The footsteps sound closer. Closer... I dare not raise my head for I am as he has requested.
Calm.
Docile.
Above me, the face that may never look upon mine the way I worship his.
A warm embrace, a divine kiss I may never find. Even the floor upon which I kneel appears eternal in his presence.
His feet are beautiful. Were I permitted, blanketed in kisses they would be, utterly and eternally mine, never to leave, always to stand over me.
A harsh voice speaks and I'm in heaven and hell at once.
"Stand up."
I fear him whilst simultaneously needing him in ways my body cannot understand. May I raise my eyes? Will you allow me to gaze upon that seductive face and swallow the beauty of those lips?
One look.
One look into those tantalizing eyes, that's all I ask.
I can't help it; I want him.
I want him to see me - to see the depth of my desire.
I know it's wrong, I know he'll be upset, but I dive recklessly, swimming vehemently through the waves of blue that shore up the doorway to his soul. And I'm in heaven. A faultless, guileless, soaring piece of heaven. It's the longest two seconds of my entire life.
I hold my breath, awaiting his sneer.
"You know the rules. Turn around."
My eyes leave his and I return to the dark. The seething depression that surrounds me only abates in the knowledge that he is here. And that he will soon be touching me, in his own way.
I welcome the strikes. They break up the perilous black, offering a small but significant portal to the light. I hear his breath heaving behind me - it's the most beautiful sound I've ever heard. I would lay here all day to let that musical sigh waft melodically through my ears.
His hand strokes my backside smoothly and tenderly in between spanks - and I know that deep down he loves me the way I love him. He has to. From the moment we met we've been drawn to each other; inseparable by the realities of time and space. He is always with me and I always with him.
We are as one.
But it kills me inside. It kills me that his face may never acknowledge what his blackened and beaten heart already knows.
He may never return a loving gaze, a romantic kiss, or a hopeful laugh.
He will always be in that prison; that dark and sinister cave where he was brutally slashed and buried so many years ago.
He will always be poisened by the black ones - the way I am without him.
Tears decorate my sweaty cheeks. It's not the pain; the pain is part of the package. The pain is what brings our love alive, into the light, out of the obscurity it obsesses in.
No. The pain will always be a part of me. It feeds me, wills me to go on. To connect in the only way we know how.
He penetrates me forcefully, my heart bursting, my senses tingling.
The pain.
The catalyst of my tears is far worse, far deeper. It lies defeated at the base of my soul, ready to give up but desperately grasping to hang on just one millisecond longer.
Then another.
Then another.
For him. For him to see. To understand.
To understand how I'm inextricably cabled into his soul, fueling it, healing it with selfless electricity. His feelings for me run deep - deeper than the well that holds the demons of his past that he has not the strength to acknowledge.
So you see, his hands will never hurt me. His words will never break me, and the absence of his loving embrace will never kill me. But this small fact is slowly and methodically destroying me:
He may never know.