He had a blindfold, soft, and he drew it over my eyes and tied it behind my head, gentle in the hair, and the world went out. The gold of the lamp gone. His face gone. The kitchen in my head—I reached for it out of habit, for the loaf, for the list, to count something, to manage something—and there was less of it to reach for, because there was less ofmepointed outward to do the reaching with. He took the sight and then he took the rest, one at a time, his voice moving around me in the dark so I lost where he was, his hands going quiet so I couldn’t track him, until there was nothing left to run, no room to keep, no number to hold, no edge to find.
“Say it for me,” he said, from somewhere. “The word. So I know you have it.”
“Kataifi,” I said into the dark.
“Good girl. That word stops everything. Anytime. You don’t have to earn it and you don’t have to explain it. It’s yours.” A pause. “Everything else, you hand to me. You don’t decideanything in here. You don’t do anything but what I say. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” I said.
“There it is,” he murmured, close now, his breath at my ear. “There you go. Put it down.”
And then he took me apart, slow, in the dark.
His mouth on my throat where the pulse goes. His hands—I never knew where they’d be, that was the whole of it, I couldn’t track him, couldn’t get ahead of him, couldn’t run the choreography, and so I stopped, I just stopped, and let the dark hand me each thing as it came. The drag of cloth off my shoulders. The cold of the room and then the heat of him over it. A hand spread flat on my belly, low. His voice, constant, the only fixed point in the world.That’s it. You don’t have to do anything. I’ve got you. I’ve got the counter.
The counter. The same words. They went through me like warm water every time.
He guided me down—a knee, a cushion, his hands telling me where, and I went where his hands told me because there was nothing else to be, no boss, no books, no Katerina who runs everything, just a body in the dark being moved into place by someone I trusted enough to move it—and then his hand was in my hair, gathering it, and I felt him close, the heat of him. I heard a zip, and I knew his pants were down. He said, low, “Open.”
I could smell him, musky and raw, and it made my mouth water. I didn’t hesitate. I leaned in, lips parting like I was taking communion, and wrapped my mouth around him.
The moment my tongue touched him, he growled—a low, possessive sound that shot straight to my pussy. I swirled my tongue around the head, savoring the salty tang of him, then sank down further, taking him deeper. My lips stretched around his girth, and I felt the weight of him pressing against the backof my throat. His hand tightened in my hair, guiding me, forcing me to take him harder, faster. I gagged a little, tears pricking the corners of my eyes, but I didn’t stop. I couldn’t stop.
“That’s it, babygirl,” he rasped, his voice rough like gravel. “Take it. Take all of it.”
I hollowed my cheeks, sucking hard, my tongue working the underside of his shaft. I could feel him twitching in my mouth, his cock throbbing with need. I pulled back slowly, dragging my lips along him, then plunged down again, taking him balls-deep. My nose pressed into the coarse hair at the base of his dick, and I breathed him in, drowning in the scent of him.
He groaned, his hips bucking involuntarily. “Fuck, you’re so good for me,” he muttered, his fingers tightening in my hair. “Such a good girl.”
The words sent a shiver down my spine, my pussy clenching with want. I sucked him harder, faster, the wet sounds of my mouth filling the room. I could feel his balls tightening, knew he was close. I reached up, cupping them in my hand, rolling them gently as I bobbed my head up and down. His breath hitched, and he cursed under his breath.
“Don’t stop,” he commanded, his voice thick with need. “Don’t you fucking stop.”
I didn’t. I sucked him like my life depended on it, my jaw aching but I didn’t care. I wanted him to come. I wanted to feel him explode in my mouth, taste him on my tongue. My pussy was soaked, my thighs trembling with the effort of staying still, but I kept going, kept sucking, kept swallowing him down until he was fucking my throat with every thrust.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he hissed, his hips jerking uncontrollably. “I’m gonna—“
He cut off with a groan, his cock pulsating as he came, hot spurts of cum flooding my mouth. I swallowed every drop, mytongue milking him for every last bit, until he was shuddering above me, his hand still clenched in my hair.
I pulled back slowly, gasping for air, my lips swollen and slick with his release. He looked down at me, his eyes dark and possessive, and tugged my chin up to meet his gaze.
“Good girl,” he said, his voice low and rough. “You’re fucking perfect.”
And I knew, in that moment, I’d do anything for him. Anything.
Hebroughtmebackthe way he’d taken me apart—slow, in pieces, one thing at a time, except now he was handing each piece back instead of taking it away.
The binding first. He unwound the soft dark cloth from my wrists, careful, and then he took my hands in both of his and rubbed, thumbs working slow circles into the heels of my palms, up the insides of my wrists, bringing the feeling back, the blood back, and he asked me—low, into the quiet—to make a fist again, to wriggle my fingers, watching even now, even after, that I was all right. I was all right. I was more all right than I had been in a year and I couldn’t have said a single word about it.
Then the blindfold.
He didn’t pull it off. He eased it up from one eye, a sliver, let the gold of the lamp come in at the edge, let me find the room by degrees the way you let someone wake instead of dragging them up, and when he had it off he kept his hand over my eyes a moment longer, his palm warm, the light coming pink and soft through his fingers, and only then did he take the hand away and let me see him. His face. Close. Looking at me like I was the only thing in the world worth looking at, the real face, the one underthe grin, and I blinked up at him from somewhere very far down and very far away.
“There you are,” he said.
He wrapped me in something soft. A blanket, heavy and warm, and he got it all the way around me, tucked it, made a parcel of me, and then he gathered the whole parcel up against his chest like I weighed nothing, like I was a thing to be carried, and I let him, I let him carry me, and that was new, that was a thing I’d never once let anyone do.
“Water,” he said, and held a glass to my mouth, his other hand at the back of my head. “Drink. All of it. Don’t argue.”