I don't know why I'm writing this. Probably because I can't tell anyone else, and I can't keep it inside anymore.

We've been together four years. He's the gentlest person I know. Always asks if I'm okay, if it hurts, if it's alright. And for months I couldn't tell him that sometimes I wanted him to stop asking. I was ashamed to even think something like that. It felt like normal women weren't supposed to want that.

In the end I wrote it in a message. I sat in the other room watching through the open door as he read it. He read for a very long time. I had time to regret it about ten times over.

Then he came in, sat down next to me and said: "Give me a word. One word. Say it and I stop immediately, no questions." We picked "cherry." He repeated it twice, like he was recording it in his head.

Then he took hold of my hair at the back of my neck. Not painfully, but in a way he never had before. And said right against my lips: "Now be quiet."

He'd never spoken to me like that before. He turned me to face the bed, pressed his palm between my shoulder blades, and I felt how small I was next to him. He didn't ask if it was okay. He just took what he wanted, and every time I made a sound, he pulled my hair a little harder, like he was reminding me who was deciding things now. I kept the word in mind the whole time. I knew I could say it whenever I wanted. And that's exactly why I wasn't scared — it felt so good that I started crying, and he stopped, and I said "no, no, don't you dare," and he didn't.

Afterward he held me for a long time, kissed my temple, asked if I was alright, and went back to being his same gentle self. I told him it was more than alright.