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Bane: Use your other hand. Pull your shirt up higher.

I tug my shirt up before I even finish reading his message. The fabric bunches beneath my collarbones, my thumb circling my hard, aching nipple as my other hand stays slick between my thighs.

Heat coils tighter and tighter inside me, hovering on the edge of release.

I don’t stop to think. My body follows his instructions before my mind can catch up.

The camera is still open, so I lift the phone, frame my face with my mouth parted and my eyes hazy, leaving enough of my chest and stomach in the shot to show exactly what I’m doing, then hit send.

My heart kicks so hard I almost fumble the phone.

Bane: You’re perfect

Bane: Imagine my hands holding your hips down while I taste you

I rock against my own palm, my back arching as though he’s here, pressing me into the couch with nowhere to go. “Please,” I whisper. “Please, oh…”

His messages keep coming. Each one reaches me before I’ve recovered from the last, and my body answers before I can.

It feels as though he can see every shiver, every hitch in my breathing, every pulse racing through me as I lie here open and aching.

Bane: Taste yourself for me.

Bane: I want to watch you lose yourself, Emma.

I obey before doubt has a chance to find me, as though I’ve spent years waiting for someone to tell me exactly what to do.

My fingers leave a mess across my thighs and the hem of my shirt. I lift two fingers to my mouth and taste myself, raising the phone with my other hand.

My tongue catches against them as I take the picture, my eyes wide and unfocused. I send it, and the reality of what I’ve just done crashes through me with enough force that I grab the blanket to keep from sliding off the couch.

Bane: Fuck. You’re going to ruin me.

A laugh spills out of me, ragged and shaky enough that it almost turns into tears. I type one-handed without stopping what I’m doing because I want him to watch. I want him to know I’m telling him the truth.

This isn’t performance. I want him to see my hands trembling, to hear me whisper his name until the syllables dissolve on my tongue.

I take another picture, obscene in the simplest way possible, my hand buried between my thighs, my shirt pushed high enough to reveal my ribs stretching beneath my skin.

I leave it without a caption, send it, and watch the silence afterward swell into its own plea.

Another message lights up my screen.

Bane: I’d have you on your knees. Would you let me?

Every muscle in my body jumps at the thought. Yes, I type before biting the tip of my finger to smother the sound climbing out of my throat, a broken little whimper that slips through anyway.

My body barely feels like it belongs to me anymore.

My breathing catches and breaks apart inside my chest until each breath scrapes free on its own, and I let the sound escape into the blue-lit darkness, caught somewhere between a cry and a moan.

I can’t stop shaking.

Every nerve inside me pulls tighter and tighter until my body seizes so fiercely that the phone almost flies from my hand and the room tilts into blinding white.

I come with a gasp, biting the inside of my wrist as my toes curl beneath the blanket. His name is the only word I can find.

I ride every wave until my body finally gives out, leaving me limp, forehead pressed against my drawn up knees, every inch of me tingling as though I’ve been remade from the inside out.