The metro empties me onto the street. The evening is warm, the light golden.

A man is walking behind me. He has been there since the metro stairs. His footsteps are heavier than mine, and the distance between us is closing. I shift my bag and walk faster. My hand goes into my bag, finds my keys. I hold them between my fingers and walk faster. I don't turn around.

I turn the corner onto our street. His footsteps turn the corner too.

I reach the building. Key fob. Beep. I push through the door and pull it shut. The lobby is cool and dim. I stand with my back against the glass and wait.

He walks past. He doesn't look in. He was always just walking home.

My hands are shaking. I press my forehead against the glass and exhale.

The elevator. I press the button. The display says 5. I watch it. 5. 4. I check behind me. The lobby is empty. 3. 2. 1. The doors open. Empty. I step in, press 3. The doors close. I lean against the wall and breathe.

Third floor. The hallway. Our door. My keys are already in my hand. I put the key in the lock and turn it. I unclench. I am home.

The hallway is dark. I push the door open and put my bag down. I reach for the light switch.

A hand closes around my wrist before I find it.

I am pulled backward, hard. A hand on my throat, fingers pressing into the sides, not crushing my windpipe but squeezing, squeezing hard. My lungs are working, but they're only half-filling, each breath a gasp that doesn't finish. My back against a chest, a mouth at my ear, his breathing slow and controlled. Mine is not.

He spins me and pushes me against the door, and the back of my head hits the wood, his wrists pin mine above my head, and his hips are against mine, and I can feel his cock hard through his jeans. His face is just in front of mine, and he is wearing a smile I have never seen on him.

"Don't move."

He turns me around. My cheek hits the painted wood of the door, and he presses my face into it, his hand on the back of my head. His other hand grabs the front of my blouse and pulls. The fabric rips, buttons scattering on the tile, and the air hits my chest and stomach. My mouth is half open. I can taste the paint. My spit smears on the surface. His hand grabs my ass, hard, fingers digging in through my skirt, then slides down to the back of my thigh, grips. I feel his hips press against me from behind, his cock against my ass, and I push back into him before I can stop myself.

He chuckles, low, close to my ear.

His hand slides around my hip and down, under the waistband of my skirt, between the fabric and my skin, and his fingers find me. I gasp, my hips jerking forward against the door.

"You're wet," he says.

His fingers stay for a second, pressing, not moving, just holding me. Then he takes his hand out, puts it on the door beside my face, and leans in close. I can feel his breath on my neck. My skin prickles, my underwear is soaked, and I have not moved my hands from the wood. The flat is quiet except for the fridge humming in the kitchen.

He steps back. He reaches past me, flicks the light switch. The hallway floods white. I blink.

He looks at me. Top to bottom. Slow.

He puts his hand on the back of my neck and walks me down the hallway.

***

I said it on a Tuesday. He was in the hallway with the foldable drying rack, hanging up pillowcases. I was in the bathroom, pulling wet clothes from the machine and sorting the next load.

"Have you ever heard of CNC?" I said.

I heard him stop. The sound of fabric against metal went quiet. A second later, his head appeared in the bathroom doorway, a pillowcase still in his hand.

"CNC?"

"Consensual non-consent."

He leaned against the doorframe. He folded the pillowcase in his hand, slowly, corner to corner. His thumb pressed the crease flat.

"Go on," he said.

"I want you to pretend to force me. I know you're not forcing me. You know you're not forcing me. But we both act like you are."

He unfolded the pillowcase and refolded it. His ears were pink.

"And you want this."

"I want this."

"How long have you wanted this?"

"Since I was a teenager. I didn't really understand what it was that I wanted back then, or why my mind drifted towards it."

He was quiet. He put the pillowcase over his shoulder and crossed his arms.

"Have you done this before?"

"No. I've thought about it. For a long time. But I've never asked anyone."

"Not even with..."

"Not even. You're the first person I've said this to sober." I pulled a tangled shirt from the machine and shook it out. "I told Laura once, after too much wine. She said it was more common than people think."

He nodded. I hung the shirt on the edge of the basket and turned back to the machine.

"People think there has to be a reason," I said. "That I must have been hurt somehow. I wasn't. I just want this. Some people want to go skydiving. I want this."

"I didn't say there had to be a reason."

"I know. I'm telling you before you wonder."

He looked at me. I was holding a wet shirt, dripping on the tile. Neither of us moved to wipe it up.

"We should make a list," he said.

I put the shirt in the basket. "I don't want to hand you a script. That's the whole point."

"It would not be a script," he said. "It'd be more like things you would like us to do. And things you wouldn't."

I looked at him in the doorway. His ears had gone pink.

"Together," I said. "I don't want to write something and hand it to you. I want us to figure it out together."

"OK," he said. "Together."

He took the pillowcase off his shoulder and hung it on the rack. I finished loading the machine and pressed the button. It started humming. He made tea. We watched television and did not speak about it again that night, but his foot was pressed against mine on the sofa. He did not move. Neither did I.

***

He steers me past the coat hooks, past the bathroom door, and into the living room. The lamp is on. The post still in the pile I left it in this morning, the morning newspaper on top of it. He pushes me toward the table, sweeps the papers and the post off the edge with his free hand. They scatter on the floor, the book with them. He presses my head down. "Bend over." I bend over. My left cheek hits the wood, my hands find the edges.

I can see the fruit bowl in front of me: a half-ripe banana and a clementine. I am staring at the clementine while he pulls my skirt down to my ankles, and the cold air hits me, and my skin tightens. He pushes my legs apart with his foot, and I grip the table harder.

"Don't move."

He walks away. I hear him cross the room. A click, a hiss, and then music filling the room, loud, dark, bass I can feel in the table under my cheek. I don't know how long he has been standing behind me.

I hear him come back. He doesn't touch me. He stands behind me, and I can feel him there, the heat of him close to my skin. His hand comes to rest on my lower back, just resting, his palm flat. I don't know what comes next; my breath goes short.

He runs his fingertips down my lower back and between my ass cheeks, slowly, and I shiver and grip the table.

Then his hand slides between my thighs, pressing through the cotton. I am wet, his fingers pushing the fabric into me. I moan, and he presses my head harder against the table. He slides his hand inside my underwear, starts rubbing me, rough, fast. My hips push back against his hand. I moan louder into the table. He rubs me faster, rougher. He stops.

He pulls his hand away. I gasp. He slaps my cunt with his open palm, and I jerk forward against the table. The sound is wet and sharp. My whole pelvis clenches.

Again, harder. The sting reaches further in. I cry into the wood. My thighs shake.

Three. Four. I flinch each time.

I hear him unbuckle his belt. The clink of metal, then the leather hissing through the loops.

"Count to ten," he says.

The first stroke lands across my ass and the leather is thinner than his hand, sharper, a narrow line of heat.

"One," I let out.

The second is harder. The skin is already sensitive; the pain piles on, and I press my face into the wood.

"Two."

Three lands across the crease where my ass meets my thighs. I yelp and my legs try to close. He kicks them apart again.

Four. The skin is swelling, the heat is building under it, and each hit lands on tissue that is already tender. The pain is duller now, deeper.

Five. Six. My voice shakes when I count. Seven and my thighs are pressing together and my fingers are white on the table edge. The welts overlap. I can feel my pulse where he hit me. It hurts. I am soaking wet.

Eight. I press my face into the wood and breathe.

Nine. The belt folds on itself and lands wrong, half-buckle, the sting uneven. He pauses.

"That one didn't count," he says. "We'll have to do it again."

"Fuck you," I say, my voice muffled against the table. It comes out before I can stop it.

Silence. The music plays.

"What did you say?"

"Nothing. I'm sorry. I didn't mean..."

"Are you talking back to me?"

"No. I'm sorry."

"Get on your knees."

I slide off the table. My knees hit the floor, the carpet rough under my kneecaps. He is standing in front of me. I hear his fly open. He takes his cock out and gets close enough so that the head brushes my upper lip.

"Open your mouth."

I open my mouth. He pushes himself in. I taste salt. I start sucking, but he grabs my hair and yanks my head back.

"I didn't tell you to suck it."

My hands come up to his thighs, and he grabs my wrists and pins them behind my back with one hand.

"I didn't say you could use your hands either. Just hold it. And count."

I am on my knees with his cock in my mouth, my hands pinned behind me. I can feel the belt in his other hand, the leather against my wrist.

He moves to my side without letting go of my wrists. His cock turns in my mouth as the angle changes. He spanks my ass with his belt, on the same spot as he was spanking me before. I let out a scream into his cock.

Nine.

The last one. He puts everything into it. I scream around his cock, and the world goes blurry. He pulls out of my mouth, lets go of my wrists. I fold forward onto my hands and knees. My ass burns, and my whole body is shaking. The carpet feels rough under my palms.

"Ten," I say. My voice is wrecked.

"Good girl," he says.

I stay on the floor. I am breathing hard, my face wet, my ass on fire. The music is still playing. I can hear him standing above me, trying to slow down his breathing.

***

The day after the laundry conversation, we sat at the kitchen table with mugs of tea and a piece of paper between us.

"So," he said. He picked up the pen and put it down again. His thumb rubbed the edge of the table. "Where do we start?"

"I want to feel overpowered," I said. "I want to feel like I can't stop it even though I know I can."

He picked up the pen. He wrote something down.

"What else?"

"I want to be hit."

He looked up. His jaw moved, just enough that I saw it.

"How?"

"Hard enough that I feel it the next day. I want to sit at my desk at work and feel where you hit me."

He let out a long breath and wrote it down.

"What about you?" I said. "What do you want?"

"I'm still catching up with what you want."

"I need you to be into this. At least a little. This doesn't work if you're just going through the motions. And it helps if you add things to the list."

He scratched the back of his neck and said with a smile, 'Oh, I won't be just going through the motions.'

I looked at him, but he didn't move his eyes from the table.

He rolled the pen between his fingers. Then he said, "When you're close, I want to make you wait. I want to hold you at the edge until I decide."

My face went warm. I picked up my tea and drank.

"OK," I said. "Put it on the list."

He wrote it down without looking up.

"What about degradation?" I said. "Words."

"What kind of words?"

"I don't know yet. That's one we should figure out."

"There are words I won't say to you."

"I know. There are words I want to hear, though."

He put the pen down. "Give me an example."

"Good girl."

He picked the pen up and wrote it down. His hand stayed on the paper for a second.

"Anything else?" he said.

"What do you mean, anything else?"

"What else should I call you?"

I looked at him. The pen hovered over the paper. His ears had gone pink.

"We'll figure that out," I said. "Together. Not now."

He nodded.

"I want my clothes ripped," I said. "You don't need to rip everything off, just a piece or two as you undress me, like you could not wait to get your hands on me."

"Wear something you don't mind losing," he said.

I went through the rest. Hair pulling. Being put on my knees. By the time I finished, the tea was cold. His ears were redder, if anything.

When I got to number seven, he drew a line through it.

"That one's a no," he said.

"Ever?"

"I could actually hurt you. Like, permanently hurt you."

"You looked it up."

"I looked it up."

"OK," I said. I reached across the table and touched his hand. "Seven is out."

He put the pen down and leaned back in his chair.

"When?" he said.

"Sometime this coming week. You choose."

"You want to not know."

"I want to not know."

He rubbed his face with both hands. "What about the neighbors?"

"What about them?"

"We're going to make noise. You more than me."

My cheeks burned. I looked at the table. "Marta can hear us already."

"What?"

"She said something the other day. 'You two seem very happy.' With a cheeky smile."

"Marta said that?"

"Mhmm."

He stared at me. "Well, normal sex is fine, but if she hears this, she might call the police."

"We put music on. Loud."

"She'll know why the music is loud."

"She already knows we're happy. Let her think we're ecstatic."

He shook his head, but he was smiling.

"We need a safe word," he said.

"We do."

"How about pineapple?"

"Pineapple is three syllables."

"So?"

"If I have to make you stop, it needs to be fast. I don't want to be lying there conjugating tropical fruit."

He laughed. A proper laugh. The kind where his whole face opens up, his head tilting back. The sound fills the kitchen.

"Red," I said. "Just red."

"Like a traffic light."

"Exactly."

He picked up the pen and wrote RED at the bottom of the list in block capitals. Underlined it twice.

He looked at me across the table. He had gone serious.

"Promise me you'll use it," he said.

"I promise."

He folded the list and put it into his pocket. He turned the TV on; a silly cooking show came on that neither of us really likes. We didn't change the channel.

***

He pulls me up by the hair. My legs fold under me, and he catches me, his arm around my waist. His thumb finds the curve of my hip and presses, briefly. Then his fingers dig back in.

"Bedroom. Now."

I walk ahead of him down the hallway, holding my skirt so I won't trip. The welts burn with each step. I feel absurd, shuffling down my own hallway with spit on my chin and tears in my eyes. I pass the bathroom. The towel I hung this morning is still on the hook. The toothbrushes are in the cup. His is the blue one. Mine is green.

The bedroom. Pale blue stripes on the duvet. A novel I gave him four Christmases ago is face down on his nightstand. He has been on chapter nine since last April. The rubber band is for decoration. He pushes me face down onto the duvet. The cotton is cool against my stomach.

He stretches my right wrist toward the headboard and ties it to the slat on the left, the one that rattles when we have normal sex. The knot tightens against my wrist bone. He stretches my left wrist to the other slat and pulls me wide. I pull. The left slat rattles, but neither side gives.

He pulls my skirt off, then my underwear, down my legs, and over my feet. I hear him undressing. Belt, zipper, fabric on the floor. He climbs onto the bed and presses my legs apart with his knees. He pushes me flat with one hand on my lower back.

He drags the head of his cock along my cunt, slow, just the tip. I am so wet I can hear it. My hips push back. He holds me down.

"Look at you. Tied to your own bed. Soaked."

My face burns into the cotton.

He pushes in all at once. I grip the slats above my head and moan. The welts press against his hips.

He fucks me slowly. Pulls almost all the way out and then pushes all the way back in. Again and again. My wrists strain. The left slat rattles. My god, if Marta is home, she must be hearing everything.

He grabs my hair and turns my head, and his face is above me on the pillow. His face. The face he has on a Saturday morning, soft and open, except his jaw is set and his eyes are harder. He spits. "Catch it." It lands warm on my cheek. I catch it on my tongue and swallow. My whole body shudders around him.

He lifts my head by the hair, just enough to unpin my chin. His mouth at my ear.

"Is this what you wanted?"

I nod.

"Say it."

"Yes. This is what I wanted."

He fucks me harder than he ever has. Both hands on my hips now, pulling me back into him. Each thrust drives the air from my lungs. The headboard creaks. My wrists are raw.

He reaches around my hip and puts his fingers on my clit. Pressure at first. Then he starts to move. My thighs shake. I am close. I am right there.

He stops.

He stays inside me. The fridge comes back on.

"Not yet."

Ten seconds. Fifteen. The album playing in the living room is one of the same five he keeps falling back on.

"Breathe."

"I am breathing."

"Slower."

I try.

He starts again. Faster. Harder. His fingers are back on my clit in tight circles. It builds differently this time. From the knees up. A tremor in my calves, I did not agree to. My mouth is open against the stripes. Sounds I do not recognize. A car alarm goes off on the street. Eight seconds. It cuts. The building is back in our possession.

He stops.

I cry out and clench around him and pull at the slats. He is still inside me. His hand on my back. He waits.

"Good girl. Not yet."

Twenty seconds. Thirty. Throbbing. The cloth is tight on the wrist bones. The shoulder is starting to hurt. I shift. Cannot.

He leans down. His mouth was at my ear again. His own voice this time.

"Are you OK?"

"Yeah."

"Sure?"

"Yes. Keep going."

He takes a beat. Then he is back.

He starts slower than before. Deeper. Each stroke goes further in than the last. He keeps his fingers off my clit. The second stroke drives the pillowcase against my mouth. It smells of detergent. His weight is on my back. He keeps going. Deeper each time. He keeps going. He puts his fingers back on my clit. Something starts building at the cervix and climbs. It is a wave that does not crest. It keeps coming. He keeps going. The pillowcase is wet. My mouth is wet. The slat. The slat. I do not know if he will stop. I do not know if I can take it.

"Now."

I come. My body locks. Releases. I scream into the pillowcase. Each wave on a stroke. Each stroke another wave. He keeps fucking me through it. His fingers stay. The waves keep coming. I cannot count. The bed shakes. The slat. My face is wet. My mouth opens. Pillowcase soaked. He keeps going.

Then it turns. It is too much. Too raw. My clit is raw. My cunt is raw. My body pulls at the slats. Away from him. Toward him. Away. Toward. He keeps fucking me through it.

"Stop. Just stop!"

He stops. He stays inside me, his hips pressed against my burning skin. His hands loosen on my hips. He drops his forehead between my shoulder blades. His breath is hot on my back.

Neither of us moves. His cock is still inside me. His full weight is on me. My left shoulder is numb from the elbow down. My stomach is against a wet patch I do not want to move out of. The music is still playing in the living room. The fridge hums. A car passes on the street below.

***

He returned from work the following evening. I was at the counter cutting onions, the extractor fan on. He put his bag down, took the list from his jacket pocket and opened it beside the cutting board. His handwriting filled the margins, smaller and tighter than mine, pushed up against my items.

"I've been thinking."

"About?"

"About what I want."

I put the knife down. I looked at the list.

"Show me," I said.

He pointed to the first addition, next to the section about the bedroom.

"I want to stop you," he said. "Right before you come. I want to bring you to the edge and hold you there and not let you finish."

I looked at him. He was leaning against the counter. His arms were crossed, and he had that look he gets when he does not know whether his next sentence is going to land.

"And then?"

"And then I decide when."

I picked up the knife and went back to cutting the onion. I was beaming.

"I thought of more things as well," I said.

He looked at me.

"I want to be tied up to the bed and stretched out, so I can't move."

His fingers tightened on the pen.

"And spitting," I said. "On my face."

He stared at me.

"Don't look at me like that."

"Like what."

"You know perfectly well what you are doing."

"Oh my dear, I haven't the faintest."

He picked the pen up and wrote them both down.

"I have another one," he said. "Teasing. I want to be close enough that you can feel me and not let you have it."

I nodded.

"And this one," he said. He pointed to the last line in the margin. "While it's happening, I want to ask if it's what you wanted. And I want you to say yes."

"Why?"

"Because I want to hear it while it's happening. I want you to tell me this is what you asked for."

I stopped cutting. I looked at him. He looked at me. The only sound was the extractor fan. My eyes were watering. I said, "Put it on the list."

He picked up the pen and wrote it down.

We quickly ate dinner and moved to the sofa. We didn't bother cleaning up.

"We should practice," he said.

"Practice what?"

"The stopping."

He was right. The sex was the easy part. Stopping when needed might be a bit more tricky.

"OK," I said. "Start something."

He reached out and took my wrist.

"Red," I said.

He let go before I finished the word.

"Again."

He grabbed my wrist. Harder.

"Red."

He let go. Same speed.

The third and fourth times he escalated, he placed his hand on the back of my neck and pulled me towards him. Each time I said "red," and each time he let go of me without hesitation.

The fifth time, he pushed me against the wall, and his hand went to my throat, not pressing, just resting, and his thumb settled over my pulse.

"Red."

He let go and took a step back.

"This is the weirdest thing I have ever done in my living room," he said.

"Nothing strange about it," I said.

I sat back down. He sat beside me.

The sixth time, he pinned my wrists above my head, leaned in, his mouth close to my ear. His breathing had changed, deeper, slower. I could feel myself getting aroused, the flush rising across my chest.

"Red."

He stopped. He ran his hands through his hair, walked to the kitchen, and poured himself a glass of water. He drank it standing at the counter.

"Are you OK?"

"I'm fine."

"You don't look fine."

"I'm fine. I just..." He put the glass down. "I liked that."

"Good."

"No," he said. "I liked that."

"I know. Good."

***

He lifts his head from my shoulder. His lips find the back of my neck, just below my hairline, and he kisses me softly.

"María."

He says my name the way he says it when he can't find me in the flat, just to know I am there.

I close my eyes. My body loosens.

He reaches up, unties my right wrist, gently, unwinding the cloth. My arm drops to the mattress, the blood rushing back into my hand, my fingers tingling. He unties the left one. I bring my arms down. They ache. The skin on my wrists is red and raw where the fabric bit in. He takes my hands in his and rubs them softly, his thumbs pressing into my palms. My fingers prickle as the blood returns.

He lies beside me and pulls me into him. I curl against his chest, his arms closing around me.

I start shaking. My jaw first, then my hands, then my full body. He holds me through it. His chin on the top of my head. He doesn't say anything. Just holds me while I shake. After a while, the shaking slows, my breathing deepens, my jaw unclenches.

His hand finds the welts on my ass, traces them lightly with his fingertips. I flinch.

"Sorry."

"Don't be. I want to feel them."

He traces them again. Slowly. Each line.

"Are they bad?" I say.

"You'll probably feel them for a few days."

"Good."

He pushes the hair from my face. I catch his hand and hold it against my cheek. His thumb traces my cheekbone.

After a while, he gets up. I hear him in the kitchen. The tap, the clatter of a glass from the drying rack. He comes back and sits on the edge of the bed and holds the glass for me while I drink because my hands are not steady enough.

"More?"

"No."

He puts the glass on the nightstand. He crosses the flat. The music stops. In the quiet, I can hear the elevator in the shaft and a television behind Marta's wall.

He comes back and lies down beside me. I press my face into his chest. I can hear his heartbeat. It hasn't slowed yet.

"Are you OK?"

"I'm fine. More than fine."

"Was it..."

"Yes. It was."

He holds me tighter.

"What about you?" I say.

"What about me?"

"Was it what you thought it would be?"

He is quiet. His hand moves slowly up and down my back.

"No," he says. "It was more."

He pulls me closer.

"Marta definitely heard," I say.

"Marta called the police," he says.

"Marta is on the phone with my mother."

"Marta is moving out."

"Marta is starting a podcast about us."

He cracks up, his whole chest shaking under my cheek. I laugh too. We lie there in our bed laughing. The welts pull every time I do.

He gets up again. I hear the bathroom tap. He comes back with a warm, wet cloth, sits beside me, and presses it against the welts. The heat is sharp at first, then it sinks in. My muscles loosen.

"Turn over," he says.

I turn onto my stomach. He presses the cloth against each welt and holds it there. The warmth seeps in. I close my eyes.

He puts the cloth on the nightstand and pulls the duvet over both of us. I curl back into him. He puts his arm around me, his hand on my hip, away from the welts. I press my face into his chest. He smells the way he smelled the first time I put my face against his chest, three years ago in his old flat.

His breathing slows. I can feel the weight of his arm as he starts falling asleep. I think about how long it has been since he fell asleep before me.

I just lie there.

***

At lunch, my phone buzzed on the desk. I was at my keyboard, eating a sandwich and half-reading an email from a supplier. The screen lit up with his name.

Do we need bin bags?

I stared at the message. Next to me, Silvia was saying, 'Totally, yeah, totally, I'll send it over' into her headset for the third time that morning. Bin bags. Of all things. I typed back: Yes, the big ones.

I put the phone face down and finished the sandwich. I did not look at the phone again for twenty minutes. When I checked there was still nothing from him.

At five, I closed my laptop and walked to the metro.