"I want you to hold me down and fuck me hard. Don't treat me like myself, or like a woman at all—treat me like an animal," I told him, the last such pronouncement I would make. Aidan was the kind of guy who always made me feel depraved, and he had a special knack for making my pussy tighten so fiercely I worried that it would stay that way permanently, the way parents warn their kids their eyebrows will stay furrowed if they keep on frowning. I'd been lusting after him for almost a year, but had finally broken through my own fear and told him what I wanted from him, only to find he felt the same way. I'd never asked anyone anything of the sort—a little spanking, a few minutes of bondage, a few dirty words thrown my way, but that was about it. This was different. This was real, raw. That's how much I wanted him. At first, I wasn't sure if he got what I was saying—I didn't want him to hold back, at all. I could tell that he had been holding back, just enough to make me long for more, to make me feel slightly put off, as if he thought I was too fragile to take what he could really give me.

Maybe it's because, outside the bedroom, I'm his boss at our small town's indie record store. I'm the girl all the wannabe guitar players drool over—five–nine, long jet–black hair often tinged with green or red, eyebrow ring, purple lipstick, powder–pale face. My clothes, some mixture of black, tight, and sexy, usually paired with imaginative stockings and com– bat boots, never fail to make at least one set of eyes turn at the store. But Aidan, unlike most of the guys who passed my way, caught my gaze immediately. He was smart, not just some snot–nosed punk looking to steal CDs when they thought I wasn't looking. Aidan could talk as easily about Dorothy Parker or Bukowski as he could the Buzzcocks or Braid or even the Beatles. He didn't lord his intelligence over anyone there, either, it just came out if you provoked him enough and stayed hidden, like a turtle under its shell, if you didn't. He was more clean–cut than the other guys, so you had to peer a little more closely to see his edge, to catch a sneer or raised brow, to see the smirks that were gone almost before they'd even formed. He had plenty of scars and dreams and fantasies, but they were wrapped up so tight I didn't know if he'd be able to let go, even though it was clear from his rock–hard cock and the look on his face, eyes half–lidded and wet mouth slack, that he wanted me.

I was sick and tired of lying back and letting some guy rock his cock inside me as if we were on a seesaw, gliding gently upward, pausing, then zooming downward at the most predictable pace imaginable. Even at twenty–five, I knew that sex should take you out of the everyday, should make you as wild and ferocious as a rabid dog—in heat. The guys before Aidan had been cute enough, but they just couldn't give me what I most craved, what I dreamed about, squirming against my slithering fingers as the walls of my bedroom shook with the latest single the store had sent our way.