He trailed his hand down my arm, wrapping his fingers around my wrist. Even though he only touched me in one place, it felt intimate. Though he didn’t squeeze, I felt fragile. Breakable.

Leading me to the bed, he pushed me gently to sit. I tightened the towel around myself, and he let me. I’d expected him to push me down, to tear the towel off and have sex with me. But I always seemed to overestimate his penchant for force. It was something about his presence, brute strength combined with the cunning to use it well. He wasn’t afraid of violence but neither was he overly fond of it. Or maybe that was just wishful thinking.

He sat down beside me, his light caresses still restricted to my arms, my shoulders. Safe places, as if we were still getting acquainted. As if my comfort mattered at all.

“Tell me about your boyfriends,” he said.

“What d-d-do you want to know?”

Oh no. I hadn’t stuttered since I was a kid. My mother had tried to frighten it out of me, but that only made it worse. Eventually I’d grown out of it…right around the time I’d gotten my book on Niagara Falls. Now my dreams deserted me along with my composure.

He raised his eyebrow, a sign he had heard my stutter, but he made no comment on it. Instead he asked, “How many have you had? How far did you let them go with you?”

I thought the phrasing was odd, even if it was technically accurate. How far I let them go, like he recognized my dominion over my body. Maybe he considered this the same thing; maybe it was. I was letting him do it to me. I was letting this happen.

Swallowing, I said, “My first boyfriend was in eighth grade. We only dated for a few months and never really saw each other outside school.”

“Did you fuck him?”

The question was blunt, and I flinched. “No. We d-didn’t do that. We would meet sometimes, outside the school during gym class.”

“You made out.” He smirked.

The arrogant action didn’t subtract from his attractiveness; it enhanced it. Up close, I realized he was one of the most handsome men I’d ever met. I never would have looked at him twice, mostly because of his age. He looked about ten years older than me. I never would have expected him to look twice at me either, but then I had always worn baggy clothes and hung at the edges of a crowd with my mother before we made a quick exit.

“Did you let him touch your tits?

“Yes.”

“Under your shirt or just over?”

“Over at f-first. And then he started—” I broke off as he touched my breasts through the towel, just two fingers on the top slope, then around the underside.

“He started what?” he prompted, still stroking, soft caresses on the rough fabric.

I swallowed, willing myself not to tremble. “Then he started reaching under my clothes.”

He tugged the towel down. I loosened my hold, letting the cloth slide down my breasts. The hem of the towel caught on my nipples, baring the slope of my breasts but no more. It was almost more obscene this way than if I’d been naked, but I couldn’t bring myself to pull the towel down.

Instead I stared into the darkness at the shadowy curtains that I hadn’t drawn closed while the weight of the wet towel tugged at the tender skin of my nipples. He drew his finger over the tops of my breasts.

I sucked in deep breaths, more panicked now, everything more sensitive, so acute—like pain. He touched me so lightly, and it hurt. How would it feel when he was rough? Because surely he would be. There was only one reason I could think of why a man who looked as good as he did would force a woman—because he preferred it that way.

“Why did you let him, your boyfriend? Surely you worried about being caught? I bet he didn’t even give you an orgasm out back behind the school. Were you that desperate for a skinny eighth-grader?”

His words knocked the breath from me. “No, I just… He wanted to, that’s all. I figured it didn’t hurt anything just to let him.”

“That’s right,” he said approvingly, soothingly. “It doesn’t hurt anything to just let him.”

With a flick of his fingers, the towel slipped off my nipples, gaping open around my waist. I sucked in a breath and shut my eyes.

“Just let it happen,” he murmured. “I want to do this. You let that little kid paw at you, so why not me?”

His warm hand closed around one breast. It was lifted, hefted into his palm before he rolled the nipple between callused fingers. It didn’t hurt anymore. He was right about that. It felt good, the slight abrasiveness, the pressure.

Sparks set off low in my belly. He played with my breasts with a proficiency that made my breath catch. Clearly he was experienced. He knew just where to touch me and how to do it. But he seemed to be learning me as well, exploring every dip, every milky expanse of skin and the pink tips that pebbled under his manipulation. My hands were tense by my sides, my eyes shut tightly until he pinched my nipple. I gasped.

“Did he do that?”

“No, I—”

“What else did you let him do? Where else did you let him put his skinny little fingers?”

He made it sound so dirty, when it had just been innocent exploration between two teenage kids, hadn’t it? That was normal. This was the fucked-up thing.

He twisted my nipple when I didn’t answer.

I sucked in a breath at the pain. “I don’t know—oh God.”

“Your cunt? Did he touch you there?”

His coarse words made my face heat. I couldn’t remember ever hearing that word aloud but I knew what it meant. Maybe it was just a universal sound or the tone he used, derisive and eager in one note.

“No,” I said. “Sometimes his hands would slip under my jeans, but only in the back.”

“He touched your ass. That’s it? That’s all he got to do to you?”

Cheeks burning, I nodded.

“No wonder that didn’t last. What about the next boyfriend? Did you put out for him?”

My voice fell to a whisper. “There wasn’t…He wasn’t…”

“Tell me about the big day. Were there rose petals and candles?”

The pain washed over me afresh. Romance? Not likely. I cursed my mother all over again for not seeing through him, for not seeing how much I was hurting in those weeks before she discovered us.

“He wasn’t my boyfriend.”

“Ah, now that is interesting. Where were you the first time, in his car?”

“In my room.”

“What did he have you do?”

“He said to… I was on my hands and knees.”

He whistled. “He came at you from behind for your first time. That’s harsh. I don’t think I would’ve even done it that way. Did you come like that, with your face hugging the sheets?”

I shook my head quickly.

It had hurt so bad. He’d stabbed deep inside, and I hadn’t known how to control the depth at all, had been too afraid and cowed to fight back. I hadn’t been able to, with his hands on my hips, holding me steady for his thrusts. The floral fabric of the comforter turned damp beneath my cheeks as I cried in pain, but he told me to quiet down.

The first always hurts, he’d whispered.

That was in the past. The horrible memory wasn’t relevant to me anymore. Except this man pulled me down to the fraying floral bedspread. The towel remained in a limp heap where I had sat, leaving my body completely exposed. I shut my eyes tightly, but I could see the scene as clearly as if we were in broad daylight. My body awkwardly splayed across the bed, tense and vulnerable. He still fully clothed, wearing jeans and a blue button-down.

I felt my hands pulled above my head.

“I wouldn’t treat you that way,” he said. “The first time is something special.”

The sleek sound of leather whipped through the air. I cringed, anticipating the blow.

He soothed me with a stroke of my thigh, as if I were an animal. Gentle hands wrapped the smooth leather around my wrists and secured them to the headboard with an ease that scared me.