I looked up at him and he was eating and his jaw was working as he cut his steak. A scraping of the knife on the plate, which caused me to have aching teeth. I kept on eating, but the food seemed like ash in my mouth. the silence that was coming between us was stifling, thick with implicit menacing, with the weight of what he had already said.
*Remember who you belong to.*
I sat up when I was through, the chair wreaking against the floor. I wondered whether he would say something--some mean thing, which would set me right to fight, to know a feeling besides this empty obedience. But he did not say a word, and his dark eyes trailed behind all my movements as an eagle spies his victim. His threats were in a way less than his silence. His brutality at least was not new.
I went to my room,
