You say you want to cook for me.

You say it while we lie there, naked, your body wrapped around mine and your fingers coasting along my forearm. Your lips are buried in my hair, and you’re breathing me in, quiet. You’re hard behind me, nudging up against my cunt. I want to cook for you. Light up your face with something good, tasty.

You say you want to travel the world together, to venture places you’ve never been. That I’ve never been. We can see every sight there is to see and discover things together. We can get lost in the Bermuda Triangle. Your fingers lace with mine, your breath heavier now. I want to see the world with you. Disappear with you.

I want to make you happy, you say.

Later, you’ll roll on top of me, body heaving over mine, lips pressing, suffocating. Rough. You know I like it like this, the way your entire body can shift me up, how you can bury yourself so far in me I think I’ll break. I want to make you come. I want your sighs, your shudders. I want you, always you. When you finish and I’m trembling, you’ll shove your fingers in your wake, thrusting them in the heat of your come to fill me against walls too tender and weak. I’ll be moaning, whimpering. I want you to come for me, forever. I want everything you have.

I want to own you, you say.

When I have surrendered, exhausted, blissed, you’ll curve your fingers around my neck. Your eyes lock with mine, two dark holes staring over me. I want your life. I want you. You are mine.

I’ll fight you. I always do. I’m twisting, writhing, crying against the novelty of our crimson, satin sheets. But my body is caught up in you, in the fingers of your other hand slipping inside every hole. Your teeth gnash my breast, and your inhalation reminds me who you are, what this is. Who I am.

I am yours.

You will fuck me like this until I come again.

On the balcony, you open up my robe. Your prying fingers are in my slit, with the neighbors right there on their adjacent patio. I don’t want them to see, don’t want them to hear how you speak to me. Not when you’re like this. But I want them to know how you love me. I want them to know I own you, body and soul. I’m quivering at the press of your fingers, hating that I love it when you do this. Hating you. 

Besides, don’t you want them to see you happy? you say.

After dinner, you brush aside my hair. Your fingertips graze the curve of my shoulder. When you kiss the back of my neck, it is warm and gentle. Tender.

But you are none of these things when you bend me over the oven. Your nails scratch at my thighs before your fingers dig inside.

Why do you make me crazy like this? you say.

I can hear your words over my utterances. They are raspy, angry things that make it hard to believe your fingers still feel this good. This is our once-whispered vacation—you inside me. My skirt is over my ass and you are fucking us away. Thrusting deep enough to push off my sanity, to make me forget.

I want to love you, you say. I want to, but I can’t when you’re difficult like this.

There are tears in my eyes when I come. You’re finished not all that long after, your semen dribbling along my thigh. I can feel it tracing an ugly path down to the inside of my knee, but I don’t move—not when you’re like this. Not as you button your pants, and wander off to grab your keys.

I think I want to leave you, you say.

I still haven’t moved once I hear your car, a rumble off and away in the distance. My fingers grip the burners on the stove, and I watch the white of my knuckles spreading over the flush of sated skin. Your come has made its way to my ankle, now, and I keep wondering if this could have gone differently.

If maybe I’d never said yes when you said you wanted to cook for me.