“So if you’re so happy,” I said, “why exactly am I here again?”
She gave me an unhappy look. “Because of something we both wanted, remember?”
“What’s that?” I played dumb.
“You’re being a brat,” she said.
“You like brats.”
“Not exactly. Now might not be the right time for it, but what I like about brats is stripping them, hitting them, fucking them, and making them do what I say.”
Heat rose up my face. “Who said now isn’t the right time for it?”
Kris looked at her watch. “We have plenty of time. But you seemed nervous.”
I batted my lashes. “Maybe I needed some convincing.”
She smiled. “Let’s start slow.”
“How exactly?”
“Take off your clothes.”
I stood and pulled off my T-shirt without a word. I wiggled out of my yoga pants. My heart racing, I unclasped my bra and dropped it to the floor.
“All the way,” she said.
I slid my panties down my legs and stepped out of them. I stood in front of her, completely exposed, as she watched me.
“Are you ready?”
I nodded.
“Give me a color.”
“Green,” I said.
She reached up and pinched both my nipples, hard. I startled, and Kris looked at me cautiously.
“Green,” I said again.
“Good, pretty girl. Now go upstairs. It’s time for your first chore.”
I walked up the stairs with Kris following close behind me. We got to her room and she handed me the hamper. “Every week, you need to wash the clothes. You’ll also need to clean each room except mine, wash all dishes every night except on Saturdays, and cook three dinners a week, along with buying groceries and any other household items we need. On Sundays, I’ll examine your work. If you haven’t done your job, I’ll obviously punish you.”
“Of course,” I said.
Kris smiled and pulled me close. She kissed me, soft and sweet. Then she twisted one of my nipples again. “Take that laundry downstairs and get to work.”
I trudged the hamper down the stairs and loaded the washer. When I glanced behind me, Kris was there, blatantly staring at my bare ass.
“Good. Now, down the hall.” I did as I was told. In the lavender room, I waited as she rummaged through drawers and then settled into a chair.
“Turn around,” she said. I walked in a slow circle until my back faced her. She dug her fingernails into my hips and pulled me to her. Kris fastened one fabric cuff on my right wrist and held the other with her hand.
Her face was inches from my lower back, her breath warm on my spine. “I’m going to tie you up and play with you. I’ll try a lot of things on you. When I ask you, you’ll tell me what you liked and what you didn’t. Your only job is to take it and then to answer honestly. Don’t pretend for me. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Good girl.” She grabbed the thick fabric hanging from my right wrist and led me to the eye hook. I saw that she had already rigged for this. When did she do this? I wondered what she had planned as she looped the restraint through the rope she’d hung. Once it was secured, she ordered both my arms above my head and tightened the other cuff around my left wrist.
“Too tight?”
“No, it’s good.” My voice had become smaller, higher than usual.
“Wiggle your arms. Fingers too.” I obeyed. “Good, your arms aren’t locked. Is the height all right?”
“A bit lower.”
She adjusted the strap on the restraint. “Don’t lock your knees. If you can’t keep standing, tell me and I’ll untie you. Don’t push yourself.” Kris showed me a large floor cushion, mine for the kneeling if I needed it. “Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” With that, she smacked me, open-palmed, on the ass. I squealed in obvious surprise, and she grinned.
“Wait until you see what’s in store for you.” She laughed.
What was in store for me? First, some gentle thwaps from a flogger, warming up my back, my butt, the backs of my thighs. It felt like a caress, like a massage from the leather. I relaxed.
“Scale of one to ten,” she said, “with ten being the most humanly possible, how much do you like this?”
“A seven,” I said.
“I think we can do better than seven,” she said. The next thing I heard was the sharp whoosh of a riding crop. I felt its concentrated sting on the fleshiest part of my backside. My breath caught in my throat. As slow and tender as Kris had been with the flogger, she was merciless with the crop. She hit my legs and ass a dozen times in rapid-fire succession. The speed of the hits made it impossible for my nerve endings to keep up. I wrapped my hands around the fabric that bound me and squeezed.
“Give it a number,” she said.
“Three,” I said through gritted teeth.
Just as the sting became too much, she stopped. “Your skin’s so red now.” She soothed my inflamed skin with her fingertips. She traced the marks she’d made on my skin, so sensitive to her careful touch. Once in a while, she pressed deep and gave me a start, only to rub it away with the lightest massage a moment later.
“Number?”
“Eight.”
Then she got out the paddle.
We went on like this, alternating soothing and pain, inching up the edge of what I could take and then backing away. I lost all sense of time in this play. Kris experimented with the heaviness of her hand, with the instruments, with the angle, with the points of impact. She raked her short nails over my body, stroked me back to equilibrium, and then began it all again. Despite the strength of my shoulders and arms, I eventually couldn’t stand with my arms tied above my head. Kris untied me and bound my arms behind me as I knelt. She used this opportunity to dabble with clamps on my nipples, screwing them tighter and releasing them, then flicking and teasing the swollen results.
Even that was too much over time, but I was so deep in my submission I could only slump. Nothing else existed as she made contact with my skin. The sensation, the silence of the room, her dominance over me, all became absolute and complete. I felt—not broken down exactly, but cracked open, raw and spilled out.
“Are you okay?” she asked when I sank into the cushion.
I mumbled something incoherent.
Kris released me, freeing my nipples from the clamps, then my wrists. Gingerly, she helped me to the bed.
“Water?” she asked.
I nodded. I took a huge gulp from the bottle she handed me. Slowly, I came back to myself. “Whoa,” I said. “Intense.”
“How are you?”
“I’m good. I’m…I’ve never gone so deep into it before.”
“Did I go too hard on you?”
“No. This was good. This is what I wanted.” It was true even though I had not known, before this, that it was what I wanted.
“I tried to take it slow,” she said.
“It was perfect.” I took another long drink of water. I glanced at the clock. Our time was more than up.
“We didn’t have sex.”
Kris laughed. “Do you want to?”
“Not right this minute.” I realized that I was so slick that I was practically dripping on the bed. It would be my job to clean it, I mused.
“Want to try for tomorrow?”
“Not just try. I want you to fuck me. I want…” Suddenly, I felt my complete nakedness. “I want you to. Please.”
Kris cupped my face in her hands. “I’d love to.” She kissed me, as sweetly as before. She stroked my hair, helped me get dressed, and promised me a list of chores to do. I put the laundry in the dryer, and she told me she’d be thinking of me, undressed and cleaning her house, all day.
But as soon as she said it, she rushed off to her room. Once again, I was essentially alone in a big, empty house.
Chapter Seven
Sasha held the ladder as
I rigged our trapezes in the Kirkus Radix studio the next day. It had just opened for early morning free time, and we were alone except for the girl at the desk out front. I was meeting with a buyer for my car that afternoon, and John and I had organized a yard sale the following weekend for the rest of my things. I hadn’t booked a single aerial gig yet, but I was optimistic about my new life. Everything was lining up.
Sasha, of course, couldn’t make sense of it. As we rigged, she questioned my move to San Francisco, which she thought had to be more expensive than my previous digs. I demurred vaguely until she suggested we take a terrible gig doing an elaborate children’s birthday party. We’d done a show for the same family months earlier for their spoiled six-year-old. Not only was it a headache to find space suitable for our equipment and for thirty kindergartners, we had to create a whole new act for the occasion, and the children didn’t even like it. One of them threw cake at us. The prospect of repeating the situation with the family’s four-year-old sounded unbearable. She called up at me, “We need to do this if you’re going to make San Francisco rent.”
I made a face as I double-checked the carabiners. “Actually, I don’t pay rent,” I muttered, thinking she wouldn’t hear me.
“WHAT?” Sasha exclaimed. Sasha had superhuman ears.
I climbed down the ladder. “Nothing! What are you thinking for our warm-up?”
“What are you talking about, not paying rent?” Sasha tapped her foot. She shot up an eyebrow.
“Kris and I have an arrangement.” I tried to sound casual. “I buy all the groceries and household stuff, and I cook and clean and do all the laundry.”
“How is that possible?” She put her hands on her hips. “And what about utilities?”
“She pays them.” I cringed. Why on earth did I have to open my mouth about this?
“Your roommate pays the rent and the utilities and you…what? Do some dishes, make dinner, and buy food?”
I nodded as we put the ladder away. “Technically, it’s a mortgage and not rent, but, yes.”
“Your one roommate?”
“It’s her house. She’s giving me a deal.”
“Obviously. How do I get in on something like that?”
We started our warm-up stretches. “There’s a little more to it than that,” I said.
“Of course. Do you have to babysit her dog? House-sit while she travels? Host cult meetings? What is happening here?”
I pressed my lips together tightly.
Sasha stared at me with her intense blue eyes as she balanced in a perfect warrior three. I blushed, thinking of my intense evening, and Sasha nearly fell over. Her blond bob hung over her face as she righted herself and shoved me. I toppled over onto the crash mat we’d set up under the trapeze. “Oh, Jesus. You’re sleeping with her. Oh my God, you’re ridiculous. Come on, Phe. You’ve known her for like six seconds. Don’t move in with a brand new girlfriend just because your roommate’s leaving. What are you going to do when you two break up?”
“She’s not my girlfriend,” I said.
Sasha shook her head. “So you two aren’t fucking?”
“I do have sex with her.” This was, of course, somewhat true. We’d certainly played, but we hadn’t had sex. Still, for the sake of simplicity, and because the intent was certainly there, I figured “sex” was the easiest way to explain it.
Judging by Sasha’s glare, though, I’d guessed wrong. “What is wrong with you?”
“There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s sex work, basically. I just happen to get paid in housing.”
Sasha rolled her neck. Her glare didn’t let up. “Don’t shit where you eat, Phoenix.”
“Does that really apply here?” I circled my arms.
“Either she’s your girlfriend or she wants to be, and that’s going to end badly. Drama and heartbreak and awfulness, I promise. Or maybe you really are a very well paid prostitute, in which case you’re living with the person you’re working for, which always sucks. Remember when I was a live-in nanny? Remember how badly that went?”
“That’s because you hate children.”
“No, I hate children because I was a live-in nanny.” She folded herself forward and rolled back up. “What if you want to date somebody else, Phe? What if you want to have friends over, or have a party, or spend the day in your sweatpants? Is it your home or is it your workplace?”
“It’s my home.” I felt uncertain as I said it.
“So what about my other questions?”
“Sweatpants are fine. And I can have people over. Kris works seven days a week. She leaves before I’m up and she works late. Other than our, uh, time, I hardly see her. I’d ask her about a party, but that’s just courteous. I would have asked John before I threw a party at our place.”
“And dating?”
“It hasn’t come up.” I pressed my palms high on the wall and leaned in for what we called the “getting arrested” stretch. “Like I said, she works a ton, so she doesn’t have time to date. And I’m focused on my aerial career right now. I don’t need complications.”
Sasha snorted. “What an obnoxious thing to say.”
“Come on, do you date?” I dropped under a trapeze bar for shoulder shrugs and she followed suit.
“I sleep with people who don’t bore me. You know I don’t like relationships. They restrict the natural flow of sexual energy.”
“How is this different? It’s not a relationship, but it meets my sexual needs. So what if it helps me out at the same time?” I flipped myself upside down to practice my knee hangs.
“It’s different because I kick the guys out the second it stops feeling good, and if you get tired of this chick, you’re stuck. Besides, you’re a compulsive girlfriend. You nest anytime you start sleeping with somebody.”
“That’s not true!”
“Oh come on, who was that girl you were seeing last year? Beth? You said it was just fun and then you were so heartbroken when you guys broke up.” Sasha stood on her trapeze and lifted her knees into her chest, holding her weight in her hands as she gripped the ropes.
I was confident I could indeed have a good time without falling in love, despite my history as a serial monogamist. Sasha’s assessment during my last breakup had been that I was “prone to fall in love.” She’d said it like it was a disease.
“This is different,” I said. “The boundaries are clear. I know what to expect.”
She shook her head. “So she’s gross? Or horrible?”
“Not at all.” I smiled to myself. “She’s very cute. Six days out of the week, she dresses impeccably, all these nice ties and pocket squares. You know I love a well-dressed butch. And we don’t spend a lot of time together, but I like her. She seems honest, and levelheaded, and generous. She’s kind of geeky.”
“Ugh. She’s like your dream girl. Is she closeted? Way too old for you?”
“Out since college and she’s in her mid-thirties. Totally acceptable.”
Sasha looked at me, her nearly invisible blond eyebrows knitting together. “Is the sex bad? Is that why she’s turning over a room for pussy?”
“It is so good,” I said, though of course I wasn’t sure. But the mere thought of what was planned for the night left me feeling distracted and dreamy. I fell behind Sasha’s warm-ups and sat there, leaning against the rope to my left.
“Eeww! Phoenix! What’s going to keep you from falling in love with her?”
“She’s successful.”
Sasha laughed.
“No, really,” I said. “I fall in love with people who do not have their shit together. I need somebody who’s a fixer-upper. Once they are fixed up, we stop working.”
“Oh, honey, you’re an idiot. You’re going to fall for her.”
“I’m really not. I can’t love somebody who’s not a mess. It’s the way I’m broken.”
“And what’s to keep her from falling for you? If she hasn’t already?”
I rolled my eyes. “She’s not going to fall fo
r me.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m a weirdo artist and she’s an adult. I, like, have a nose ring and wear ripped fishnets half the time, and she’s clean-cut. She’s serious and I’m frivolous.”
“So? Business folk can’t like aerialists?”
“Like? Yes. Have a relationship with? No.”
She shook her head. “Really, why wouldn’t she fall for you?”
“She works all the time. She meets tons of important people. We’re on different planets.”
“You’re in trouble,” Sasha said, but I ignored her. Sasha prided herself on never getting serious with anyone, so her standards for no-strings-attached were a little high. She teased me as we ran through our latest choreography. I let her words fall away while I focused on feeling myself move through space. Aerials always made me feel calm.
Aerials also left me sweaty and a little wiped out. This was one of the things I’d always loved about it. On that particular day, the training wore me down. Moving and the scene from the night before had drained my stamina. I managed to complete my chores once I got home, but by seven forty-five, I was ready to fall asleep.
As a remedy, I hopped in my luxurious new shower. I hoped I’d get cleaned off (and woken up) before Kris came home. Just in case I wasn’t, I didn’t lock the door.
“Phoenix?”
“I’ll just be a minute. Sorry, I’m in the shower.”
I heard the door to the bathroom open. “Ready?”
“Five minutes,” I said.
“It’s eight thirty.” I could barely hear her over the water.
I looked at her. The steam on the glass shower door blurred the edges, but I could still make out her slacks, her neat dark hair, the line of her tie. “I was just so tired, I was trying to wake myself up…”
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