A Shameful Morning.

I open my eyes to find my fingers are already in his hand as he is pulling away from me. He seems to have kissed my forehead. My hair smells of his aftershave, I'm fairly certain that's what woke me up. 

"Good morning, my love," he says to me, holding my fingers to his mouth and kissing every tip. 

My fingers smell of his aftershave, too. Usually, I cannot stand any fragrance, odour is easier to tell the truth, I only use unscented products and everything he buys for himself goes through the most stringent quality control at the helm of my unforgiving olfactory senses. Nothing passes. This aftershave didn't pass either, it came close but it didn't pass. He decided he would inflict it on me nonetheless and I grew to associate it with the feeling of being controlled and disregarded, I can tolerate a scent if it hurts my feelings, I suppose. 

"You're already dressed!" I exclaim, as I pull his fingers to my mouth to kiss them, "I was so..dead asleep." 

"You had a long night," he says, "You needed the rest."

I avert my gaze, looking down at my chest instead of up at him. The night was rough, and long, but I don't hurt. My body is unmarked, unbruised, uncut yet I feel as if I've been twisted in knots and left in the washing machine overnight. He didn't beat me at all, yet I feel so shaken. It's not quite fear, it's *that* feeling, the one that makes any of us do any of this. That feeling of gleeful subservience that can only be manifested in wry stone-faced silence, the kind that feels like a secret warmth inside your blanket when you're travelling in a bus full of people. That feeling of knowing there is dirt smeared all over your oily face as you stand underneath the unrelenting sunlight. That feeling of knowing the person in front of you *remembers* everything that happened the night before and could make you do it all over again at the drop of a hat. That feeling of exposure and vulnerability that isn't quite safe, because you know that the person to whom you've exposed your wounds is more likely to sprinkle salt on them, than numbing cream. He runs his fingers over my chest, past my abdomen and into the quilt that still covers my lower half. 

"If I touch you now, will I find that you're still incorrigibly desperately aroused?" He asks. 

I wail. It's a request and an apology. *Please don't do this, I'm sorry for being so pathetic and desperate.* I don't know when we started playing this game but it's the only version of arousal I understand now. He plays with me and denies me for months, then punishes me for being so turned on. He shames so much for being wet that I apologise instinctively now the moment his fingers touch my leaking hole, then he fucks it with everything he can find to discourage my need. He makes me display myself and inspects me for arousal and then penalises me if I am found responsive to his touch. It's a game made entirely of shame and in it, being human is punishable, and being made to be an animal is the punishment for that crime. It's a long game and every couple of months when he decides it's time to play it again, he guts me like a paralysed fish that is still breathing through its murder, unable to stop it and unable to die. 

His fingers slip through the quilt and head straight for my cunt. It's been shaved a little too well and too consistently, I prefer some hair, to hide behind, but he won't let me have it. He strokes it — softly and so slowly — I bite my lip and grip the sheets to keep myself from moaning out loud, but it doesn't seem to matter. His fingers circle in on my insides, prying out all the viscous shame and smearing it against my skin. 

"Tut, tut," he utters in his characteristically awful manner, "Just how much do I have to punish you to get you to stop being so desperate? Last night would have been enough for anyone, but you just cannot learn." 

"I'm sorry," I mumble, as I pull the quilt up to my face and try to bury myself under it. 

"You think you can hide?" He asks, "What are you hiding from? Is it what I am doing now or what I did to you last night?"

I can hear him laughing, it's a practised laugh that evokes a response that is too specific to be innocent. He pulls the covers off my face and my entire body in one fell sweep. It feels like a spotlight even though all the lights are off and only faint rays of sunlight are breaking in through the curtains. 

"I cannot stand to think about it," I say to him, "Yet it consumes my mind." 

"Why don't you tell me?" He asks, still playing with my wetness and my cunt, "Tell me what I did to you last night, spare no detail." 

I hate him. Sometimes he makes me feel like my heart, my soul and my body are just toys to him. I beg him with my eyes, but I know it's futile. I admit I do love this language between us — his commas are impatient, his gerunds are a sentence, I'm always the indirect object and my cunt takes the action of every verb — this language in which he tells me, with silence, that if I don't start speaking in a few seconds, he will punch me in the mouth. 

"Last night you tied my legs to the bedposts and sat between them," I begin, my eyes aren't quite closed, but they aren't looking at anything, "You teased me and warned me not to be a desperate mess." 

"But you were, weren't you?" He asks. 

I was. In no conception of the universe would it be possible for me to not be, I'll say this about the man, he is more dexterous than anyone I have ever met before him. He *learns* with his hands and the more time he has with an object, the more expertise he teaches himself. As trite and off-putting as it is for me to say this, I didn't know the things my cunt could feel until he got his hands on it. I thought my system was broken, and it is, but he showed me that things can break in all sorts of ways, the most delicious of which is when someone breaks them deliberately and with skill. 

"What happened after that?" He asks, his fingers circling around my clit, with the lightest of touches, beckoning to something horrible that lives inside me, desire. 

"You said I was being too pathetic so you brought some ice from the kitchen to make me behave," I say, as I steal a glance at him from the blur of need, "You rubbed the ice on my cunt for a long time." 

"But you were still a pathetic mess of need, weren't you?" He asks. 

I was. It seemed to work at first. It was so cold and it hurt, then it numbed me to everything, but he kept using his fingers alternatingly to make me sentient to his touch again. At some point I lost track of the difference between the ice and his fingers, everything felt like it was designed to drive me insane with need, or maybe it was his words. He kept telling me how disappointed he was that I couldn't control myself even at his behest, how sorry I needed to be in order to have any shot at forgiveness. He kept laughing when I begged him to stop, he kept telling me he would stick a dozen needles into my cunt if I even came close to orgasming, he kept drawing attention to my state of being. Describing it to me with editorialised adjectives instead of accurate nouns. 

"So I had to punish you even more, didn't I?" He asks. 

"You did, you brought all these clothespins and put them all over my cunt, it was okay at first, because I was cold and numb and then I started to feel them," I continue, "You pulled at them and fucked me with your fingers, every moment felt like death by a million cuts. You took them off after I begged for so long." 

"Awww, you poor thing, but you were still incorrigible, weren't you?" He asks. 

I was. I didn't mean to be. It was so horrible what he was doing to me. Every stroke of his fingers shook every single one of those pins like a seismic shock and each tremor lit up every nerve in shades of pain I didn't know I could experience. Pain wasn't being my friend and I've never been in that place, pain is on my side, that was the agreement I made with the monsters under my bed decades ago, but it's my cunt, it won't make any agreements with me. It seems to exist only to torment me from within, because some executive function in my brain decided that I should keep my friends close, and my enemies inside my pants. 

"Is that all that happened?" He asks, letting his fingers wander lower than my cunt, "Or was there..something else?" 

"You untied me, bent me over and fucked my ass with your fingers," I saw, bringing my hands over to my face and pushing my lashes down onto the gaps in my gaze. 

"Why would I do that?" He asks, in a tone so honeyed as he rubs his finger against my most resistant orifice, "Was that my decision?" 

"No," I admit, as I cover my entire face with my hands. 

My legs spread wider automatically. It's a learnt reflex, I cover my face with my hands at the peak of shame, it swirls like the effects of tequila inside my head, and my legs just, open. 

"Why did I do it then?" He asks, more sternly, so as to indicate that monosyllabic communication has no place in this households. 

"I asked you to," I force myself to say out loud. 

"Why would you ask me to do something like that?" He presses, "You know how much it debilitates you to be..touched like that. Why would you ask for that?" 

I know exactly why I asked, he led me to it. He led to the place where it was all I could offer in an acceptable attempt to be exonerated for sins he made me commit. I didn't forget how much I hate it, I didn't suddenly become a different person, well, to be a honest, a different person would have been welcome, a different person wouldn't have asked for it. I stare at him in silence, begging him not to make me say that words I was screaming out loud as his fingers plunged in and out of my asshole. 

"Answer me," he says, gritting his teeth to accentuate his imperatives, "Why would you ask for that?" 

"Because I deserved to be punished," I say, the words take the form of a cry, like I'm begging him to stop with intonation alone. 

"And now?" He asks, bringing his fingers up to my cunt again. 

"I still deserve to be punished," I say. 

He starts to slap my cunt the moment I utter the words. His slaps aren't the gentle taps of a palm that wishes to tantalise, they're loud and resounding, like a message sent in flesh, like a wordless threat delivered in the form of a severed toe. I press my hands into my face even harder, I can smell his aftershave, but through it, the scent of my arousal seeps into the room. I worry I will always smell it now, when I smell him on my skin. 

"I'm sorry," I beg, in vain hope of getting him to stop. 

"What's the point of apologising?" He asks, hitting me harder and faster, "You're never ever going to learn not to be a desperate bitch." 

"I will!" I declare, louder than I've spoken all morning, "I will learn, I promise." 

"You really believe that, don't you?" He asks. 

I nod my head. As I move, his fingers run accidentally against my swollen flesh, and the moans I've been holding back all morning start to escape my mouth. I want to believe I will stop, I do believe it, he has to know it's possible or he won't ever stop tormenting me this way, but I know he doesn't. Every inch of my body betrays my declaration. 

"I do," I say out loud, "I promise I'll be better. Please believe me."

"You're an idiot, my girl," he says, plunging his fingers back inside the depths of my shame, "You're a fucking fool."