I never said the words out loud.
Not once. Not even when my mouth was against her throat and her nails were in my back and the only sound in the room was the wet, desperate noise of us trying to climb inside each other’s skin.
But the thoughts never stopped.
It started the night she fell asleep on my chest after the third time, her breath still uneven, one thigh thrown over mine like she owned the space between my legs. I lay there staring at the ceiling fan turning slowly in the dark, and the first unspoken thought arrived fully formed, sharp as a blade:
I want to ruin her for anyone else.
Not gently. Not romantically. I wanted the memory of my hands, my mouth, the exact way I made her shake, to live inside her permanently. I wanted her to wake up in other beds years from now and still feel the ghost of my fingers pressing into the soft place behind her knees while I told her to keep them open.
I didn’t say it. I just watched the ceiling fan and let the thought sit in my mouth like something sweet and poisonous.
The next morning she made coffee wearing only my shirt. The hem barely covered the tops of her thighs. When she reached for a mug on the high shelf the shirt rode up and I saw the faint red marks my teeth had left on the inside of her left thigh. She caught me looking and smiled the small, private smile that always made my stomach drop.
“What?” she asked.
I almost told her. The words were right there: I want to leave marks that never fade. I want you to look at yourself in the mirror months from now and still feel me.
Instead I walked up behind her, slid my hands under the shirt, and pressed my cock against the soft curve of her ass while I kissed the side of her neck. She melted back into me with a soft sound that went straight to the base of my spine. We didn’t make it to the bedroom. I bent her over the kitchen counter and fucked her slow and deep while the coffee machine hissed uselessly behind us. Every time she tried to push back harder I held her hips still and whispered, “Not yet.”
She came with her forehead against the cool marble, gasping my name like a secret.
I still didn’t say the thought out loud.
That became the pattern. The more I wanted her, the quieter I got. The thoughts grew heavier, darker, more specific. They lived behind my teeth like a second tongue.
I want to watch her touch herself while she tells me exactly how she imagines me using her. I want to edge her for an hour until she’s crying and begging and then make her wait another ten minutes just because I can. I want her to come so hard she forgets her own name and only remembers mine.
None of it ever left my mouth.
One Friday night she came over after a long week. She was still in her work clothes, blouse slightly wrinkled, lipstick almost gone. The second the door closed I had her against it, mouth on hers, hands already under her skirt. She laughed into the kiss, that low, knowing laugh that always made me harder.
“Missed me?” she asked against my lips.
I answered by dropping to my knees right there in the hallway, pushing her skirt up and her underwear aside. The first taste of her made my eyes close. She was already wet. I licked her slowly, deliberately, like I had all night, while the unspoken thoughts roared in my head.
I want to do this every single day for the rest of my life. I want the taste of her to be the last thing I remember when I die.
She came on my tongue with her fingers buried in my hair, thighs shaking around my ears. When I stood up she looked at me with those dark, half-lidded eyes and said, “Your turn.”
I carried her to the bedroom. She stripped me while I watched her face, memorizing every small change in expression. When she pushed me down onto the bed and climbed on top, I let her. She sank onto me inch by inch, eyes locked on mine the whole time. The moment she was fully seated she leaned forward, hands on my chest, and started to move.
Slow at first. Then deeper. Then harder.
I could have come in under a minute. Instead I held still and let her use me, watching the way her mouth fell open every time she took me all the way down. The thoughts were so loud I was surprised she couldn’t hear them.
I want to flip her over and fuck her so hard the headboard leaves a dent in the wall. I want to pull out and come on her stomach and then push it back inside her with my fingers while she watches. I want her to look at me the way she’s looking at me right now every single time she comes for the rest of her life.
She came first, body locking up, a broken sound escaping her throat. I held her hips and kept thrusting up into her through it, dragging it out until she was trembling and oversensitive. Only then did I let myself follow, burying myself as deep as I could and spilling inside her with a groan that felt torn out of me.
She collapsed onto my chest. We stayed like that for a long time, sticky and breathing hard. Her fingers traced idle patterns on my collarbone.
“You get so quiet sometimes,” she murmured. “Like you’re thinking something you’re not saying.”
My heart kicked hard against my ribs.
I could have told her then. I could have opened my mouth and let every filthy, possessive, aching thought pour out. I could have confessed that I wanted to own the way she sounded when she came, that I wanted the shape of my cock to be the only one her body remembered, that I wanted her so completely it scared me.
Instead I kissed the top of her head and said, “Just thinking about how good you feel.”
She smiled against my skin and drifted off a few minutes later.
I stayed awake for hours, staring at the ceiling again, the unspoken thoughts circling like sharks.
Weeks passed. The sex got better, more intense, more wordless. We learned each other’s bodies the way people learn a language—by immersion, by repetition, by the kind of attention that borders on obsession. I could make her come with nothing but two fingers and a low command whispered against her ear. She could reduce me to shaking silence with the exact pressure of her tongue under the head of my cock.
And still I never said the real things.
The closest I came was one night when she was on her stomach and I was behind her, moving so slowly it was almost cruel. She kept trying to push back for more and I kept denying her, one hand pinned at the small of her back, the other reaching under to circle her clit with just enough pressure to keep her right on the edge.
“Please,” she whispered into the pillow.
I leaned down until my mouth was against her ear.
“Tell me what you want.”
She made a broken sound. “You. Harder. Please—”
I gave her one deep thrust and then stopped again. “More specific.”
She was shaking. “I want you to fuck me like you mean it. I want you to use me.”
The words hit me like a physical blow. For a second the filter between thought and speech almost collapsed. I almost said it. Almost told her everything.
Instead I did exactly what she asked. I fucked her hard and deep and relentless until she came twice, the second time so hard she sobbed into the sheets. When I finally let go I buried my face in the back of her neck and came with a force that left me lightheaded.
Afterward she turned in my arms and looked at me for a long time in the dark.
“One day you’re going to tell me,” she said quietly. “Whatever it is you keep locked up in there.”
I didn’t answer.
I just pulled her closer and pressed my mouth to her forehead and let the thoughts keep circulating in the space between us, heavy and unspoken and permanent.
Because the truth was simple and terrifying and I still didn’t know how to say it out loud:
I didn’t just want her body. I wanted every sound she made. Every thought she had when she was alone. Every future version of her that would ever exist. I wanted all of it.
And I was still too much of a coward to open my mouth and claim it.