Chapter 5: Applying the Cream
The taxi ride back to the resort was a silent coffin. Layla stared out the window at the waking city, but all she saw was the fluorescent glare of the examination room, the crackle of paper under her hips, the doctor’s detached voice saying, “Significant superficial tearing. You need to allow the tissue to heal. Abstain from intercourse for at least a week. Use this.” She’d been given a sample tube of antiseptic cream and a pamphlet on vaginal health that now felt like a indictment crumpled in her purse.
Yusuf paid the driver without a word. He didn’t take her hand as they walked through the lobby. His touch, when it came, was a guiding pressure on the small of her back, fleeting and formal. The suite, when he opened the door, was a monument to their earlier abandon. The bed was still unmade from their frantic exit, sheets tangled in a violent knot. The scent of jasmine had soured, mixed now with the sterile hospital smell clinging to their clothes.
She went straight to the bathroom, shutting the door. She leaned against it, listening to the absolute quiet of the other room. Then she heard it: a muffled, choked sound, like a fist being driven into a pillow. Once. Twice. She turned the shower on to drown it out.
When she emerged, wrapped in a towel, he had straightened the room. The bed was made, smooth and impersonal. He stood by the window, back to her, shoulders rigid. On the nightstand, the tube of cream sat next to a glass of water.
“They gave you painkillers,” he said, still facing the glass. “Did you take one?”
“No.”
“You should.” His voice was gravel.
“I don’t want it.” What she wanted was for the numbness inside her to lift, for the hot shame to cool. The humiliation was a deeper ache than the physical one. The doctor’s polite, pitying eyes. Vigorous. The word hung in the air between them now, a clinical label for what he’d done.
He finally turned. His eyes were red-rimmed, hollow. He looked like he hadn’t slept in years. “Layla.”
“Don’t.” She tightened the towel around her chest. “Just don’t say anything.”
“I have to.” He took a step toward her, then stopped, as if afraid his proximity would cause more damage. “The doctor said to apply the cream. Twice a day.”
“I can do it.”
“Let me.” The words burst from him, raw and pleading. He picked up the tube, his knuckles white. “Please. Let me put it on. It’s my fault anyway. Every bit of pain you’re feeling is because of me. Let me… let me try to fix one fucking thing.”
His composure was cracking. She saw the tremor in his hands. This was worse than his anger, his passion, his control. This was Yusuf broken. She nodded, a tiny movement.
He guided her to the bed, arranging pillows behind her. “Lie back. Just… try to be comfortable.”
She lay down, the towel still wrapped around her torso. He gently parted her knees, his touch so light she barely felt it. He couldn’t look at her face. His gaze was fixed on the task, his breathing shallow. He squeezed a pearl of cool cream onto his fingertips.
“This might sting,” he whispered.
His fingers brushed her outer lips. She flinched. The skin was puffy, tender, a landscape of subtle bruises shaped by his grip. He withdrew instantly, a hissed breath escaping him. “God. I did this.”
“Yusuf…”
“No. Look at you.” His voice broke. A tear slipped down his cheek, and he wiped it away with a furious jerk of his wrist. He tried again, more carefully. The cream was a shock of coolness on the hot, swollen flesh. He spread it with a reverence that was utterly foreign to the man who had taken her over divans and into baths. His fingers traced the hurt he’d caused, his touch a silent apology with every pass.
He worked in silence for a minute, his head bowed. Then, a sob racked him. It was a dry, painful sound. “I swore to protect you,” he choked out. “I stood in front of our families and I swore to cherish you. And I tore you apart instead. I’m a monster.”
“You’re not a monster.” She reached down, her fingers tangling in his hair. He leaned into the touch, his eyes squeezing shut.
“I am. I saw you bleeding and I didn’t stop. I heard you beg and I pushed harder. I wanted to own your pain. What kind of man does that?” He opened his eyes, looking at her now, his gaze swimming with agony. “I vow to you, Layla. On my life. I will never hurt you like that again. Never.”
His fingers were still there, at her entrance, coated in cream. The soothing motion, the intensity of his remorse, the raw vulnerability in his eyes—it was weaving a strange, new tension. The pain was still present, a sharp, bright line, but around it, her body was responding to his touch. A traitorous warmth began to pool beneath the cool medication. Her breath hitched.
He felt it. His fingers stilled. His eyes, dark and wounded, searched hers. “What?” he murmured.
She couldn’t say it. Shame flooded her anew. How could she be growing wet while he cried over hurting her?
His thumb, still slick with cream, brushed over her clit. A bolt of sensation shot through her, part pain, part shocking pleasure. She gasped.
“You’re getting wet,” he said, his voice awed and horrified. “While I’m putting medicine on the cuts I gave you.”
“I don’t know why,” she whispered, tears filling her own eyes now.
“Your body doesn’t care.” There was a shift in his tone, a dark wonder cutting through the guilt. “It doesn’t care about apologies or hospitals. It just knows my touch.” He applied more pressure, a slow, circular rub that made her hips jerk. The sting flared, then subsided, replaced by a building thrum. “It’s filthy, isn’t it? This perfect, innocent cunt. Beaten raw and still begging for my fingers.”
“Stop,” she moaned, but her legs fell open wider.
“I can’t.” He leaned down, his breath hot against her inner thigh. “I’m supposed to be healing you. And all I want to do is get my mouth on you and taste how messed up you are for me.” He replaced his thumb with his tongue, a slow, flat lick from her entrance to her clit.
She cried out. The sensation was unbearable—the cool cream, the heat of his tongue, the abraded flesh screaming in protest even as it bloomed with need. He lapped at her, gentle at first, then with growing hunger. He sucked her clit into his mouth, and the pain-pleasure was so intense she saw white behind her eyelids.
“Yusuf, it hurts, it hurts,” she sobbed, her hands fisting in the sheets.
“I know, habibti,” he growled against her, his voice vibrating through her. “Let it hurt. Come on my tongue while it hurts. Show me how ruined you are.”
His words were a key turning in a lock. The coil inside her, tightened by pain and shame and this bizarre, deviant tenderness, snapped. Her orgasm ripped through her, a convulsive, silent scream of a thing that arched her off the bed. He held her down, drinking from her, until she was limp and shaking.
He rose up, kneeling between her legs. His face was wet with her and his tears. He unbuttoned his trousers, freeing his erection, which was thick and veined and painfully hard. He smoothed more cream onto his length, the clinical act rendered obscene.
“I can’t fuck you,” he said, his voice ragged. “The doctor said no. I won’t tear you again.” He positioned himself, the head of his cock nudging her entrance. She was swollen, sensitive, the flesh protesting. “But I need to be inside you. Just for a minute. Just to feel you.”
He pushed forward, an infinitesimal inch. The stretch was immediate, a burning reminder. She whimpered.
“Shhh,” he soothed, kissing her knee. “Just the tip. Just so you can feel how much I need you. How sorry I am.” He pushed another fraction, his jaw clenched with the effort of restraint. He was sheathed just inside her, a hot, impossible presence in her soreness. “Oh, fuck, Layla. You’re so hot. So tight. Even like this.” He began to move, not thrusts, but a slow, shallow rotation of his hips, grinding the head of his cock against her tender inner walls.
It was agony. It was ecstasy. Every micro-movement sparked fresh pain that blurred instantly into desperate pleasure. She was raw, and he was rubbing salt in the wound, and her body was clamoring for more.
“Touch yourself,” he commanded, his eyes locked on where they were joined. “I want to watch you make yourself come again while I’m just barely inside your broken little pussy.”
Her hand, trembling, slid down her stomach. Her fingers found her clit, swollen and hyper-sensitive. The contact was electric. She circled it, matching the slow grind of his hips, her cries becoming ragged.
“That’s it,” he choked out. “Fuck yourself on me. Use my cock. Milk it just like that.” His control was fraying. His hips stuttered, pushing a little deeper, then pulling back. “I’m not going to come inside you. I won’t.” He said it like a mantra. He reached between them, his hand covering hers, pressing her fingers harder against her clit. “Come for me. Now.”
The second climax was slower, deeper, a rolling wave of sensation that drowned the pain entirely. She clenched around the invading head of his cock, and with a shattered groan, he pulled out. Strips of hot come landed on her stomach, her thighs, mixing with the glistening cream. He collapsed beside her, his chest heaving.
For long minutes, the only sound was their ragged breathing. The room smelled of sex, medicine, and sweat.
He fetched a warm cloth. He cleaned his release from her skin with the same tenderness he’d shown with the cream. When he was done, he lay back down, pulling her into his arms, careful of her soreness. He kissed her forehead.
“I am sorry,” he whispered into her hair. “And I am a liar. I will hurt you again. Not like that… but I will. Because wanting you turns me into someone I don’t recognize. Someone who needs your pain as much as your pleasure.”
She listened to the steady beat of his heart. The humiliation was gone, burned away in the crucible of that raw, careful joining. In its place was a cold, clear understanding.
“Then I’ll have to be stronger,” she said quietly.
He held her tighter. Outside, the first birds began to call, signaling a dawn they had entirely missed. The vacation stretched before them, a week of mandated abstinence. The bed felt like both a sanctuary and a cage.
The bed felt like both a sanctuary and a cage. For seven days, it was where they whispered in the dark, his hands learning the safe geography of her—the slope of her shoulder, the dip of her waist, the back of her knee. He kissed the lingering yellowed bruise on her inner thigh until it faded, his mouth an apology against her skin. They talked more than they ever had, voices low and confessional in the lamplit nights, words building a bridge over the chasm the first night had opened.
Yusuf kept his vow. His touches were medicinal, purposeful, applying cream with a clinical focus that gradually softened. By the third day, his lips followed his fingertips. By the fifth, her sighs were not from pain but from the frustrated ache of his restraint. “I’m healed,” she breathed on the sixth evening, guiding his hand. He simply shook his head, his nostrils flaring, and moved his mouth to her breast instead.
On the seventh morning, she woke to an empty space beside her. Sunlight poured into the clean, ordered room. She stretched, a long, languid movement, and realized with a jolt that the deep, bruised soreness was gone. There was only a faint memory of tenderness, a phantom twinge. She tested herself, sliding a hand between her legs. The skin was smooth, pliant. Unhurt.
She found him on the balcony, sketching, his profile etched against the sea. “The week is up,” she said.
His pencil stopped. He didn’t turn. “The doctor said at least a week.”
She walked to him, took the sketchbook, and placed it on the table. She stood before him, the breeze lifting her nightdress. “I am fully healed, Yusuf.” She took his hand and pressed it firmly against the warm cleft between her legs, through the thin cotton. “Feel. Nothing hurts.”
His control, so carefully maintained, snapped. A raw sound tore from his throat. He stood, his chair scraping back, and pushed her gently against the sun-warmed wall of the balcony. He kissed her, a deep, consuming kiss that tasted of coffee and need. His hands gripped her ass, lifting her, and she wrapped her legs around his waist. “You’re sure?” he demanded against her mouth, his voice already ragged.
“I’m begging for it,” she whispered, biting his lower lip.
He carried her inside, to the bed, laying her down as if she were glass. He pushed her nightdress up, his hands worshipping her stomach, her thighs. He kissed her navel. He was so gentle, his tongue tracing old paths with a reverence that made her want to scream. He parted her folds, his breath hot, and just looked. “Perfect,” he murmured. “All new. All mine.”
He entered her with a slow, relentless pressure that made her eyes roll back. He filled her completely, a stretching fullness devoid of any sharpness. He held himself there, buried to the hilt, his body trembling. “Oh, god, Layla,” he gasped, his forehead against hers. “You feel… you feel like heaven.”
He began to move, a gentle, rocking rhythm. It was sweet, profound, a connection that felt holy. She clutched his back, overwhelmed by the rightness of it. But the gentleness, after a week of starving for him, began to feel like a tease. The deep, building coil of pleasure needed friction, needed force.
His movements were long and slow, his cock sliding almost all the way out before pushing back in with maddening care. He was watching her face, his eyes soft with love, reading every flutter of her eyelids. It was beautiful. And it wasn’t enough.
“Yusuf,” she breathed.
“Yes, my heart?”
“Harder.”
He stilled, his eyes searching hers. “I don’t want to—”
“You won’t hurt me.” She arched her hips, taking him deeper, and clenched her internal muscles around his shaft. “Please. I need to feel you. I need all of you.”
A switch flipped. The tender lover vanished, replaced by the hungry man she’d glimpsed in the bath, in the shameful, perfect moment with the cream. His expression darkened, a possessive gleam returning to his eyes. “You want it harder?” he growled, pulling out and slamming back into her with a force that jolted the bed frame.
The sound was obscene—a wet, solid slap of flesh. She cried out, not in pain, but in pure, shocking relief.
“Like that?” he grunted, setting a brutal, driving pace. “You want me to fuck this healed-up, begging little cunt like I own it?”
“Yes! Oh, my gosh, Yusuf, harder!”
He snarled, flipping her onto her stomach with a rough, effortless motion. He hauled her hips up, entering her from behind in one deep, punishing stroke. His hand fisted in her hair, pulling her head back. “You get my gentleness,” he panted, pounding into her, each thrust punching a moan from her lungs. “And you get this. You get all of it. Every fucking part of how I need you.”
The mattress rocked. Her fists clenched the sheets. This was what she’d craved—the obliterating intensity, the sensation of being utterly claimed, the safe, consensual wreckage of his passion. He was everywhere, his smell, his sweat, the slap of his skin against hers, the filthy, loving words rasped in her ear. “Take this cock, you perfect wife. Grip it just like that. Come all over it.”
She shattered, a climax tearing through her so violently her vision blurred. He followed, his rhythm fragmenting into short, sharp jerks, a hot flood filling her as he collapsed over her back with a choked shout of her name.
They lay there, a mess of slick limbs and heaving chests. After a long while, he carefully withdrew and turned her, gathering her against him. He was grinning, a real, unguarded, boyish smile she hadn’t seen since before the wedding. He looked relieved. He looked happy.
“I love you,” he said, kissing her sweaty temple. “So much it terrifies me.”
She traced the line of his jaw, her body humming, whole and complete. “I love the way you terrify me.”
The cage was gone. The sanctuary remained, but its doors were now wide open.
The sanctuary remained, but its doors were now wide open.
They stayed three more days in that suite. Three days of Yusuf waking her with his mouth between her thighs, his tongue tracing obscene alphabets against her clit until she clawed at his scalp and came with his name breaking on her lips. Three days of her learning the weight of him on her tongue, the salty-sweet taste of his release flooding her throat while he fisted her hair and called her his perfect little whore.
Three days of fucking on every surface. The balcony railing, her palms braced against the warm metal, the sea wind whipping her hair while he took her from behind, grunting filth into her ear about how tight she was, how wet, how he could fuck her forever and never get enough.
The bathtub. The floor. Once, memorably, against the door when room service knocked and he pressed a hand over her mouth, driving into her with slow, torturous strokes while she bit down on his palm to keep from screaming.
By the fourth morning, the vacation was over. The taxi to the airport felt like a funeral procession. They held hands across the cracked vinyl seat, silent, both of them retreating into the armored shells they'd worn before the wedding. The driver's radio played a pop song about love that made Layla want to vomit.
The flight was short, barely an hour, but Yusuf slept the entire time, his head against the window, his hand still gripping hers even in unconsciousness. She watched the clouds through the glass, her mind a blank, humming static. The green of their neighborhood, when it appeared below, felt like a prison yard.
Their apartment smelled like the lemony cleaner the maid had used before they left. Everything was exactly as they'd arranged it: the throw pillows on the couch angled just so, the wedding photos already framed and hanging on the wall, the kitchen counters gleaming. It was a stranger's home. A showroom for a couple that didn't exist anymore.
Yusuf dropped the suitcases by the door and pulled her into his arms. "We're home," he murmured against her hair, his voice thick with something she couldn't name.
She let him hold her. Her arms stayed at her sides.
He felt the stiffness. She knew he did. His embrace loosened, and he stepped back, studying her face with a frown. "You okay?"
"Tired." She managed a smile, the muscles in her cheeks protesting. "Just tired."
He accepted that. He always accepted what she offered, as long as she kept offering. He ordered takeout—Lebanese, from the place around the corner—and they ate on the couch watching some reality show neither of them could follow. His hand rested on her thigh throughout, a warm, possessive weight.
She excused herself early. In the bathroom, she stared at her reflection. The woman staring back had dark circles under her eyes and a bruised look about her mouth. She looked like a woman who had been fucked so thoroughly she'd forgotten her own name. She looked like a stranger.
She brushed her teeth until her gums bled.
The week that followed had a rhythm. Yusuf went back to the architecture firm, leaving at eight, returning at seven. Layla had two more weeks before her teaching contract resumed. She spent the days alone in the apartment, wandering from room to room like a ghost, her phone in her hand, her thumb hovering over her mother's number.
She never called.
At night, Yusuf fucked her. Always after dinner, always after the dishes were cleared and the apartment was tidied. He'd pull her onto the bed—sometimes gentle, sometimes rough—and he'd take what he wanted. She gave it. Her body responded even when her mind drifted. She came when he commanded, her climaxes mechanical, efficient, a performance she'd perfected.
Afterward, he'd hold her and whisper pretty things about love and forever. She'd listen to his heartbeat slow and wonder if this was what drowning felt like.
On the eighth night, he came home late, reeking of whiskey and the cloying perfume of some woman's body lotion. A work dinner, he said, some client from Dubai who wouldn't take no for an answer. His words were slightly slurred, and his hands were grabby, his fingers finding the hem of her nightgown before she'd even said hello.
"I need you," he growled, pushing her against the hallway wall. His breath was hot and sour with alcohol. "Been thinking about this cunt all fucking day."
He didn't wait for a response. He pushed inside her without preamble, a brutal, stretching thrust that made her gasp. The wall was cold against her cheek. His hips were relentless, each stroke a punishment. She closed her eyes and waited for it to be over.
When he finally came, grunting into her neck like an animal, he didn't pull away immediately. He stayed buried inside her, softening, his weight pressing her into the drywall. "Love you," he mumbled. "Love you so much."
She said nothing.
That night, for the first time since the honeymoon, she couldn't sleep. She lay beside him in the dark, listening to his deep, even breathing, her mind churning. The apartment was silent except for the hum of the refrigerator. Outside, the city was swallowed by night.
She thought about the hospital. The doctor's voice, calm and clinical. She thought about the cream, cold and greasy, his fingers parting her raw flesh. She thought about the balcony, the bathtub, the door. The way he'd pinned her down and called her his whore while she begged him for more.
She thought about his whiskey breath tonight, the careless thrust, the way he'd used her like a receptacle.
She thought about the word he'd used. Superficial. As if the bleeding, the pain, the violation of her body had been a minor inconvenience. A scratch.
He hadn't learned anything. He'd just learned to be sorry afterward.
She turned her head on the pillow. In the dim light from the window, she could make out the lines of his face. The straight nose, the dark lashes against his cheeks, the mouth that had spoken vows and filth in equal measure. He was beautiful. He was a monster. He was her husband.
She thought about what she'd said to him in the shower, that first morning. About resilience. About passion. She'd meant it then, a confused, half-conscious olive branch. Now the words curdled in her memory like spoiled milk.
He'd asked her to be stronger.
She would be.
She slid out of bed, careful not to disturb the mattress. He didn't stir. He slept like the dead after sex, a heavy, dreamless oblivion that nothing could penetrate. She'd learned that in the honeymoon suite, the one time she'd tried to wake him for water.
But she didn't want water now.
She walked to the kitchen, her bare feet silent on the polished tile. The moonlight through the window painted everything in silver and shadow. She opened the drawer where they kept the knives, the good ones, the wedding-gift set with the black handles and the serrated edges.
She selected a paring knife. Small.Sharp. It fit in her palm like it was made for her.
She walked back to the bedroom, her heart hammering so loud she was sure it would wake him. But he didn't move. His breathing never faltered. He was gone, lost in whatever darkness sleep gave him.
She stood at the side of the bed, looking down at him. The sheet had pooled at his waist, exposing his chest, his stomach, the trail of dark hair that led below. His cock, soft and harmless in sleep, lay against his thigh.
She stared at it. The thing that had caused all of this. The thing that had torn her, healed her, filled her, and now claimed her like a territory. The thing he couldn't control. The thing that ruled him, and through him, ruled her.
He'd said it himself. I wanted to own your pain.
Maybe it was time he owned something else.
The knife felt heavier than it looked. She tightened her grip, her knuckles white. Her breath came in shallow, careful gulps. She'd have to do it fast. One clean cut. He'd wake screaming, but it would be done.
She'd watched enough crime shows to know how to make it quick.
She lowered the blade toward his exposed flesh, her hand steady, her mind finally, blessedly quiet. The moonlight caught the edge of the blade, and a thin line of silver danced across his skin.
He shifted in his sleep. Murmured something. A name. Not hers.
Mariam.
The knife paused an inch from his skin.
Who the hell is Mariam?
Her hand trembled. The quiet in her mind shattered into a thousand jagged pieces. She stared at his sleeping face, at the mouth that had just whispered another woman's name, and something cold and vast opened up inside her chest.
She looked at the knife. She looked at his cock, still soft, still vulnerable. She thought about blood. She thought about screaming. She thought about prison, about her mother's face, about the life she'd imagined in this apartment and the life she actually had.
She didn't move for a full minute.
Then she stepped back. She walked to the bathroom and shut the door behind her. She turned on the light and stared at herself in the mirror, the knife clutched in her hand like a talisman.
Her eyes were wild. Her hair was a mess. She looked insane.
She was insane. This was insane.
But she wasn't going to stab her husband in his sleep. Not tonight. Not like this.
She opened the drawer beneath the sink and shoved the knife inside, behind the extra toilet paper, hidden from sight. She splashed cold water on her face, dried it with a towel, and breathed until her hands stopped shaking.
When she returned to bed, Yusuf was still asleep, still whispering names that weren't hers. She lay down on her side of the mattress, as far from him as she could get without falling off.
She didn't touch him.
She didn't sleep.
The plan, when it came, was quiet and cold and perfect. She wouldn't use a knife. A knife was crude. A knife would make her a victim, a villain, a headline.
She would use something far more effective.
She would use everything he'd given her. Every bruise, every tear, every careless word. Every time he'd whispered Mariam instead of Layla. She would gather it all up and she would destroy him with his own hands.
He deserved it.
She smiled in the dark, a thin, broken thing that no one could see. Tomorrow, she would begin. Tomorrow, she would ruin him.
But first, she needed to know who Mariam was.