Chapter 3: Morning After

I stood in front of the full-length mirror on the back of my bedroom door, naked, the soft light from the hallway spilling across my skin. The apartment was quiet except for the refrigerator’s faint hum and the distant sound of a car passing on the street below. Amber’s door was closed; she had finally gone back to bed around 5 am after lying with me for another hour or two after my nightmare. I had told myself I would look, take stock the way I had that first morning after the party, but the moment my eyes moved over my body, the memories rose like heat.

The marks were fewer this time. Not the dense map of purple and red that had covered me two weeks earlier. Still, the ones that remained were deeper, more deliberate, and they hurt when I pressed them. I started at my left breast. Just below the nipple, another, almost on the soft underside, dark bruise the size of a thumbprint had already begun to purple at the edges. The center was an angry red-black, the skin tender and slightly raised. I remembered the exact second it formed. Tyler had twisted the nipple hard between finger and thumb while he was buried inside me on the kitchen counter, the pressure sharp enough to border on real pain. My back had arched. The cry that left my throat had not been protest. It had been the sound of an orgasm that hit at the same instant the pain peaked. His voice had been low against my ear, “That’s it. Feel it. You’re so fucking perfect when you take it like that.”

I touched the bruise lightly with the tip of one finger. The soreness flared, bright and immediate, and a matching pulse answered between my legs. I told myself the pain was penance. I had earned every mark. They were battle trophies, proof that I had been wanted with a force that left evidence. Mike had never left a single bruise on me in three years. No lover before him had either. Their hands had been careful, almost reverent. Tyler’s hands claimed. The difference felt like the difference between being held and being taken, and right now, standing in the quiet of my room, the latter still felt like the only thing that made sense.

I moved lower. On the soft inner curve of my left thigh, close to the edge of my labia, a clear set of tooth marks stood out in red. The skin around them was puffy and warm. No blood had broken the surface, but the indentations were deep enough that I could still feel the shape of his teeth when I brushed the area with my fingertip. The memory arrived whole: the second time in his bed, my legs up by my head, his body positioned below me, between my thighs, his mouth open against the sensitive skin while his fingers had been buried in me. He had bitten down just as I started to come, the pain and the pleasure locking together until I could not tell which one was driving the climax. “Look at me,” he had said. “I want to see your face when you give it to me.” I had looked down. I had come so hard the edges of my vision went white.

I pressed the mark harder than I needed to. The ache was sharp, almost nauseating for a second, and then it settled into a heavy throb that made my clit swell. I told myself it was lust, pure and mutual. He must have marks of his own ... scratches down his back, the imprint of my nails, the bruise on his shoulder from the first night when I had bitten him to keep from screaming. The thought of his body carrying my evidence made something warm and possessive curl low in my belly. I wasn’t some victim here; I hadn’t lost a battle, right? We had marked each other. That had to mean something.

I turned, angling my body so the mirror showed the space between my shoulder blades. A long, vertical bruise ran parallel to my spine, the skin scraped and discolored where it had struck whatever hard object had been on the wall when he fucked me against it. The edges were already turning the sickly yellow-green of a bruise that would last days. I remembered the impact more than the pain ... the sudden pressure, the way the object had dug in with every thrust, the sound of something framed rattling against the plaster. He had not slowed. He had driven harder, telling me this pussy was his, that I belonged to him, that I would cum whenever he told me to. I had cum. The bruise was the receipt.

My fingers traced the length of it. The skin was hot. I closed my eyes, and for a moment the kitchen wall was solid against my back again, his hips snapping, the wet slap of skin on skin filling the small space. The memory was so vivid my knees weakened. I took a deep breath, opened my eyes and looked at the full reflection: small breasts marked, thighs marked, back marked, the soft flesh of my hips still carrying the faint ghosts of his fingers. A tapestry. That was the word that rose. Both times with him, my body had become a record of how thoroughly he had used it.