From the corner of her eye, she sees him pull a belt slowly from his waist. She listens to the whisper of leather in his hands, hears the ankle cuffs clink against the metal of the ladder, and then there is just sensation, the heavy thud of the belt on her thighs, the deep pain that seeps from the surface of her skin down into her bones. She watches him do it, watches the faint red smudges against the white of her skin, the black tongue of the belt lapping at her thighs.

“You like it, don’t you?” he says.

“Yes,” she says.

He is tilting her head back, opening her mouth, and his tongue is hot and forceful in her mouth. She pulls against the restraints, and then he is inside her, making her gasp sharply, but the sound is suffocated. His mouth is tightly on hers. It swallows her, and yet she can also hear him speak.

“Greedy little slut,” he says. “Tell me you want it. Tell me you want to be beaten and fucked,” and she does. She wants it, and she can feel him, smell him, see him both inside and outside of herself when her body hiccups and trembles and then slams back to the bathroom floor.

In the morning, she woke up exhausted. She could hear Katie flipping through television cartoons, and then Phillip asking if she wanted more orange juice. Josie closed her eyes and pulled the covers over her head. What happened last night was bad. It had left her scared and shaken, and she had crawled back into bed and felt first unbearably guilty and then intensely angry.

“Josie.” Phillip walked in and pulled the covers back. “You want some coffee?”

She shook her head, and he sat on the bed and rested his hand against her cheek. “You okay?”

He was wearing a blue sweatshirt with holes in the cuffs, and she snaked her thumbs through and against his wrists. “You need these sewn.”

He took her hands in his. “You look tired. You want to sleep in? I’ll take Katie to school.”

“No.” She sat up and looked at him. She looked at the space between his teeth, the scar that bisected his chin. He had always looked boyish to her, but with the sun streaming in through the window and illuminating his shoulders, he seemed especially so, and she had a sudden desire to tell him everything, to smack down any illusions of herself as his good girl. “I’ll get up.”

“No. Go back to sleep. Let me take her.” He pressed her back to the bed. “I don’t have to go in until two today,” he said. “I’ll come back, and maybe you’ll let me make up for last night.” He ran his fingertips along her neck and down to her breast, and she had to fight not to pull away.

“All right.”