Chapter 1
At eighteen, I gave my virginity to a boy named Ethan in the back of his parents’ minivan. He lasted forty-seven seconds. I counted. He kissed my forehead afterward like I’d done something brave, and I lay there thinking, That’s it? That’s what everyone freaks out about? I spent the next two years trying to fix that disappointment. Different boys. Different beds, Different positions; Missionary, cowgirl, doggy, reverse cowgirl, sixty-nine, against the wall, on the floor, in the shower. I let them call me pretty, dirty, good girl, bad girl, princess, whore. I let them fuck me in every way they could think of, and I came exactly three times, all of them alone in my dorm room with my vibrator and my own desperate fingers. The first time I faked an orgasm, I was nineteen. He was a grad student with kind eyes and clumsy hands. He was so proud of himself. I felt nothing. Not pleasure, not guilt, just a cold, hollow boredom that has only gotten worse with time.
By twenty-one, I’d moved on to older men. Men who knew what they were doing. Men who made me dinner first and tied me up second. Men with toys and mirrors and safe words. I let a lawyer spank me until my ass was purple. I let a photographer film me while I sucked his cock. I let a married man whisper his wife’s name by accident while he was inside me. And still, that hollow place yawned wider. I started to wonder if I was broken. If something inside me was missing, a wire disconnected, a nerve deadened. I read articles about female sexuality, about trauma, about repression. I went to therapy for three sessions and lied through every one. I bought bigger toys. Stranger toys, I watched porn that made me gasp and then hate myself for gasping. Nothing! Nothing! Nothing!
Until last week when I saw him. He was standing at the bar of a club I’d never been to, in a part of the city I usually avoid. Dark suit, Dark eyes. A stillness about him that made everyone else look frantic. He wasn’t handsome in the usual way; his face was too sharp, too knowing. He looked at me like he could see straight through my skin, past my muscles, into that empty, aching cavern inside me. And he smiled. Not a friendly smile. Not a flirtatious smile. A smile that said, I know what you need. And you’re terrified I’m right. I walked past him. I told myself I wasn’t interested. I ordered a drink I didn’t want and let some accountant buy me another one. But my skin was buzzing. My cunt was wet. My hands were shaking. I’ve never been more scared in my life. And I’ve never been surer. I wasn’t always like this. Or maybe I was, and I just didn’t have the words for it yet.
Let me tell you about the ones who tried. There was Marcus, the musician with tattooed knuckles and a tongue piercing. He fucked me on a rooftop under a full moon, his mouth between my legs for what felt like hours. I stared at the stars and thought about my grocery list. He came up grinning, convinced he’d ruined me for other men. I let him believe it. It was easier than explaining that his tongue, his fingers, his desperate eagerness, none of it reached the place that needed touching. There was the couple. Her name was Lena, his was Derek. They wanted to share me, worship me, and use me together. I agreed because I was curious. She kissed me softly, reverently. He took me from behind while she watched. It was beautiful, I guess, Artistic. I felt like a painting being admired. But paintings don’t feel anything, do they? I left before sunrise and never called them back. There was the dominatrix in the next city over. Madame Voss, she called herself. I paid her three hundred dollars to tie me to a cross and beat me until I bled. She had a room full of implements, floggers, paddles, canes, knives. She was professional, clinical, and precise. She gave me exactly what I asked for. And when it was over, I lay on her dungeon floor, naked and marked and utterly empty, and I realized I didn’t know what I was looking for. I thought pain would wake me up. It didn’t. I thought submission would free me. It didn’t. I thought being worshipped, used, admired, degraded, any of it, would finally make me feel something real. But every encounter left me colder. Every orgasm I faked, every moan I manufactured, every performance I gave, it all just dug the hole deeper. I started to fantasize about things I was ashamed to admit. Being taken without asking. Being held down and made to take it. Being broken open so completely that there was nothing left of the polite, smiling mask I wore every day. I wanted someone who didn’t care if I came. Someone who would take what they wanted and leave me wrecked and sobbing and finally, finally feeling something. I wanted a monster. But monsters don’t exist. Do they? I fucked a man who looked like one, tall, scarred, silent. He worked with his hands. He fucked me like he was angry at me, like I’d done something wrong just by existing. He didn’t kiss me. Didn’t look me in the eye. Came inside me without a word and rolled over to sleep. I lay there, wet and aching and untouched in the ways that mattered, and I felt nothing but a familiar, crushing disappointment. I cried in the bathroom afterward. Not because he hurt me. Because he didn’t. That was three months ago. I stopped trying after that. I stopped letting men touch me. I stopped pretending. I bought a new vibrator, stronger, louder, more obscene. I used it until I was raw and numb. I watched videos of things I’d never admit to anyone. I touched myself in the dark and imagined a hand around my throat, a voice in my ear, a presence so overwhelming that I had no choice but to surrender. And then, last week, I saw him. And I knew. I knew that everything before was practice. Every disappointing fuck, every failed experiment, every fake moan and hollow orgasm, it was all leading me to that bar, that night, that man with the dark eyes who saw right through me. He knew what I needed. The question is: am I brave enough to let him give it to me? Alone in my bed, when the city is quiet and my hand is between my thighs, I don’t think about romance. I don’t think about candlelight or whispered promises or gentle hands. I think about being taken.
I imagine a man who doesn’t ask, who doesn’t negotiate, who pins me down with his body and covers my mouth with his palm and takes what he wants while I struggle, not to escape, but to feel the weight of his dominance pressing into every inch of my skin. In my fantasies, I say no. I fight. I cry. And he doesn’t stop. He holds me down and fucks me until I stop fighting and start begging. Until my no becomes yes, please, more, harder, don’t stop, don’t ever stop. Until I’m nothing but a wet, whimpering mess beneath him, completely undone, completely owned. I imagine being blindfolded. Not knowing who’s touching me. Not knowing what comes next. Just feeling, hands on my throat, my breasts, my cunt. A voice telling me I’m a good girl, a bad girl, a slut, a whore, a treasure, a toy. Words that should hurt but somehow make me wetter. I imagine being shared. Two men, three, more. Passed around like a thing to be used. No names. No eye contact. Just bodies taking their pleasure from mine while I lie there and take it, take it, take it, until I’m sore and dripping and so full I can’t think. I imagine being punished. Bent over a desk, a table, a bed. A hand spanking me until I’m red and raw and sobbing. A belt. A paddle. A crop. Each strike lighting up my nerves like fire, and each fire making me wetter, hungrier, more desperate for the next one. I imagine being denied. Tied to a bed, spread open, vulnerable, while a man, or woman, or both, touches me everywhere except where I need it most. Fingers teasing my clit, then pulling away. A tongue tracing my inner thigh, then moving up to my stomach. A cock pressing against my entrance, then sliding away. Leaving me aching, begging, promising anything, everything, if they’ll just let me come. And when they finally let me, when I’m raw and broken and desperate, I imagine the orgasm is so intense that I black out. That I forget my own name. That I wake up changed, hollowed out, filled with something new. Sometimes, in my darkest fantasies, I imagine not coming at all. I imagine being used purely for someone else’s pleasure. A warm hole. A willing body. A vessel for their release. I imagine them finishing inside me, on me, across my face, and then walking away without a word. Leaving me there, used and empty and somehow satisfied in a way I’ve never been satisfied before. I imagine being collared. Owned. Branded. Marked so everyone knows I belong to someone. I imagine kneeling at someone’s feet, head bowed, waiting for permission to speak, to move, to breathe. I imagine the peace of total surrender, the silence of a mind that no longer has to decide anything. These are the things I think about when my hand moves faster, when my breath catches, when I bite my lip to keep from crying out. These are the things that make me come. And then, in the aftermath, when my body is shaking and my sheets are soaked and my heart is pounding, I lie there in the dark and wonder if I’m sick. If something is wrong with me. If the reason I can’t be satisfied is because the only thing that could satisfy me is something I’m too afraid to ask for. But I’m not afraid anymore. Not since I saw him. The bar was called The Hollow. Fitting name. I’d never been there before. I’d wandered in after a night of walking the city aimlessly, my feet carrying me somewhere my mind hadn’t agreed to. The place was dim, almost cavernous. Red velvet booths. Black walls. A stage in the back that was empty but waiting. The air smelled like whiskey and leather and something else, something animal. I ordered a gin and tonic and leaned against the bar, letting the noise wash over me. I wasn’t looking for anything. I’d given up looking. But then I felt it. A gaze. Heavy. Focused. Like a finger tracing down my spine. I turned. He was standing at the far end of the bar, alone, a glass of something dark in his hand. He wasn’t tall in a towering way, but he seemed to take up more space than his body should. Broad shoulders. Dark hair, silver at the temples.
A face that looked carved from stone and then softened just enough to be dangerous. His eyes were black. Not brown. Black. Like obsidian. Like the bottom of a well. He was looking at me like he knew me. Like he’d seen me before, not in passing, but in those private moments when I thought no one was watching. When my hand was between my thighs and my fantasies were running wild. I should have looked away. I should have finished my drink and left. Instead, I held his gaze. He smiled. Slow. Deliberate. The smile of a man who has all the time in the world because he knows exactly how the night will end. He set down his glass and walked toward me. The crowd parted for him without seeming to notice they were doing it. He moved like a predator who didn’t need to rush. He stopped inches from me. Close enough that I could smell him, cedar, smoke, something metallic and clean. His voice, when he spoke, was low and rough, like gravel wrapped in velvet. “You’ve been looking for something,” he said. Not a question. A statement. I opened my mouth to deny it, to play coy, to be the woman I always was in these situations. But the words died in my throat. He leaned closer, his lips brushing the shell of my ear. His breath was warm. His voice dropped even lower. “I can see it in you. The hunger. The emptiness. You’ve let a hundred mediocre men touch you, and none of them reached the place that needs to be touched.” My heart was pounding so hard I could feel it in my throat. Between my legs. In my fingertips. He pulled back just enough to look me in the eyes. “I can reach it,” he said. “But you have to be willing to go where I take you. And I promise you, it will hurt before it feels good.” I should have run. I should have laughed and called him crazy and walked out into the night. Instead, I heard myself say, “When?” His smile widened. Just a fraction. Just enough to make my stomach flip. “Now.” He turned and walked toward the back of the bar, past the empty stage, toward a door I hadn’t noticed before. A black door. No handle. No sign. He didn’t look back to see if I was following. He didn’t need to. I set down my glass. My hands were shaking. My cunt was wet. My mind was screaming at me to leave, to run, to save myself. But my feet, my traitorous, hungry feet, carried me after him.
