Domination

I hated him for the way he stalked me, but that morning under the fridge light I discovered his gaze made me tremble for reasons I refused to admit.

I thought I’d buried the woman who charged for her time. One offer from my own boyfriend was enough to wake her and take control of the night.

The woman who chained me in that basement wasn’t after pleasure: she meant to teach me, blow by blow, that my body no longer belonged to me and that her word was the only law.

My friendship with that rough but good-natured old man took a turn one afternoon over wine in a lost village, when he whispered what he planned to do to me.

I sat in the dim light, determined not to touch anyone and only to watch. But my fingers had other plans as I watched her give herself to two men a meter from me.

I found him hiding in the garage, frozen with cold. I never imagined that a year later I’d be the one inviting him into my bed and my marriage.

We went to confront him believing we were in control. It took only for him to close the office door for my wife and me to lower our eyes and obey every word.

I walked into that gray office ready to beg for a document. I left knowing that that night the one who’d be begging would be him, on his knees in his own house.

Maximiliano strutted around as the alpha of the room until she walked in. One whisper and her perfume were enough to bring his smoke-and-mirrors empire crashing down in front of everyone.

We worked in the same building, and one brush in the elevator was enough for me to understand I was about to lose something I thought untouchable: my will.

It was July, I was ruined and desperate. I crossed my sister’s garden looking for help; my nephew was waiting by the pool with a smile I didn’t know how to read in time.

When he lowered his voice to confess it, I thought of a thousand betrayals. None of them was this: he wanted to watch me in bed with his best friend while he sat there and missed nothing.

“Come at five. We need to talk about Saturday. Alone.” I wrote that to her in the morning, and since then I thought of nothing but hearing her come down the stairs.

At three in the morning she was still awake, her head on my arm, waiting for the exact moment I opened my eyes to begin.

I arrived at his door carrying a bag with my other skin inside it: corset, stockings, and heels. That night I stopped being Adrian and gave myself wholly as Selene.

She knocked on their door soaked by the rain, without pride and with nothing to offer but her body. They looked at her, looked at each other, and she knew it was all beginning again.

I went to his house to make him leave my partner alone. I left knowing I’d be back the next Sunday, and the one after, and every one after that.

It began as a fantasy we read together at night. Today Daniel fastens my heels before Bruno arrives—and he prefers it that way.

I had my ex’s blackmail on my phone and the law firm’s bill on my mind. When he saw the videos and smiled, I knew that fee wouldn’t be paid in cash.

I crossed half of Spain to leave that afternoon by the pool behind, but music and a stranger dragged me into repeating what I swore I’d never feel again.