“I wasn’t choking. Not even a little. I could breathe the whole time.”
“Why did you ask me to do that?”
“It’s a huge turn-on for me.” No. She can’t mean that. It’s too fucked up. Choking someone during sex is . . .
I recall what she said about Martin. He knew shit. Kinky shit. And it was good. I liked it. A-whole-fucking lot. “That sadistic son of a bitch taught you that, didn’t he?”
“Do you really want to go there?”
I move off Adelyn, roll to my back, and stare at the ceiling. Contemplating why in the world she asked me to do something like that. “Haven’t you been hurt enough?”
“I didn’t ask you to hurt me. And you didn’t.”
She’s wrong if she believes this is a game. “I’ve been choked. To the point of turning blue and passing out. More times than I care to recall. It’s not harmless.”
“It’s not about cutting off my oxygen to make me pass out.” Adelyn gets up and moves over on top of me. Straddling me. She grabs my wrists, pins my hands over my head. “It’s about this.”
“Which is what?”
“Control. And how I feel when you exert your strength over me. Domination. Power. Control. All of it turns me the fuck on.”
“Why?”
“There’s something primal and exhilarating about a man who takes complete control in the bedroom. That’s what it’s about for me. I want to feel desire. Real desire. I need a man who will grab me and make me feel small and vulnerable and feminine. Without hurting me.”
She releases my hands and sits upright, still mounted on top of me. “Outside of the bedroom, it’s all a level playing field. I’m an independent woman, and I control everything in my life. But in the bedroom . . . I want to be controlled by a strong man.”
“And choked.”
“I need an alpha male. I crave the dominance and show of strength he has over me.” She reaches for my hands and intertwines our fingers. “You’re the first man I’ve trusted in years. I couldn’t have let anyone else put their hands on me that way. It had to be you.” She releases my hands and leans over me, propping on her lower arms, but her hands grasp my face. She presses a soft, closemouthed kiss on my lips. “Only you, Thorn.”
She wants an alpha. A controller. A choker.
God help me, I like what I just did to her. I want to do it again. And that’s totally fucked up.
I spent my childhood being controlled, dominated, choked. What kind of person does it make me if I do those things to her? Even if it’s what she wants?
“I can’t, Max.”
She presses her forehead to mine. “You can. You did.” I did. And it was wrong.
So. Fucking. Wrong.
“But not again.”
“I saw your face. You liked my submission. You liked putting your hand on me like that. You weren’t repulsed. And in those few moments when you held my life in your hands, I belonged to you. I knew it. You knew it. And you liked it.”
Only a monster could love holding another person’s life in his hands. “You’re confusing me with your last lover.”
I grasp her hips and move her off me. “Don’t go, Thorn.”
“Where are my clothes?” She doesn’t answer, but I spot them on her dresser.
I yank on my underwear. “You shouldn’t have dropped something like that on me without any warning.”
“I bet you’ve never come so hard in your life.” Lucky guess. “Tell me if I’m wrong.”
I can’t. To do so would be a lie. “You’re not wrong.”
“See?” She leaves the bed and comes to me as I’m pulling on my jeans. “We’re good together. And that was only our first time.”
She kisses my chest and sucks my nipple into her mouth, biting down on it. And my dick spasms. “Imagine what it would be like after we learn how to fulfill one another’s sexual fantasies. Pure ecstasy.”
How can she feel it would work between us? So confident? Pure ecstasy? Fuck. Probably. But I’m scared as hell to know what her sexual fantasies are if she was brave enough to reveal her choking fetish the first time we’re together.
I pull my T-shirt on. “I’m sorry but this isn’t going to work for me.”
She steps away and wraps her arms around herself. Hiding her nudity from me. And I feel like a huge asshole.
I pick up one of the towels from the floor and wrap it around her. “We’re neighbors. We’re going to see each other. A lot. Where do we go from here?” I don’t want this to be weird. But I don’t know how it won’t be.
She looks so wounded. I didn’t want to hurt her. Physically or otherwise.
I think again of her scars. He hurt her. That’s not me. I can’t hurt her on purpose.
She forms a faux smile accompanied by glassy eyes. “We wave when we pass on the street, and we say hello when we see one another outside, and we resume our lives as they were before this relationship began, and we pretend this night never happened.” She pauses and looks toward the window. She takes a deep breath and adds quietly, “Another secret we add to our collection.”
Adelyn has come to hold a special place in my life. I don’t want any of those conditions. “No more hanging out? No more anything?”
She looks at the floor as she shakes her head. “No. I can’t. Not now.”
“Maybe we break for a day or so and see where things are when the dust settles.”
I see a tear fall from her cheek to the floor. And she covers her face with the end of the towel. “No.” She shakes her head. “I’m so humiliated I can’t even look at you. Please go.” She shouldn’t feel humiliated. I was unprepared.
I don’t know what I feel about this yet, but I don’t want to let her go.
“Max . . .”
“Just go, Thorn.”
* * *
No damn way I can concentrate on work today. Not after last night’s disastrous events with Adelyn.
It bothers the fuck out of me. All of it. But most of all, I hate knowing that son of a bitch who nearly murdered her taught her that kinky shit. And she likes it.
I can’t stop imagining some faceless asshole putting his hands around her throat.
>
What is the fascination with it?
Why does she like it so much?
Why did I like doing it to her?
I turn to the one source who won’t judge me for asking. The web.
I open a private window on my browser and do a search: choking during sex.
Choking has become the new third base.
Inspired by violent pornography.
Men want a princess in public and a whore in the bedroom.
Women want a prince in public and a sexual predator in the bedroom.
Some of the articles and posts I find are disturbing while others are . . . interesting.
Deep-rooted desires of domination are no longer taboo.
Stop asking her what she wants. Tell her what to do. Order her around the bedroom like you own her. Issue commands. You are in charge. She exists for your sexual pleasure. She exists to please you.
Choking is an indicator of your strength as a man. If you are an alpha male, a woman will crave your domination and show of strength.
Who the fuck writes this shit? And who the fuck does this shit?
Everything in my upbringing, from the time Mom and Dad got us, taught me this is not the way women should be handled. My parents invested a lot of time teaching me how to treat people respectfully, especially females. They taught me right from wrong and worked hard to undo all the wrong that had been done to me.
Choking Adelyn feels like I’m doing harm to her. Hurting her. In my mind, nothing could be more wrong.
Yet these articles claim otherwise. And Adelyn does too.
“You look exhausted. I’m hoping that’s a sign your date with Adelyn went really great.”
I jolt at the sound of Lawrence’s voice. Like a kid caught looking at porn. And that’s sort of what it feels like I’m researching.
I minimize the screen displaying the article “How to Choke a Woman During Sex.” Shit. Lawrence would flip out if she read that heading. Or saw the photo of a sexy couple where the man’s hands are wrapped around a naked woman’s throat.
“I didn’t get a lot of rest last night.” I couldn’t sleep. All I could think of was the disaster with Adelyn.