Humiliation

I was wearing my mother-in-law’s black lingerie set when the door opened. Lucía hadn’t brought only Patricia with her. My mother was there too.

When he told her to scrub the floor on her knees, she hadn’t done anything wrong. That was the test: obey without punishment, prove that his hand was the only measure.

When I saw him get off the train, he was no longer the boy I remembered. In that moment I thought my husband would have to learn to share, even if he never knew how.

Hayashi’s voice hit me like a blunt удар: the contract extended forty-five more days. It was on page 492, and we’d signed without reading it.

The first time I saw him with her, I wanted to kill him. The second time he walked through my door without knocking, I understood the rules had changed forever.

I was on my knees in the dog run, handcuffed and unable to move, while they laughed and their dogs circled closer and closer.

When Marta told me she’d found the four perfect women for my punishment, I knew there was no turning back. That same afternoon I signed the contract without reading half of it.

My heels were killing me and the wig was itching, but when that man looked at me from across the room, I knew the night had only just begun.

I’d rejected him a hundred times, called him the ugly duckling in front of everyone. When I opened my eyes, my wrists were hanging from a bar and he had a whip.

When Carla took off her shirt and sat on my husband, I knew the game had crossed a line none of the four of us wanted to come back from.

Camila was already on the bed when I walked in. She looked at me with that smile of someone who knows something you still don’t, and then the Master closed the door behind us.

When we got off the plane we had a check and a secret. The check paid the debts; the secret, though, can’t be erased, not even with the tattoo covered.

I hadn’t done anything wrong. Even so, while I scrubbed the floor on my knees, I felt my body belonged to him more than ever.

When the air returned to my lungs and he turned on the red camera, I knew that night of domination had only just begun and I could no longer go back.

They tied me up in the park in broad daylight and no one came to help. They had planned it well—much better than I had.

They didn’t give him water in a cup. They poured it over her foot, and he had to lick it from the leather straps if he wanted to survive.

There was something in her eyes when she turned around that should have worried me. It wasn’t the anger of an irritated neighbor. It was a promise.

She had done nothing wrong, and he wanted to see her on her knees with a cloth in her hand. She would do it, because that was what she had chosen to be for him.

When I opened my eyes, my wrists were held above my head and I wasn’t wearing a thing. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was that he was smiling.

She looked him up and down and said, “You walk like you’re asking permission to exist.” She was right. And that was exactly what she wanted from him.