Hold­ing Beauty in the Palm of My Hand

She kneels on the floor and pleads with me to stop. Her lit­tle hands push against me in an instinc­tive yet futile ges­ture to keep the pain away.

To keep the source of the pain away. Me.

Her face con­torts in ago­nized antic­i­pa­tion when she feels my fin­gers upon her ten­der breasts all over again and her instinc­tive phys­i­cal response is replaced by a ver­bal one, uttered plain­tively, dream­ily, almost intro­spec­tively, not really directed to me but to her­self. A mantra like a rail to cling to, to keep from falling,

“No no no no no no no…”

And I clamp down on those poor nip­ples yet again and she throws back her head in a silent cry. Her eyes lose focus and her stac­cato breath catches as if she was fac­ing a tor­nado; she is hurt­ing so much that she can­not focus even on breathing.

And dur­ing all this, when her vision is blocked by a thou­sand black stars and her mind is short-​circuited by protest­ing nerve-​endings, I feel her lit­tle hand search­ing for and find­ing my erec­tion, as hard as her soul is soft in this very moment. Dur­ing all this, she still wants to please me, her tormentor.

She finally finds her breath and her dart­ing eyes find mine and her del­i­cate brow twists into the look I have come to trea­sure so. Like so many times before, I mar­vel at this mag­i­cal creature’s courage and strength; she never shies away from me, she never looks at me in hor­ror and tries to scram­ble away. No mat­ter where I lead her, she fol­lows as grace­fully and effort­lessly as a wisp of perfume.

I real­ize that my fin­gers are still slick from shov­ing them into her ear­lier and I roughly push them into her throat and make her gag on them before pulling them out again. Her brow twists even deeper into that look. She has come to the point of no return.

I whis­per, “Let go, sweetheart.”

And she does. Her beau­ti­ful eyes well up and her first sob stabs me right in the heart and makes my erec­tion even harder. Even as I con­tinue to hurt her, she throws her slen­der arms around my neck, cry­ing hard, sob­bing deeply, never think­ing the thought of pulling away from me. Wad­ing against the emo­tional assault, she only wants to get closer, to seek com­fort from the very source of her pain, to wrap all her gen­tle soft­ness around her tor­men­tor even while I con­tinue to tor­ture her.

In the pri­mal dance between the sadist and the masochist I assault her emo­tion­ally and phys­i­cally; I give her no quar­ter and I invade not only her body but her mind and her soul. But she assaults me right back in her own way; she assaults me with beauty, with accep­tance, with radi­ant warmth, with sooth­ing soft­ness. As over­whelm­ing I am to her, she is dev­as­tat­ing to me. And I would have it no other way.

I kiss her cheeks and I taste the salti­ness of her liq­uid emo­tions mak­ing room for new ones. As her tears abate I raise her up and lay her on the bed. I brush aside the mat­ted hair on her damp fore­head and I kiss her face to calm her and com­fort her. My fore­arm rests between her breasts and my hand rests by her col­lar­bone and I whis­per my approval and my plea­sure in her ear.

Her eyes lock with mine and with­out break­ing con­tact she shifts her head slightly so that her throat falls into my hand. Word­lessly, her eyes flash the most pri­mal of fem­i­nine mes­sages, “Take me. Pos­sess me.”

I squeeze her throat gen­tly to begin with. Then harder.

And harder.

I see in her eyes that she is falling into the world, the uni­verse that is only hers and mine when I take her air, when I hold her life in my hand. I lose myself in her pupil-​eclipsed eyes and I star­tle myself when I hear my own voice speak a truth that can­not be denied anymore.

“I love you.”

Her half-​open eye­lids snap open and her eyes search mine as if to ask if I mis­spoke or if she mis­heard. Those three words should always burst out from your chest and this is true right now; I can no more resist repeat­ing it than I could resist say­ing it to begin with.

“I love you.”

As soon as those words hit her con­scious­ness she orgasms with­out being touched, shak­ing under my arm with my hand securely hold­ing her breath in. Smil­ing, I watch her beau­ti­ful face con­tort, this time in plea­sure instead of pain. My heart reaches out to stroke her heart and finally I release her throat to allow her life-​sustaining air back for just a moment.

And as I clamp down on her throat again, she sac­ri­fices the last few sec­onds of fresh air that could have fed her lungs to look me in the eye and whisper,

“I love you too…”