This must be what it feels like to be raped.

Michelle gradually worked him, first licking and sucking slowly, sensually. Then she sped up her ministrations until the intensity reached super-human speed and force. She shifted position, straddling his face with her thighs to place her most intimate flesh in his face, and began grinding herself back and forth across his lips and teeth. His natural reaction of arousal spiraled up. The wonderful sensations of Michelle’s highly skilled attentions could not be denied. All his fears erased in the heat of the moment.

At the point he reached his peak and could no longer resist his climax, Michelle struck like a viper, driving her mouth down to seal against the base of his engorged sex to the ultimate deep throat position. With this move she buried her razor sharp fangs deep into his pubic flesh, sinking in to the bone, sucking down his blood and climax all together.

Aaron’s peak, pain, shock, and venom-saturated loins, brought the most excruciatingly intense orgasm he’d ever known. Without conscious thought, his vampiric instincts reacted. He sunk his fangs into Michelle’s intimate folds, digging down through inner and outer labia to hit home at her pelvic bone. He gave as good as he got, blasting Michelle with the same intensity of climax twisted by pain, shock and the amplified sexual effects of his venom flooding through her tender, vaginal flesh.

Both Aaron and Michelle’s psychic barriers of privacy shattered in the storm of sensations and pain. Mind-altering waves of ecstasy, agony, and multiple orgasms assaulted them. Each experienced the other’s rollercoaster of peaks simultaneously with their own. The cycle of climax, crash, and repeated climax continued over and over again. The lovers remained locked together, spasming and grinding, consuming each other’s blood and sex until their physical limits of endurance were reached and surpassed. Sometime near sunrise they passed into oblivion, still locked in each other’s parasitic embrace.

Both awoke at sunset, faces buried in each other’s groins. Michelle arose first and silently prepared a scorching hot bath. They looked like hell––their faces and thighs encrusted in blood and sex, their expressions identically haunted, somber. Aaron sat in the oversized Jacuzzi across from Michelle. They soaked in silence, avoiding eye contact. He didn’t know what had happened. His world traversed from one extreme of happiness to the other extreme of pain, humiliation, and depravity.

When he finished bathing and moved to leave the tub, Michelle broke the silence. “What did you do to that woman last night? I know you had sex with her and I know you hurt her.” Her face had twisted in a murderous snarl. Her mind was blocked up solid.

He answered her simply, “Yes … I had sex with Rosalie.”

Michelle reached out lightning fast with a whip-snap move to grab hold of his scrotum, her claws piercing through flesh, drawing blood in demonstration of her severity.

“Show me your memories of what you did to her!”

The door to his mental vault dissolved. Their connection opened wide to access his memories, or anything else she might want to know. His mind instantly replayed the entire date with Rosalie leading up to his return home, and then followed by the bizarre sexual encounter with Michelle, transmitting all of it to her via their psychic bond. Michelle experienced all his thoughts, feelings, emotions, and sensations as though she lived through these moments inside his body along with him.

“Enough! I don’t need to see anymore!” She turned away from him as if trying to avert her eyes from what she’d witnessed. She released her painful grip on his genitals and his blood turned the bath water pink. Her face looked stricken.

He leaned towards her and whispered, “You’re fuckin’ nuts.”

He climbed out of the bath and dressed without once looking or speaking to Michelle. He ignored the tears of blood silently running down her face.

She had stripped him of all protections, absolute zero privacy. To him it felt like standing naked out in Times Square, all his dirty little secrets laid bare. Psychic rape.

It was the most demeaning thing she could’ve done, apart from ordering him to kill himself. He settled into heavy depression. He meant nothing to Michelle. Nothing more than a possession––a servant to be punished when he misbehaved.

Shattered, smashed, damaged beyond recognition––Michelle demolished all hope that her affections were genuine. He was nothing but her slave, her property, who had disobeyed and needed to be reprimanded. He felt like a dog pissing on the floor, forced to have his nose rubbed in it to learn a lesson.

“Come, we must feed.” Michelle spoke in terse tones. She wouldn’t look him in the eyes. Her face was tight-lipped and severe as he followed her out the door.

“Yes, Master.” He wasn’t teasing or smiling.

Cruising through the night streets in the taxi, his depression began to take on a new color of resentment. Why should he be treated like this? Was this all because he disobeyed her directive or was there something else? Is this how it would be with her for years to come? Being punished for virtually nothing? He deeply resented her abuse of power.

He began to hate Michelle for turning an act of affectionate lovemaking into a sadistic punishment. The kindness and mutual care that once permeated their relationship disappeared. Michelle reached out to hold his hand as she had so many times before, but the gesture no longer felt like the loving caress he’d imagined it to be. It felt like a leash.

* * * *

CHAPTER 16

He arose without a word to Michelle. He had slept on the floor in silent protest. She remained in bed. She didn’t say a word when he left, exiting via the fire escape.

He had to get out. Just go, walk, somewhere, anywhere away from her. Every second of every minute, every waking moment she was there. In his thoughts, in his face, the smell of her saturated every corner of the apartment. He couldn’t get rid of her scent. It was on his clothes, on his skin, in his blood. You are blood of my blood. She owned him. He was marked. He couldn’t go anywhere or do anything without her being there, holding his fucking hand.

He marched down the alley way, hoping to burn off some steam, put a little distance between them. His temper flared to the point that he burned to lash out in violence. Every word and gesture from her the night before seemed to have a double meaning mocking him and his subservience to her.

This need for violence and confrontation was something wholly new to him. He’d never before felt such fury and frustration. It was a raging passionate fire threatening to overtake all reason. He had to get some distance and cool off before he ended up going after Michelle. He had no illusions about how that would turn out. She’d kill him.

He began jogging down the alley moving through the back streets. He stayed to the dark recesses of the city, purposely avoiding people. Oblivious, he passed into one of the seedier areas of New York. This was a place he would never normally walk, especially not in the darkness of night. The new and improved Aaron was unconcerned. He felt absolutely no fear of anyone––apart from Michelle. She’d been telling the truth when she spoke in her condescending tone, they are like cattle.

He tried to stop dwelling on the negative, but his mind continued to find things to make him angry, worsening his mood. His problem stemmed from one inescapable source: Michelle. No matter how far he walked she was still there at the edge of his mind, connected, waiting, judging him unjustly.

After some introspection he recognized what the true problem was. Her power over him governed not only his physical body, but his soul as well. No matter that she treated him like a dog to be punished, he still loved her. His heart wouldn’t listen to reason. He needed to be near her like he needed air to breathe.

Deep in his soul search, meandering aimlessly through the night, he landed himself in the middle of a group of thugs. They were big, black, tattooed, and not the least bit happy to see him in their neighborhood. A quick scan of their minds revealed they were looking forward to some entertainment at his expense.

By the time he came to his senses, he was surrounded by five black gang members who looked like they spent more time in jail than out. Their pants hung low at the waist, boxer shorts exposed in the classic ‘sag’ of the urban gangster. He could read their immediate interest in him. They assumed he was easy prey with cash, credit cards, or something else of value.

The one on his right in a NY Jets hat yelled loudly to his companions, “Dis mousy ass bitch must be lost.” He turned to Aaron up in his face, pointing at him. “Hey powder, don’t you know where da fuck you at?”

The inner city ghetto, one of those places he’d artfully avoided all his life. Shit. There were heaps of trash on the ground, buildings with broken and boarded up windows, and isolated pockets of gangsters hanging out in the shadowy corners. Liquor stores lined either side of the street. Not a white person in sight. The Projects.

“Fuck!” Aaron cursed under his breath as they closed in around him, cutting off all paths to escape.

The guy directly in front of him wore a black hoodie and was the biggest of the lot, three hundred fifty pounds of muscle and bad attitude. He stepped towards Aaron with a wicked scowl that left no doubt of his intentions. The gorilla growled down on him from his six foot six height, “What you got in your pockets, bitch?” Aaron suspected the guy had never been denied such a request before. He had the air of one who always took what he wanted, when he wanted, from whoever he wanted.

Aaron stepped back. “Hey, I don’t want any problems.”

The guy to the left in a NY Giants coat grabbed Aaron by his arm. “You are the problem.”

Aaron reacted instinctively, snapping his arm out to break the hold. He connected hard against the man’s chest, a crack-crunch sound. The man’s entire body flew backwards several feet, and he landed on his butt, wheezing in pain. The excessive force of Aaron’s whip-like reaction surprised him as much as it did the guy he hit.

“Git dat mothafucka!” yelled the guy with French-braided hair. Aaron’s aggressive response triggered a free-for-all.

The call to attack punched an adrenaline surge through Aaron. A wildly exhilarating sense of power filled him, a limitless strength and energy. He easily evaded several blows, his movements much faster than theirs by magnitudes. He now understood what Michelle meant when she had stated so eloquently, they will be turtles, moving in slow motion.