Zeus' Mistake

The NEED

This is fine. You’re fine.

It’s just an itch. A problem. A chemical glitch in the synapses.

It’s not like you haven’t dealt with worse.

I close my eyes and breathe slowly, trying to pray the throbbing away without actually believing in prayer. The room is dark, the machines quiet. Somewhere beneath the sterile cotton sheet, beneath the hospital gown, beneath bruised skin and stitched flesh, a feeling coils like heat lightning—violent, insistent, stupidly primal.

I’m supposed to be recovering from surgery, not auditioning for PornHub: Solo Hour.

But this shitty, clawing sensation inside me doesn’t care about timing, morality, or physical trauma. It’s not even pleasure. Not at first. It’s pressure.

Hunger.

As visceral as fear.

I try images that normally work—lazy beaches, bronzed strangers, flirting sunlit bodies—but everything is plastic and two-dimensional. Nothing sticks. Nothing breathes. Nothing reaches down into that molten ache and pulls it loose.

Okay. Something else.

Women, maybe. That’s usually a dependable option.

I conjure a line of strangers in bikinis: slow, teasing, laughing. Hands on hips, fingers sliding under fabric, mouths promising sin.

But there’s nothing in me.

Not one spark.

The ache gets sharper, like a blade carving through muscle, reminding me of incisions and organs and hands that were supposed to heal but first had to break me open.

Don’t think about that. Don’t think about him pinning you, crushing you, crushing your lungs, your ribs, the sound of bone under pressure—

My body betrays me and clenches, a reflexive twist that sends pain flaring across my abdomen.

God, I hate this.

Hate that pleasure and pain speak the same language sometimes.

Okay. Fine. Let’s try something else. Anything else. Just not—

Whatever you do, don’t think of Le—

Too late.

The minute his name surfaces—silent, forbidden, electric—my body responds viciously, like a match tossed into gasoline. A thrill detonates in my lower belly, eclipsing the surgical pain entirely. The lightning hits, sharp and blinding and humiliatingly effective.

I grit my teeth.

Goddamn it.

I should stop.

I should stop right now.

But the ache is consuming, terrifying, almost violent. And I’m too tired to white-knuckle it anymore.

I slip my fingers lower, careful, terrified of stitches, terrified of tearing something I’ll need later. But the second I touch my clit, my whole body stutters. Pleasure seizes me with a ferocity that borders on frightening.

A quiet, broken sound escapes my throat.

And then—without permission, without intent—Leo’s face crashes through the dark.

Those ridiculous eyes: blue with gold like trapped sunlight.

That arrogant body: built like someone who’s never had to apologize in his life.

That voice: sliced from velvet and weaponized.

His presence fills the fantasy instantly, overpowering, inevitable.

I imagine that night again—the wall at my back, his body caging mine, arrogant proximity, that stupid towel, that stupid face leaning down like he knew exactly what I wanted before I did.

But this time, I close the gap.

This time, I shove my mouth against his and take what I want.

God, the way he’d taste—

Warm. Salt. Heat.

A mouth designed for sin.

I twist my fingers and gasp.

My fantasy swells, becoming too vivid, too real. Suddenly, we’re in the hallway of our apartment building, but then the floor shifts, the world tilts sideways, and gravity throws us onto the ground.

Leo ends up on top of me, his body perfectly aligned with mine, pinning me in a way that does not trigger panic, because it’s him.

His shirt is gone.

His skin is bronze and hot and heavy.

His mouth is on mine.

His hands slide lower, decisive, sure, learning me like something expensive.

I feel his thumb at my waistband, slow, teasing, infuriating, before pulling my underwear away entirely.

My breath shakes.

My fingers move faster.

In my mind, he lowers his mouth to me, biting my thigh first—sharp enough to leave marks—then soothing the sting with soft, deliberate licks. He drags his tongue slowly across my skin, up, up, until—

The second his tongue hits my clit, I jerk upward so hard I nearly rip something open. Pain and pleasure overlap, blur, become indistinguishable.

A strangled moan slips from me.

And he—dream-he, hallucination-he, imaginary-he—feels it, responds to it, tightens his grip on my hips like he’s anchoring me to this moment, to this body, to him.

I don’t have control anymore.

I don’t want control.

He licks me slowly, then faster, circling, dragging, flattening his tongue, every motion designed with obscene intelligence.

My hips lift automatically, grinding into something that isn’t really there, chasing a mouth that doesn’t exist, but God, it feels real.

My body rushes headlong toward climax.

Fast.

Desperate.

Ugly.

I come hard, shaking, strangled, nearly silent because hospitals do not appreciate orgasmic screaming. My core pulses and spasms, and the flood that follows is so intense my thighs tremble helplessly.

But the ache isn’t gone.

Not even close.

The fantasy shifts again—way too effortlessly, like my brain is no longer driving this machine. Leo moves up my body, eyes glowing gold, gaze hungry, reverent, terrifying.

He looks at me like the world exists because I do.

And then—still watching me, watching every reaction—he pushes a finger inside me.

Slow first.

Then faster.

Again, again, again.

I choke on a gasp.

This is dangerous.

Too strong.

Too deep.

I shouldn’t—

Can’t—

But I can’t stop.

I come again, harder, louder, my hands gripping the hospital sheets, my body bucking upward, pain threading through pleasure until my vision whites-out.

And then—blessedly—release.

Full-body, shaking, devastating release.

Damn you, Leo.

I pant, trembling, staring at the dark ceiling, waiting for normal to return. But normal doesn’t show up. Instead, there’s silence. Thick, buzzing silence, ringing in my ears like I’ve done something irreversible.

Slowly, painfully, I lower my hand. The sheets are damp—evidence of my body’s betrayal. My hospital gown sticks to my stomach, sweat-soaked, clinging to bandages and bruising.

And then I feel it.

Not pleasure—

But pain.

Deep, sharp, internal pain—reminding me I am stitched together, fragile, ruptured. Something shifts wrong inside me, and suddenly I’m gasping, curling, clutching my abdomen with both hands, terrified I’ve undone the surgeon’s work.

Stupid.

Reckless.

Self-destructive.

And familiar.

Too familiar.

My body remembers this pattern: cope through sensation, distract through stimulation, seek control through surrender.

My therapist—years ago, different problems, same brain—called it “trauma intimacy displacement.”

I called it “just getting by.”

A sharp ache tightens low in my pelvis, a hot twisting pain that steals breath and floods memory: the surgeries, the ultrasounds, the quiet panics, the warnings whispered in sterile rooms.

You can’t keep doing this to your body.

It won’t always bounce back.

Well.

Too late for that.

The room spirals, a sickening carousel of white walls and flickering shadows. My heart races too fast, too loud. Sweat chills on my skin. My body feels wrong, too tight, too full, like something is tearing, unraveling.

And suddenly, the fantasy doesn’t feel sexy.

It feels dangerous.

Predatory.

Like something inside me is feeding on a need I cannot satisfy, a hunger that will chew through flesh and bone to escape.

My breath stutters.

Not arousal now—panic.

I curl sideways, clutching my abdomen, swallowing sobs because if a nurse walks in and sees me crying over an orgasm, I will die. Actually die.

But the pain is real.

The fear is real.

The shame is real.

I did this to myself.

Again.

Like an addict sneaking into a bathroom stall, chasing a hit that hurts more than it heals.

Maybe this is why I never let anyone stay.

Why I break before I bend.

Why the idea of depending on someone—letting someone like Leo see me, know me, want me—feels more terrifying than any assault, any surgery, any scar.

Because if someone sees you,

they can lose you.

Or worse—

leave you.

I squeeze my eyes shut and breathe through the pain, through the jagged edges of pleasure left behind, through the terrifying thought that I might have undone my stitches in pursuit of a fantasy.

Eventually, the ache dulls.

Eventually, my muscles unclench.

Eventually, my heartbeat slows from “Holy s**t you’re dying” to “relax, drama queen.”

I sink deeper into the mattress, exhausted—hollowed out, used up, scraped raw.

My body is heavy.

My mind is buzzing.

I am nowhere near okay.

As my eyelids droop, something flickers in my vision—a strange skew in the blinds, like someone touched them recently.

A breath catches in my throat.

Did I do that?

Or—

No.

No. Don’t go there.

Don’t invent monsters just because you can’t handle loneliness.

I swallow, strangely afraid of the dark now. The hospital room feels too small, too silent, like something might slip out of the shadows and lay claim to me.

But exhaustion wins.

The world drifts, fades, dissolves.

The last thing I feel is the faint pulse of pain in my abdomen—

a reminder that some hungers don’t disappear when fed.

They just… wait.