for. ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with me.’
‘You want me to hit you.’
It wasn’t a question, but I didn’t know what to say back to him. Did I? Maybe. Yes. In the right context. When I wanted it, but only then. But I didn’t want to have to ask for it, I wanted him to just do it. Shit. How could I explain it to him when I didn’t understand it myself?
‘Not hit,’ I whispered, my throat raw from screaming and sobbing. ‘Not like that.’
‘Like how, then?’ He sat up and clicked the switch on the lamp beside the couch. A warm glow illuminated his face. He looked exhausted, a five o’clock shadow on his high cheekbones, his black hair tousled like he’d been running his fingers through it in frustration. I knew this face, this man. I knew him and I trusted him. I owed him as honest an explanation as I could give him, even if it didn’t make any sense to either of us.
I raised my shoulders in a shrug. ‘I don’t know. A slap, I guess.’
‘Like a spanking?’
‘Yeah, sorta.’ It felt surreal to be talking about this. ‘But more. More than a spanking, more than my ass.’
‘Your face?’
I nodded. ‘Yeah.’
‘You want me to slap your face when we’re fighting – or when we’re fucking?’
‘Both,’ I whispered.
‘Do you push me to fight so I’ll do that, be that rough with you?’
I nodded. ‘Yeah, I think so. I think I do. It’s messed up.’
He moved to the edge of the couch and rested his arms on his splayed thighs. ‘Come here.’
I went to him without hesitation. I wasn’t sure of his mood or what was happening between us, but I knew I trusted him. Despite the fights, the angry words, the years of feeling like we were never connecting, I still believed in him. In us. And I knew he would never do anything I didn’t want him to do.
When I was standing in front of him, he looked up at me. ‘You’re not messed up,’ he said softly, pulling me down in front of him until I was kneeling on the carpet between his legs. ‘I think I wanted the same stuff – well, wanted to do it to you. But that’s even more fucked up.’
I couldn’t help myself, I laughed. He was sitting on the couch, I was on my knees in front of him like I was going to go down on him, but instead we were talking about our mutual desire to do the one thing we couldn’t do. ‘Oh, baby, what the hell have we been doing all this time?’
He shook his head. ‘Hell if I know. The fighting – it’s been off the chain, right? I mean, I have never, ever fought with anyone like I fight with you. Never. It’s weird.’
‘Dysfunctional,’ I agreed.
‘And I hate myself when I’m saying those things. Hate you when you’re screaming at me. But I can’t resist it.’ He stroked my hair absent-mindedly, as if he was petting Charlie. ‘I try to ignore you when you start pushing me, but I can’t fucking resist it.’
‘You crave it,’ I said, running my hands up and down his thighs to the same rhythm as his stroking of my hair. ‘You need it.’
‘Yeah,’ he said starkly, self-loathing in his expression. ‘What’s wrong with me?’
‘What’s wrong with us? I need it, too.’
We sat there like that for awhile, touching each other as if we couldn’t help ourselves – and maybe we couldn’t. Maybe this was love, even if it was not what we thought love should be.
He looked at me, searched my face as if seeking some elusive answer. ‘What now?’
I took a deep breath and let it out in a long, ragged sigh. I felt as if a great tension had gone out of my shoulders. Something in me had opened up. For better or worse, he knew my darkest secret. And I knew his.
‘It’s on the table now. Let’s see where it goes.’
‘You’re going to have to take the lead here,’ he said, as he pushed my hair behind my ears again and cupped my face. ‘This is so outside the realm of my experience I don’t know what to do. It feels … wrong.’
‘But I want it,’ I reminded him. ‘I’m asking for this.’
He just shook his head.
‘But I said I want it.’ I was louder, more forceful. ‘Slap me. Slap my face.’
He went very still. ‘No.’
I could feel the familiar anger beginning to rise. He was teasing me now, playing with my emotions. ‘Slap me, Brian. Stop messing with my fucking head. Slap me.’
‘Why should I?’
‘Because I want you to.’
He laughed. ‘Not good enough. Why should I do what you want, when you’ve been such a bitch to me?’
‘And a slut,’ I said, putting that taboo word on the table, too. In for a penny, in for a pound.
He blinked at me, his breath catching in his throat. ‘Yeah? A slut?’
‘Yeah.’
‘What else?’ he asked.
It was my turn to taunt. ‘You tell me.’
‘A little whore,’ he said, the word sounding foreign on his tongue. ‘Whore.’
I was wet. I could feel the wetness gathering between my thighs, soaking through the cotton crotch of my panties. ‘You want me to be a whore.’
‘Yeah, I do. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to slap you just because you want me to, you bitch.’ There was a note of anger in his voice, as if the resentment of the past five years of frustration and miscommunication was bubbling up in him, too.
‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Slap me because you want to. You’ve always wanted to. You want to slap the smile right off my face, don’t you? You want it so bad you can taste it like you can taste my pussy on your tongue.’
His hand cracked across my face before I even had time to blink. It wasn’t hard, less sting than shock, but it shut me up. I gasped, or maybe he did, and we sat there blinking at each other. I instinctively raised my hand to cup my cheek, but he pulled it away and put it on his bulging crotch.
‘That’s what you want, isn’t it?
I nodded, swallowing hard. ‘Yes.’
‘Want me to fuck you, little slut?’
‘Oh God, yeah,’ I groaned. I pulled off my raincoat, stifling under the weight of it. Still kneeling in front of him, I stripped my gown over my head. ‘Fuck me.’
‘I’m
