She rolled over in her bed and for once didn’t care about the loud clangs that came from the kitchen. Harper was untouchable. In the days since her multiple orgasms, she felt like she could take on anything. The bruises and small welts that lingered were like armor. She delighted in seeing the marks from Sean’s hands and paddle on her ass when she showered in the mornings.

But it wasn’t just the discipline he doled out. It was equally the tenderness and caring he showed afterwards. When he wrapped her up in the plush robes or cradled her close after their sessions, it was like he healed more than the controlled pain he’d just inflicted. It went deeper than that, to her core—straight to her marrow.

She pulled herself out of bed to prep for a long day of casting calls. As Harper pulled off the oversized shirt she slept in, she nearly gasped at the marks across her body. No skin was ever broken, Sean was sure of that, but it would take a few days for these bruises to heal. She gauged her body from every angle. Fuck it. If the designers can’t deal with it, who needs them?

Harper ran the shower as hot as she could stand and stood below the soothing water. She couldn’t get over the feeling of how freeing it was to give everything up. She’d done a little research after the night at the sex club, and some of what she’d read from experience subs and doms stuck with her. “The submissive has all the control,” one dom had written in a forum. “Although it rarely looks that way to outsiders.”

She sighed as she ran the bar of soap across her body. Ever since she and Sean had started … whatever it was they were doing, everything that weighed on her had lifted. All the past trauma, the emotional and physical tolls her body took on a daily basis, it had started to slough away.

However, it was temporary. Only during her time with Sean, the buildup to it and the afterglow that she clung to, that was when she was truly free.

Harper stepped out of the shower and wrapped a fluffy towel around her head. I need more, she thought as the gazed into the mirror. At the same time, worry chewed away at her. Will it be like this every time? What if it starts to fade?

It certainly hadn’t yet, but for the first time in her life she’d found something that felt right. When she was with Sean, she forgot about comparing her body to all the women around her. She didn’t obsess over whether or not she thought she felt her thighs kiss or if the side of her breasts spilled out the arm holes of her dresses. She could just be. With Sean in control, as he loved and worshipped her entire being, she could just be.

Harper was on autopilot as she dressed for the casting calls. Boring, neutral underwear that would go with anything a designer could throw at her, and which left minimal lines. Loose-fitting clothes that were easy to pull off and on. She looked to her silent phone. Sean had told her he’d be busy for a few days, but did that mean they couldn’t connect?

“Good morning,” she texted. “Busy?” She ran the wide-toothed comb through her damp hair and wiped the Aczone across her face. Yet another ridiculous side-effect of purging. The crap skin that was kept in line solely from prescription creams.

“Yep, sweetheart,” he replied.

She stared at the phone. Part of her was satiated just from that hint of his presence. Another part of her desperately craved more. “Text me later?” she asked.

“Okay.”

His one-word responses continued throughout the day. Harper had planned her go-sees so she could walk to the majority of them. She was always up early, often when it was still dark. The body’s instinct to seek out food while in starvation mode was stronger than anything else, including sleep. However, she was also naturally a morning person, and that gave her an advantage. Harper was fresh, upbeat, and didn’t have to walk in the mid-day heat from call to call. She’d learned early on that it wasn’t worth the outrageous parking fees to drive all over town.

Her high from being with Sean began to wane after the fourth designer gave her a pitiful up-down. It bordered on disgust. “Your agent suggested you were a good fit for this line?” the no-name designer asked her.

She scrambled for something to say. “I thought you were looking for—”

“Fresh, honey. We’re looking for fresh.”

Jesus Christ, why don’t you just tell me I’m too old? she thought as she slipped on her flats and shoved the closed-toed beige heels into her bag.

“Wyd?” she texted Sean as she walked to her next call. In the ten-minute walk, he didn’t reply.

Fuck. I know I’m not that important to him, but still …

After the last designer of the day waved her away with a promise to “be in touch,” she headed to the gym. As one of the few members who qualified for her own locker, she was never tempted by the excuse of not having her Brooks shoes or workout gear readily available. In a small act of rebellion, Harper left her phone in the locker. After her self-inflicted punishment, at least she’d have something to look forward to.

Harper set the elliptical for 60 minutes. Once that finish line was in sight, she upped it to 120. Nothing was a better high than seeing the towering numbers that two hours on the machine could provide. Well, almost nothing.

She dismounted, wiped down the machine, and nearly ran back to the locker. Still nothing. Her phone was completely silent.

Fuck. She changed quickly and started to jog back to the house in the flats that pinched her feet. At the corner store, she veered inside and grabbed the bag of Cheetos and a box of Apple Jacks. She wanted the Fruit Loops, but it might be too difficult to tell when the colors transitioned from rainbow to just orange.

“Love them Cheetos, huh?” the clerk asked.

“Uh, yeah.” Great, now she’d have to start going somewhere else.

Harper waved to Molly and Helena who sat on the porch smoking, but made a beeline for the kitchen. Armed with a bowl, the last of the milk and a spoon, she locked herself in the bedroom. Harper tasted nothing, not the tang of the Cheetos or the sickly sweetness of the cereal as she downed the entire box.

Immediately after she finished, she battened down in the bathroom and maneuvered her finger to just the right spot in her throat. Her body responded like it always did, and her eyes watered as her teeth opened up the wounds on her knuckles.

It wasn’t even dark yet, but she exhaustion and stress of the day put her into a sleepy stupor. And there was still no reply from Sean.

Harper’s dreams were often a bad mash-up of childhood memories. Suddenly she was twelve again and her mom measured her waist. “Twenty-two,” her mom said. “That would be alright, if you weren’t still twelve years old. Here, see this?” her mom asked. She pinched, hard, some of the flesh from Harper’s waist. “Have you heard the phrase ‘pinch an inch’? If you can pinch an inch of flesh or more from any part of your body, that’s fat and it needs to go.”

She was thirteen and hovered in the kitchen while her mom carefully weighed chicken breasts on a food scale. “Remember, you can’t trust what nutrition labels say,” her mom said as she handled the slimy meat. “One hundred grams of chicken breast is 165 calories. Always get white meat, always.”

Harper was fourteen and hunkered over a BMI chart she’d found online. She was at 18.2, but 18.1 was considered underweight. If I can get below 18.1, I’ll be thin enough. She ate nothing else the rest of the day, drank not a drop of water, and in the morning she’d lost two pounds and was officially, doctor-approved “underweight.”

She was fifteen and in a fitting room where her mom had squeezed in and splayed across the stool. They were selecting Harper’s first go-see outfit that would be bought just for the occasion. Her mom cocked her head. “They say the camera adds ten pounds,” her mom said with a sigh. “Try the black. Fucking cameras. But you know what the real killer is? Men.” Harper had paused, curious if her mom would say anything more about her dad—a man she only knew from photos. But her mom just reached out and tutted as she squeezed Harper’s growing hips.

She woke with a start and could tell by the pastel light it was morning. Her phone beeped it’s dying call. Damn, I hadn’t charged it.

A slew of texts from Sean filled the screen. “Sorry, sweetheart. Swamped with meetings all night and the phone died.”

Comfort swelled through her. He wasn’t ignoring me after all.

“Up for a hike today?” That had been his last text, sent just ten minutes ago.

Harper hesitated before she replied. “Sorry I missed you,” she said. “I feel asleep early, busy day. Yes to the hike.”

“Ugh,” she said as she sat up. Her electrolytes were surely fucked up after last night. She examined her face in the mirror. Her eyes were red and her face puffy from purging. Harper dropped in the prescription steroid eyedrops and filled a Nalgene bottle with water to pound.

It was time for some serious fixes before a day of trekking around the hills with Sean.