I let my leg loll heavy in his hands, mimic being relaxed, unconscious. He traps it between his thighs, pushes my legs further apart. This is the moment, I think, that things start to feel a lot more wrong. But it's okay because I am asleep.

It ended with a question, which is where I wanted to start. “Why didn’t you want to hold my hand?” But for that to make sense, we need to go back to the beginning.

He tells me to be asleep.

I am tired and sore from him fucking me earlier. To lie on my side, curl my knees up to my chest and tuck in the little pillow I hold against my stomach – it feels initially like a relief. I can manage this, pretend to be asleep – hardly a challenge. I press my face into the pillows and bring my hands up to my face, a safe little ball. This I how I sleep, or at least the position I usually fall asleep in. He’s kneeling somewhere behind me on the bed, watching. But I am asleep, so I don’t care.

He takes one ankle, starts to pull my leg behind me. It’s a struggle not to react with my breathing, stifling the anticipatory intake of breath. I let my leg loll heavy in his hands, mimic being relaxed, unconscious. He traps it between his thighs, pushes my legs further apart. This is the moment, I think, that things start to feel a lot more wrong. But it’s okay because I am asleep. I’m asleep and he’s trying to push inside me and I’m not ready so it hurts with a kind of hot tearing pain that flares behind my skull and my chest feels like it might burst from all the noises trapped inside that I cannot make because I am asleep. He pushes harder and I can’t – I break and make some noise, some exclamation of pain and fear, trying to claw my way up the bed and he doesn’t stop but instead tells me Shhhhhh. And there’s something about it that’s so chilling I am instantly stilled. Because it’s not Shhhh it’s okay, it’s Shhhh be quiet so I can keep doing this.

He fucks me for a while like that. I roll against him with each thrust, somnambular and limp. I am completely silent but inside my head I am screaming. It hurts so much. And the self-imposed silence has swallowed me and I feel glassy and unreal. After a while he tells me That’s good. You can stop now. But I can’t. And I don’t really want to. I don’t want to be active and involved in this, this thing that hurts in a way that isn’t fun and that has twisted into wrongness and is horrifying me in a way I can only cope with if I pretend I don’t have to. I’m asleep, I’m asleep, I’m asleep.

Of course, I have no choice. He hooks his fingers in the entrance to my cunt and pulls upwards, and the combined pain of that and him inside me is enough for me to finally react and squeal and try and get away. After that I can’t find the quiet place again. I am awake, and the pain is worse for it, and I just want this to be over now.

He tells me to hold his hand. If I had my words I would tell him fuck you. I don’t want to hold his hand. I don’t want to have anything to do with him. But he hurts me and hurts me until I do, and I’m in so much pain and I’m so furious that I hold his hand as hard as I can, squeezing and grinding and putting every last bit of resentment and anger into it. I hang from my hands for a living and my grip is strong. I can feel his knuckles rolling as his fingers are squeezed ever tighter together and I don’t stop. I squeeze for a long time and I’m not aware of anything else except his hand in mine being slowly, determinedly crushed. And then I’m spent, out of anger and out of strength and he’s still fucking me and it still hurts.

He rolls me over and makes me look at him. I am trying to lose myself, to drift off and stare at corners so asleep-me can pretend it’s not happening until it’s over, but he won’t let me. He keeps dragging me back, making me acknowledge that this is happening. And it is awful, it is all awful. He makes me kiss him and I want to scream. I am shaking my head and trying to pull away and he hits me hard in the face. He tells me I will do these things willingly or he will do them to me. I don’t know which is worse, which will make me feel worse. And he’s fucking me now in a way that doesn’t hurt but that feels good and that is awful too, because I don’t want to enjoy this, and he is making me. I feel my hips trying to press up against him and it makes me want to cry. And when I’ve given up so totally that I am seeking comfort from him, trying to bury my face in his neck, he pushes me back down, holds me there, away from him. There is nowhere left to go.

I cry afterwards. He wipes my tears away and licks them from his fingers. I’m in a numb, hollow place where I don’t know if I want him to comfort me or not. After I return to my body I kiss him but it’s about something other than affection – I want to be in control, for him to be the one having something done to him, even if it is just a kiss. And when I’ve recovered myself enough to sit up he asks why I didn’t want to hold his hand, I am so close to not being able to deal with it. Because I know he knows. He just wants to hear me say it. So I ask him why he wanted his hand held – even though I know, too. It takes him so long to answer that initially I think he’s ignoring me. But eventually he tells me something about wanting me to be ‘willingly complicit’ in what was happening to me. And I think about his hand being crushed in mine I and I snappishly ask him how complicit he thought I was.

And he smiles again. “But you held my hand.”