Hit Me

“What are you thinking?”

We sat feet apart, but we might as well have been in different houses, different neighborhoods, different cities with how impossible it felt to bridge the gap between us. I pulled my knees up to my chest and wrapped my arms around myself, grateful for the comfort of my old college sweatshirt as I looked across the kitchen table at B’s familiar face made strange. 

We’d both chosen non-monogamy long before choosing each other, but that didn’t mean there weren’t hurdles like any other relationship—and my first new partner since B and I had started dating was a major hurdle. It wasn’t going to be easy to move past hurt feelings—a fact becoming clearer by the minute as our breakfast grew cold.

Silence hung in the air, and I willed myself to move, to grab B’s hand, anything, when their warm fingers found my chin. B pulled me toward them until our lips met softly in twin acts of forgiveness and devotion—until I pressed back hard enough to feel the outline of teeth behind closed lips. They returned every inch, nipping at my bottom lip and bruising my mouth, as we battled to show that we remembered, we remembered, we remembered.

B pulled away first and, reluctant to let go of our first real spark of connection, I tracked them until they moved too far to follow. My breathing slowed as I sat back in my chair and stared at flushed cheeks I knew mirrored mine; a heaving chest; that dark hair that ached to be brushed away; those blue eyes that still weren’t quite familiar. 

“Hi,” I whispered, oddly shy. They were coming back to me, but we hadn’t yet regained the easy rhythm of our relationship. I swallowed hard. 

“Hey,” said B. The familiar timbre of their voice echoed through my chest, and I broke, collapsing against them. B held me as my face found the crook of their neck and I breathed deep. They smelled like themself—spice and smoke—and I followed the thread back to them. 

B pushed me away, and I whined at the loss of contact. They only smiled, meeting my gaze as they gently brushed two fingers against my cheek. 

“I’m going to hit you now.”

I whimpered, warmth flooding me at the memory of every time before when we’d found each other this way. I should’ve known our reconnection would be midwived through the delivery and acceptance of pain—our compatible kink one of our strongest bonds. My smile softened at the thought of their palm against my cheek, their teeth in my skin, their spit in my mouth—all versions of the same promise: we would return to each other again and again and again. 

“Yes, please,” I said and waited for the first slap, memorizing the arch of their eyebrows and the sweep of their jaw. They always looked so purposeful and exacting before they hit me, and I wanted to remember it. 

I gasped as the slap reverberated through me, face knocked to the side by the impact. Chin tucked into my shoulder, I allowed myself a moment’s reprieve before bringing my face back to the front. Just as quickly, their left hand found my other cheek. All thought emptied out of me as we moved together in this dance. Them, pure energy. Me, the receptacle through which it could be absorbed. We provided what the other needed; our way of saying I care about you.

Another slap, and my cheek burned. I lost track of how many times they’d hit me, and I wondered distantly if my face would bruise. I eagerly turned back to B and their waiting palm, but this time B didn’t connect. Before I could beg for another slap, they grabbed my wrist and pulled me out of the chair and into the bedroom.

The moment we crossed the threshold, B nodded at the bed in front of us. “Lie down.”

I scrambled to comply. My back found the mattress, and I trembled as I waited for them to tell me what came next. Seconds dragged, and I clenched my hands into fists. Waiting was always part of the game, but I didn’t know if I could do it today—not when I was still this raw, still needed to touch them, still needed to find them. 

“No, that’s no good,” said B, voice short. “Take off your shirt.”

I sat up, hesitating for just a moment, before I pulled off my sweatshirt and the t-shirt underneath in one fluid movement. Clad only in my underwear, I stared as B stripped down to a black tee and boxer briefs. As eager as I was for them to join me on the bed, I was unwilling to spoil the moment—especially not once they slid a hand down the front of their briefs. 

I whined with need as B touched themself, fanning the desire that had sparked the moment our lips had touched, and that had fully ignited when their palm connected with my face. I bit back a groan, struggling not to beg to touch them as their gasps and moans filled the air along with my panting. 

Tears pricked my eyes with unabashed want—a level of need I often played at but rarely felt so acutely. All I could think about was how to convince B to let me touch them—and for them to touch me. It was almost enough to make me beg not to play at all and to ask them to make love to me instead. 

But of course, this was our lovemaking. Slaps and tears and moans that brought us back to ourselves and each other, time after time after time. We gave each other everything by offering up our pain and need in ways that few could understand. We created a love language all its own. I’d never known a deeper trust than the one it took to hit and be hit. 

B interrupted my thoughts by climbing onto the bed and straddling my prone form. I lifted my hips off the mattress in search of connection, but B pinned me in place with their thighs. I groaned in frustration, and they laughed.

I had enough time to register the dangerous sparkle in B’s eyes before their hand shot out, twisting my face to the side with the force of their slap. I whimpered, turning my face back to them, and was rewarded with a twin slap against the opposite cheek. With flushed faces, we stared through the slowly clearing air—each of us filled with want and need and the desire to meet each other in this moment.

“Kiss me,” I whispered, desperate for a moment of gentleness before we plunged into the abyss. “Please.”

With the savage grin I loved so much, B leaned down and captured my lips. I moaned into their mouth as they pressed hard enough to bruise, hands stealing across my body as fingers dug into soft flesh. Trapped by their mouth and their hands and their legs, all I could do was press my lips against theirs in desperation as they devoured me. 

Both of us breathing heavily, B broke the kiss to grab my side and shoulder, flipping me so that my face was pressed into the mattress and they sat on my ass. I wriggled helplessly beneath them as their fingertips mapped the skin of my back, painting new topography upon it with nails and teeth and spit. I screamed into the pillow whenever the sensation became too much, trapped by the weight of their body and my own desire to please. I pressed back into them to wordlessly ask for more every time the pain stopped. 

My tribute. Their acceptance.

Lost in the heady cycle of pain and its echoing absence, I missed whatever B whispered above me. The meaning became clear when they roughly knocked my legs apart until they were spread wide enough for them to kneel between them. I pushed my ass off the mattress and toward them, reveling in the sudden freedom of movement.

I was rewarded with a hand grabbing my hip hard enough to bruise. B pulled me up until I was on my knees and elbows, and then finally, they found the wetness between my thighs. 

There was no playing this time, no teasing, just a brutal thrust of fingers into cunt that left me gasping. I barely had time to acclimate before they began fucking me, but it didn’t matter—this was what I wanted. What I needed. My body followed their rhythm, slowing when they paused long enough to add another finger and then another. Pausing again to grab lube and smear it over their fingers and my cunt, neither of us done with the other yet. 

The whole time, nothing words streamed out of me. Words like please and ah and fuck. All I could feel was their fullness and the nails scratching my back. I distantly wondered if they’d drawn blood and just as distantly knew it didn’t matter—no, that I would’ve liked it if they had. My willingly endured pain proved the depths of my trust and care, and the marks it left reminded me of the depth of our connection when we were apart. 

Their fingers moved in me, drawing me out, over and over again, until my thighs trembled and my cunt ached and it still wasn’t enough and—

“Fuck,” I said as they found that perfect spot. My face went slack, thighs soft as they hit it over and over again. “Just like that. Just like that. Just like that.”

Their pleased moan told me I was gushing enough to soak the mattress, but they kept moving as senseless words filled the air between us. Until finally it was too much and I threw a hand behind me, blindly grabbing for their wrist. 

They froze, and I tugged until they freed themself from my cunt. I spun onto my back, breathing heavily as a giggle found its way to the surface. Smiling, I blinked up at B’s face, sharp, blue eyes crinkled into a smile so familiar that my heart cracked to see it, my grin widening to meet theirs. 

A moment of shared joy before I pulled them into me. Our lips found each other, and it was less demanding this time. More giving. I lost myself in the press of their mouth, the weight of their body on mine as I reveled in our recovered connection.

My hand sneaked between us, greedy to touch B and to bring them as much pleasure as they’d brought me. My fingers traced the front of their briefs, eliciting a soft moan. I smiled into our kiss as I stoked their desire and searched for their pleasure. 

Mid-movement, B grabbed my wrist and dragged it into the space between us like an offering plate intended for gods. For us. Placing it palm-side up, I watched beneath heavy lids as they slowly bent over my open palm and let a string of spit fall into it as offering. Before I could ask why, they guided my hand inside their briefs. 

I groaned at the heat I found, more intense than anything I could ever discover with cloth between us. I built into the rhythm they liked, and they resumed their own work—fingers pushing into my waiting cunt. 

I groaned at the ease with which they entered me but forced myself to remain focused on their pleasure. Mine became nothing but a pleasurable buzz in the back of my head and the base of my spine as my fingers slipped over them and B’s moans overtook mine. 

“A little harder,” said B. 

“Yes,” I breathed, pressing against them while maintaining the same steady rhythm. My reward was their sped-up breathing, the hitch in their chest. B’s eyes were squeezed shut as they ventured closer to the edge. They looked perfect with their hair falling into closed eyes, full lips parted around the sounds of their pleasure. I led them to release until finally, they found it. 

They came with a gasp, fingers flexing inside me as their entire body went rigid from the force of the orgasm. I didn’t stop moving until they grabbed my wrist—the silent command unmistakable. A moment later, B pulled themself out of my cunt and collapsed on top of me in a heap of sweat and laughter and ease. 

B planted a kiss on my cheek as they rolled off of me and onto their side. We stared at each other for a long, quiet moment as our hearts slowed and our sweat dried, reveling in our hard-won closeness. 

“Hi,” said B with a soft smile. 

“Hey,” I whispered, stroking their cheek as our lips met.

Photo by Maria Eduarda Loura Magalhães