I developed rituals. Counted floor tiles to pass the time. Held my breath under blankets until I passed out. Taught myself to dislocate emotionally during ‘punishment,’ so I could leave the body behind. The body became an object. A house I visited when necessary. But never where I lived.
He didn’t want a sanitized version of my pain. He wanted the truth in its rawest form. The cracked bone. The unfiltered nightmare. The parts that made most people recoil, he kissed those first.
He didn’t pity me.
He recognized me.
And that did more for my healing than any therapist ever could.
We didn’t fall in love in the usual way, he stole me. Trapped me into a cell, locked the door and watched through a camera in the corner.
And when the door opened, he was there.
Standing in the doorway like a god of war.
Unmoved by my fear.
That’s the kind of man he was, he understood fear on a molecular level.
He knew how to make me doubt my own breath.
He never needed to yell. Never needed to hit.
He could just lean against a wall in absolute silence and make me sweat. Make me question if my heart was beating too loud. If he could hear it.
He controlled me with stillness. With that pause before the gesture. With the way he looked at me like he already knew my next ten moves, and how I’d fail every single one. He didn’t need threats. He was the threat. His presence said enough.
Just being in the same room as him made the air heavier. Like I was constantly being measured and always coming up short. He could sit there, silent and still, watching me unravel without lifting a finger, and somehow I’d still find myself whispering‘‘I’m sorry’’—for sins I haven’t even committed.
And that terrified me.
But it also turned me on.
Because fear and desire speak the same language. They run on the same current. They bloom in the same twisted part of the nervous system.
Every time he entered the room, I felt it, like electricity snapping beneath my skin. My breath would falter. My muscles would lock. My thoughts would scatter into white noise. I didn’t know if I wanted to run or fall at his feet.
And he knew.
He’d tilt his head when I backed into a wall, smirk like he’d already won, and do nothing.Letting me hang in that unbearable tension between terror and arousal until I couldn’t tell them apart anymore.
He made me wet with a look, made me ache without ever touching me.
He never asked for permission. He didn’t need it. He didn’t take, either. He waited. Waited until I offered myself. Until the fear inside me twisted into hunger. Until I stopped flinching... and started wanting.
That was his art.
That was his violence.
He didn’t steal my body.
He made me give it.
I stopped tiptoeing around my triggers. I let them roar. I stopped shrinking to fit into other people’s expectations. With him, I could be sharp. I could be loud. I could be ruined and want more.
He gave me back my body.
He kissed the cigarette burns and bruises like they were scripture. Touched the places I avoided in mirrors. Told me I wasn’t broken, I was reshaped.Forged.
