A/N: Obviously, this fic contains choking. If that isn't your thing, you'll want to avoid this fic. To be honest, it's not quite my thing, which is why I've been sitting on this story for so long. But, I managed to finish it up, so I figured why not post? If you feel so inclined, please give the story a read, and let me know your thoughts. Thank you!

It had been her idea.

She was the one to bring it up, and when he demurred, she was the one to push past his protests and demand it of him. And now here they were. She was laid out beneath him on the bed, naked and spread wide. He knelt above her, astride her, with his knees planted on either side of her hips and both of his hands wrapped around her neck. His hold was light—he wasn't exerting any pressure at all—and yet he could feel her pulse beating hard against his index finger. It gave him pause, despite all of her earlier encouragement.

"We don't have to do this," he said for the tenth time.

"I want to," she whispered back.

It was only half a lie. She didn't want to do this, exactly, but she did want what she knew would come of doing it: knowledge. She wanted to understand him, especially this part of him. She wanted to know, if she let him put his hands around her neck, would it stop him from doing the same to others?

She told herself she could handle it. It wasn't as if no one had ever choked her before. It had happened, and she had lived—though admittedly she'd never been choked during sex, and the thought of it, while mildly thrilling in the abstract, frightened her in practice. She tried to normalize it in her mind, rationalizing it along with all the other less-than-gentle things they did in bed.

She liked it when he was rough with her. She liked the way he yanked on her hair when he fucked her from behind; she liked the sting of his open-handed slaps on her ass. She liked when he bit her and she liked when he rode her so hard she was sore the next day. She liked allowing him to dominate her, to control every part of her, if only for a few nights now and then.

She told herself this wasn't anything different, but they both knew it was.

"Don't be scared," he whispered, tightening his fingers around her throat.

She nodded, or tried to. It was hard to move her head while under his grasp.

"I'm not gonna hurt you," he promised, but she could tell by the grit in his voice that he was scared he might.

"I know you won't," she whispered back, only because she knew he needed to hear it. Sometimes it was only her belief in him that kept him in line. Just like his belief in her.

"You know what to do, okay? Tell me to stop and I'll stop. If you can't speak, you tap my arm." He demonstrated on his own forearm. "Understood?"

"Yes."

She could see it in his eyes again: You don't have to do this. If she were less proud, she might've backed out then. But she couldn't: she had come too far just to bow out now because she was scared of the unknown, scared of a little pain. She had to see this to its end. She had to learn what she'd come here to learn.

She lifted her own hand and put it over his, squeezing hard enough so that his grip tightened around her neck.

"Don't be a pussy," she taunted, hardly feeling the bravery she was demanding from him.

He didn't react to the insult as she'd expected him to. In fact, he hardly seemed to hear it. She watched as he bent down, lowering his face so it was mere inches from hers. She lay still and stared up at him, not knowing what to expect. His face was rigid, closed-off, and she could not read his eyes. She waited, tensed, for his grip to tighten around her throat.

But then all at once he softened.

He bent down and he kissed her on the mouth, very gently, very slowly, stroking her lips with his.

"I love you, Letty," he whispered. "You know that, right?"

She nodded, her throat stuck. She was suddenly very grateful for his hand wrapped around her neck; it gave her the pretense of not being able to speak.

He had said those three words once before, weeks ago when they'd been in an all-out screaming-and-shoving fight, and she hadn't yet been able to say them back. The words had silenced her that night, as they silenced her now. This was only the second time he'd ever said them.

Eventually, because she couldn't take him waiting, staring down at her in expectation, she nodded.

"I know," she whispered.

It wasn't what he wanted to hear, but he didn't ask for more.

He kissed her again, as gentle as before, but this time he slipped his tongue in, stoking the fire he'd built up between her legs earlier. He'd brought her off once already, to ease some of the tension after they'd struck their deal. She spread her legs wider, remembering how he'd buried his head between them earlier. Her thighs still burned from his stubble, and the feeling was spreading the more he kissed her. He was distracting her, and it was working. She was going to let it work.

She closed her eyes, focusing herself on every part of him except his fingers wrapped around her throat. His tongue was deep in her mouth now, slippery and heavy; his erection was hard against her skin as he straddled her; his legs—

Her eyes flew open when his grip tightened around her neck. She gasped for air reflexively, her head jerking up as her hands flew to her neck, and he eased up at once. She was too busy sucking in air before she remembered the point of this whole experience.

"Sorry," she whispered, laying her head back down on the mattress. "I didn't mean to."

"It's okay," he replied. "You don't have to apologize. It's instinct to react like that; it's not your fault."

She nodded, her eyes falling. His hands were still resting against her neck. She couldn't look away from them. She'd barely lasted two seconds. How in the world was she supposed to understand him when she was this weak?

"Maybe this isn't the best idea," he began, starting to remove his hands from her neck. "I know you're not comfortable with—"

"I don't care about comfort," she interrupted, holding his hands in place. "I want to keep going."

"You're scared."

"No, I'm not."

"Yes, you are. You can lie to everyone else, but you can't lie to me, Letty. I know you and I know when you're scared."

"Who cares? Just because I'm scared doesn't mean I don't want to do this, Javier!"

He sat back, moving his weight from his knees to his calves as he reclined above her. Apart from his hands she held against her neck, they weren't touching. She could see he was still hard, but she knew one more minute of introspection and he would be as soft as she was scared. She couldn't let that happen. She had to get to the bottom of this.

"Talk to me."

He blinked, broken out of his thoughts. "What?"

"Talk to me," she repeated. "You know—like we used to. I think it'll make it easier."

"You mean—" He frowned. "—pretend?"

She smiled, reaching her hands out to touch his thighs. "Doesn't have to be pretend. You could take me on a tour of our greatest hits, if you like."

"Oh, really?" His eyes brightened, a smile suddenly peeking out beneath his stubble. "You want it like that, do you? Where would you like me to start?"

She dug her nails into his skin. "Start with Nevada."

Something changed in his face at the mention, and she couldn't help but grin, knowing she'd found a surefire way to distract him, and a surefire way to get him worked up. After all, what happened in Nevada was what they'd fought about weeks ago. It's what had made him feel like he had to scream that he loved her for the whole world to hear.

"Nevada?" His voice had lowered; it sent a thrill through her stomach. "You want me to talk to you about Nevada, do you?"

Without him even seeming to have thought about it, his hands had tightened around her throat. She shut her eyes and whispered the one word she could get out: "Please."

"Hm…" He adjusted his grip on her neck, shifting his hand until he had the hold that he wanted. "I don't like talking about Nevada, as I'm sure you remember. It wasn't exactly a fun trip for me."

She opened her eyes, grinning up at him despite her breathlessness. "It was fun for me," she taunted, watching his eyes narrow.

"Of course it was fun for you. There was a line of men a mile long waiting to fuck you."

She started to laugh at the bitterness in his voice, until he stopped her. She strained against his hold on her neck, enough so she could get out, "Like you didn't have your own line."

"The difference between you and me?" He bent down close, so that his face was just an inch from hers. "I didn't enjoy it, Letty."

She put on an innocent face, as much as she could manage under the circumstances, and he snorted, leaning closer.

"Oh, I know you enjoyed it," he replied. He rubbed his thumbs down either side of her throat, pressing hard against her tendons. "Nothing gets you off more than pissing me off. It's like a game to you. Isn't it?" He ground his hips into hers and she gasped, instinctively rising to meet him, her nails digging into his forearms. He stared down at her, seeming not to feel the pain. "It's all a fucking game to you."

It's not, she wanted to tell him, but she couldn't speak beneath the pressure of his hands and she didn't want to break whatever trance he was in by asking him to let up. She could see it in his face, feel it in the way he kept rolling his hips into hers: they were actually going to do this. He was going to fuck her like this and she was finally—finally—going to understand what went on inside his head.

"And you love your games, don't you, Letty?" he murmured, sliding one of his hands down her chest, over her stomach, and then dithering, his fingertips just barely brushing her pubic hair, making her whine in frustration. He grinned. "I forgot, you only like them when you're the winner."

Then he slid his fingers inside her and she couldn't have argued even if she'd wanted to.

"Don't worry, baby," he whispered, pumping his fingers deep inside. "I'll let you win tonight."

She shuddered beneath him, but didn't have long to enjoy the treat. His fingers were gone quicker than they arrived; she watched his hooded eyes as he reached for himself, coating the length of his cock in her wetness. She tried to reach for him, tried to help him, but he refused.

"You lay there like a good girl and be quiet," he whispered, grunting as he stroked himself to full force. "You lay there and take it."

She closed her eyes, managing only a brief moan before his fingers tightened on her throat again. It was working now—she was too hot to think about losing breath; she was so excited at being lightheaded to want it to stop. She thought maybe she understand some of it now—at least from the submissive's point of view. There was something so intoxicating about the way his control of her breath affected her arousal. Like the touch of his fingers, or the slide of his tongue, or the push of his cock, his siphoning off of her air made her want him all the more.

Her mother had always said she'd had an unnatural taste for danger. Letty herself had thought she'd reached her limits of acceptable forms of danger long ago. But maybe, maybe there were still other avenues to walk down that she hadn't explored yet.

Javier didn't say anything before he entered her, but he did let up the pressure on her neck, and she grinned as he did so, crying out for him the way she knew he liked. He pressed his body down into hers, so they could feel each other breathe, feel each other strain to be closer. For a few strokes, he pushed into her and kept the hold light on her neck. Then slowly, slowly, he increased the pressure. She wrapped her legs around him, exerting her own kind of choking force, liking the push-and-pull rhythm they'd found.

She shut her eyes as he tightened more and more. She didn't think she was going to pass out, but she could feel the edges of her vision, the edges of her being going fuzzy. He let her have a breath, then he stole one; all the while, he drove himself into her, teasing her with his fingers when he knew she needed it.

And he knew. He knew her so well—knew her better than anyone else on this earth did.

It made her happy sometimes. It made her happy now, in her not-quite-there fuzzed-out mind. She felt like smiling but she wasn't sure if she was doing it right. She opened her eyes—just a little—and saw him moving above her. His face was a blur of color and movement. He was pushing into her so deep and fast—he was so close; she could feel it—and as he neared him climax, she could see something shift in his eyes. He was so near to her and yet—there was something distant there, in his darkened, suddenly detached pupils. It made her wonder if this was what he looked like when he murdered people. She let him squeeze tighter, wondering how he could wall himself off so quickly, so easily. It took her years to separate herself from others, and even then they always managed to worm their way back in. Her defenses were always crumbling while his were flawless. How did he do it?

She could feel herself falling. His hand was so tight on her neck and her orgasm was so close. In a faraway place in her mind, she wondered if the combination of both at the same time might make her pass out. Or die? Surely she couldn't die from this. It was a game. It's all a fucking game to you. She laughed without air, willing her body to slow down even as she felt it unravel. It would be fitting if she died like this: strangled in bed by a hitman who loved her, killed not because he'd wanted to choke her, but because she'd made him. She'd forced him.

Your shit life is your own doing, that's what her mother had always told her. Don't go blaming anyone else for it, she'd said, by which Letty knew she'd meant, Don't go blaming me.

Her mother always expected her to meet a violent end. She'd told her so, during the bad years when the only time Letty had spoken to her was when she'd needed money for drugs, or for an abortion, or to pay off her debts. Letty had believed her—not simply because her mom had said it, but because Letty had been thinking it for so long, believing it for so long, and it was almost nice to hear something else agree.

I'm going to meet a violent end.

She opened her eyes, and somehow, through the haze of her orgasm, the haze of her vision, she saw him. She felt him start to come, and as their eyes met, his hands released her. His whitened knuckles went slack, as if shocked, and he collapsed onto her, into her, his head beside hers and his lips at her ear.

"I love you."

There it was again. Breathless this time. He was getting careless.

Or perhaps he had stopped caring: about how he sounded, about how she felt. How she failed to feel.

He was saying it to say it, not to be answered, and wasn't that what mattered?

She shut her eyes, dropping her aching legs back onto the bed. She slung one arm around his back, then another. She slid her fingers through the damp hair at the back of his neck. She listened to him breathe, listened to herself breathe. She had stopped gasping.

After a few minutes he pulled away, rolled off of her. They lay beside one another on their backs, staring up at the ceiling. Breathing. She had never noticed how much she'd breathed before.

"I don't want to do that again."

She blinked at the ceiling, letting the words in one ear and out the other. She turned her head to look at him.

"You didn't like it?"

"I don't want to do that again," he repeated, ignoring the question. He was staring at the ceiling. She waited until he eventually gave in and turned to meet her eye.

"Why not?" she asked. She stared at the sweat on his skin, the muscles in his chest. She felt her breath growing shallow just staring at his strength, passive as it was in this moment. It wasn't fear, exactly. She wasn't sure what it was. "You did it before. With others."

"It was different with the others."

"Why?"

He looked away, over her head, but she could read the answer in the tight lines of his face. Because you're already damaged enough. Because I didn't care about them like I do you.

She felt her lip twitch, the precursor to a smile. She had wondered if letting him hurt her would stop him from hurting others. She had her answer, she supposed. At least until the next test. The next job.

She bent forward, pressing a kiss to his shoulder. He watched her as she pulled away, waiting for more. Waiting for her to speak, to give him back those three little words he'd given her so many times now. She gave him a smile instead, and reached for his hand. Now wasn't the time. But maybe later.

A/N: Thank you for reading! Reviews would be lovely, if you have thoughts. This fic was pretty far out of my comfort zone.