighs and ass— anywhere I can reach in an attempt to get him to give me more, to go deeper and harder and faster.

“Use you like a toy made to get me off?”

Yes. I imagine lying in bed at night, him coming in and fucking me awake. All I wanted was for him to lose control just once, because then I’d know he wanted me as much as I wanted him. There’s always been an imbalance of power in our relationship, because I’ve never truly believed this man could actually be in love with someone like me. He’s so conventionally perfect. And yet he’s been fucking someone else behind my back—someone who acted like a fucking victim. My perfect dream guy has finally caved in.

Well, I’ll be his victim all night long if that’s what it takes.

He grips my thigh hard enough that I know it’s going to bruise, and I moan at how it sharpens everything, honing the moment to a point of stillness where I can feel everything—even the stubble on my legs.

He thrusts harder and up until we’re against the wall and my head hits it over and over in tempo to the jabs of his cock slamming against my womb. I like that, too, the way it hurts, and I know I should stop for a minute and readjust, but everything else feels too good and all I can do is feel him stretching me, pounding me, battering my pussy hard enough to bruise it.

I want to shave off my pubic hair tomorrow to see if he’s left marks with his cock.

He pinches my nipples hard enough to make me yelp. “Do you like this?”

Yes, yes, yes, I’m going to come so hard on your cock and you’ll feel exactly how much I like this and how could you not like something your lover likes this much? How can you not like something that makes my pussy milk your cock for every last drop of come?

“You want me to treat you like a slut?” He moves my arms above my head, fucking harder, and I watch the way he watches my tits bounce.

He loves this, too. I smile up at him.

He tosses my hands out to the sides and pushes up away from me, staring down with a snarl. “You like it when I fuck you without love?”

Wait, what? No, that’s not it, and I open my mouth to tell him, but he slides his hips to the side and I come violently, like I’m possessed, and I can’t talk it’s so deep and complete, and I’m lost to the roaring of my pulse, the way my pussy clamps down on him like it never wants him to be separated from my body.

I come to when he pulls out of me and his come dribbles to the floor in a sad little puddle.

Fuck without love? Is that what he thinks was happening?

“Jack, wait. That’s not what happened.”

“That, Catherine, it was.”

“You’re leaving me for her, aren’t you?”

“Yeah. Because I just can’t look at you the same way anymore.” He stands and tucks himself into his pants on the way to the door, not looking back at me once.

I sit up and slide back, wishing for a cigarette, because this is one of those moments in life where you need smoke to swirl, mirroring your thoughts.

Until the last bit, it was everything I wanted it to be. Until he ruined it. Afterward, though satisfied, I’m left with a feeling of sickness and disgust. Why do I need to be the one to make up?

Women don’t need to be soft and yielding.

I feel no shame for wanting what Jack just gave me.

What he almost gave me and tried to take away.

I refuse to let him make this feel wrong or dirty. It’s goodbye.

If anything, I feel disgusted that I’m supposed to feel ashamed for wanting the things I want. He’s judging me for something that makes me feel good, when I’ve asked him for it repeatedly, and he treats me like I’ve asked him to commit a crime against me. Any guilt I might have felt for doing anything in the clubs below us dissolves, because he’s the one who cheated on me this time.

There was no exploration, only abandonment.

I don’t know if he’s going to try to bring Gold down, but I do know he needs time to cool down. His anger is sullen and feeds upon itself like a human centipede. I’ll wait for him to remove his head from his own ass, and then we’ll talk.

I’m tired of being made to feel like what I want is wrong. Like I’m a silly little girl who doesn’t know her own mind, when Jack doesn’t even realize that the world isn’t black and white—that morality isn’t absolute.

Can we ever have just the good without the bad? Can I have the rush without the crash? Is this the rush before Jack brings things toppling down?

It reminds me of D’Annunzio: “Wherever were all his vanities and his cruelties and his expedients and his lies? Where were the loves and the betrayals and the disillusionments and the disgust and the incurable repugnance after pleasure? Where were those impure and rapid love affairs that left in his mouth the strange sourness of fruit cut with a steel knife? He could no longer remember anything.”