His hands are rarely gentle on me, but I rarely want gentle with him. I want to feel him touch me, really feel him. And the roughness of his touch is unlike any other touch before. Impata was gentle in her fleeting touches, Cordy touched only when she had to, Faith wasn’t rough—she was brutal and Anya’s touches put me more in mind of a medical exam than lovemaking. Each of those cases, each of those four desperate women, touched me to make themselves real. None of them saw me except as an extension of themselves.

With him it is different. He already knows he is real because he has in essence created himself. From the base clay of a desperate, pathetic (his words, not mine) poet he dug and twisted and brought forth the marble statue of a fallen angel. Adding a swagger here and a sneer there, he created a persona that fits him like a glove even to this day.

Now he sets about creating me.

He sees beyond that which I’ve cloaked myself in all these years, scraping away and digging through the shell of donut boy and zeppo and finding the man who is not afraid of asking for what he wants. With each scrape of fingernail over nipple, with each bruising kiss, each thrust of cold hard cock into my body…each time he sinks fangs in to an as yet unmarked part of my flesh he draws out the poison of a Hellmouth upbringing and creates me new and whole.

I am his work of art.

I am his creation.

I am his.

No gentle touch could have brought this about. Only roughness, only reality, only him, only love.