Playing Seriously

My hair came back away from my neck while I was laughing in my apartment kitchen with Jason. That was my first mistake.

"The fuck is that?" he asked, dangerously. Where my black hair came away from the side of my neck was a small, circular blotch. A love bite, from the night before. When Hector had come over.

My pulse quickened. I didn't turn my head up to look him in the eye. Jason was sweet, but intense, and he knew I needed to stop seeing Hector...and he knew I knew. Hector treated me like a pet fish: no attention unless he was "feeding" me in some way.

"Hey. What is that?" Jason repeated, less a question now and more a demand. My light brown eyes were beginning to rim with tears. I knew he'd be disappointed in me--I certainly was--and I knew he'd forgive me, but he'd hold me accountable, and I don't want to be accountable, I just want to let Hector use me because I love him. He treats me like shit, but I do. Jason doesn't think it's love and he's told me so, but it is, it's what I know.

I turn a little bit and look up at Jason. He's at least nine inches taller than me, maybe even a foot. I try to will my eyes dry, but I know he sees. I try to force my voice steady, but I know he hears. That damn boy knows everything and he's still making me tell him! In an attempt at nonchalance, I state, "Hector came over last night."

And I know Jason was hoping for another explanation, because I could see his eyes drop in disappointment, and then briefly blaze and turn cold and hard. He's so intense. I like that side of him, but sometimes it scares me. And sometimes it turns me on, like a little? I can't tell if it's his eyes like that that get me a little bit or if my response to trouble is just to disarm the person any way I can, but he's so big, and I'm just...so sorry. The guilt comes crashing down on me in the silence following my statement, so hard that I can't look at him anymore. I just want him to beat me, throw me to the ground and stomp on me like the piece of shit I am. I must be shit. I'm so worthless that Hector won't even look at me after we're done fucking. I disgust him. God, just let Jason kill me! I can't stand him looking at me like that! My eyes begin to fill with tears and now I want a hug. I want his embrace. I want him to tell me it's ok, it's not a big deal, like he's done every other fucking time. Oh God, just...just...

And I stand there with my arms at my sides, staring at his upper stomach as he leans against my counter. And finally the rage just overcomes me, the hatred I have for myself, and I want him to do it, I want him to fucking break me. I steel myself again to look into those blue eyes, guardedly cold. I can feel the fire dancing behind them. I steady myself and say, quietly, less sure than I intended to be, "It's okay if...if you want to hit me."

The eyes blaze, burning more brightly and angrily than I had ever seen before. Oh God, he's going to do it! I see the muscles in his shoulders tense for a split second. Just let him, I need it. I need Hector to be associated with pain, physical pain. Emotional pain clearly doesn't keep me away. Just hurt me Jason! Hurt me or I'll start fucking cutting again! Anything but this guilt!

He's still staring at me. My internal monologue has only taken about five seconds. Five good seconds of those blazing eyes dimming and dimming into stone blue. I relax a little physically, but I'm screaming internally.

He rolls his shoulders menacingly and says in his low, threatening voice, the little bit of fire creeping back into his eyes, "Is that what you want me to do?" He says it softly at first. "You want me to hurt you so that you can have the satisfaction of pain, so you can offload your guilt onto me, who will have to live with whatever I do to you my whole life?" He's getting angrier now, and I'm afraid. He just said he doesn't want to hit me, but he looks like he's going to, oh my God, please, help me Jason. He pushes himself away from the counter with the hands he had placed on the edge. He towers over me. We're so close now, he couldn't possibly hit me from this close...

But he's right, this is unfair, it would be on his conscience, hurting a much smaller, frailer girl like me unprovoked. "I'm s--" I try to say, but his right hand has come up, forcing my mouth shut, his palm on my chin, thumb and index on the sides of my jaw. I don't have any choice now but to shut up and look into his eyes as he talks. My arms haven't even moved yet. "No," he says, "you aren't sorry at all. Save your bullshit for someone else. If you were really sorry you wouldn't fucking do it." I want to tell him that I meant I was sorry for asking him to hurt me, but my teeth are shut tight and my fear default is to keep my face like iron too.

He pushes me away by the neck like he's throwing a fish back in the water. I stumble a few steps backwards as he turns away from me and takes a deep breath. I've never seen him like this before, having to control himself so much, so close to just losing it. I don't know if I want him to anymore.

"Alright," he says, his back still turned toward me, speaking with his head tilted up toward the microwave like he was getting loose for an endurance challenge, "tell me what happened. Just tell me what happened."

How do I tell him I invited Hector over? How do I tell him how lonely I was last night, how much I just wanted someone to tell me I'm worth something? How do I tell him the agony I went through trying to stop myself from texting him only to do it and regret it and be anxious for the hour it took him to reply, then hope he didn't mean it when he said he was going to show up? How do I tell him it's my fault, it's always my fault?

"He...He asked if he could come over and I said it was okay."

Jason whirled around, fire back in his eyes, and squeezed my throat between the palm of his hand and the wall. My head hurt from its own collision, but Jason had knocked my thoughts from my brain. My arms finally came up, but I just let my hands rest on his wrist. I could still breathe, mostly. "You fucking liar! Why can't you just tell the truth to anyone about anything ever? You can't fucking tell the truth to yourself! Your diary is just a menstrual log, your therapist is fed up with the barriers, and I'm the last fucking ally you have because everyone else is absolutely sick of your shit!"

I read it in his eyes. This was it. I'm a piece of shit. I deserve this. I deserve anything he does to me. He's right. Just choke me more, please, make it hurt, take my pain onto yourself. If I suffer I didn't do anything really wrong, and I can't take having been wrong.

His voice gets low and dangerous again. He's let go. My lie did it and he's disgusted with me too. "Okay. You really want a fucking punishment don't you?" I don't say anything. I'm not sure I could, but I don't even try. I just look at him, as hardened as I can. Suddenly he squeezes my neck hard, front and sides. I can feel the blood pumping in my head as I open my mouth involuntarily. My hands squeeze his wrist in turn, my body trying to save itself, my brain hoping he just makes me suffer.

We just stay like that for a while. I can feel my face getting redder. I can hear the blood in my ears loudly. I stay keeping eye contact with him, daring him to go further, daring him to do this to me. I can feel my eye contact fading as the edges of my vision start to darken. I know I'm looking at him with only glazed eyes, and I think I might be drooling on his wrist a little. I can't tell, my face is mostly numb. I can feel my brown eyes start to shut. Oh my God, he's actually going to kill me! That was my last thought before I blacked out.

I woke up slumped over and panting on the floor. I didn't have any pain, so clearly Jason caught me. Or maybe I'd been out long enough that it didn't hurt anymore? Regardless, Jason was still standing over me while I got myself together. I looked at him as I stood up. The fire was gone from his eyes, mostly. He wanted more, but he was concerned that he'd gone too far. "I'm okay," I panted out. "Good," he replied, "Now just think of that every time you think about calling Hector over here."

I shook my head. "What do you mean, no? You need more?" I kept looking at the kitchen floor from my position sitting against the wall. The paint and floorboards felt so cool against my skin. He knelt down beside me. "Hey. I asked you, do you need more?" His tone had changed...he was actually asking me if I needed more punishment to stay away from Hector! I stayed still for a second and he wrapped his hands around my throat, one in the front, one on the back, just as a warning. I nodded and he squeezed again. He didn't squeeze as hard this time, but I let my jaw drop open once more and made little rattling sounds as I breathed laboriously. How long would he keep me like this?

Just as I thought that, he began to stand up, pushing me up with him by the neck. I looked at him out of the corner of my eye. He wasn't watching my eyes, he was looking at my breasts through my cropped tank top! He began to squeeze harder with his front hand so I couldn't breathe at all, pulling me away from the wall while he did it. My legs started to go weak and he eased me down to my knees gently, keeping me on the edge of unconsciousness. Then all of a sudden he let go and I gasped and fell forward, barely catching myself with my hands before I hit the floor. My head sagged and my ribcage was going crazy as I hyperventilated and gasped my way back to life. I felt his hands on my bare mid-back, material being peeled away as the baby blue spaghetti strap crop top found its way over my head and down around my hands on the floor. I was wearing a no-strap cupped bandeau, also light blue, around my B cup breasts and faded skinny jeans with a rope belt. Nothing much between me and the world.

Once I had caught my breath I looked up at him, my black hair falling everywhere. I had decided that anything he did to me I was going to take stone-faced. I needed to suffer through this.

He looked down at me. "On the bed." I got up slowly, leaving my crop top on the floor, and walked the ten feet over to my bed and sat down on the edge.

"Don't make this hard for me," he said.

I climbed onto the bed further, and sat cross-legged, looking at him. "Close your eyes." I did so and felt his gaze traveling over my body. From my thin, toned arms to my slender legs, over my stomach, so thin and flat it didn't spill over my hem when I sat like I was sitting. With my eyes still closed I reached my arms back and supported my petite body like that, knowing he'd get an easier look at my stomach and waist, get to watch my ribcage expand as I breathed.

"Keep you eyes closed. Get on all fours." I obeyed, getting on my elbows so that my back had a little arch in it to show off my ribs and the ass I knew was awesome. I heard him take out his cellphone. Good, let him have some pics.

"Stay still now," he said, and I could feel the bed move where he got on and as he was coming towards my ass. His hands started at the top of my back, near my shoulders, and moved down, framing my curved sides, to my medium-wide hips. They then went down around my waist, feeling how thin I am, the lightly-veiled abdominal muscles, down to the knot of my rope belt. He began to untie it.

When he had slid it through the belt loops, he took my hair up and put my head through the belt. Oh my God, he's going to choke me again, I thought. And I was right. He had looped it so that it would tighten all the way around when he pulled. My jaw fell open and I would have cried out if I could, but all I could do was make soft, pitiful gargling noises. I rose up on my knees, fingers scrambling at the rope for a few seconds before Jason pushed me back onto the bed and flipped me over.

I met his gaze. He wasn't stopping. I wasn't going to let him get away with only making me suffer halfway though. My chest rose and fell getting my air back and he told me to grab the headboard. I did and he got off the bed and pulled me as hard as he could by the ankles. I was still able to hold on, but that was quite a stretch. My ribcage I could feel poking sharply out of my skin. And those skinny jeans, he just reached right up to my hips and slid them off. I could feel the movement of his hands down my legs.

Once I was just in my bra and panties, he straddled my tiny waist, the rope in his hands, and ran his hands over my ribs, squeezing at them, pushing higher until he got to my own hands, still on the headboard, and tied them together up there, so I couldn't move. He then sat on my tiny stomach and yet again wrapped his hands around my throat. I kept eye contact as long as it was possible to, but I didn't last very long. I hadn't had much air in my lungs to begin with, being stretched like that, then when he sat on my stomach a lot of the rest was pushed out and couldn't be filled back in.

He didn't let me go out all the way though, only to moderately dim. He flipped me over so my hands had to be crossed, then unstrapped my bra, leaving my whole upper body exposed. The panties were easy, so they were gone next. But I heard him unzip his pants and totally accepted my fate. He rubbed his dick all over me, flipping me over a few times so he could shove it in my mouth and rub it all over my ribs.

Finally, with an animalistic grab of my hips, he lifted my lower body up and fit himself inside me, squeezing my waist terribly. My back was arched down, and he leaned on me like that. It hurt so much. But he was down on his hands and knees, covering me completely, when his hand wrapped around my throat and he started thrusting harder, coming inside me right when I was about to pass out one more time.