"The body has its own memory, and the skin never forgets what it liked."
— Warsan Shire
~~~
The apartment felt different when Zaya stepped back inside, as if her silence had shifted into something more deliberate, something heavier.
She kicked off her boots at the door, set her bag on the chair, and stood still for a long breath. Her keys clinked softly in the bowl. The faint smell of coffee grounds and lavender oil lingered in the air, but it didn't ground her the way it usually did.
Her mind was too full. The scent of lavender oil still lingered faintly in the air, mingled with a trace of old coffee grounds. Normally, it brought her back to herself. Tonight, it barely touched her.
She walked into her bedroom and peeled off her dress, letting it slide down her body like a layer she couldn't carry anymore. She grabbed an old hoodie from the back of her closet, one she had stolen from an ex years ago, oversized, soft at the wrists and tugged it on over bare skin. She wears no bra and no shorts. Just the hoodie and her underwear.
She tied her locs up tighter, then walked barefoot into the kitchen, filled the kettle, and lit the stove: rooibos tea. Something earthy. Something that would remind her she still lived here, still existed in the real world, not just in the space between Cael's words.
"BDSM."
The word felt strange in her mouth. Not wrong bt foreign. Like a language she'd heard before but never bothered to translate.
She carried her tea to the couch, settled into the cushions, and pulled her knees up close. The hoodie shifted as she moved, and she became aware of how bare her thighs were against the fabric. Her skin was warm. Still aware of his voice, his offer, his world.
She reached for her phone, tapped the screen, hesitated and then typed:
"What is BDSM really?"
The search results exploded instantly.
The first few links dragged her into a world she didn't recognize: threads packed with neon usernames, crass language, Slang she didn't understand and pictures that made her shift uncomfortably.
One page led with a bold headline:
"Do you want to be someone's dirty little toy?"
"Daddy Dom, Little Girl: A safe space to play."
The pages were filled with language that made her recoil:
"Good girls get punished."
"Cages for brats."
"Learn to serve your master."
~ Zaya: "What the fuck..." she whispered and closed it immediately.
She kept scrolling. Each new page seemed worse than the last.
There were lists of names she'd never use to describe herself. "Pet." "Toy." "Property."
One forum thread was filled with people ranking their favorite humiliation scenes: A man bragged about making his girlfriend crawl to him on a leash in public. Another described blindfolding and tying his partner, then leaving her in the dark for hours without explanation. Another posted about being spit on during a scene and loved every second of it. One woman wrote about begging for her food. Another described being collared in public and punished in the back of a van.
There were words like "slut training," "degradation kink" and "consensual non-consent."
She blinked at the screen and shut the tab.
New article popped up, this one bright pink with heavy fonts:
"Do you want to be his perfect submissive?"
She read the first few lines.
"Obedience is your purpose. Kneel, shut up, and let your Dom show you your place."
She dropped her phone onto the couch beside her.
Her stomach twisted. It unsettled her more than it aroused her. Not because it was taboo. Because it felt like erasure. It was sex rewritten without care. Intimacy stripped of nuance. Power twisted into something that looked more like punishment than presence.
That wasn't what she wanted.
This wasn't what Cael had described, had talked about. He hadn't said anything about control like that. He hadn't spoken to her like she was some blank doll waiting to be commanded. He had offered her precision, awareness, respect. None of what she just read reflected that.
Still, she couldn't shake the images now stuck in her mind: the pictures, the threads, the dark rooms filled with bodies kneeling or gagged. It wasn't even about the intensity, it was the emptiness in some of those eyes. The absence of choice.
This was theater. Costumes. Power games that didn't just bend reality, they broke it.
She stood and walked to the kitchen, poured the rest of the lukewarm tea down the sink, and refilled her glass with cold water. The sharpness of it steadied her for a moment.
She returned to her seat and leaned her head back. The hoodie fell further along her shoulder, exposing the slope of her collarbone. Her skin felt tight, uneasy.
She picked the phone back up. She typed slower and carefully this time:
"Intro to BDSM for beginners."
"What is soft domination?"
"Can BDSM be emotional?"
For once, the results came softer, more focused.
She clicked into an article written by a therapist who specialized in power dynamics and trauma-informed care. The first line slowed her breath.
"Consent is not a checkpoint. It's a continuous conversation."
Another piece described different forms of dominance: physical, psychological, sensual.
One story was from a woman who said her partner never used restraints or toys. He just whispered instructions, touched her with intention, and taught her how to listen to her body in a way no one ever had before.
Zaya read every word. The farther she went, the more nuance she found. There were people who treated submission like a sacred thing. Not a game, not a roleplay but a release, a ceremony. Something chosen.
She saw terms that spoke to her in a different tone: sensory control, anticipation play, guided surrender.
Another article described a kind of dominance where the power came not from punishment but from presence. From the Dom knowing when to push, when to pull back, when to be still.
She kept scrolling.
She found phrases that felt closer to her: "Voice control"
"Guided sensation"
"Anticipation play."
"Blindfolds."
"Silence."
" The intimacy of not knowing what's next."
A scene described where the submissive was touched only with breath, sound, and the edge of a feather. Her body had responded before she could even name it.
Zaya sat up straighter.
She opened a new article, written by a clinical sexologist who practiced consensual kink in therapeutic frameworks. The opening line landed deep in her gut:
"Consent isn't a door you walk through once it's a room you live in together."
She read on. Another piece, more personal, written by a woman who had entered submission in her thirties.
"I didn't want to be broken down. I wanted to be held still enough to be known."
Zaya's breath caught on that one.
This world wasn't just leather and gags. There was more underneath it, something slower, something quiet.
She found a story of a submissive who cried after being blindfolded and kissed gently, not because she was scared, but because she felt safe for the first time in years.
That was the first time Zaya let herself feel what she hadn't dared to earlier. She wanted that kind of safety.
She scrolled further.
Now the words began to sound different. Dominance described as holding the weight of someone else's body without ever hurting it. Not just handling power, but carrying trust.
She wasn't interested in calling anyone "daddy/sir" or crawling or gagging on command.
But when she read about slow teasing, about patience, about being told to breathe, to wait, to feel instead of perform, her body responded.
🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹
🥀 💥 ❤️🔥 🥀
v𝖊𝘭v𝖊𝘵 𝚙𝔯𝖊𝓼𝓼𝗎𝔯𝖊
🥀 💥 ❤️🔥 🥀
🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹
The room was quiet except for the ticking of the small kitchen clock and the low hum of traffic from outside.
Zaya hadn't moved in nearly fifteen minutes. Her phone was still resting on her thigh. The screen gone dark again but the list she'd written lingered in her mind like something sacred.
She reached for the clean notebook she kept tucked beside her art supplies, a slim journal with a soft, cream cover she'd never found a use for.
Tonight felt like the right time. She opened to the first page and uncapped her pen.
She started writing.
"Things I Know About Myself."
She paused. Then underlined it.
* I don't like chaos. But I don't want control either.*
* I like the pause between breath and touch.
* I like the moment before I'm kissed.
* I like being looked at like I'm being listened to.
* I don't want to be overpowered. I want to be guided.
She stared at those lines for a long time before flipping to a fresh page.
"What I'm Afraid Of."
* Being asked to go further than I want.
* Saying yes when I should say not yet.
* Losing my voice in someone else's story.
* Becoming what someone else needs instead of who I am.
The words surprised her. Not because they were dramatic, but because they were clear. They had edges. They weren't fear shouting. They were fear naming itself.
She exhaled slowly. Then flipped again.
"What I'm Curious About."
This list was harder to write. But she didn't stop her hand.
* The way my body reacts when I don't know what's coming.
* The feeling of being told to stay still.
* The sound of someone else's breath in the dark.
* The kind of surrender that doesn't erase me.
* The part of me that wants to let go and still be held.
She stopped after that. Not because she had no more thoughts, but because she felt something settle inside her.
She reached for her phone, opened her message thread with Cael, then hesitated.
She didn't text him. She wasn't ready to say yes. But she was ready to say almost.