Excerpt

All she wanted to know with complete trust and absolute certainty was that, despite the terrible things she did to him, despite the tender atrocities he allowed her to inflict on his body and his spirit, that he still loved her, still desired her, still wanted to be with her. The truest definition of unconditional love she had never experienced.

She didn't want to explore how lustful he felt or how beautiful he thought he thought she was: those things were too facile, too trite. She wanted to examine how difficult it was, how filled with longing, pain, uncertainty and anguish but ultimately filled with peace and joy these moments between them could be. She wanted to test him, an irrational desire to see how far she could push him, or push him away. Would he stay? She was almost too afraid to find out. But the need to know, that certainty she craved, drove her.

"Come here Adam, " she whispered.

He left his place, seated on the floor by the bay window. He was watching the rain. He crawled on all fours toward her, head down and quickly yet smoothly as he had been taught. She watched the patterned muted light from the window cast shadows along the skin of his naked back, dappling on the muscles alive and moving. When he reached her he rubbed his face on her silk nylon sheathed crossed legs, without her permission, without asking. A small infraction this unexpected and ardent gesture of affection, it would serve to answer her questions today. He would have to be punished.

(c) 2015 from the forthcoming The Weft and the Weave