Page 117 of Shattered Obsession

“Green,” I whisper, and I mean it. Xander’s grin sharpens, reaching for the silk tie draped over the nightstand, looping it around my wrists and securing them above my head. It makes me shiver—not from fear but from anticipation. Each knot is a reminder.

I trust him. Trust doesn’t happen all at once. My therapist showed me breathing patterns, tools that sound so simple I almost resent them. Four counts in, hold two, and six out. I practice them under the hum of the refrigerator, in the grocery line, while Xander is in the shower and the apartment feels very large and empty. The exercises are ridiculous and miraculous; they don’t erase panic so much as teach me how to ride its tide. We also map triggers—sounds, scents, phrases that can jerk me backward. Sometimes I forget; sometimes I flinch at a wardrobe zipper or the scrape of a chair. When I tell Xander what I learn, he listens the way someone receives a map to a place they love but do not know. He asks questions that are small and respectful. ‘Do you want me here? Do you want me quiet? Should I hold your hand?’ If there is a single gift this trauma leaves me, it’s that I know what I need now, and I am allowed to ask for it. He makes himself an apprentice to my safety.

It’s not a switch that flips; it’s a bridge built plank by plank.

When Xander ties my wrists, he doesn’t bind me to hold me down.

He binds me so that I can choose to stay.

Damian took choices.

Xander gives them back.

Sometimes I wonder if that’s what love really is. Not possession, not the hunger to consume… but the willingness to hold without taking.

He leans down, lips brushing the edge of my ear.

There are nights when desire arrives, not as a demand but as a patient, polite guest. Xander waits at the doorway of my consent, checking in with whispered questions that sound like prayers. “Do you want this?” he asks in a hundred different ways. A look, a touch at the knuckle, the slam of a palm replaced by the feathering of a thumb. I start saying ‘yes’ differently, intentionally, considering the word a small victory.

Reclaiming my body is slow. It is green light given and taken back. It is negotiation. It is the shock of wanting and being allowed to want without apology. Sometimes the wanting is messy, a mixture of fear and need; sometimes it is clean and soft. Xander’s hands learn the difference between force and guidance. He learns when to press and when to soften, when to stay and when to step back. We build a cadence together that feels less like a rescue and more like a duet.

“I’m going to ruin you tonight, Thalia. And you’re going to beg me for more.” My body trembles as his hand closes gently around my throat, applying just enough pressure to remind me of his strength, but never enough to steal my breath.

His other hand slides down my body, lingering on every curve until he reaches the heat between my thighs. I’m already wet, aching and ready for him.

“See?” he murmurs, slipping two fingers inside. “Your body knows who it belongs to.” I moan as he muffles it with his mouth, crashing against me, teeth and tongue claiming me with brutal tenderness. Every thrust of his fingers pushes me higher until I writhe against the restraints, my body begging for more.

But Xander isn’t about to make it easy.

He pulls back just as I teeter on the edge, his smirk infuriatingly smug. “Not yet, baby. You’ll come when I say you can.”

There’s a strange beauty in anticipating pleasure instead of fearing pain. There are things Xander does that unsettle me and make me feel worshipped at once. He walks the stairs to my building twice at night just to check. He replaces the bulbs in my balcony light with stronger ones. He knows the names of my neighbors and the makes of their cars. He times his arrival to be early enough to be across the street when I leave and late enough to be waiting by the mailbox when I return. It could be overbearing if it were possessive; instead, it reads as devotion.

But I’m not naïve. I have watched men care in ways that suffocate. I need him to remember the difference between keeping me safe and owning me. When he sees that hesitation on my face, he breathes and shows me the receipts, like the way he declines friends who joke about owning their partners. He says he would move heaven and earth for me; I believe him. But the promise must always come with permission. That is the bargain we make over and over.

The restraint isn’t a cage; it’s a promise.

Damian took because he could.

Xander waits because I want.

Consent isn’t just a word.

It’s a feeling, like falling without ever hitting the ground.

The frustration only sharpens my need, the fire building inside me until it feels like I might explode.

He flips me onto my stomach, pulling my hips up and slamming into me with a force that steals the air from my lungs. My scream is muffled by the pillow he presses into my face as my body shakes with the force of his thrusts.

“Louder,” he demands, yanking my head back by my hair. “Let the world hear who owns you.” And I do. I scream his name until it’s the only word left in my mind. When he finally lets me come, it’s violent, shattering, my whole body convulsing with the force of it. He follows seconds later, collapsing over me, his weight pinning me into the mattress.

I don’t feel trapped. His touch isn’t a trigger; it’s an anchor of safety.

Safety isn’t the absence of danger. It’s the presence of someone who chooses not to hurt you.

When it’s over, Xander does the smallest things that say we are okay. He pulls the blanket up; he tucks a strand of hair behind my ear; he places his palm on the small of my back and breathes until my own breath steadies. Aftercare for him is not theatrical. It is cooking me instant coffee, bringing a cool washcloth for my forehead, or asking if I want to talk and listening when I do. He never asks the wrong questions. He holds me while I cry, and when the tears stop, he tells me, without drama, that he is proud I asked for help, proud I sat in the chair and said the hard words out loud. Those words—proud, not pitiful—become a new language. They thread into my nights, snagging my fear with something warmer and truer.

Nightmares still chase me sometimes. Corridors without doors, familiar faces contorted, the sensation of motion with no agency. But waking has become a different thing. I open my eyes and find Xander’s hand on my shoulder, his breathing slow and steady. He will hum a nonsense chorus until the dream dissolves. He will say, “You’re with me,” like an anchor drop. I tell him the fragments when I can, sometimes coherently, sometimes in a stuttering list, and he listens without flinching. In the beginning, I would hide the vividness of it because shame whispered to me. Now I say the details, because naming them steals them of power.