I always make her cry.

This is never my intention. Not my way. I want her smiling slyly at me, hooded dusk eyes and jeweled lips. I want her to laugh as she enfolds me, a bright thing of joy in us both. I want: her.

Here is what happens.

We kiss, deeply, my hands framing her skin, her lips tasting of unknown spices. Her mouth blossoms, her tongue, and my hands around her throat clench, push her away. "What's wrong?" she asks, her eyes too large, her lips perfect shining red still, as always, as when they draw the others in, as when they make promises they intend to keep. "How'd they teach you to do that?" I demand, my own voice unrecognizable. "Did you practice on each other? Did they show you with pictures, or just kinda describe it?" "Mal, what are you talking about?" she asks, but she knows. We both know.

We lay on her bed, her limbs golden against the crimson silk. Her hands discover nerves I didn't know I had. My fingers tight around her wrists, pushing them into the mattress. Leaving bruises. "Don't do that," I hiss, and her arms go slack. "Not like you do to them." I lean in to kiss her but her head turns, my mouth falls awkwardly on the hollow under her cheek bone. Her lips press together, tight and unsure.

They open, later, as she breathes her pleasure in and out. Noises catching in her throat, are drawn carefully out, one after another. I think it is the best sound I have ever heard, the sound she makes as her eyelashes flutter and her hips arch, the open asking sound of her freedom. And then I think, she made this sound for them too. They would want that, some of them, would want to think she was there by choice, that she was enjoying herself, and she would oblige, she was good at what she did. So these sounds, false or true, must have come before, must have been coveted in times past as I covet them now. I move over her, my mouth swallowing sounds before they reach the air, but that only reminds me of other things. "Shh," I whisper, my teeth on the shell of her ear. "Shh." She does not