Good with Young People

She left her bra in the bathroom again.

Hanging on the door hook. White cotton. Nothing special. The kind you buy in packs of three. I stood there brushing my teeth and staring at it and thinking about the size of it, which was small, and the warmth still in the fabric, which I checked, and then I rinsed my mouth and went to bed and didn't sleep.

Kayla has been on my couch for three weeks. My friend Deb's daughter. Twenty-two. Just graduated. Starting a job in the city in September and needing a place to crash and Deb asked and I said of course because that's what I do. I help. I accommodate. I make space for people in need and I hold appropriate boundaries and I am so fucking tired of being good.

She walks around in a t-shirt and underwear. Cotton. Black. The kind that sits low on her hips and shows the crease where her thigh meets her pelvis. She doesn't think about it. She's comfortable with me. She trusts me the way you trust a friend's mom, the way you trust your therapist, the way you trust the kind older woman who asks how you're sleeping and makes you tea and never, ever looks at you the way I look at her when she bends over the refrigerator and her shirt rides up and I can see the dimples at the base of her spine.

I have a PhD in clinical psychology. I've published papers. I've given talks. I can name what I'm doing to myself in precise diagnostic language. Fixation. Idealization. Objectification. Projected transference. Grooming behaviors.

That last one. I know what I'm doing. The late-night conversations. The wine I started offering even though Deb would lose her mind. The listening. The careful, precise, predatory listening.

I know where Kayla's is. I've known for a week. The way she defers. The way she watches my mouth when I talk. The way she went quiet and flushed when I told her to sit down and eat, my voice a little harder than necessary, and she sat. Immediately. Pupils dilated.

I know and I should stop and I'm not going to stop.

---

Thursday night. Wine. Her third glass. She's on my couch with her legs tucked under her and the grey t-shirt riding up and she's telling me about a boy who fucked her badly and I'm listening with my whole body the way I listen to clients except I'm not cataloguing this for treatment. I'm cataloguing it for use.

"He just, like, jackhammered? And I kept thinking, is this it? Is this what everyone's talking about?" She laughs. Self-deprecating. "Maybe I'm broken."

"You're not broken."

"How do you know?"

"I know."

She looks at me. Something in my voice. Something that leaked. I let it leak. I'm done containing it.

"You say that like you're sure."

"I'm very sure."

The air changes. She feels it. I can see her registering something, the way an animal registers a shift in wind, and she doesn't understand it but her body does. Her spine straightens. Her lips part. Her breathing changes.

"How?" she says. Barely a whisper.

I set my wine down. I look at her.

"Stand up."

She stands. Immediately. She's standing in front of me in her grey t-shirt and her black cotton underwear and she's shaking.

"Come closer."

One step. Two. She's between my knees now. I can smell her. Soap and wine and underneath that the warm animal scent of a girl whose body has been answering a question her mind hasn't heard yet. She's been wet for twenty minutes. Maybe longer. Maybe since she sat down and I poured her wine and my fingers brushed hers on the glass.

"Take off the shirt."

Her hands. Shaking. She grabs the hem and hesitates. Looks at me. Looking for an out, a joke, a way to make this something other than what it is. She finds nothing. My face is calm and certain and hungry and offering her nothing to hold onto.

She pulls it over her head.

Bare. Small tits with pink nipples already hard. The freckles I've been imagining scattered across her shoulders and chest. The soft belly she sucks in the moment the air hits her skin. The instinct to cover. Her arms twitch toward her chest.

"No. Hands at your sides."

She forces them down. Fists at her thighs. Knuckles white. Her lip between her teeth so hard the skin blanches. The flush starting at her cheeks and pouring down her neck, her chest, blotchy and uneven, the kind of flush you can't control, the kind that broadcasts everything.

I look at her. Slowly. The way I've wanted to look at her for three weeks. The collarbones. The small tits with their tight pink nipples. The belly she's still trying to suck in.

"Stop that."

"Stop what?"

"Sucking in your stomach. Breathe."

She exhales. The belly softens. A small sound escapes her, something between a whimper and a sigh, the sound of a body that just released something it didn't know it was holding.

I look at the underwear. Black cotton. The same kind she wears every day. There's a dark spot at the center. She knows I can see it. The flush deepens. Her eyes are wet.

"Those stay on. For now."

"Kneel."

She sinks. Slowly. The hardwood under her bare knees and I can see the discomfort register, the cold floor, the pressure on bone. She kneels in front of me in her underwear with her hands at her sides and her tits out and her eyes wet and she looks up at me.

God. That look. I've been imagining that look. The upward angle. The vulnerability. The not-knowing. She has no idea what she looks like right now. No idea what that face does to me. The freckles and the red eyes and the bitten lip and the tears starting and the flushed chest and the small tits and the wet spot on her underwear that's getting darker while I watch.

I pick up my wine. Take a sip. Set it down. Slow. Letting her kneel there. Letting the seconds accumulate. Letting the hardwood do its work on her knees. Letting the air do its work on her nipples. Letting the silence do its work on her mind.

She starts to speak.

"Don't."

She closes her mouth.

"You don't speak unless I ask you a question. You don't move unless I tell you to move. You don't cover yourself. You don't look away. You kneel there and you let me look at you and you feel whatever you feel and you don't try to manage it. Nod if you understand."

She nods. A tear falls. She doesn't wipe it because I haven't told her she can.

I let her kneel for five minutes. I know because I can see the clock. The room is quiet enough to hear it tick. Five minutes on hardwood with her tits out and tears on her face while I drink wine. The only sounds are the clock and her breathing, ragged, unsteady, and the faint wet sound when she swallows. The dark spot on her underwear spreads visibly. She knows I'm watching it spread.

She's trembling. A fine vibration. Her jaw clenched.

I stand up. Walk to her. She has to tilt her head back to look up at me and the angle stretches her throat and I can see her pulse, fast, hammering.

I reach down and touch the dark spot on her underwear. One finger. Pressing the wet cotton against her. The fabric is soaked. Hot. The heat of her coming through the cotton against my fingertip and her clit underneath, swollen, throbbing, I can feel it pulse through the fabric. Her whole body jolts and a sound punches out of her, loud, desperate, her hips bucking against my finger. I hold it there. Just pressure. Through the wet fabric. Not giving her skin. Giving her the barrier. My finger and her clit and the soaked cotton between them and she's grinding against my hand and the wet sound of it, the cotton squelching, is obscene.

"You've been wet since you sat down tonight, haven't you?"

"Yes." Barely audible.

"Before tonight. You've been wet before. In this apartment. Around me."

A sob. "Yes."

"Every night on my couch. Talking to me. Getting wet and going to bed and touching yourself and thinking about me. Yes?"

She's crying now. Really crying.

"Yes."

"Good girl."

I say it now and the effect is physical. Her whole body shudders. Her eyes close. Her mouth opens. A moan comes out that she didn't know she had, deep, guttural, and her hips grind against my finger and I feel her pulse through the cotton and the moan hits my clit and I'm done waiting.

I grab her hair. Wrap it around my fist. Pull her head back.

"Get up."

I haul her to her feet by her hair. She stumbles, her knees stiff from the floor, and I catch her and I don't catch her gently. My hand in her hair and my other arm around her waist and I walk her to the bedroom. Fast. Not tender. Not seductive. I'm moving her from one room to another the way you'd move furniture. The way you'd relocate a thing you own.

My bedroom. Clean. Controlled. The bed made with sharp corners. The closet door open.

She sees the closet.

The silk ribbon hanging from the hooks on the inside of the door. Black. The same ribbon I use to wrap gifts for clients at Christmas. It had a normal life before tonight. She's staring at it.

"Face the bed. Hands behind your back."

She turns. Puts her hands behind her. I can see her shoulders shaking. The knobs of her spine. The freckles. The dimples at the base of her back that I've been staring at for three weeks.

I pull the ribbon from the hooks. Long. I double it. Start at her right bicep. Wrap. Tie. The black silk against her pale skin and she gasps at the contact, the binding, the moment her arm is no longer hers. I do the left. Wrapping above the elbow, tight, pulling her arms back, her shoulders drawing together, her chest pushing forward.

I tie her wrists. Crossed. The silk layered now, black bands on both arms and the final knot at her wrists, and she pulls once and nothing gives and a sound comes out of her that's close to a whimper.

I turn her around.

The silk on her arms visible from the front. Black against her flushed skin. Her small tits pushed forward by the position, nipples hard, chest heaving. Her eyes wild. Her lip bleeding slightly where her teeth broke the skin. The black cotton underwear with its dark wet center.

I push her shoulders down. She sinks to her knees on the bedroom floor. Carpet now, softer than the hardwood, and I see the relief flicker across her face.

"Did I say you could be comfortable?"

The relief dies. I watch it leave her eyes.

I pull her up. Walk her back to the living room. Push her down onto the hardwood.

"This is where you kneel."

The hardwood. The wine glass on the table behind her. The bookshelves. The living room where we've been having conversations for three weeks. This is where she sat and told me about bad sex and I poured her wine and we laughed and it was normal. She's kneeling in the same room, on the same floor, ten feet from the same couch, with silk on her arms and tears on her face and her mother's friend standing over her.

This is where the breaking happens. Not the bedroom. Here. In the room where she trusted me.

I sit back down on the couch. Pick up my wine. Cross my legs. Look at her.

"Now. Where were we."

She stares at me. The tears flowing. The flush spreading. Her bound arms behind her pushing her chest out. The wet underwear. The hardwood under her knees.

"You were telling me you're broken."

A sob.

"You're not broken. You're just untouched. There's a difference. Broken means something doesn't work. Untouched means nobody's bothered to find out how it works." I take a sip of wine. "I'm going to find out."

She's shaking so hard the silk is trembling.

"But first you're going to kneel there and you're going to answer my questions. Honestly. If you lie I'll know. I always know. I'm very good at my job."

I smile. The warm smile. The therapeutic smile. The smile Deb sees when she picks up Kayla after sessions. The smile that says you're safe with me.

She's never been less safe in her life.

---

I question her for thirty minutes. On her knees. On the hardwood. With her arms bound and her tits out and her underwear soaked and my wine going slowly and the questions precise and relentless and designed to strip her psychologically the way I've already stripped her physically.

Every boy she's fucked. What they did. What they didn't do. Where they touched and where they didn't. What she faked. Whether she's ever come from someone else's hand. The answer is no. Whether she's ever come from penetration. The answer is no. Whether she touches herself. Yes. What she thinks about. She can't say it. I wait. I sip wine. I wait longer.

"You."

There it is.

"What about me specifically."

She's crimson. Sobbing. On her knees with her arms tied and snot on her lip and she's telling me her fantasies.

"Your voice. When you... when you tell me to do things. Normal things. Like, eat. Or sit. And I just... I think about what else you could tell me to do."

"Like what?"

"Like this." Barely a whisper. "This. What's happening right now."

"You fantasized about being on your knees for me."

"Yes."

"Bound."

"Yes."

"Stripped."

"Yes."

"Did you come to that fantasy?"

"Every time."

My clit is throbbing. Has been since she said you. Since before. Since the dark spot appeared on her underwear. Since the bra on the bathroom door three weeks ago.

I stand up. Walk to her. My hand under her chin, tilting her face up. Her eyes are swollen. Her face is a mess of tears and snot and flushed skin and she's never been more honest and she's never been more beautiful and she has no idea. She has no idea what she looks like right now.

"Stand up."

She struggles. Her knees are red and sore and her balance is off without her arms. She gets there. Standing in front of me. Breathing hard.

I hook my fingers in the waistband of her underwear. Snap the elastic against her hip. She flinches.

"Off."

She stares at me.

I wait.

"I can't... my hands..."

I pull them down myself. Slowly. Over her hips. The blonde patch of hair she hasn't trimmed because she wasn't expecting this. Wasn't expecting anyone. The hair damp with what's been building for the last forty-five minutes. I pull the underwear down her thighs and they drop to the hardwood and she steps out of them.

Naked. Bound. Standing in my living room. Twenty-two years old and the only person who's ever looked at her like this is her mother's best friend.

The guilt doesn't come.

"On the bed. Face down."

She walks to the bedroom. I watch her ass, small and round and unmarked, and her bound arms and the silk and the way she walks differently now, smaller steps, head down, the walk of a thing that's been claimed.

She climbs on the bed. Face in the pillows. Ass in the air. The vulnerability of that position and the fact that she assumed it without being told. Her body knows what it is now. Her body got there before her brain, the way it always does.

I go to the closet.

The spreader bar. She doesn't see it. She hears the click of the buckles and the metallic sound of the bar and she tenses. Every muscle.

"Spread your legs."

She does. I buckle the cuffs around her ankles. Adjust the width. Wider than she opened on her own. Wide enough that she feels the strain in her inner thighs and the complete exposure of being held open. Click. Click.

I step back. Look at her. Face down, arms bound behind her back, legs spread and locked. Her cunt visible between her thighs, swollen, slick, the blonde hair damp and the flesh underneath flushed and open. She's been wet for over an hour and the evidence of it is on her inner thighs, glistening in the lamplight.

I don't warn her.

The first spank, full force on her right cheek, and the crack fills the room and she screams into the pillow.

The second before she recovers. Left cheek. Harder. Her body lurches and the bar holds her and the silk holds her and she goes nowhere and the scream becomes a continuous sound muffled by cotton.

I hit her. Not counting. Not warming up. I hit her because I want to hit her. My palm stinging from the impacts, the sting feeding back up my arm and landing between my legs. Her skin going from cool to warm to hot under my hand. By the tenth hit my palm is burning and her ass is on fire and I can feel my own wetness soaking through my underwear and I haven't even touched myself. Her screams are doing it. The crack of contact is doing it. The red blooming on her white skin is doing it.

Her ass scarlet. Hot. Welted in places where my fingers landed hardest. She's sobbing into the pillow, full body sobs that shake the bed, and between her spread legs she's dripping. A strand of wet connecting her cunt to the sheets.

I push two fingers into her cunt. No warning. No buildup. Just in. And she clenches around me and screams and she's so tight, so hot, so wet that my fingers are coated before I'm past the second knuckle. She's never had anyone inside her who knew what they were doing. I can feel it in the shock of her body, the overwhelm, the way she grips me like she can't believe what's happening.

I curl my fingers. Find the spot. Press.

Her back arches off the bed and a sound comes out of her that isn't a scream. Lower. Deeper. The sound of something being found. Something that was there all along and nobody bothered to look for it.

"There it is," I say. Clinically. The way I'd note a breakthrough in session. "That's what you've been missing."

I fuck her with my fingers. Precise. Targeted. Every stroke hitting the same spot and her body responding in ways she's never experienced, the intensity building in a pattern she doesn't recognize because she's never been brought here before. She's always stopped short. Or been stopped short by some boy who thought jackhammering was technique.

I don't stop short.

I feel her building. The muscles tightening. The sounds getting higher. Closer. She's approaching something she's never reached with anyone else's hands and her body is scared of it, I can feel the resistance, the clenching, the impulse to pull back from the edge.

I slap her cunt. Hard. Direct hit on her clit. She convulses.

"Don't you dare hold back."

My fingers back inside. Pressing. Curling. My other hand on her welted ass, gripping, possessive, my thumb pressed against her asshole, just pressure, just the threat, and she gasps and the gasp becomes a moan and the moan becomes a sound I've never heard a human make.

She comes.

Her body locks. Her cunt clamps around my fingers so hard I can barely move them. Her back arches. The scream is raw and ragged and ugly and she's pulling at the silk and kicking against the spreader bar and the whole bed is shaking and she's crying and coming and I keep my fingers inside her and I press that spot and I milk every contraction out of her until she goes limp.

That was for her. The only thing tonight that was for her.

Everything after this is for me.

I strip. She's face down, panting, destroyed, and she doesn't see me step into the harness. Doesn't see the cock. Black silicone. Ridged. Big enough that it's going to be a problem for her and that's the point.

The base settles against my clit. Just the weight of it, the pressure, and I'm already throbbing so hard that the contact makes me inhale sharply. I've been wound up since the bra on the bathroom door. Three weeks of hunger pressing against the base of a cock I'm about to bury in a girl who's never been fucked by someone who meant it.

I climb on the bed behind her. She feels the mattress dip. Feels me between her spread legs. Feels something press against her opening that isn't fingers.

She tenses.

"What..."

"Shh."

"That's... that's too..."

"Yes. It is."

I push in.

One thrust. All of it. The head spreading her open and her body fighting it and the ridges dragging against her walls and her scream filling the room and the base of the cock crushing against my clit and the jolt. Fuck. The jolt. Three weeks of hunger answered in one burst of pressure and friction and my clit so swollen the base grinds against it like a tongue and my thighs shake and I grab her hips, fingers digging into the welts, and hold her still and grind.