She gets home and the quiet feels like judgment.
Not because she did anything she hasn’t done before.
Because this time she can’t pretend it was what she wanted.
She lies on her back and stares at the ceiling like it might offer a verdict. Her skirt is gone. Her shoes are kicked somewhere careless. The room is dim in that late-night way that makes everything feel like a confession.
It’s bothering her because it didn’t go the way her body thought it would.
He talked the right kink. He wore the right tone. He knew the vocabulary—danger, control, rough, consequences—like he’d memorized the language from clips and captions and other people’s stories. He enjoyed the idea of dangerous behavior the way some people enjoy the idea of weather: thunder as an aesthetic, not a storm you actually have to stand inside.
And when it came down to it—when her breathing changed, when her eyes got heavy, when the moment demanded something real—he didn’t know how to handle her.
Not because he didn’t “mean well.”
Because authority isn’t a mood.
Authority is a skill. A presence. A pressure you can trust.
What he had wasn’t authority. It was assumption.
Like he’d read a manual written by aliens about what girls like her want—step one, step two, say this, touch here, call her that—and then when he was in front of her he couldn’t make the words and movements land in the right order. A person trying to speak a new language in public, smiling too much, listening too little, hoping enthusiasm would cover the gaps.
Sure. She did things with him.
Her body responded because her body responds—because she’s built for surrender and she’s starved enough that almost-right can still get a reaction.
But the whole time, inside her head, she could feel herself doing the thing she hates:
Directing.
Correcting.
Teaching.
Not playfully. Not as a flirt.
As if she had to keep telling him how to hold her—how to touch her, how to talk to her, how to make the danger feel like care instead of chaos.
And the worst part is that she did it anyway.
She gave him the map. She handed him the script.
She watched him try to perform it.
And when it still didn’t work, she felt something sour bloom in the back of her throat: the familiar mix of shame and anger that shows up when she realizes she’s the only one in the room who knows what she actually needs.
Her hand is in the drawer beside her bed now, fingers curled around the blade.
Not using it.
Just turning it, slow.
Metal catching the dim light.
A small weight that makes her feel anchored to something real.
She rolls it across her palm like a coin. Like a worry stone. The edge is there—present, patient—like it’s always been.
She thinks about what she wanted tonight.
Not romance.
Not tenderness.
Impact.
A hand that doesn’t hesitate. A voice that doesn’t fake certainty. A man who can feel her shift and respond without her having to translate herself into instructions.
Someone who understands that “rough” isn’t the same thing as “careless.”
That “danger” isn’t the same thing as “unsafe.”
That dominance is not a collection of lines—it’s credibility, earned in the moments where you could take more and choose not to.
She stares at the ceiling harder, like she can pressure an answer out of it.
Who actually has that?
Who could give her what she wants without making her feel like she has to keep the whole structure from collapsing?
Why can’t she find someone who matches her drive?
Maybe that’s the secret: that what she wants is so specific it doesn’t exist in the wild.
Or maybe she’s the problem.
The thought comes clean and cold:
Maybe I’m broken.
Maybe the only way I can find something that completes me is breaking someone else—just enough—to make us fit my mold.
The blade slides between her fingers again, a slow, practiced motion. She hates how calm it makes her feel. She hates how easy it is to reach for something sharp when her mind gets loud.
Her phone lights up on the bed beside her, a soft rectangle of light in the dark.
A message from a local boy she’s friends with.
Nice. Gentle. The kind of person who doesn’t talk in kink at all. The kind of person who might not even be interested in sex, or maybe just doesn’t live in that language.
Her mouth lifts into a small smile anyway.
Like her body is relieved by the simplicity.
Like some part of her wants the break from being a storm.
She picks up the phone and replies before she can overthink it:
hey want to meet up after dark?
Then she flips into the private tabs, the ones she pretends are just curiosity, just release, just nothing.
Her gaze hovers over the search bar for half a second—one last chance to be the version of herself that shuts the door on certain thoughts.
Her thumbs type it before she can flinch: forced sex
She stares at the words like they’re not hers.
Like she’s watching herself from across the room.
And somewhere underneath the arousal, underneath the shame, underneath the old familiar pull toward danger, a darker question rises—quiet, serious, and too honest to ignore:
Can I hurt people the way people have hurt me?
Cycle II · “The Hidden Life” · 14
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