Yassim stands in the middle of the floor. He has his hands at his side now, and slowly he raises an arm towards him. He says something, but Jacob doesn’t hear him, there’s a roar in his ears.

‘Who are you?’ he screams again.

Then Yassim is in front of him. The gun is ripped out of his hands and thrown onto the floor. Through the roar in his ears he can just make out the sound of it clattering onto the hard floor. Yassim is on top of him now, and Jacob holds up his hands to defend himself, but Yassim is too strong and Jacob falls back onto the floor, as if in slow motion, with his friend above him.

Yassim’s thin body feels heavy as he presses Jacob onto the cold floor; his hands are strong, relentless around his wrists. That is how he holds them when they fuck. But their sex is a game, or that’s how Jacob thought of it. Yassim’s domination, his own submission, each to stimulate the other. He’s thought of his submission as a choice, as roles they assumed and could break out of at any time. But this is serious, and it scares him for real.

Yassim turns him so that Jacob is lying with his stomach on the floor. And Jacob can feel Yassim’s weight, his breath, his hips, his cock. It’s humiliating. Not just getting caught snooping on the computer, but also that he is unable to defend himself physically. But the most humiliating thing of all is how horny this makes him. That he can’t resist this or defend himself against Yassim on any level. This is neither fucking nor a game. This is being steamrolled.

‘Fuck me,’ Jacob hisses against the cold floor. ‘Fuck me as hard as you fucking can.’

Yassim tears off his underwear, and then he’s moving inside him. The world explodes in pain and a raw, terrible pleasure, and for a moment Jacob thinks he’s going to die, that the world is ending.

*

Afterwards, Yassim pulls out and collapses with his back against one of the table legs. Jacob is still lying with his face against the floor, eyes closed. It’s too much. This is just way too much.

‘It was a Saturday,’ Yassim begins quietly. ‘My sister’s wedding was on a Saturday.’

Jacob lies completely still.

‘My whole family was there, of course. Everyone. My father was an important man. Influential. Powerful in his way. But most of all, he was very good at keeping everyone happy, understanding what people needed the most. That’s why they listened to him. That’s why the Americans listened to him, too. Everyone was there for the wedding. Secular rebels, al-Nusra representatives, al-Qaeda. Even Abu Bakr was on his way, but he was late. He wasn’t the caliph yet – just Ibrahim, an ambitious nobody.’