Chapter 2: The Feminist Test
The hum of the fridge stayed with Nat for days. It buzzed underneath Micha’s cheerful chatter, beneath the sound of the shower running, a constant reminder of the yellow light and the raw power she’d witnessed. Chris went about his usual routine—flipping pancakes, leaving his bike in the hallway—but she watched him now. She studied the easy confidence in his shoulders, the way people naturally leaned toward him when he spoke. He was a lock, and she’d seen a glimpse of the key.
It was Thursday evening, and the apartment was quiet. Micha was working late. Lucia and Annika were out. Nat found Chris in the living room, idly scrolling on his phone. She didn’t sit.
“I don’t believe you,” she said. Her voice was firm, cutting through the ambient noise of the city outside.
Chris looked up, one eyebrow arched. “About what?”
“That you can just ‘watch’ and know. That it’s that simple. What you did to Erna… that was pre-existing. History. You had a lever already installed.” She crossed her arms. “Prove it. Read someone fresh. Someone who doesn’t have a… prior arrangement with you.”
A slow, intrigued smile spread across his face. He put his phone down. “You’re calling my bluff.”
“I’m testing a hypothesis.”
“Who?” he asked, his tone conversational, as if she’d suggested a movie.
Nat’s mind raced through the roster of their shared lives. It had to be someone here, now. The name came to her, perfect and dangerous. “Conzi.”
Chris actually laughed, a soft, appreciative sound. “Conzi? The woman who lectured me for ten minutes last week on the patriarchal implications of me not replacing the toilet paper roll?”
“Exactly. She thinks you’re a charming, useless man-child. She’s told me so. Find her lever.”
He stood up, stretching languidly. “Okay. But you watch. You don’t interfere. And you see everything.”
Conzi’s door was ajar, light spilling into the dim hallway. Chris knocked on the frame. She was at her desk, textbooks and highlighted articles spread in chaotic arcs around her laptop. She looked over the rim of her glasses, her expression shifting from focus to mild annoyance.
“Chris. What.”
“Got a question about one of your articles,” he said, leaning against the doorframe. His posture was all relaxed curiosity. “The one on performative masculinity. It’s doing my head in.”
Nat lingered in the hallway shadow, her heart pounding. This was a stupid, reckless game.
Conzi sighed, the long-suffering sound of the knowledgeable being asked to explain something simple. “Which part?”
“The part where it claims most male dominance displays are hollow. Compensatory.” He stepped into the room, his hands in his pockets. “Seems like a broad brush.”
“It’s academically supported,” Conzi said, turning in her chair to face him. Her eyes were sharp, her shoulders set in a line of intellectual superiority. “The data shows—”
“Data’s one thing,” Chris interrupted, his voice dropping, losing its playful edge. “Reality’s another. You can cite all the studies you want, Conzi. But you’re sitting here, in a room that smells like stale beer and unwashed sheets, typing so hard your shoulders are up by your ears. You’re frustrated.”
Conzi blinked. “I’m stressed with my thesis, that’s not—”
“It’s not your thesis.” He took another step. The room was small. He now stood over her, the too-bright lamp casting his shadow across her open books. “You’re physically wound up. You haven’t been touched in months. You listen to Lucia and Annika giggle about their weekends, about being fucked properly, and you curl your lip and call it patriarchal gossip. But you listen. You always listen.”
Nat saw Conzi’s throat constrict. A flush crept up her neck, staining her cheeks. Her gaze darted to the doorway, saw Nat standing there, and her eyes flashed with a mix of shock and betrayal. “Get out. Both of you.”
Chris didn’t move. “You wear these baggy clothes, these modest sweaters. But you’ve got tattoos underneath, right? Secret ones. Places someone would only see if they had you naked and pinned. You have whole conversations in your head about how you’re above base desires, but at night, you squeeze your thighs together and think about being told to shut up. About being treated like a dumb slut.”
“Stop it.” Conzi’s voice was a strained whisper. Her knees were pressed tightly together. One hand had crept to the collar of her sweater.
“Your lever is humiliation,” Chris said, his voice flat, clinical. “You’re so smart you’re lonely. You want someone to cut through all the words and just use you. To make you feel so stupid and so full that you can’t form a thesis statement.”
He reached out, not touching her, but hooking a finger under the strap of her glasses. He slid them slowly from her face. She didn’t stop him. She stared up at him, her eyes wide, naked, and terrified.
“Stand up, Conzi.”
She stood. Her body moved as if pulled by strings.
“Take off the sweater.”
Her fingers trembled as she grasped the hem of the thick knit sweater. She pulled it over her head, her short blonde hair mussed. Underneath was a simple cotton tank top. The lines of a tattoo—a geometric bird—peeked from under one strap.
“The rest. Everything.”
Conzi’s breath hitched. She looked past Chris to Nat, a final, silent plea. Nat said nothing. She just watched, her own skin humming, a treacherous heat pooling low in her stomach. Conzi unbuttoned her jeans, pushed them and her plain cotton panties down her hips in one jerky motion. She stepped out of them, kicking the pile aside. She stood in just the tank top, her body pale and tense in the lamplight.
“Turn around. Bend over the desk.”
A choked sob escaped Conzi’s lips, but she turned. She placed her hands on the scattered papers, her back arched, her round ass exposed. Chris undid his belt, the leather sliding through the loops with a soft hiss. He pushed his jeans and briefs down just enough, and his cock sprang free, thick and already fully hard, curving heavily against his stomach.
Nat’s mouth went dry. It was huge, as the whispers had said. Veined and ruddy, the head flushed a deep, angry purple. Chris spat into his palm, gave himself two rough strokes, and stepped forward.
He didn’t prepare her. He didn’t ask. He just positioned the broad, slick head at her tight entrance and pushed.
Conzi gasped, a sharp, pained sound that melted into a moan as he shoved his way inside. She was clearly dry, tight, and he stretched her brutally, forcing her open with one relentless, initial thrust until his balls were snug against her ass.
“Fuck,” he grunted, his calm facade cracking for a second with pure physical pleasure. “Christ, you’re tight. Clenching like a fucking vice.”
He held himself there, buried to the hilt, letting her body quiver around him. Then he pulled back and slammed home again.
The room filled with the raw, wet sound of it. Conzi’s face was pressed against a page of her thesis. Her eyes were screwed shut, tears leaking from the corners. Her moans were broken, ragged things. “Oh god… oh fuck…”
“Shut up,” Chris commanded, his voice guttural. He set a punishing rhythm, each thrust rocking her whole body forward, making the desk creak. “You don’t get to talk. You’re a hole. A smart, frustrated little hole that needed to be split open. This is what you wanted every time you argued with me. Admit it.”
He wrapped a hand in her short hair and yanked her head back. “Say it.”
“Yes!” she cried out, the word torn from her. “Yes, I wanted it! I’m a dumb slut! Please… please don’t stop…”
Nat watched, transfixed. She saw the brutal penetration, the way Conzi’s body yielded and took him, the obscene glisten of her own arousal mixed with his spit now coating her thighs. The academic, the feminist, was gone. In her place was a writhing, begging animal, taking every savage inch and pleading for more.
Chris fucked her with a focused, athletic intensity. His hips pistoned, his balls slapping against her. Sweat gleamed on his back. The degradation was total, and Conzi was lost in it, her earlier resistance now fuel for her submission. Her pleas became a constant, whimpering chant. “Fuck me, use me, I’m your stupid whore…”
He lasted a long time, drawing it out, varying his angle until he found the one that made her scream into the wood of the desk, her body seizing in a sudden, violent orgasm that clamped down on him. Only then did his control snap.
With a final, deep grind, he buried himself and came, a low groan ripping from his chest. Nat saw the muscles in his ass clench, saw him pulse inside her. He held himself there for several long seconds, emptying himself, before pulling out with a soft, wet sound.
Conzi collapsed onto the desk, her body slick with sweat, trembling uncontrollably. Chris tucked himself away, fastened his jeans. He was breathing hard, but his expression was already settling back into its familiar, easy calm. He looked at Nat in the doorway.
Her own panties were soaked. Her legs felt weak. The evidence of his theory was dripping down Conzi’s thighs.
He walked past Nat into the hallway, pausing to murmur in her ear, his breath hot. “See? Everyone tells you what they want.”
He left her there, staring at the wreckage of Conzi, who was now crying softly into her own arms, a complex mix of shame and devastating satisfaction on her tear-streaked face. The hypothesis was proven. The horror was in how simple it had been. And the terrifying part was that Nat, her pussy throbbing with a jealous, awful hunger, had understood every single step.