She came like a thunderstorm, cried out and spilled forward with a breathy sob, bouncing down onto the carpet and flipping over in a single elegant motion. He fell back onto the floor in the opposite direction, his chest pounding, gasping for air. He let his leg lop over hers. For long moments, they lay in the dark together, letting their breathing settle, their hearts slow. A gibbous moon shone through the windows, unhurriedly hid behind a shelf of clouds, reappeared, and filled the room with moonlight, throwing long shadows across the motel room.

The floral scent extant when they first entered the room was long gone. The room reeked of sex now.

The belt was still around her neck, in a loose curl, inches away from his hand. Ripped fabric draped her shoulders and waist. She stared up at the ceiling, placidly tracing a wet fingertip along the horizon of her hip.

“Fuck,” she said.

“Fuck,” he agreed.

“That was so fucking hot.”

“Yes.”

“I mean, fuck. That was…. It was like….”

“It was hot,” he summarized.

She absently traced her breasts and stomach with her finger as they talked. She said, “It was like another place. It was like I didn’t know where I was. Like I wasn’t even there, like I was dreaming it.”

“It was like drugs. Like dropping acid. The whole world changed.”

“Exactly! Like dropping acid.”

“Like Alice.”

She smiled. “Yes, like Alice,” she said. “Down the rabbit hole.”

“And into Wonderland.” He returned the smile.

Her hand paused and felt at a spot on the skin just below her left breast.

“You bit me!” she said.

“I bit you,” he echoed, his body still, his voice quiet and hoarse.

“You left a mark.”

“Yeah.”

She raised her head to look. “You, like, drew blood.” She craned her head to examine the area more closely. “Here, look.” She cupped her breast in her hand and lifted it. He turned his head to see a tiny dot of abraded skin, and teeth-shaped bruises already forming.

“Savage.” She gave him a half-playful slap on the leg.

“I like biting you,” he said. “I marked you.”

“You love saying that, don’t you?”

“Yes. I love marking you. Marking you with tooth and claw. And cum.”

“Isn’t that from a poem?” She recited, “Nature red in tooth and claw?”

“And cum. Don’t forget cum.”

“I don’t think cum is in the poem.”

“It should be.”

She laughed. She said, “Remember, that first time? When you held out your hand, and I took it, and you led me up the stairs?”

“Of course, I remember. I will never forget.”

“I was surprised,” she said. “It was so gentle. The way you held my hand. I expected you to be just as gentle when we made love.”

“I hate that phrase.”

“I know you do. I didn’t know that at the time. Fucking. You prefer the word ‘fucking’.”

“Yeah. “‘Making love’ is so bloodless. Sanitized. Like a Hallmark card or something.”

“I know,” she said.

“There can be just as much love in fucking as there is in making love. More maybe. Because there are fewer rules.”

“Still, that’s how I thought you’d be. Gentle and slow. But you were…fucking me. Not making love. Fucking me.” Her hand drifted to the belt around her neck. She pulled it experimentally; the loop tightened. Her smile broadened. She blushed. She said, “You bite. You tear. You choke.”

“Yes, love.”

“I didn’t expect that.”

“Me either,” he said. “You bring it out in me.”

“I do?”

“Yes.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

She purred contentedly.

He asked, “Can I tell you something?”

“Yes, dear.”

He paused, debating whether to tell her. “This was the hottest fuck I’ve ever had.” Her face beamed. He continued. “I’m different with you. We are different.”

“My love.” Her hand moved to her neck, between the belt and her skin.

“I’m a little sore.” Her eyes widened, suddenly panicked. “You bruised me. Did you bruise me? On my neck? I can’t see my neck, I can’t tell.”

“Yes. There’s a bruise.” He exhaled an involuntary, if proud, snort of laughter.

“No!” She jumped out of bed and walked quickly to the mirror. “You did!”

“And I enjoyed doing it.”

“At work. They will notice at work. They will know what I did this weekend.”

He watched her as she peered into the mirror, naked, fingers gingerly examining the flesh of her neck. “That’s really hot,” he said.

“What will they think?” She was tracing the suggestion of a bruise along her neck.

“They will think it’s really hot, too. All those people at work will know what you were doing this weekend. As you lean over their desks. Or pass them in the hallway. That I was fucking you. That I was marking you.”

She lowered her eyes.

“They’ll be fantasizing about you.”

She blushed.

“As they fuck their wives. Or their girlfriends.” His cock began to stir. He was getting hard. She noticed he was getting hard. He noticed that she noticed.

“Or boyfriends,” she said, meeting his gaze now, not directly, but through the conduit of the mirror.

“Yes.”

“They will know I own you. I marked you. You’re mine. They will want you, but only I get you.”

She turned to face him. Her mouth was slack. Her eyelids were half-closed. “You marked me,” she said, the register of her voice lower, huskier.

He rolled toward her. “And I am about to do it again.” She walked to him. He stood and took the belt in his hand in a gesture gentle enough to invoke his taking her hand and leading her up the stairs, their first time together, months ago. He led her to the bed. He kissed the reddened skin on her neck with elaborate care. She shivered and sighed as his lips began working their way down toward her nipple. He sucked it into his mouth, scraping the sides of her tender skin with his teeth. He bit down softly.

Then he bit down hard.

He took the belt and doubled it in his fist, tightening it as she howled.

*

Hours before, he had been late picking her up at the airport, as usual. He was late for everything. But the airport made it so much worse, every terminal looked the same, every level of the parking garage, every entrance, every exit. He found a parking place finally, marking the spot in his memory—D5—but the irony was that every sign was the same too, E5, F5, G5, and he could feel his own particular spot already fading from memory. Wait. C5? Was it C5?

And, of course, after he’d rushed to get there and worried he’d miss her at the main gate when she arrived, he looked up at the bank of screens announcing arriving flights and saw her flight was delayed. He was right on time. A little early, even.

A cry of joy. He turned to see a woman in the crowd run past the tidy velvet-like fabric ropes used to keep lines orderly; she ran across the concourse with her rolling luggage off its wheels and canting crazily from side to side. She let go of it entirely as she launched into her lover’s arms and gave him a rodeo hug that looked like it had come straight out of a Tom Hanks-Meg Ryan movie. They kissed as he held her off the ground, twirling her in a circle. He set her down; they looked into each other’s eyes for an endless moment before succumbing to the urge to kiss again.

They kissed again.

He didn’t know if it was the real thing or not. It had looked so cinematic. He wondered if his own imminent reunion would look so larger than life. He glanced at the huge digital clock overhead. She was due any minute.

Then he heard his name.

He turned to the escalators, and within a few seconds of scanning the crowd, he found her face, head tilted quizzically, sly smile aimed in his direction, awaiting recognition. And he began to walk toward her, and she began to walk toward him, and he never knew if they ever ended up resembling the giddy reunion he had just witnessed because his mind was on her and nothing else, on taking her in his arms, kissing her, feeling his arms on her back as he felt her arms on his.

She broke the kiss. She put her hand on the back of his neck to pull his ear close to her mouth. He felt her red fingernails tickling along the back of his neck.

“Mark me,” she whispered to him. “Now.”

*

The ride from the airport was all small talk and quiet music on the radio, the car filling with a sexual tension so tangible it felt like fog pressing damply against their skin. They held hands for most of the drive, fingers idly at play, intertwining. They both wore small, knowing grins on their faces. Occasionally, they’d turn to each other, and the grins would dissipate, their eyes grow wide, envisioning the night ahead.

As they entered the motel room, he plucked a move from his fantasies and threw her against the wall, kissing her roughly. His palm pushed hard against her collarbone, holding her there. Greedy fingers pressed against the skin of her neck, feeling the muscles, the pulsing arteries.  The placement and position of his fingers caught in his mind, a bookmark for some larger hunger. His hands quickly found her wrists, encircled them, and pinned them against the wall as their lips met. She bit his lower lip and pulled; he let out a low growl. He sucked her tongue deep into his mouth and felt a shiver course through her body.

He stepped back, pulling her arm so that she fell toward him, then pivoted on his heel and threw her to the floor.

He took off his belt as she lay splayed on the carpet, skirt hiked. He took his time, working the belt through the loops slowly, drawing it out. He watched as she pulled her sweater off, revealing a thin-ribbed tee shirt. Her nipples were visible through the fabric. She wiggled out of her skirt and panties.

When he had the belt entirely off, he dropped his arm so that the belt lay against his leg. He snapped it. She shivered in response, a spasm running up her body like a wave.

“Kneel,” he said.

She lifted herself from the floor and knelt in front of him, head bowed.

He circled her, snapping the leather against his leg. He stopped behind her and didn’t move for a very long time, letting the tension build.

He slapped her ass with the belt, lightly but hard enough to make a small thwacking sound.  She gasped in surprise.

He slapped a little harder. “Do you like that?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

He slapped her with the belt again, incrementally harder.

“You like it when I mark you with my belt?”

“Yes,” she hissed.

“Slut.”

The room was still. She knelt on the floor with her head bowed; he stood behind her with the belt in his hand. They had formed this tableau many times before. It was one of their oldest and most favorite games. A ritual in which they both knew their parts, with their lines memorized: a classic play straight out of the BDSM playbook. He would bind her hands tightly with the belt, then walk back in front of her, his cock thickening inches away from her face. He would tease her with it, then rub it all over her face as she closed her eyes and purred.

Except that’s not what happened. That’s not what happened this time. That’s not what happened when he looped the belt in his fist, not what happened as he walked toward her, not what happened as he stood over her, entranced and aflame.

He paused. He inhaled the moment. His arm developed a will of its own.

He lowered the loop of leather around her neck. He did not pull on the belt but left the loop loose as he walked around to stand in front of her again. He felt on the verge of some new world.

She raised her head to look up at him. Her face was aglow, as if lit from within. Her mouth was slightly agape, her eyes round with wonder.

When he remembered the moment years later, and he would, he would recall her expression as not even specifically sexual. He would remember the openness of her gaze, the complete lack of boundaries, the trust in knowing anything might happen next. It was the awestruck look of a child; it was the worshipful look of a parishioner deep in prayer. The look of an athlete milliseconds before the firing of the starting gun. The look of a girl about to receive her first kiss.

Their eyes locked. The air shimmered. The moon broke out into clear sky and moonlight spilled through the window, baptizing them.

Silence.

And then he sneered and pulled the belt tight, and the air went red, and everything seemed to happen at once.  He lifted her off the ground with the belt, kissing her roughly as she gasped and choked and moaned, biting at her lips and tongue. He lowered her back to the ground. His cock was inches from her face.

“I need you to suck my cock,” he ordered.

“Yes,” she whispered.

“Do you like to suck my cock?”

“I love it. I love sucking your cock.”

“Beg for it.”

“Please baby, I need your cock.”

“More.”

“Please baby. Give it to me. Give me your cock.”

“You want to suck my cock?”

Her response was a wordless sigh of pure need.

“Say it!” He pulled on the belt.

Breathless, barely able to get the words out, she said, “Yes. Please, baby.”

“Then fucking suck it. Now.”

But as she leaned toward his cock he pulled back tightly on the belt so that her lips could not touch his pulsing, reddening head; they quivered  a hair’s width away. She strained at the belt. He held it tight. The leather grew taut. A curl of saliva bowed from her lip.

“I said suck it, bitch,” he commanded, still holding back on the leash of the belt. He had never used that word before, never called her “bitch” or even considered it, but the sound of the word hit her like lightning. She lunged toward his shaft, gagging and choking now against the pull of the belt, desperate to taste him, and still he did not allow her enough slack to touch him.

“NOW, bitch!” he growled. He pulled more savagely on the belt. “Fucking NOW!”

She turned from his cock to look into his eyes with undisguised hunger. She turned back to his cock. He lent her a little more length this time.

As she strained and stretched, he allowed the tip of her tongue to touch the tip of his cock. A single pearling drop of precum rewarded her; she flicked it off onto her tongue and swallowed it down as if receiving a sacrament. After she swallowed, she snaked her tongue into the tiny hole at the tip, working her way inside it. He rewarded her by allowing another inch of freedom from his belt. Her lips wrapped avidly around the head.

It was his turn to lose control. His knees buckled as her tongue slid under the bell of his now pulsing head, and her lips massaged the rim of it.

He regained control. He pulled back on the belt just enough to allow her access to the reddening bulb of his cockhead, but no more, and she worked it passionately with her lips and tongue, attempting to earn more of the length of it. Her tongue swirled in circles, her lips wrapped themselves at the edge of the rim, playing with it, running them along the curve.

He let go of more of the belt, his need to control temporarily flagging. One more inch, then another, then another, and soon his grasp on the leather loosened entirely as he gave into the sensations she aroused. His head lolled back on his neck, his legs trembled, his breath quickened, a low moan escaped from his throat.

She swallowed him deep into her mouth so that he could feel the back of her throat, and he focused, no longer lost in his gathering orgasm, and it was as if reality itself shifted, the world gone from black to glorious splashes of fireworks, from silence into the deafening thunder of his blood, from gentle sleep into a furious wakefulness so sharply defined it was as if he had been sleeping for decades, sleepwalking through his entire life.

Perhaps he had.

His head snapped back to attention; he rejoined the grip on the belt and then doubled it around his fist (a move he had only made twice now, but already he was learning its full erotic power) to shorten the length of the leather. He pulled harshly on the belt and impaled her mouth onto his now quivering cock.

“I need you to take it deep,” he said in an almost inaudible growl. “I need you to choke on my cock. Gag on it.” He cut off his words with a silent snarl.

He stabbed her mouth with it, pistoning it in and out with fury until her face was webbed with ropes of spittle. As he fucked her mouth, he reached down to the shoulder strap of the tee shirt she wore to pull her closer. He heard a small tearing sound where the fabric ripped, and as the sound of torn clothes reached his ears it was as if his mind tore open as well. He needed more; needed to slash and tear and destroy. He pulled hard and was rewarded with a loud ripping sound as the shoulder strap tore in two.

He pulled his cock from her mouth, slapped her in the face with it, hard, twice, three times. For a long, still moment, they looked into each other’s eyes as an understanding passed between them. He was not himself; she was not herself, yet they were both exactly who they were when together: they were themselves, transformed by love and lust and serious moonlight.

He grabbed her by the throat and threw her to the ground, then fell upon her. He took the loose strap of her tee shirt into his fist and pulled at it so it ripped across her torso, revealing her breasts. The sound of it, the feel of it, the sight of it inflamed him more. He bit into the flesh of her tits. When his teeth found her nipple, he chewed at it, pulling at the flesh before biting down hard, chewing it more, and then biting down harder, hard enough to draw blood. She screamed and came as he bit her, her entire body convulsing in a long electric shock of a spasm.

She corkscrewed up to him to bite at his ear and held on, pulling it by the lobe. It infuriated him. He slapped her head away, kicked her legs apart, and entered her savagely as she screamed out again, parting her legs farther to allow him more deeply inside her. He let go of the belt entirely, one hand now around her neck (and he flashed back to throwing her against the wall with his fingers splayed against her neck, how the impulse had been there always, and only now was he giving shape to it), choking her as he fucked her, the other clawing at the flimsy fabric of her tee shirt, not wanting to tear it off her so much as wanting to see it in shredded tatters, hanging off her in threads, ripping at it as he ripped into her.

“Fuck me harder,” she implored, with some new note in her voice he had never heard before. “Take me. Ruin me.”

He fucked her violently in response. He found himself growling, a snarl on his lips. As he looked down at her reddening face, he found a mirror of his own snarling need.

She let herself grow limp, surrendering herself to his savagery, her body rocked with every angry stab, every pull of torn fabric, her head lolling on her captured neck, twisting left to right, crying loudly with each pounding thrust.

He felt his cum building, a spark deep within him beginning to glow. He slowed his thrusting, in compensation, thrusting deeper, grinding against her now at the apex of each thrust. He gripped her throat tighter, and she gasped for breath, drowning in a sea of vicious desire.

He let go of her neck, and she gulped air. He grabbed her hair in his fist, and brought her face close to his own. Still fucking her, hard and deeply, he said, “I own your pussy, bitch.”

She met his eyes, looking dizzy, dazed, drunk.

“Say it,” he demanded.

In a whisper: “You own my pussy.”

Still clutching her hair, he said, “I own your mouth, slut.”

She did not respond. She seemed barely conscious, in another world.

“Say it!”

She mumbled, “You own my mouth.”

He kissed her hard, bruising her lips. “I own your ass, whore.”

Her head fell back, she closed her eyes, and in an affect so disoriented she sounded drugged, she said, “You own me, you own me, you own me….”

He had never bitten a woman so hard before. He had never choked a woman before, never collared one. He had never grabbed a woman by the hair before as he called her a bitch, a slut, a whore.

God, but he loved her. Body and mind and soul.

He had marked her neck, her tits, her pussy, her mouth. And she had, in turn, marked him. Marked his heart. Marked his memories. Marked the hot pulse of his blood. Marked his life.

He barely recognized these thoughts flowing through his head, hidden behind a bright red scrim of desire. He tightened his hold on her neck.

He said, “I’m gonna take you and rip open your pussy and fucking own you.”

Her hips thrusted up to meet his as she said, “Cum, baby, cum in me, baby, mark me.”

His hand returned to the already bruising skin of her throat as he pulled her face to his, and he said, “You want me to mark you with my cum, don’t you?”

And she said, “Yes,” and then “Yes” again, she said, ”Mark me,” she said, “Fuck me,” she said “I need you to take me, rip me apart, make me yours, give me your cum,” as his chest heaved and his legs shuddered and he came in great spurts deep inside her, pumping into her, filling her, marking her pussy with his cum as he had marked her neck with his hand and belt, and her nipple with his teeth.

She was his; he was hers, marking him as he marked her. Marking each other’s hearts, each other’s minds, marking their lives and their futures, their losses and loves.

She came like a storm and spilled forward, bouncing down upon the carpet and flipping. He fell back onto the floor in the opposite direction, his chest pounding, his lungs gasping, his leg settling over hers. The moon watched from beyond the windows, hid behind a spill of cirrus, and reappeared, a voyeur to the small majesty of two people connecting in some ancient way.

“Fuck,” she said.

“Fuck,” he agreed.

They talked and fucked and drowsed and slept betwixt the shadows and the moonlight, and fell into chiaroscuro dreams.

*

The silence in the car as they drove to the airport was not uncomfortable. They took surface streets, allowing them to drive slowly and leisurely. The radio was off, the windows open, sun shining through the bright glass of the windshield. They were not so much lost in their own thoughts as they were silently comfortable in each other’s presence.

“So I wonder what the maids will think?” he asked as they eased to a stop at a traffic light.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you know, we came into the room, it smelled of some fake flowery smell. They probably keep it in forty-gallon drums in the basement. It was everywhere.”

“Yeah.”

“And then we show up and leave twenty hours later, and the room smells crazy like sex. Like, soaked in sex. The sheets, the floor. The carpet. The fucking drapes. They have to notice.”

“They’re probably used to it,” she said. The light turned green. She added, “I think someone is bragging a little.” She smiled.

“Okay. Busted. I’m bragging.”

“It’s endearing.”

“It’s hot. When we come in, the room smells like something fake. Fake flowers. And we leave, like, what, twenty hours later? And it smells like something real. It smells like sex. Real sex.”

“Our sex,” she added.

He kept driving. The airport loomed in the distance. An arrowed sign led him toward the Departures lot.

She said, “So, I gotta ask. That was pretty crazy, right?

“Right.”

“The belt. You ripping off my clothes. Fuck. Fuck.”

“Hottest fuck ever, my love.”

She paused in brief reverie. “Yeah.” Then, “But why? I mean, we've been fucking for months. A weekend here, a weekend there. Why last night? What changed?”

“I dunno.”

“Trust. Maybe we trust each other more.”

“We do,” he said. He added, “That’s kind of the Oprah answer, though. I don’t buy it.”

“That’s how you dismiss it? Say it sounds like Oprah?”

The tone of her voice was not disapproving, but he felt a need to say something romantic in atonement. “Love. Maybe it’s love.”

“We've loved each other for a while now.”

“Yes, we have,” he affirmed. They stopped at another light. She reached out to his hand; he tenderly took it.

“Maybe it was the moon,” he said. He touched his lips to her fingertips.

“I’d like to think it was the moon.”

She lifted his hand and returned the kiss. “I love that you think that. I love the way you think. The moon, driving us mad. Moonlight.”

“Driving us looney. That comes from lunar. The word ‘looney.’ Did you know that?”

She said no, but her smile suggested to him that she did. She added, “Isn't that supposed to be the full moon? That drives you mad? It wasn't full last night.”

“Maybe it doesn't matter. It was so bright. Seriously bright.”

“Serious moonlight.”

“It isn't even up now, and I still feel the same way.”

She said, “It is still there. Even if we don't see it. It there. It's shining. It's shining on someone. Even if it isn’t shining on us.”

He took a long banked curve to the left, and suddenly they were there, at the bustle of the Departures gate, cars, and taxis fighting for parking space, travelers spilling out of cars onto the sidewalk, luggage valets tagging suitcases and loading them onto carts, signs every ten feet warning them they could not park, cars must not be left unattended, space was for loading and unloading only.

Get out of the car. Grab your bags. Go.

He left the car running. They shared a long kiss in the car. He popped the trunk, and they left the car and pulled her bags out and onto the sidewalk. Then, it was just him and her and the luggage at their feet.

He and she, and a hundred other people, sharing goodbyes of infinite variety.

He hugged her, and they shared one more kiss, exchanged I love yous, then clung tightly to each other’s shoulders, prolonging the moment.

He whispered into her ear, “It is always shining on us. The moon. It’s our moon. It shines on us.”

They disengaged. She took her bags in hand. They shared one last look, and one last quick peck of a kiss, and then she was walking through the hissing automatic doors and lost in the crowd as he hurried back to the driver’s seat, avoiding the impatient looks of those vehicles now vying for his parking spot.

He closed the door, buckled in, hit the gas, and pulled out into the stream of traffic, crawling away from the Departures area, heading toward home. He absently touched the bite she had left on his ear as he drove, and noticed a bit of dried blood on his finger. Nature red in tooth and claw, he thought, remembering the way her fingernails scraped the back of his neck when they met yesterday. He took the entrance ramp out onto the highway and turned his attentions toward the road home, his wound forgotten, the events of the weekend already falling out of his waking mind and into the bright alchemical forge of memory.