“Now would you like to be untied?” the man asks, and his voice sounds more familiar to me.
We’re done playing our parts—for now. I answer yes.
They work together to release me. The buzzer goes off with perfect timing as I sit on the edge of the table, trying to get my bearings again and flexing my hands.
I smile at him as the woman comes in to kiss me and carefully massage the rope burns around my breasts. I touch the back of her neck and feel the man kiss the back of mine as I reach my other hand around to stroke the back of his. We make a wonderful triad, I think. We’re not spies anymore, but I’m Vanessa again and they’re my real life partners Sofia and Aron.
After we leave here, we’ll go back to our apartment and share our bed in contented exhaustion. I know the way Sofia tends to kick the blankets off when she gets too hot and the way Aron will inevitably get up earliest of all of us to work out and drink that nasty whey protein powder. We’ve all discovered how to do these more intimate things through a lot of trial and error these past few years, but it’s been exhilarating each step of the way.
Sofia rolls her tongue piercing across my lips one more time before she pulls her mouth away and we all sit together for a moment, holding each other, before we start to transform the room once again into a chaste, fun venue for tomorrow night’s real escape room customers. We help each other dress again, pack the implements away in my backpack, unlock the wheels on the tables and roll them into the large hall closets, and lock up the place before starting the short walk home. In the dim night, I walk between them and they both hold either of my hands as we watch the few bright stars we can see beyond the streetlights.
“They’re so beautiful,” I say, tipping my head upward.
“Yes, we are,” Aron says with a playful smile as Sofia laughs.
HAMMERED GOLD
Rosalind Chase
Morgan watched the last bites of cereal swirl around the milk in her bowl. She interrupted the white current with her spoon, stirred the opposite way, watched the bloated grains spin counter clockwise.
Is it degenerative?
It was a man at the gallery the night before. A man she’d worked with off and on for months but he’d only just found out about her disease. He didn’t understand. How could he know what he was asking?
How could he ever grasp it?
The invisible nature of it.
The way the disease itself was like a ghost. A poltergeist. Existing only to wreak havoc, spread chaos, keep her up at night.
Morgan thought back. The day she had to leave her last job. The day she started. The day she moved into this apartment. The day she quit going to the support group. The day she joined it. The day her doctor told her she should get some extra help. The day her diagnosis came down. The day she landed in the hospital.
And there were all the other days in between.
All the moments that melted into a blur of color and sound and pain.
And all the moments that should’ve been. All the days that didn’t happen. The trips she didn’t take. The plans she cancelled. The dates she’d shirked.
Were her days getting worse? Was her life getting worse? Was she degenerating?
Morgan opened her phone. Scrolled. Scrolled. Her thumbs ached.
She put the phone back down. Stared out the window. It was full spring now and daffodils and irises had pushed up through the soil in front of the bookstore across the street. The worst of the cold was gone, Morgan hoped, and the warmth of summer would bring a little more ease into her body. Less creaking and cracking and radiating pain. More afternoons with the window open.
But she wasn’t there yet. That would be weeks down the line.
Today, it was chilly. Sweater weather. And her body hurt.
The nerves in her fingers lit up, sending a sickening, shiver-inducing pain straight up her arms, through her chest, and down into her belly. Her knees weren’t much better and she could feel the hard tightness of her shoulders threatening to follow right behind. She fought her instinct to curl in on herself, to make herself small, to hope the pain wouldn’t notice her, would pass her by.
Is it degenerative?
She opened her phone again, scrolled through the contacts, glanced outside. No ice. No driving rain. Just a chill. Would the cold hurt? Yes.
Would it be worth it?
Yes. A thousand times yes.
Now if she could just get him to answer.
She hit the name, Daniel, put it to her ear, let it ring.
She’d met Daniel when she was in her late twenties. That was a decade ago. Before her diagnosis. Her whole life was lumped that way. Before. After.
It rang.
Daniel didn’t use a cell phone. He was old-fashioned and English and refused to give up the rotary phone he’d found on the curb when he’d first moved here. He was like that. Always treasuring things other people threw away. Always noticing something shining and beautiful about things that were a little broken.
It rang.
Morgan closed her eyes. How long had it been? Three, four months? Just as the winter had begun to be too much. He’d come to her that day. There was no way she could’ve gone out. He’d arrived at her door in a hand-knit and hand-patched wooly sweater under an ancient bomber jacket and had shaken the frost from his silver hair.
“Hello?”
“Daniel,” Morgan said. “I’d almost hung up.”
“You just caught me, love. I’ve just returned from the market.”
Morgan pictured his armload of groceries the way it would be written in a movie, with a stiff baguette poking out the top of a paper bag.
“I wondered if you might have time for me today. I know it’s last minute.”
She listened to the rustle of paper as Daniel set the bag on the kitchen table, listened to the hard thunk of the glass bottle of milk (where did he get this stuff?) as it shifted against the ancient wooden surface.
“Lucky girl,” he said. “Come by in an hour?”
“Yes. I’ll be there,” Morgan agreed, realized she was smiling.
“Right. See you then.”
Morgan hung up and took a long, deep breath. She already felt better. Breathe in . . . two . . . three. Hold. Out . . . two . . . three. It was just how Daniel had taught her. It was how she got through her high pain days. Her regular days. And her sessions with him.
She stood, slowly, and wandered into the bedroom. It didn’t matter what Morgan wore, she knew, but she didn’t want to show up at his pristine cottage wearing ragged sweatpants and her pizza-stained Emmylou concert T-shirt she’d bought back when she could still go to concerts. She peeled every single thing off and stood in front of her mirror.
She tried to see her long legs instead of the burst veins that spidered under her skin. Tried to see her full breasts instead of the bruises her underwire had left around them the night before. Tried to see a face that was happy in spite of her health, successful in spite of her circumstances, hopeful in spite of her disease. For the most part, Morgan succeeded.
She wiggled into a pair of leggings and a jersey dress, a soft sweater and buttery leather boots. Daniel lived twenty minutes away. She didn’t need to hurry but she shouldn’t lollygag either. She packed a bag with a change of clothes, her medication (just in case) and, as she was going out the door, the beaded necklace Daniel had given her so many years ago.
A bead for every breath, he’d said.
A circle of beads. Going on forever. Like she would never stop.
“Hello, love,” Daniel said when he opened the door. He was tall and lean. He spent the warm months rowing a single scull up and down the river and spent the cold ones hiking in the mountains. His hair had been white since long before she’d met him and, though she’d never asked his age, she’d loved watching the development of the divergent crow’s feet that told the story of his thoughtful life and the deep dents at either side of his smile which hinted at his quietly joyful nature.
“Hi, Daniel.�
�
“Bad day?”
“Not so bad,” Morgan said, wrapping her arms around her waist, holding herself close, making sure she didn’t fly apart before she could even get into his house. “Good enough to come out.”
She let her gaze travel the long length of his body. His worn but well-maintained desert boots led up to soft-looking charcoal trousers and a navy (or, at least, it had once been navy) long-sleeved T-shirt. His skin was perpetually tanned, his snowy shadow perpetually five o’clock, and his mouth perpetually quirked up into a curious almost smile.
“Come on, then,” he said and nodded his head toward the interior of his cabin.
She followed him inside and wasn’t wholly surprised to see a fire crackling away in the corner. He always made sure she was warm.
The interior of the cabin, all rugged and raw and wooden, was cozy. The space was open, with a little kitchen to one side and the living area to the other. The bedroom and bathroom were beyond the closed door, she knew, but her gaze was pulled, immediately, to the object in the middle of the floor.
Wine leather cushions padded the surfaces of the mahogany bench, which had always looked, to Morgan, a lot like a complicated sawhorse. Its four legs tilted up like twin As and, at front and back, were well-cushioned and sturdy rests for a person to, effectively, kneel on their shins and forearms while their body came to rest against the padded spine of the bench. Each arm and leg rest came equipped with a wide leather cuff to secure the appendages of whoever knelt there.
Morgan realized she was holding her breath at the sight of it and she let it out, through pursed lips, in a long whisper of air.
“Are you ready?” Daniel asked from behind her.
Morgan turned. Her heart was racing. It didn’t matter how many times she came here, nor how many years she had known him, nor how long she could possibly keep doing this. Being here, in this room, with this man and his voice and his skill and, yes, her pain, always made her dizzy with want.
She nodded, unable to speak for the lump of excitement in her chest.
“Take off your clothes,” Daniel said.
She did. She tugged at her dress, her leggings, her bra and underwear and socks. And Daniel watched. He stood, casually, next to the dining table with a mug of steaming tea in his hand and, simply, watched.
When she started to remove the necklace he held up a hand.
“Leave it,” he said.
So she did.
They stood for several long moments. Him—clothed, ten feet away, noiselessly sipping his tea. Her—naked, bare, raw, in the center of his floor, the hearth sparking and warming her from behind, his steady gaze setting the rest of her on fire.
“Go to the bench,” he said.
She moved toward it and heard Daniel’s footsteps first on the hardwood and then on the carpet as he neared her. He held out his hand and she took it, using it to steady herself as she mounted the bench. It really was like a horse, she knew, and once she’d first figured out how to get situated comfortably on it, she always found it again without trouble.
“Good girl,” Daniel said, his voice like velvet.
He knelt by her right wrist and brought the cuff up around her arm, adjusting it here and there until it was neither too loose nor too tight. She couldn’t move, but neither was her blood restricted. Instead, she felt secure. Safe.
Daniel moved around the bench, cuffing her left wrist and then both legs, before stepping back to look at her. How did she know that’s what he was doing? Could she feel his stare? Hear his breath? Know his desire?
And what was his desire?
Her?
Hurting her?
Healing her?
Morgan shivered within the restraints. Her torso, from pubic bone to sternum, was supported by the leather pad and she was angled slightly so her head was higher than her ass. Daniel had made the pain horse, as Morgan always called it in her mind, on his own. She had never seen the inside of the woodworking shed she knew stood out back but she’d often imagined it. She imagined it again as she rested her cheeks against the massage table style headrest at the front, which she suspected Daniel had installed just for her. She never asked.
What would be the fun in that?
“We’ll start light today,” Daniel purred from behind her. “What’s your pain level?”
Morgan studied the weft of the forest green carpet below and breathed in a long, deep breath, her ribs expanding, her chest pushing into the stiff leather cushion.
“Five to six,” she said, breathing out. “It’s not too bad.”
Morgan knew people—maybe even most people—walked around at a zero, a one, maybe a two. She thought again about the question the man had asked.
Is it degenerative?
She breathed in . . . two . . . three. Out . . . two . . . three.
With every passing moment was she falling more and more apart? That’s what the man had wanted to know. That’s what he’d been asking. What would she be like in a year, ten, twenty?
Would the pain have eaten her alive by then?
She heard the long swoosh of leather on metal as Daniel pulled the riding crop from the antique umbrella stand he kept near the fireplace.
“Yeats?” he asked, gravel in his voice as he took a step nearer to her. “Or Shakespeare? Of course, there’s always Blake.”
“Yeats,” she said.
She tried not to brace herself for the first brisk thwack. She tried to let it slide off her like waves over a beach, but she could never help it. She could never relax into the start of a session. And so her fingers gripped tight around the ends of the wooden armrests as Daniel repeated, “Yeats,” and let the crop fly for the first time.
It landed against her left buttock with a snap. Not too hard. Not too gentle. It stung and the heat radiated out, through her body, to her curled toes and fingers. Warmer than sunshine. She relaxed a little.
“This is no country for old men,” he started. “The young/In one another’s arms, birds in the trees.”
Another snap. This one against her right buttock.
He stepped back. Morgan heard the soft crush of the carpet under his boots as he moved. She imagined him appraising the brief red blossom the leather had left on her skin.
He continued the recitation.
The thwack of the crop wasn’t regular, Morgan knew. It didn’t come at the end of each stanza but, instead, wherever Daniel felt it belonged. Wherever a word deserved emphasis.
“Caught in sensual music,” he said, his voice straining as he brought the crop down hard. It was the first deep hit. The first one that vibrated Morgan to the core. It opened doors in her body, in her mind. She felt the rush of relaxation unlocking her, a piece at a time.
“Sound clap its hands and sing, and louder sing.”
Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.
Morgan didn’t bother biting her lip, didn’t bother gripping at the armrests or digging her forehead into the headrest as she might once have done.
Instead, she gave herself over to it.
Let her body slide from one kind of pain into another. Into this other, more beautiful, more perfect pain.
“And therefore, I have sailed the seas and come.” SNAP.
She screamed over his next words as the crop bit into her buttocks but she knew what they were.
To the holy city of Byzantium.
They’d tried floggers over the years. Paddles, too. But nothing ever worked so well as Daniel’s crop. Nothing ever felt so right. The pure snap of leather against flesh. The reverberating pop through her body. The fireworks that bloomed on her skin and went away just as quickly.
“And be the singing-masters of my soul./Consume my heart away; sick with desire.”
Thwack. Thwack. The whisper of his boots on carpet as he adjusted. Thwack.
The crop cracked against her thighs and Morgan groaned.
Now she was falling into the warm darkness of her pain. It would take her. She would let it. She welcomed it. She asked fo
r it.
Thwack.
She felt an ache of a different kind grow between her legs, felt the heat of her own moisture, felt the power of her own control.
“I shall never take/My bodily form from any natural thing,/ But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make—”
Morgan listened to the hard thump of blood in her ears, the husky rattle of her own voice in her throat, the hot pop of leather against her thighs, close to the backs of her knees.
“Of hammered gold and gold enamelling.”
This was her doing.
Daniel was holding the crop. This was his device on his carpet in his house and it was his voice reverberating through the raw wood walls. And yet it was her choice to be here. Her choice to call him. Her choice to kneel and wait for the delicious snap of the crop. Her choice. Her pain.
This pain wasn’t some cruel twist of fate. It wasn’t some broken letter in her DNA. It wasn’t some failure of her body to protect her.
It was Morgan’s pain. It was Morgan who held this power. Power over her body. Power over her mind. Power over this room.
“Set upon a golden bough to sing.”
The crop’s wicked tip met the soft, sensitive flesh just outside her sex.
She groaned and let herself disappear into the mesmerizing rhythm of Daniel’s steady speech. Of the mysterious pattern of his stinging hits. Of the warm power that came with the very fact that she was here, naked and bound, because she chose to be.
“Of what is past, or passing, or to come.”
The last snaps came harder, stronger, faster.
Her heart thundered against the leather below and she felt both more and less present than she’d ever been. She was in this moment and she was everywhere. Nowhere.
He reared back for one last blow. She knew the poem well, by now.
She prepared herself without tensing. Without resisting. She breathed into it, her body ready and relaxed as Daniel finally whispered, “To the holy city of Byzantium.”
Morgan let the pain of the final fierce strike travel the length and depth of her body, let it into her core, her inmost self, let it wrap and curl itself around her fragile heart, shielding it the way thorns shield a rose. This pain was hers. It was her monster and she had tamed it. She controlled it. Her monster, at her bidding, chased away the poltergeist of her other pain. Her daily pain. Not forever. But for now.
Best Bondage Erotica of the Year, Volume 2 Page 2