Chapter 3: Midnight Confessions
The silence in the gym after she’d left had been absolute, a vacuum where her desperate words still echoed. Jarkko had finished his close-up routine on autopilot, the clang of the lock on the main doors too loud in the emptiness. He’d driven home through a fine, misting rain that did nothing to clear his head.
His apartment smelled of effort and solitude. Pine cleaner from wiping down his gear, the lingering ghost of burnt coffee from that morning. He tossed his keys onto the counter and stared at his phone, a black rectangle on the scratched wood. It felt like a live wire.
When it buzzed, the vibration was a physical shock.
Maria (23:47): I am just now taking a shit again. I think about you.
He read the words twice. The brutal, mammalian honesty of it was a gut punch. It stripped away every pretense. This wasn't poetry. It was biology. A confession.
His thumbs hovered. The pragmatic part of him, the guard, said to delete it, to block the number. That part was drowned out by a louder, darker curiosity. She had opened a door in that gym. He found himself stepping through it.
Jarkko (23:49): That’s graphic.
Maria (23:50): It’s true. It’s all I can think about. Emptying myself. Being clean and empty for you. I want you in my ass. Right now. I’m clenching around nothing and it makes me crazy.
The phone felt hot in his hand. He walked to the window, the rain streaking the view of the neon sign across the street. He shouldn’t engage. He knew it. But her words were a hook, set deep.
Jarkko (23:52): You have no idea what you’re asking for.
Maria (23:53): Tell me. Tell me exactly. I need to hear it from you. Please, Jarkko.
He let out a long breath, fogging the cool glass. He typed slowly, deliberately.
Jarkko (23:55): It wouldn’t be gentle. I wouldn’t ask if you were ready. I’d just push. You’d fight it for a second, your whole body tight as a fist. Then you’d give. You’d feel yourself tear open. And then you’d be full.
The three dots bounced. And bounced.
Maria (23:58): Yes. God, yes. I want to feel owned. I want to feel used. I want you to groan against my neck while you do it. I want to be your secret. Your filthy, secret hole.
A current, raw and electric, jolted down his spine. The clinical detachment of the gym was gone. This was pure, undiluted id. Her fantasy was a detailed blueprint, and he was the only contractor who could build it.
Jarkko (00:01): Where are you.
Maria (00:01): In my bathroom. On the floor.
Jarkko (00:02): Get off the floor. Come here.
He sent the address. No further instructions. The authority in the command was part of it, he understood that now. This was what she needed. Not a debate. A summons.
Twenty minutes later, the buzzer rang.
He didn’t buzz back. He went down the two flights, his footsteps echoing in the concrete stairwell. He opened the front door to the apartment block.
She stood on the step, soaked. The fine mist had become a true rain. Her blonde hair was darkened to honey, plastered to her scalp and neck. A simple cotton dress clung to every curve, transparent in places. She hugged herself, shivering, her eyes huge in the yellow light of the entryway.
She looked like a drowned animal. A offering.
“You came,” he said, his voice low.
She just nodded, her teeth chattering.
He turned and walked back up the stairs. He didn’t look back, but he heard the soft slap of her wet shoes on the steps behind him, the drip of water from her hem. Inside his apartment, he closed the door. The lock engaged with a solid, final click.
They stood in the gloom, the only light from the streetlamp outside, fractured by the rivulets on the window. The rain drummed a steady pulse on the glass.
“You’re wet,” he said.
“I know.”
“Take off the dress.”
Her hands went to the straps, fumbling with cold-numbed fingers. She peeled the soaked fabric from her skin, letting it fall to the floor with a wet slap. She stood in just the lacy thong, the same delicate, absurd thing from the gym. Her skin was pebbled with gooseflesh, her nipples hard. She kept her eyes on the floor.
“Look at me.”
She did. Her gaze was terrified. Resolute.
“Was it true?” he asked. “What you texted.”
“Every word.”
He closed the distance between them. He didn’t kiss her. He put a hand on her waist, his fingers spanning her hip bone. Her skin was icy. He turned her, not ungently, and guided her toward the small kitchen table, cluttered with mail and a single, empty protein shaker.
“Bend over.”
A shudder ran through her. She obeyed, placing her palms flat on the wood, pushing aside a stack of envelopes. Her back arched, presenting the full, perfect curve of her backside, the thin string of the thong bisecting it. He stood behind her, watching the rain-light play on her skin. He hooked his thumbs in the lace and pulled it down, past her thighs, letting it drop around her ankles.
He unzipped his jeans. The sound was obscenely loud. He was already painfully hard, driven by her words, her abject surrender, the sheer taboo of it all. He leaned over her, his chest not touching her back, his mouth near her ear. He could smell rain and her shampoo.
“You cleaned yourself out for this.”
It wasn’t a question.
“Yes,” she whispered, her voice cracking.
“You’re sure.”
“Please. Please split me open.”
He didn’t use his hands to guide himself. He just pushed, a single, insistent press of his hips.
Her whole body tensed, a bowstring pulled taut. A sharp, stifled cry hit the tabletop. Her hands scrambled against the wood. He held still, buried to the hilt in a shocking, impossible tightness, a hot, clinging resistance that made him see stars. He felt the tremor of her fight, the instinctive, bodily revolt.
Then, as he’d told her she would, she gave.
It was a physical sigh, a melting. Her elbows buckled and her forehead came to rest on the table. A low, broken moan spilled from her lips.
He began to move. Slowly at first, each withdrawal and thrust a deliberate conquest. The table scraped against the linoleum with their rhythm. He gripped her hips, fingers pressing into the soft flesh, holding her in place as he settled into a deeper, rougher pace. Her cries were muffled, animal. Each one drove him on.
This was what she’d wanted. To be used. A clean, empty vessel filled on his terms. He lost himself in the physics of it, the relentless, piston drive, the slap of skin, the creak of the table. The world narrowed to this: the heat of her, the choking sounds she made, the rain blurring the world outside into nothing.
He leaned down, his chest finally against her slick back, his mouth against the rain-damp hair at her neck. He groaned, the sound torn from him. “Is this what you wanted, Maria? To be my secret hole?”
“Yes,” she sobbed, the word vibrating through both of them. “Yours. Only yours. Forever.”
The promise, the permanence in it, shattered his control. His thrusts lost all rhythm, becoming frantic, final. He drove into her with a last, brutal surge, emptying himself deep inside the clenching, impossible heat.
For a long moment, the only sounds were their ragged breaths and the unceasing rain. He stayed buried within her, his weight on her, both of them spent and trembling. Slowly, he pulled away.
Slowly, he pulled away. The air of the apartment felt suddenly cool against his damp skin, a stark contrast to the furnace-heat they’d just created. Maria didn’t move, her forearms still flat on the table, her breathing a ragged, open-mouthed sound.
“Okay?” he asked, his voice rougher than he intended.
She managed a slow nod, her hair shifting against the wood. “It burns,” she whispered, not with complaint, but with a kind of awed reverence. “I can still feel you. Like you’re stamped in there.”
He righted his clothes, the mundane zipper sound closing over something monumental. He fetched a towel from the bathroom, a clean grey one, and draped it over her shoulders. She finally straightened, wincing as she did, the towel clutched around her. Her eyes were glassy, pupils blown wide.
“I should…” she started, gesturing vaguely toward the door, the damp dress on the floor.
“Stay,” he said. It wasn’t a request. “It’s pouring. The couch folds out.”
She looked at him, and a flicker of that old, earnest Maria surfaced through the haze. “I didn’t… plan for that.”
“I know.” A corner of his mouth twitched. “I’ve got an extra toothbrush. Unopened.”
The domesticity of it seemed to startle her more than the sex had. She just nodded again, mute.
From that moment on, a new, unspoken protocol governed them. Maria started dressing even more slutty for Jarkko. It was subtle at first—deeper V-necks on her blouses, skirts that clung to the full sweep of her hips and stopped a reckless inch above the knee. Then bolder: a tight, ribbed knit dress that left nothing to imagination, seams of her thong visibly tracing her curves beneath the thin fabric when she bent to tie her shoe in the gym lobby.
Their meetings moved from chance encounters to deliberate assignations, always at his apartment after his shift. And when they met, they did it only in the ass. It became their sole grammar. He never asked why, and she never suggested an alternative. It was the treaty they had signed on that rain-slicked kitchen table.
Anal sex for hours. It became a physical language of patience and possession. Some nights it was slow, almost meditative, a relentless, deep claiming that left them both sweat-slicked and trembling. Other times it was fast and hungry, a frantic release against the hallway wall or with her pressed into the mattress, her face buried in his pillow. She learned the rhythm of his body, how to open for him, how the initial sharp protest of her nerves melted into a deep, full ache that she began to crave.
Maria talked dirty. Hesitantly at first, her cheeks flaming even as the words tumbled out. “Your cock feels so thick there,” she’d breathe, voice hitching with his every thrust. Then, with growing confidence: “You own this, don’t you? You own this tight little ass.” Her pious vocabulary was repurposed, sacrilegious and hot. “Oh God, Jarkko.Right there. That’s my heaven.”
And Jarkko loved when Maria started texting every time she was pooping, for him. The messages became a bizarre, intimate thread woven through his days.
Maria (14:22): In the stall at work. Thinking of you. Making room.
Maria (09:15): Morning coffee did its job. I’m clearing the deck, captain. Ready for inspection later?
The raw, unmedical candor of it should have been grotesque. Instead, it felt like the ultimate intimacy. It was her preparing a sacred space for him, an act of devotion stripped of all pretense. He’d stare at the words, a slow heat building in his gut, and reply with simple, commanding promises.
Jarkko (09:17): I’ll check. Thoroughly.
One Tuesday evening, she arrived in a leopard-print dress so tight it looked painted on. She spun in his dim living room, the fabric straining. “Too much?” she asked, but her smile was daring.
He didn’t answer with words. He walked to her, turned her around, and pushed the flimsy material up her waist. He found her already bare beneath, prepped and ready. He took her standing, her palms flat against the cool windowpane, the city lights smearing in her vision.
After, tangled on the pulled-out couch, she traced the tattoo on his bicep. “My pastor called today,” she said, her tone oddly light. “Asked why I’ve missed bible study three weeks running.”
“What’d you say?”
“I told him I found a new form of worship.” She said it to his chest, then tilted her head up to see his reaction.
He looked down at her, at the mascara smudged under her eyes, at the genuine, unafraid curiosity in her gaze. The girl from the gym was gone, reforged in this desperate, honest heat. He brushed a thumb over her cheekbone.
“And what does your new god demand?” he asked, playing along.
Her hand slid down his stomach, purposeful.
Her hand slid down his stomach, purposeful. “Demands I’m happy to fulfill,” she murmured, her earlier boldness softening into something more vulnerable. She let her head rest back on his shoulder, watching the rain trace paths on the window. “I actually told him, you know. My pastor.”
Jarkko went very still beneath her. The rhythm of his breathing changed. “Told him what, exactly?”
“About us. About… my new lifestyle.” She said it calmly, as if discussing a change in diet. “Not the graphic details, obviously. But I said I’d met someone who showed me a different kind of devotion. That my body had become a temple for a single, focused act of worship.” She let out a small, shaky laugh. “He thought I was speaking metaphorically. About chastity. I didn’t correct him.”
He was silent for a long moment, his hand absently stroking her arm. The streetlight caught the silver in his watch. “Why tell him at all?”
“Because it’s real,” she said, turning to look at him. Her eyes were clear, untroubled by the guilt he might have expected. “It’s the most real thing in my life. Hiding it completely felt like a different kind of sin. I needed to say it out loud to someone from… before.”
The following Sunday, she went to church.
She wore a high-necked, long-sleeved dress in dove grey, a costume of purity. She sang the hymns, bowed her head for the prayers. After the service, she approached Pastor Alan in the sunny, stuffy foyer, the smell of old coffee and floor wax hanging in the air.
“Maria! It’s so good to see you,” he said, his kind face wrinkling in a smile. “We’ve missed you.”
“I’ve missed this, too,” she said, and found she meant it, though not in the way he understood. “I wanted to talk, if you have a minute. To confess something.”
His expression shifted into gentle concern. He led her to his small, book-lined study, offering her the worn leather chair opposite his desk. She sat, her knees primly together, her hands folded in her lap. She looked every inch the penitent.
“I’ve been with a man,” she began, her voice even. “The man I mentioned. It’s become quite serious.”
Pastor Alan nodded, steepling his fingers. “The path of courtship is a blessing, Maria. As long as it’s respectful, and oriented toward a holy union—”
“It’s only anal sex,” she interrupted softly.
The words landed in the quiet room like stones in a pond. A fly buzzed against the windowpane. Pastor Alan blinked, his benevolent expression freezing, then slowly dissolving into confusion. He cleared his throat. “I’m… I’m not sure I take your meaning.”
“We don’t have vaginal intercourse,” she explained, with the patient tone of a teacher. “We’ve chosen a different path. An anal-only relationship. It’s how we express our physical bond. He takes me there, and I… prepare for him. It’s my offering.”
The pastor’s face paled, then flushed a mottled red. He looked away, toward a framed print of the Sermon on the Mount, as if seeking guidance. “Maria, that is… that is deeply unnatural. It’s a perversion of the gift of intimacy. It’s—"
“It feels sacred to me,” she said, and the certainty in her voice silenced him. “It requires patience. Trust. A deliberate kind of surrender. It’s not casual. It’s a covenant, just between us. I’ve never felt closer to God than when I’m surrendering to that… specific truth.”
He stared at her, his mouth slightly open. There was no script for this in his theology manuals. He fumbled for words, landing on a strained whisper. “You must end this. Immediately. This is a spiritual corruption. You are defiling yourself.”
Maria stood up, smoothing her grey dress.
Maria stood up, smoothing her grey dress. She met Pastor Alan’s horrified gaze without flinching. “I’m not ending it,” she said, her voice quiet but solid, like stone settling. “I’m going to be with Jarkko forever. However he wants me.”
The pastor finally found his voice, sputtering. “This is madness, Maria! This is depraved! You speak of forever with a man who… who treats you this way?”
“He treats me with more honesty than anyone ever has.” She adjusted the strap of her purse on her shoulder. The room felt suddenly very small, the air thick with his judgment and her defiance. “I know what I’m offering. It’s not a mystery. I want to offer my shithole to him. I do offer it. Every day. And it’s the most meaningful thing I’ve ever done.”
She turned and walked out, leaving the door to his study open. The click of her heels on the polished hallway floor was a definitive period to the conversation. She didn’t look back at the sanctuary, at the stained glass, or the empty pews. The rain had started again, a cold drizzle that kissed her heated face as she pushed through the heavy doors.
She drove to Jarkko’s apartment through the grey smear of afternoon. Her hands were steady on the wheel. She didn’t feel cleansed or absolved. She felt… factual.
When he opened the door, he was in sweatpants and a faded t-shirt, hair damp from a shower. He took one look at her church dress, her set expression, and stepped back to let her in. “How’d it go?”
“I told him,” she said, kicking off her shoes. The familiar scent of the apartment—clean linen, masculine soap, the underlying note of them—wrapped around her. “I used the words. ‘Shithole’. He looked like he was going to have a stroke.”
Jarkko leaned against the kitchen counter, arms crossed. A slow smile, one of genuine surprise, touched his mouth. “You didn’t.”
“I did.” She unbuttoned the stiff collar of her dress. “He called it a perversion. I called it a covenant.” She let the dress pool at her feet, standing in just her simple underwear. “I feel amazing.”
He pushed off the counter and came to her. He didn’t touch her, just looked, his eyes cataloging the resolve in her face. “No guilt?”
“No.” She reached for his hand, placed it on her stomach. His palm was warm. “It’s just us now. Really. There’s no one else in the room, even when we’re alone.”
He understood.