Limits of control

A week in and it feels like I never left. I can tell from the magnolias in the Luxembourg garden that winter turned to spring, four months without him and nothing else has changed. We still spend sleepless nights in the shadow of the Tour Montparnasse, then waste away our Sundays in bed or on the quiet back streets of Saint Germain.

He's going back to school tomorrow, I make plans to distract myself while he's away. He gets to me in ways I thought no man could, not after my father, not after Carl. He knows exactly how to touch me and he knows exactly what it does to me.

I sometimes feel the need to tell him, in the mornings when he slowly runs his fingers up my naked thigh. My skin is like his own, every inch a way for him to control the way I breathe. Softly at first, then faster until suddenly he stops. He whispers something to me, then gets up and leaves me there in the silence and the warmth.