Risk Tolerance #6
His mouth crashes onto hers, but there’s nothing kind to it.
Nothing like earlier at the party, his fevered response to his Russian diminutive on her tongue.
It’s a filthy kiss, intended to shut her up; like he’s cutting anger on her, like he wants to hurt her, and the threat of that intention—oh, it unfurls something damaged inside of her.
Something that aches to be harmed, again and again.
Bruises that want to be pressed, scars that want to be bitten. She wants him to hurt her.
Not letting him pull away, Lili tugs at his shirt, scrambling and clumsy. Aleksandr takes over fast, pulling his shirt over
his head, not bothering with the buttons, as she gets his belt undone, tripping backwards towards the bed, dragging him with
her. Before she can grasp anything like control, Aleksandr pushes her against the sheets, wrenching her wrists away from him.
He pins her down, forcing her legs apart, and she tries to kiss him, her back arching with how much closer she’s trying to
get to him, but he shoves her back against the mattress; it’s like he doesn’t want her to touch him. He grasps her knee, hitching
it high on his waist—blur of heat, breath, darkness, she’s disoriented; naked, dress discarded, underwear gone at the restaurant—the
strain of him pushing her other leg open, the hardness of him against her, and Lili opens her mouth to say something—what’s wrong?—but he thrusts into her, almost all at once.
She lets out a high, ragged gasp—surprise, force—head falling back against the pillow. The grunt ripped from his throat, as
he pulls out of her, and tries to thrust into her again—the shatter of hunger, the cascade of pain, clench of her body—it
makes her feel animal, used. She tries to grasp for him; she wants to feel obliterated. But bracing his arms over her, tightening
his hold on her wrists—trapping her—Aleksandr lowers his mouth to her ear.
“Let me in, Lili,” he says, and there’s cruelty in his voice. “Don’t you trust me?”
No—not that—no, she can’t—she can’t answer that. Ideas like trust, like falling. Please, she thinks, please just push me.
Instead of answering him, or listening to the struggle of her body telling her to slow down, she tries to adjust her hips—tries to let him in further, because whatever he wants to do to her, she’ll find a way to take it.
But rather than working with the weak movements, these attempts she’s making—her helpless, frustrated sounds as she tries to take him—he shoves into her again.
It bleeds over her vision, the force wrenching her shoulders.
In the rough overwhelm, it creeps into the corners of her mind—the sense that something is off. That look in the rain, that
tightening restraint in the car; this isn’t like that first night, or the morning after her birthday. There’s something else
here.
“Does it hurt, sweetheart?” A dark, tight murmur against her ear. His voice—it threatens to uncover meaning. Eloquence in
pain, and she doesn’t want that; what she shied away from in the shower weeks ago, what she uses sex to escape, not embrace.
She wants an agony that wipes her clean, swallows her whole; that doesn’t push her to examine the texture of that hurt inside
of her, uncover its twisting roots.
Lili starts to struggle for it, straining against his hold on her wrists.
But another harsh thrust makes her cry out. Then he’s inside of her, all of him. Slick with sweat, her body can’t figure out
how to understand this mess of pleasure and panic, as he fucks her past the remaining resistance, into the give of her body—feeling
that glimmer of pleasure build again, grasped in the car—teetering between hurt and hunger, she keeps trying to lean into
the roughness, the anonymous agony—but it keeps growing, this depth reached that could make her cry, this complicated release—this
darker pain she does not want.
“I thought you liked it when I hurt you, Lili.” There’s a wretched intimacy to his words. It tears a moan from her throat,
because yes, she does, she does, except—hurt her, yes, give her suffering at his hands, but don’t make her feel her own pain. That’s the deal, that’s their exchange: pull her
out of herself, don’t push her deeper into the threats carried within her own skin, the shadows behind her anxieties and aspirations,
the fear that laces her thoughts, the lack that aches inside of her, a scream she’s never let out.
“Aleksa—” A hoarse sound cracks in her chest. She’s close to begging him to fuck her harder, begging him to leave her alone.
Part of her only wants to give and give, until she’s gone.
“What do you want from me, Lili?” His voice tears out of him harsh, strained.
It’s too much: what she wants, and what he might give her instead.
“I—” Lili breaks off, breath rasping, and she’s just—she’s exhausted.
Exhausted, so tired she could let it all go.
The struggle against loss she will not grieve, the enormity of her desire—a life stolen from her, memories she never got to have—the reality of how little she might actually mean, to deserve treatment like this; all that she fights with daily.
Release, that’s all she wants—the absolution of herself, the loss of her own responsibility for it.
“Just—just . . . just hurt me,” she whispers, urging him. “Hurt me . . . that’s all I—want, just hurt me.”
She’s never really realized how dark his eyes are. How easily he can hide from her, how little he can let her see. But she
sees it, all of it, before he closes her out now: the anger that fractures black, bitterness and pain—no sign of pleasure,
nothing—and she doesn’t understand, she doesn’t understand.
Another thrust—particularly hard, particularly vicious. “This? This is what you want?” Aleksandr snarls, grip tightening around
her wrists so hard she can feel bruises forming.
She feels like something close to being ruined. It makes her body give up a little more, struggle draining. He feels it, and
pushes further.
“I want to break you, Lili—fucking break you,” he spits. The intensity in his voice isn’t just anger, it’s agony: inscrutable and confusing, but it’s the mirror,
she somehow knows, of her own anguish, the part of her that only wants him to harm her.
She moans, wanting to grasp for him, because God, she wants that: to be broken, and not have it be her fault. It’s terrifying,
how much she can handle. The sense that she might keep pushing past what she can survive—that there’s an emptiness waiting
for her—but no, not just emptiness—not the physical, mind-altering pain she craves, but that agonizing, bleeding hurt she’s
buried, grief emerging between the shattered pieces of herself, the hurt of her life—and she can’t—Lili can’t—she will not let herself be seen in that.
She can’t risk that depth of exposure, the finality of that fall.
It’ll take everything from her.
Tilting his hips, Aleksandr pushes—pushes closer, pushes further, and Lili has to gasp, because that’s it. That’s as far and
as deep as anyone will ever go. “More,” she urges, desperate, wanting the physical oblivion. “Fuck—please, more—”
Already on edge, she can feel herself about to come. Her body starts to shake. She tries to lean into it—away from questions, away from consequences—ready to black out on some high of skin pleasure, get rid of herself.
But before she can, he grabs her throat.
A resounding, sickening—inexplicable—surge of hurt hits her.
“Aleksa—” she tries to gasp out. Under his hold, her throat contracts around a sob. Why is she crying? She both wants this, and wants to dissolve.
“Take what you asked for,” he grunts, thrusting into her so hard that a groan—choked—stutters out of her. Her vision dances
with sparks of black. Too little light, too little air: and her, there—her, too much. Everything inside of her shies away
from and rushes towards that. It’s like he somehow knows the depths of what she’s avoiding, feeding emotional pain desperately
to physical hurt. What she doesn’t want to see—cannot let herself see. All her striving, all her running, all her conviction,
all her constant want—nothing in the face of this calcified, bottomless suffering she’s repressed, what’s now starting to
stir in the face of this physical pain, as if released. This isn’t what she thought she was getting here.
Too far, some protection inside of her tries to scream. This is too far.
“I ca—can’t brea—” Breath keeps failing her. “Can’t—”
“Good.” His voice is hoarse. Nothing is left in her lungs, and her blood starts to throb. “You can only breathe when I let
you.”
Inexplicably, relief washes through her, keener than climax. The fog in her head, the stretching ache in her hips, the tangle
in her chest: It all cracks open, the responsibility for it all—just gone. She needs that; she needs all of that disappeared.
Somehow, her hand—weak—finds his grip on her throat; tries to press it tighter—
It’s like something breaks inside of him.
“Is this all you want from me?” he rasps.
From no part of her, can she summon a voice. Her head aches with tears, wet eyelashes, hitches of her dying breath—unable
to fully sob, lungs struggling, body still trying to fight when she’s so close to giving up.
Because there is so much. So much she’s constantly trying to reach, across this spread of loneliness, gray and engulfing, old smoke, signs of fire long gone, infiltrating even the moments she might feel happy.
This unreachable space she can never quite cross between her and her friends, between her and everything else—the world she’s reaching for, separated by this suffocating grayness, making her feel forsaken, the drumbeat of the belief that if she were to disappear, if she just wasn’t here anymore, it wouldn’t mean much to anyone.
Those that love her, they’d live past her.
With momentary sadness, but they would live past her.
She, though—she has never lived past the loss of the life she never fully had, her parents she cannot grieve, because beyond