Grace Restored

My breathing became ragged. "Stupid girl. Why- Fuck! Why should I care?"

I had seen panic, fear, guilt, and pleasure in Grace's eyes that night. But now I saw what I could only describe as terror. "Daddy's gonna- fuck- gonna fucking breed you, church girl." I slammed into her, primal aggression driving me towards the end. Towards how this was always going to end.

"Gonna make you carry my baby, Grace. And you can't stop me, can you? Keep you knocked up from now on, slut. Just like you deserve!" With a final, brutal thrust, I shuddered as my balls tightened. Rope after rope of my seed painted her cervix, millions of sperm desperately seeking an egg. Seeking to change her life, her body, forever.

The terror on her face morphed into ecstasy as the first surge of molten heat bloomed inside Grace's womb. She came again, harder than before. Harder than I'd ever seen. What I first thought might be an aftershock was the earthquake itself, one so strong that there could be no scale to measure it. No words came from her lips, only a keening wail that vacillated between mournful and joyful. A young woman's fear that I was stealing her future dueled with her raw need to mate with the man that had claimed her.

When the last of our shared orgasm passed, I pulled out of the pale beauty. She was sobbing; joy and fear and understanding and loss warred on my fiancée's face.

—----------------------------------------

When I'd seen her at the bar that night, I was absolutely sure I had her number. To be fair, I was half right; more than, probably. She really was a girl next door out for a night among the bad people. But the why mattered so much more than that surface reading.

It was easy to spot those superficial details, especially since we came from such similar backgrounds. Both children of highly religious families; both seeking a life away from them after severe disillusionment; both drawn to a darkness that had seemed so forbidden before, but seemed so welcoming now.

The goth scene in a college town is like the Island of Misfit Toys by way of Tim Burton. There was a sense of found family there that Grace and I had both missed since our fallings out with our families and their faiths. I was older than her, and I had, in my own way, became an elder in this secular congregation; I was a performer in the bondage act that the club's owner counted on to draw in extra revenue from looky-loos among the college crowds that packed the streets on Saturday nights.

What I had said during the scene we had just enacted was true; some of it, at least. I was trusted and respected in the scene, and I had an extensive number of paramours within it. I didn't drink, smoke, or do drugs, a rarity amongst the assembled throng; that and my general tendency to offer a shoulder to cry on made me "safe" to the women that came to dance and drink. I was someone they could trust to go exactly as far as they wanted and no further.

For many, that meant simple friendship; for some, it meant acting as friends with benefits between relationships. And for a few, it meant helping them safely engage in painplay, breath play, or even more intense activities. I would help them find their limits, then make them feel safe and cared for as they opened themselves up emotionally. Different people had different needs, and I was happy to help just about any of them.

Helping them helped me, too. The toxic faith of my parents had ingrained in me that Christian men should always lead women, regardless of their aptitude or even decency. It taught that women should submit to their husbands; there were empty platitudes about husbands loving their wives, too, but the latter was optional, while the former was mandatory. It wasn't what the Bible intended, as anyone willing to read with a critical eye could see, but it let these small men take unearned control over some part of their lives.

My time in the local scene and the people I interacted with let me tease apart the good and the bad of the lessons I'd learned. They let me embrace nurturing, protecting strength. I learned how to indulge in my dominant nature without truly harming others, to nurture and protect and care for the women that chose to be submissive to me by accepting what my parents' faith rejected: that submission was a choice. A gift.

Grace's story was the flipside of that. The lessons taught to me were harmful, but the lessons taught to Grace nearly destroyed her.

She had been every bit the good churchgoing girl. Her parents' faith taught Grace that her role was to submit to "godly" men without complaint: a pastor, a church elder, her father, eventually her husband. And because of that, a "godly" man stole her innocence.

It was a youth pastor that groomed her. He had groomed several girls‌, but that only came out later. Jerry was fifteen years older than Grace and charming in the way that older men who prey on young women can be. He complimented her on her maturity, listened to her complaints, told her he'd always be there for her.

And then, when she was vulnerable and confused, he raped her.

Jerry told Grace that it was her fault. That she had seduced him. That if his marriage failed, it was because of her. That she was Eve in the garden. She dressed like a whore; she led him on; she was stained with the sin that all women had carried since God cast man out of Eden. He had done this many times before. What he hadn't done before was to get a girl pregnant, one who truly believed the lessons impressed upon her.

He tried to force Grace to get an abortion, something anathema to everything she'd been taught. She went to her parents, hoping that they would support her. They did not. Like the youth pastor, they blamed her for seducing him. The elders did the same, and the head pastor. When Grace miscarried--most likely from the stress--they saw it as a blessing from God, although no one specifically called it that; instead, they proclaimed it "part of His design."

Grace left. She headed to college and left everything behind: her family, their faith, all of it. The trauma consumed her for the first year of college, and she barely scraped by.

But she'd always been studious, and she kept her grades and therefore her scholarship up. Grace saw a counselor provided by the school, and that helped a little. But none of it really took until she heard that the youth pastor's wife had left him and he'd been arrested for possession of child pornography.

Like me, Grace eventually sought a new place with new faces. That night she came into the club had been a lark; her roommate and some friends wanted to check out bondage night, so she had, in fact, gone to the mall and grabbed some starter goth apparel to fit in. It wasn't her parents' card that paid for it, though. She'd been working part time to supplement her scholarship. So I got that part wrong.

I know she fell in love with the scene first, with the music and clothes and the dark aesthetics that somehow always seemed to have just a little hope hidden behind them. But, like I said, I was a lot of things to a lot of people, and I was one of her first friends there.

Things progressed from there. Girls talk, and Grace was told, as she asked around about me, that I was what I appeared to be: a decent guy that looked out for people. And, almost as importantly, someone who she could safely explore some darker urges, with no strings attached.

Except that we ended up being just about perfect for each other.

We clicked on pretty much every level: intellectually, physically, socially, even our tastes in film, TV, and music. That shouldn't have been that much of a surprise, given the similarity of our backgrounds. One shared quirk was that only "safe" media was allowed in our homes: terrible Christian rock, weird religious cartoons, and bizarrely censored movies that kept a bunch of violence but not even the hint of sex or swearing in. Grace and I commiserated on this, laughing uproariously at things the people around us had no reference for, and even reminiscing about a few of the objectively good items from our past.

It was in that context, of trying to find the good in all the bad that we had gone through, that Grace told me everything that had happened to her. My experience wasn't as traumatic--nowhere near as much--but I recognized her story as kin to that of several hushed-up accounts from my youth. Her break from the church was a sudden one, born of utter betrayal. Mine had been the wearing away of my faith by the drip-drip-drip of hypocrisy and disillusionment.

Our upbringings had both left us with urges that the other recognized. But our rejection of our faiths changed the nature of those urges. I was dominant, as the church had taught me to be; but I was gently dominant, understanding that submission was a gift and a responsibility, and that strength should nurture, protect, and lift up.

Grace was submissive, but her submission was not silent and long-suffering; it was cooperative, joyful, and, when necessary, assertive. It was submission on her terms, given only to someone she deemed worthwhile. And, of all those who attempted to show their worth, only I fit her perfectly. I realized she had been what I was seeking the whole time, as well.

I wasn't Grace's first sexual partner in the scene. She wanted to play the field for a while, just as I had. I could scarcely begrudge her the experience, nor did I want to be her post-evangelical rebound. But we were constantly in each other's orbit, and we fairly quickly moved from friends to lovers to exclusivity.

I saw my beloved through her therapy, through the nightmares and self-loathing and insecurity. My strength was used to lift her up and protect her from her pain. It was sometimes used in other ways as she worked through the dark places in her soul: to inflict pain, to restrain, to break through her limits. To cause harm in order to heal. But always, always, afterwards, I would hold her and love her. She gave me strength through her love; I did everything I could to show her she was worthy of that love in return.

We had been engaged for almost a year when she came to me with the request that made me doubt if all of that would be enough.

—----------------------------------------

I had come home from work a bit late that evening. Grace was in the last year of her bachelor's degree. I had finished up college a couple of years before that, then settled into a software development position. Dinner was ready, and I was famished, but I could tell my angel was nervous. That had to come first.

"Hon? What's wrong?"

Her hands toyed nervously with the strings of her apron. "I- I need to ask you something, Josh." She sunk down onto the couch and looked up at me. "Something big."

I sat beside her and took her hand. "Grace, whatever it is--"

"Don't." Her tone wasn't harsh, but it was abrupt. She took a deep breath. "I need to tell you before you promise- well, just before you say anything. Okay?"

My other hand stroked Grace's cheek, and she nuzzled into it, eyes closed. But when she opened them again, they were moist with unshed tears. "I love you so much, Josh. You are- you've been everything I need. I mean that." She swallowed. "But I need something else from you now."

"What?"

Another deep breath. "I need you to rape me."

A heartbeat passed, then two. Three. "Rape you?"

Grace's gaze moved away from mine. "Yes. I need to... We've always been careful: used safewords, sane limits, all the stuff that we should to make sure... well, to make sure we play safely." A tear trickled down. "But I didn't have any of those when..." Grace's voice trailed off. She didn't need to complete the sentence. I knew the 'when.'

"I've talked a lot with my therapist about... about how it felt. When I was violated. How it made me feel during and afterwards. All the pain and..." Grace shook her head and smiled at me; it was so beautiful. So fragile. "All of the things you've helped me through. God, Josh, I love you so much."

"I love you too, angel."

Her lip quivered at the pet name. "But there were other things, too. You know that. How- how I felt when he... How intense it was. How my body reacted. I need to separate it all out.

"I hated him. Hate him. But some of it felt so good, and I need to understand, was it... Was it him? Was it me? Was it the rape? The loss of control, the cruelty? What was it that made me feel so much? That--" Her voice was hoarse. "That made me like it so much, even though I hated it?"

Grace's laughter lacked any joy. "How fucked up am I? Asking my boyfriend--my fiancé!--to rape me so that I can..." She shook her head again. "So that I can feel whole. To put these doubts to bed."

"Doubts?"

"That I deserve to be happy. That I'm... that I can ever be good enough to deserve you." A furtive glance at me. "That I can ever feel... God, Josh, you're so good to me. And- and with me and for me. All of it. I love you so, so much.

"But I felt something that night that I've never felt since, and I wonder, is it just... am I broken? I love the way you make love to me. I love the way you fuck me. And the way you take me and use me when I want it... well, you know what that does to me. But I've never... since that night, I've never felt something so intense, and, and, and I..." She covered her face with her hands, unable to say the words she feared would hurt me. "Please don't hate me!"

I pulled her into my arms as she sobbed. "Shh shh, it's okay, Grace. I love you. I could never hate you. It's going to be okay. We'll figure it out." I had my doubts, I'll admit. But I didn't want to let her down; not my angel. We sat there together until she regained her composure.

She pulled away and wiped at the mess of mascara that trailed down her cheeks. "I'm sorry. This is so dumb. I shouldn't have even- Just forget I--"

"What do you need me to do?"

"I..." Grace hesitated for a moment; I think if she hadn't already said so much, she would have let it go. "I need to feel... unsafe. Out of control."

"So, no safewords?"

She nodded slowly. "That's part of it, yeah. But there's more."

"Do you want me to act like him? Your pastor?"

"No!" Her eyes went wide. "No, that's exactly what I don't want. I'm trying to... I want to separate how I felt because of what was being done to me from how I felt because of WHO was doing it to me."

I carefully worked my way through the idea. "So... you want me to not be him. To be me?" She nodded. "But to rape you."

Grace held her hands up. "I know that's- I know you're not like that. I love that about you, that you're... I love the things you do to me, even the rougher stuff." A little chuckle. "Especially the rougher stuff. But they're, you know, consensual. I want to..." She sighed. "Do you remember how we met?"

I laughed. "How could I ever forget how I met my future wife?"

Grace's smile was the first genuinely happy one I'd seen on her face since I'd come in. "God, you were so hot. And I was--" She rolled her eyes. "--so fucking dumb. I was going to take a drink from that guy!"

"You weren't dumb. You just didn't know better. That's not your fault."

She shrugged. "Anyway. I want to... I guess to be that girl. The person I might have been if Jerry had never- if none of that stuff happened. If I was just the 'me' you met at that bar, but a 'me' who had gradually fallen away from my faith, like you did."

"And you want me to... what? Be like one of those assholes at the bar?"

"Yes! No. Sort of? I want you to be... you, I guess, but... more. Or less. You, but without the decency. Like--" She snapped her fingers. "Like if you were only pretending to be a good guy until you got me alone. Or, like, if you were trying to teach the stupid new girl a lesson."

I nodded thoughtfully. "Okay, I think I get what you want." There was a queasy feeling in my stomach. "But I don't know if I can... I'm not that guy. I can't- I don't want to be."

"I know. I know you aren't." She sighed. "I'm sorry. This is dumb. I shouldn't have asked. I know you, and I know this..." Grace caressed my cheek. "I can see how much it's bothering you. Just forget--"

"No. It's bothering me, yes. But you need this. You wouldn't have asked for it if you didn't." She nodded unhappily. "I just... We're going to be okay, right? After?"

Grace nodded again. "Yes! Yes. Of course we will." But it felt forced. She couldn't predict the outcome. Neither could I. But we both knew it was a thing that would fester if I didn't do this for her. We might not be okay if I did as she asked. But we definitely wouldn't be okay if I didn't. There would always be a doubt in her mind about who she really was.

In a way, that made things easier for me. Once I knew I had to do this for her, it was a matter of logistics. "No safewords, and you want to roleplay. Anything else? Any other limits?"

Tentatively, as if she was feeling out my reaction at each statement, she laid out the list. "I don't want anyone else involved, either as a participant or watching. Somewhere private and controlled, like the house. No permanent marks or injuries." I raised an eyebrow. "I meant anything, Josh. Anything you want to do to me within the limits of what we agree on. I want to be... scared. Surprised. I don't want to know what you're going to do."

I chewed on my cheek, thinking. "If it's supposed to be a surprise AND a roleplay scenario, you'll need a signal to know when it's starting."

"Yeah, that makes sense. A song, maybe?"

"How about..." I chuckled. "'She's Lost Control?'"

That got a big laugh. "God, you're so corny. A bit on the nose, don't you think?"

With a shrug, I just said, "I am who I am, angel."

"I know. That's why I love you so much." A small, melancholy smile. "I'm sorry to ask for this. I just need..." She sighed. "Hell, I can't even really explain it. I just know that I need to know, and there's only one way to do it."

"Yeah. I get it." I looked at Grace; she was so different from who she'd been when we met. "You should get rid of your piercings. Other than the nose one, I mean. Can't do much about the tattoos, but the piercings need to go. It'll be easier to... I dunno, get into character, I guess. For both of us."

"Okay. Anything else?"

"You're sure that's your only list of no-gos? Just us, here at the house, no permanent marks? Those are the only restrictions?"

Grace grew still. Anxious. It suddenly had become real; I had tacitly agreed to this, and now we were just discussing to the details. "N- no. I can't think of anything else."

I sat for a long while with the idea. The woman I loved wanted me to rape her. But she was asking; that was just submission of another type, wasn't it? I wasn't forcing myself on her; not exactly.

Except that I would be. To make it work, to scratch the itch, I'd have to do things she wouldn't normally want me to do. Things she'd otherwise safeword out of. I could spin it however I wanted to: that we had agreed to it, that she had asked me to, that it was consensual. But those were all to assuage my guilt. They weren't the truth.

The truth was this: I was going to rape Grace.

—----------------------------------------

A tap on my phone's lock screen ended the music still playing in the living room, and a few quick movements unlocked the cuffs on my lover's wrists.

Grace took a swing at me as her hands came free, but I caught the flailing attack and held her close to me, whispering, "Shhh, angel. It's over. You're safe. It's over." Her eyes shone with tears, then with understanding. A quick nod told me it was safe to release her; my reward was a slow, loving kiss.

I tasted blood. When I pulled back, I saw that the last slap had split her lip. "Oh God Grace, I'm so sorry!" But my angel silenced me with another kiss, a longer one, before nestling into my shoulder. My arms encircled her slight form; she tensed for one moment, then let herself go. I was no longer her captor, her tormentor, her rapist. I was the man she was going to marry in a few short weeks. I was her lover and her protector. That was what I told myself, at least, even as fear roiled in my head.