She got inside his head and octopusly spread herself, reaching deep into every corner of his psychology. Like a harpsichordist that produced different sounds by plucking strings in isolation or in combination , she knew how to play him. She knew how he thought and what he felt and was in control of his emotions. He was torn out of his comfort zone and challenged and outwitted. The tormenting change he was going through was completely foreign to him. True she had her own designs and plans in his regard and may have even faithfully wanted, at some point, the best for him, just as a genuinely good mother may have the best intentions for her child, though hers was only as an off-shoot of her self consumption.
That feeling of suddenly being challenged by a woman beyond his ego: he took for love.
He’d never truly experienced falling for someone, that free and dangerous feeling… What many, already as teenagers graduated themselves in and experienced, now a connection then a lost connection, guarded jealousy, obsessive desire to have complete access to the person, he had never attended the first grade in that domain. He was worse than a teenager. It was all new. Not that he hadn’t been with women. He’d been with more than plentiful, enough to stir some envy, and had so liberally broken so many hearts without the slightest hesitation or regret or humanity. Now at thirty eight, for better or worse, he knew.