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It’s quiet.

I can’t move, and he’s not there. I can’t hear him. I can’t sense him. I imagine myself like that in the room, bound up and unable to move and abandoned.

Panic flutters in my breast, worse than any of the pain that’s come before this.

“Wolf?”

There’s no answer.

I can’t explain the wrenching pain that rocks me. I can’t explain the panic. But it’s like everything I’ve ever been afraid of crushing me all at once. I’ve shown him everything and he’s abandoned me. I’m alone. In spite of how hard I tried.

I’m not enough.

I’m sobbing and it’s like I’m falling. Weeping like a child and I can’t stop.

You can stop it.

“Halt,” I say, the word a broken whimper.

Then he’s there. Like he always was. I was never alone, I just didn’t trust him. I’m covered in shame.

I failed him. I’m in so much pain, and still the pleasure is rolling through me like a thundercloud.

And I don’t deserve it. I don’t deserve it. I used the safe word.

I failed him. I didn’t give him what he wanted.

I’m not a good enough sub. I’m not good enough. He wants things that I can’t do for him. I hit my limit before he did. I’m sobbing uncontrollably.

And then the knife is back. He doesn’t untie the ropes. He cuts them free, unbinding me in seconds, before pulling me onto his lap and holding me as I shake and weep, expending my misery all over him.

“I didn’t do it,” I say.

“Avery,” he says. “You did exactly what you were supposed to do. And you waited too fucking long to do it.”

“What… What you mean?”

“You fucking know what I mean, you fucking stupid girl. It matters what you want. You don’t have to just sit there and endure things for someone else.”

“I’m your submissive,” I say. “That’s the point.”

“It is not the fucking point. It’s supposed to be for both of us. And that safe word is for you as much as it is for me. So that I don’t hurt you. So that I don’t scare you. So that I don’t put you in a position where I’ve gone too far. And I was afraid that you weren’t going to use it. That you wouldn’t ever tell me what the fuck you actually want because after talking to you, I realize that’s what you do.”

I’m naked. I’m naked and crying, and throbbing in his arms, but his words just now make me feel far more frightened and exposed than I did before.

They make me feel small and silly and seen.

Because he’s right. There was a lot about that I enjoyed. I liked how feral he was. I liked how rough he was. But I let him take me past the point of pain that I could endure. I can’t take that much pain and then be denied touch, then be abandoned. But I took it because I thought I had to. He always made it clear that I didn’t need to do that for him, but I did it to myself.

He tested me. And I failed it, just not in the way that I initially thought.

“I wanted you to use your safe word,” he says. “Because what you need to understand is that what you want matters.”

“But I like being used for your pleasure. I like existing to please you.”

“I like it too. But that can’t be all it is.

“But it feels good. It feels good to know that I’m enough on my own.”