Page 42 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8
The dominance in his voice makes my internal muscles clench. Yet another thing I feel I should be angry about, but I’m just aroused.
Then I find myself being pushed back on the couch, and he looms over me, his hand coming up to my throat, where he squeezes tight, and my breath exits my body. For one moment, I wonder if I’ve made a grave mistake. But then he lowers his head slowly and starts to kiss me. And there’s something about the way he’s holding me combined with the sweetness of the kiss that brings me right back to the edge of erotic dysfunction. I can hardly think.
While he’s kissing me, he releases his hold on me, and I am conscious of him making movements, but barely aware. I realize that he’s gotten a condom, freed himself from his suit, and before I can tell him that I haven’t done this before, he thrusts inside of me.
I gasp at the unfamiliar invasion. He’s so big I can barely breathe. I find myself beginning to panic, my breath coming too fast, making me dizzy.
He begins to shush me, like I’m a panicking animal, but he stays inside of me as he holds my face steady and looks at me. “Are you a virgin?”
“Not anymore,” I say, trying to keep the edge of panic out of my voice.
I don’t want him to stop.
He makes a pained sound, somewhere between pleasure and torture, and then he begins to move inside of me.
With each movement I find my pleasure building. The pain becomes a distant memory, and I am lost in the rhythm.
And when I finally do come, I arch my back up off the couch, and scream. He covers his mouth with mine, and freezes above me. I feel him large and pulsing inside of me as he surrenders to his own climax.
I am certain that I will never see him again.
I laugh then. In the emptiness of the room. If only I hadn’t seen him again. But I was a silly girl. I wanted to be in love. I wanted my ill-advised one-night stand to be forever. So much that when he asked me to stay the night I stayed. And then I stayed every day after. I tried to keep doing my studies for a while, but there was a point when being with him became overwhelming.
We exchanged names, obviously.
He showered me with gifts. He made me feel special. And he married me quickly. The most lavish event you can possibly imagine. An old church in Romania with roses climbing all over the old stone structure. Lights wound around every pillar and trellis. Thousands of people came. I couldn’t say that I knew any of them, apart from my family and a couple of my friends. All of whom wanted to be supportive, but were clearly overwhelmed.
Who can blame them? It was like I’d had a personality transplant. Dragos was my whole world. When before my whole world had been my art. My achievements.
And then once he had me…
I look around the empty space. My decision is made.
Yes. My decision is made.
I can be Dragos Apostolis’s mad wife in the attic. Or I can go back to being Cassandra.
I miss her.
And so, I know I need to leave.
CHAPTER TWO
I’M SURPRISED WHENDragos comes home that night. It’s deeply out of character for him as of late. There was a strange in-between space in our marriage, when he had isolated me from everything and everyone, and he was always with me. It was always us. In this house. And it was heaven and hell all at the same time. My whole world was him.
But the problem with the two of us is that we don’t talk. It isn’t love. That’s what it’s taken me nearly four years to understand. He is obsessed with me. And I’m obsessed with him. Or rather, hewasobsessed with me. Now he’s obsessed with… Something else.
It’s distressing to me how little I know about my husband. He’s from Romania. He never speaks about his family. I get the sense that he’s deeply enmeshed in a business that is connected to his family. Another thing I know spare little about. He keeps me separate. From everything.
He’s paranoid. He says that he’s afraid for my safety because he is a powerful man. And yet it all feels like being on a leash to me.
The dominance that’s so exciting in the bedroom is much less exciting when enacted in our actual lives.
One thing I do have is money. He’s given me my own account so that I can shop whenever I like. I know it has never once occurred to him that I might leave him. If I act quickly enough I should be able to use that money to get a place to stay.
I don’t know what he’ll do if I leave.
The truth is, there’s so much I don’t know about my husband, and it’s because I haven’t wanted the answers.
