Her eyes darkened and she lunged for the instrument, grabbed them so roughly from his finger that he felt the joint snap. And she plunged the scissors into his thigh, leaving a dime-size slash. Before he could realize what was happening, she began to lap up the blood with her warm tongue, leaned over to kiss him, her lips dabbed red. And this obscenity, not the cut itself, turned him on like nothing else had before. He wanted more of it.

Soon, Tom began fantasizing about incorporating more pain, others’ pain, into their bedroom routines. “I can make it happen for you, for us,” she whispered one night. And he didn’t believe her at first. But then she did it, his fantasies coming to life right before his eyes.

There was something about Peri, the way she thrust herself forward so unabashedly, making him a partner in her domination, that made him want to own that domination. He’d always fantasized about controlling them, all those girls who had rejected him in middle school, high school, their tiny mouths twisting in disgust at the mere thought of going out with Tom Newburn. And with Peri, he had the power to actually do it.

She procured girls for other men sometimes, too. Powerful men. Plucking the discards from her own sexual conquests and handing them off to a network of suits salivating at the idea of sex with lithe, beautiful young women who weren’t professional sex workers, merely girls Peri had found and delivered. Tom, these other men, they wanted to fornicate with the kind of girls they could meet in real life. They wanted docile, homebody types, not the Peris of the world. Or, rather, not the type of woman Peri was, self-possessed and strong-willed.

Tom and the other men would pay the girls off so they wouldn’t say a word. And for a while, it all went swimmingly, mostly because Tom loved Peri. He loved how she made him feel, all the potential she saw in him. How powerful he’d become since she came into his life. He never mentioned that, in some ways, Peri also scared him. How would that look, to be so fearful of a woman?

He had met her at a club during his last year of business school, out with his colleagues from the venture capital firm he’d soon start working for, trying to make friends.

Tom had only recently grown into himself. It wasn’t until an economics class in college that everything clicked, that he learned, fully absorbed, that he didn’t have to be a big, bulky guy who could knock other men down to be successful. That if he worked hard, harder than anyone else, he could be ahead of everyone, ahead of his brother and his father. Ahead of all the bullies of his childhood.