You close your eyes and you want for nothing. Spin for me, and she does, lips closing into a sly smile, silk snapping around her ankles and you want to press your lips to the fading pockmarks on her forehead, normally hidden by a messy fringe and a whippet-quick snarl. Chicken pox when I was twelve, she says with a sigh, fingers dancing over the curve of your spine and smirking when you gasp, heat pooling in the pit of your stomach as her nails scrape fresh welts and come away crimson. Her lips part slowly, deliberately, and she makes a sound of pleasure at the taste of your blood, eyes dark with want and danger, always danger, because this is the girl who takes a razor to your back like a fucking artist, painting swirls of copper across your skin and hissing, always hissing, Quiet, pet! For fuck’s sake, I’ll have to start all over again while you try not to whimper or to choke when she wraps her bloody hands around your throat at the end of the night. You go to sleep that way, waiting for her grip to loosen on your throat, the cotton of the bedspread soaked with her sweat and your tears, the scent of fear and sex so heavy in the air that you taste it on your tongue as your jaw finally unclenches and you take your first breath.
