Chapter 8
Damaging enough
Ana
Stanley stood beside me, completely at ease, adjusting the cuff links on his suit as if he were prepping for his coronation. He gave the impression of being so comfortable in this life; private elevators, skyline views, champagne served in glasses I was afraid to breathe on. I wasn’t sure if I admired that or envied it. Or I wished I had a little of it in me.
The elevator doors opened with a soft chime, and warm jazz music spilled into the hallway. Everything appeared to be dipped in amber and money.
Soulé’s penthouse was... a lot. Everything was smooth, glowing, and minimal in a way that screamed intentional but whispered, “Don’t touch anything.” It whiffed of wealth, success, and whatever perfume odor said, “I own property in many countries.” Beautiful people were milling around, holding delicate glasses they’d been trained not to clink too hard.
Even the air came with a price tag.
And there was the car.
Yes. A car.
Inside the penthouse.
The car Soulé used to pick me up earlier from my father’s.
How did it even get there?
That was something for rich people to know, and for me to mind my business.
The car was on display, not tucked into a garage or even in a corner. It was… here…deserving of applause.
I tried not to stare, but it was hard not to. The car had a better skincare routine than I did.
Stanley glanced at it. I almost whispered “excuse me” to it for walking by too fast.
“This way.”
Stanley placed a hand on my back as he guided me into the room.
I ambled forward, wondering how soon I could ask for water without sounding like I was seconds from fainting.
I hadn’t seen her, but she was here.
Somewhere in this crowd of glossy smiles and polished conversations, Soulé was here. And the second I locked eyes with her, I knew I would forget how to breathe.
A few minutes in, I stepped away from the crowd, searching for quieter spaces where I wouldn’t have to fumble over my words or feel overly self-conscious. So, I slipped away from Stanley and found solace in an empty room.
I stood in the corner of the penthouse library, tracing my fingers along the spines of books I hadn’t read. The music from the main room pulsed through the walls, distant but steady, a heartbeat I was trying not to acknowledge.
I needed air, quiet, or a space to escape the heat pressing against my ribs.
Then, not a touch, not a word. Only her, humming beneath my skin.
Soulé’s presence arrived before her voice did. It prickled across my body, an invisible current, intimate and wild.
“You found the quiet corner,” she said, stepping into the room as if she belonged there.
... she did.
“I needed a bit of space,” I replied, trying to keep my voice light. “The party’s a bit much.”
“You’re not made for small talk,” she said. “I can tell.”
I smiled, more nervous than amused. “What makes you say that?”
She didn’t answer right away. Her eyes moved over me, but not the way men’s did. Unlike them, her eyes didn’t take from me the way theirs always did.
Her gaze was soft… admiration.
“You managed to find the one room everyone else had somehow avoided. You managed, Ana, to find the books.”
I was now too aware. My dress clung to me in all the right, or wrong, ways. I couldn’t tell.
“I meant what I said earlier,” she said.
“What did you say?”
“That you are perfect,” she said, her voice a velvet warmth. “Damaging, even.”
I blinked. “Damaging?”
“Yes,” she said, nodding. “Damaging. Enough to make people rethink themselves.”
My breath hitched. I chuckled. “That sounds like trouble.”
“Only for the ones who lie to themselves.”
“And you’re one of the ones?”
She smirked, faintly, and the confidence that came with it sank my heart to beneath my feet. “I know myself. I can handle you.”
I glanced away, but it was too late. Her words were already splinters beneath my skin.
“I don’t know what to do with things that are... too much,” I said.
She took a step closer. She didn’t need to touch me; her nearness alone made my hands tremble.
“Breathe through it,” she said. “That’s the only thing you can do when everything starts to feel...” her gaze drifted, almost imperceptibly, over me, “… too much.”
My heart thumped so hard it resonated in my ears. I didn’t know whether to run or reach for her.
The music shifted into something slow and soulful, a song that clotted the air.
She peeked toward the sound, then back at me, and she offered me her hand. Fingers extended toward me. But everything in me jolted. Every warning bell my faith had ever installed went off like sirens.
I stared at her hand. Then her face.
I wanted to say yes.
God, I wanted to say yes to those eyes reeling me into her, summoning parts of me I wasn’t privy to condemn—yet, if at all.
But I couldn’t.
“I... can’t,” I said, stepping back.
Her hand lowered, and there was no judgment in her eyes, but understanding, even something softer than that, like patience.
“No worries,” she said. “Some dances take time.”
I didn’t reply. I couldn’t. I turned and slipped into the hallway, my breath shaking and my chest aching like I’d left something behind.
But her voice stayed with me.
Breathe through it.
God, what if I wanted to?
I returned to Stanley’s side, heart still drumming like a warning bell and a war cry all at once.
He was talking to some woman I didn’t recognize, laughing a little too hard at something she’d said. I stood beside him, but he didn’t notice straightaway. His hand rested on my lower back when he realized I was there, a touch that used to be comforting. Now was... expected.
I didn’t hear what he was saying and didn’t care to. Soulé’s voice haunted the corridors of my mind, soft enough to slip past defenses.
Breathe through it.
I cleared my throat. “Stanley?”
He turned toward me. “Yeah?”
“Dance with me.”
He blinked, surprised. “Yes?”
I was already reaching for his hand.
The music shifted, bass thumping low like a heartbeat against my ribs. Stanley’s hand found my waist, his fingers warm, anchoring as he guided me onto the floor. His other hand slid into mine, a practiced grip, steady and sure.
But my eyes drifted past him.
She was there.
Soulé.
Moving with a woman whose laughter spilled out bright and unguarded, as though the music itself had coaxed it free. Her hand found the woman’s back. Her fingers traced slow, invisible lines along the woman’s skin, the touch light enough to suggest restraint, certain enough to promise me she could do more. She seemed to know exactly where to linger, where to press, how to draw the other woman closer until the space between them felt less like distance and more like invitation.
She whispered something in the woman’s ears, as her gaze sank into me.
A faint curve touched her mouth, knowing and restrained.
She wore control and confidence in its most subtle form. The power of being fully aware of herself... and of what she awakened in others.
And it pulled at me like a tide I couldn’t resist.
I stared. God, I couldn’t will my gaze away.
The music pulsed between our bodies, but it was her rhythm I followed, not Stanley’s, not mine.
Our eyes met across the crowded dance floor for a breath or two, and it burned me.
Her gaze didn’t plead. It didn’t question. It held me open. Her eyes were saying: I see you. Even here. Even now.
My stomach twisted with guilt, then heat. I turned my face away, but it was too late; the gaze had already taken hold, and the truth had already echoed within me.
I was dancing with a man who liked me, but I was looking at a woman who hadn’t touched me.
Because some part of me (buried, bruised, trembling) wanted to stop pretending and enter the fire.
I wanted to know what it was… to breathe through it.
A moment later, Stanley was mid-conversation with someone new: a tall, bearded man this time, laughing like old friends. I did not register the topic. Politics? Tech? Some investment fund? My head was still on the dance floor.
“Hey,” I said, resting a hand on Stanley’s arm.
He turned to me, his eyes bright. “Hey! You good?”
“Yeah,” I lied. “I need the restroom.”
“Ah.” He leaned in, pointing down the hall. “Third door on the right. It’s past the library, but not to the end. Don’t open any rooms with collected paintings in them, that’s not a bathroom, that’s a Soulé trap.”
I forced a laugh. “Got it.”
I sauntered, fearing my heels might betray the storm swirling in my chest. My hand trailed along the wall as I passed the warm glow of lightning and the occasional art piece that cost more than my entire undergrad education. I counted the doors, as he said.
One. Two. Three?
The hallway quieted. The music muffled. The air whispered, closer. The air knew I shouldn’t be there.
I pushed open the door.
And froze.
It wasn’t the restroom.
I walked straight into the heat.
Not temperature; something primal. The room dimmed, lit only by the golden glow of a lamp in the far corner. The scent of sweat, perfume, and something heady hit me like the steam from an open oven.
And there she was.
Soulé.
On her knees.
Between the legs of the woman she’d been dancing with.
The woman was half-crouched, half-sunk into a velvet ottoman, head thrown back, dress gathered at her waist. Her thighs spread wide, trembling, framed Soulé’s shoulders.
Soulé’s face was buried between them, her hands pressing the woman open. I could hear the wet, soft sounds that made my knees wobble.
The woman’s chest rose and fell in quick bursts. Her hands were tangled tight in Soulé’s locs, pulling, guiding, almost shaking.
And I couldn’t move.
My body went still, but inside, I was vibrating. Burning.
This wasn’t a kiss. This wasn’t touching.
This was more... intense.
I should’ve left. I should’ve turned around, shut the door, run down the hallway, and confessed my sins to the sky.
But I didn’t.
Because I couldn’t.
I stood there, my feet bolted to the floor, every nerve tuned to the sounds Soulé was drawing from that woman’s mouth: moans, gasps, pleas.
Then the woman’s eyes opened and locked onto me.
She didn’t scream.
She held my gaze like she’d known I was standing there all along.
Her lips parted in a smile, lazy, blissed-out, and triumphant.
Her whole body then jerked. She arched forward, moaning Soulé’s name like a gospel refrain, raw and ecstatic.
Her fingers yanked tighter in Soulé’s thick locs. Her thighs clamped around her face. Her voice cracked on the edges of pleasure, drawn out and trembling.
And still, Soulé didn’t stop.
She devoured.
She moved with hunger and tenderness, idle slickness a ghost alongside her face, her fingers digging into flesh as if it were her anchor to Earth.
And I...
God help me...
I watched.
My thighs pressed together, as if my body didn’t belong to me anymore. My heart slammed into my breastbone. Everything inside me was breaking and blooming at the same time.
Every part of me was awake, burning, undeniable.
Soulé then caught me.
Her face glistened. Her lips were swollen. Her eyes...slow, dark, unreadable, held my gaze for one long, unreadable second.
Then the woman slumped back, laughing, still riding the aftershocks.
And I backed out of the room.
I shut the door behind me with a shaky hand and leaned against the wall, panting as if I’d run ten flights of stairs.
My body was hot. Flushed. My palms were damp. My thighs were wet. My chest ached with a hundred unsaid things.
What the hell happened?
But my body knew before my mind did. This was new. This was everything. It broke every reference point. Sight, sense, rewritten in a breath.
She was licking someone else. And somehow, I was the one coming undone.
Was it wrong that I hadn’t turned away?
She never touched me, not once, and still the ghost of her mouth rested against me. Her tongue, there and not there, grazed my body like a lingering ache, sweeping over my skin with phantom pain.
I gripped the edge of a nearby table for balance. I wanted to scream. To pray. To fall on my knees and beg God to take the image from my mind.
But I knew He wouldn’t.
Because part of me didn’t want Him to.
I didn’t know how I made it back to the main room.
The lights were too bright now. The voices were too loud. Laughter cracked in my ears. Glasses clinked. Music played. Nothing had changed, except me.
I walked back into the party, pretending I still lived up to the person I’d been ten minutes ago.
My body was still humming with everything I’d seen. My breath came in shallow gasps. My skin prickled, heat trapped beneath, and it’d been sealed shut. I was suffocating under the weight of my own body.
I spotted Stanley by the bar, engaged in conversation and drinks.
He watched me. Something in my face must have broken because he stopped mid-sentence.
“Ana?” He asked, his voice cutting through the crowd.
I shook my head. It was the only thing I could manage.
“Can you take me home?”
“Now?”
“Please,” I whispered. I didn’t want to be here anymore.
Stanley didn’t ask questions. Didn’t press. He grabbed his jacket, thanked the person he’d been talking to, and walked me to the elevator as if I were made of glass.
The ride down was silent.
I was grateful.
Because if I’d opened my mouth, I’d have wept or confessed something.
***
I sat on the edge of my bed, my dress still on, and my heels kicked off somewhere by the door.
I couldn’t move.
My legs were shaking. My hands wouldn’t stop fidgeting. I kept seeing it—her, Soulé, between that woman’s thighs, Soulé’s face, Soulé’s mouth, the moans, the way she gazed up at me as if she wanted me to see.
And I hadn’t turned away.
I clasped my hands and lowered my head, whispering into the silence.
“God...”
Nothing came.
The memory of her tongue and those fingers digging into flesh, and the scream of her name ricocheting off the walls of my soul.
“God, I don’t know what’s happening to me.”
I folded over, fingers digging into my scalp.
“I shouldn’t have seen that. I shouldn’t have seen that. I wasn’t supposed to...” my voice cracked, “but I did.”
I sat there, gasping like the air was too thick for my lungs.
“And You were watching too, weren’t You? I... stood there, not turning away. Not even wanting to.”
I paused, swallowing the truth.
“She wasn’t touching me... but something did.”
I bit my lip to keep the sound from escaping my chest.
“What does that mean? What kind of person does that make me?”
The guilt burned, and charred my ribs, and I waited for clarity to cut, and punishment to follow.
None came.
Instead, there was only the ache.
And beneath it, the want.
Darkness pressed in, but it didn’t offer peace. It amplified the need.
I lay back on the bed, still dressed, the sheets cool against the warmth that hadn’t left me since I opened that door.
Some part of me stayed there, watching her, unable to move.
Breathing through the same ragged pulse.
I closed my eyes, trying to sleep.
But I couldn’t.
Every time I blinked, Soulé showed. The sound of that woman crying out her name, the curve of her back. Her strong hands digging, her mouth buried in heat.
And the way she caught me.
She knew.
My legs shifted beneath the sheets.
A pulse beat low in my stomach, soft at first, then louder. Insistent. I squeezed my thighs together, as if pressure could smother it.
It didn’t.
It only made it worse.
My hand moved before I could stop it.
It started as a simple adjustment, a nervous twitch, but then… my fingers lingered.
Slightly over the fabric of my underwear.
I inhaled.
Everything in me screamed to stop.
But something deeper... quieter... told me not to.
I moved again, but this time, slower.
My breath ragged as I touched, and everything in me stuttered.
Shame bloomed behind my ribs. I bit my lip, but my hips lifted, chasing the friction.
I wasn’t thinking anymore; I was remembering, reliving.
Her.
Soulé, kneeling. Soulé, licking. Soulé, devouring someone else as if it were an act of faith.
Then, Soulé, between my thighs, drinking me. And it was I who was crying out now.
In whispered grace. In quiet want. In softer hymns.
Because I couldn’t scream her name. Not like that woman had.
I rubbed myself with shuddering fingers, eyes squeezed shut, jaw constricted, trying to hold the guilt and pleasure in at the same time.
It built fast.
Too fast.
My body jerked and tightened, chasing something I’d never let myself hunt before.
And... I came.
Sudden. Intense.
Something in me broke through in a single, erratic breath.
I lay there without moving. The air around me was charged, and the tears came.
Helpless and uninvited.
Because I didn’t know if I had sinned...
Or...
The storm outside cracked the sky open in judgment. Rain wept down the windowpane in streaks, reverberating the ache I couldn’t swallow anymore. My theology books lay open across my desk, untouched, collecting more dust than divine wisdom.
I slid to my knees beside the bed, the carpeted floor chafed my skin, and my hands clutched so tight they ached.
“God... I don’t even know what I’m asking anymore.”
The words came out, splinters, jagged and breathless. I sucked in air. I was drowning. If I didn’t speak it now, I never would.
“What she was... doing. And I... wanted it...”
Lightning flashed across the room, stark and furious.
“I don’t know what I am. I don’t know if I’m gay, or bi, or just broken in some way. But she watched me, and something broke open inside me. Something I can’t seal back up.”
Tears streamed down my cheeks, unbidden and relentless. My voice faltered.
“Why does sin ache like this?”
The thunder engulfed me whole, but under its roar, something whispered.
Soft. Honest. Scared.
“I think I want her.”
And the silence after was the most terrifying amen I’d ever said.
Prayer Journal - Ana
05/08/2024
Dear God,
I walked in on Soulé with someone else. A woman. They weren’t kissing or flirting. No, she was...she was licking her.
I didn’t close the door. I didn’t shield my eyes. I watched. And that woman looked at me. She smiled and then screamed Soulé’s name with a joy that had woven into my skin.
What kind of woman watches something like that and gets...hungry? I can’t sleep now because my body is too awake, still reacting as if I were the one Soulé was sipping.
I wanted to pray it away. I tried to.
But I wanted to keep it.
God, what’s happening to me?
Is this a sin?
Or am I finally seeing myself?
Could you please help me? What should I do?
Or if you won’t...
Please, at least tell me who I am now.
Because, You know I am, but I can’t be.
Amen.