by K. M. Szpara
“Bed?” he asks, as we catch our breath.
“Yeah.”
I take my pants off, fold them, and set them on the couch as Onyx walks down the cleared path on the floor. With one swipe, he knocks a pile of clothes off the red plaid sheets. A flannel that’s soft and warm when I lie on them, my pants halfway off. Onyx stands while he undresses, tossing his clothes wherever as I watch. No hamper in sight. No rules.
“Wait.” He places a hand over mine before I can remove my boxer briefs. “Lie back. On the pillows,” he says as I scoot into place. “That’s it. Now, hold your hands together.”
Onyx runs over to a closet and pulls a length of sky-blue rope from inside. He uncoils it as he walks back over, swiftly doubling the length. I lose track of his motions as he wraps my wrists. Every cinch makes my cock twinge. When he pulls the loose end around a bedpost and ties it off, I lose the ability to lie still. I writhe for touch—for his touch. Even the sheets send pleasure through the downy hair on my thighs.
“How does that feel?” Onyx lowers himself for a kiss.
My eyes are still closed when I answer, “Good.” It’s tight enough, somewhere that matters. Not everywhere. I can take more, but this is enough, for now.
Onyx’s mouth makes its way down my chest. Pausing to roll my nipple between tongue and teeth. To lap at the curve of my navel—I gasp, that spot never explored. His fingers curl inside the hem of my underwear, then pull it slowly down—over my hip bones, over my thighs—exposing the trail of thick brown hair that’s grown from my abdomen to my hardening cock, and inside my thighs.
Onyx’s body is smooth, not a hint of stubble. Should I have continued grooming? Maybe that’s what everyone in the city does. I tug at my hands, unable to cover myself, now. He can see what I’ve done. I look away.
“What’s wrong?” Onyx asks, his mouth an inch from my ear. He slides his hand up my thigh, fingers spread so that they glide through the short hairs. He grips and tugs, so close to my cock. I thrust up.
“Nothing,” I say.
“Then, why won’t you look at me?”
“I’m embarrassed. Ever since I stopped living with Alex, I’ve let my hair grow—everywhere. What if that’s wrong? What if you don’t like my body this way?” I pull at my hands again, but the rope doesn’t budge.
“Do you like it this way?” Onyx says.
“Yes.”
“Then, so do I.” He kisses my hip bone. My pubic hair.
I gasp.
Onyx slides his tongue slowly up my shaft, leaving a cool trail of saliva. “Anyone ever go down on you?”
My “no” evolves into an “ohhh,” as he engulfs the head of my cock. I want to tell him I’ve never experienced anything so much so wet and warm and all over, but I can’t speak. Can barely breathe. I dig my heels into the mattress and raise my hips.
Onyx pushes them down and holds me there. “Wow, you are bad.”
The word hits me like a bucket of cold water. “Red,” I say, before I can stress over it. “Please don’t call me bad or good.”
“Got it,” Onyx says, lips free only long enough for those words before I watch my length slide between them. I close my eyes and let myself feel his fingers at the base of my cock, sliding to meet his mouth where it stops. The soft suction, swirl of his tongue around the head.
He kisses the side of my shaft, still holding it, hand unmoving. The hyper-glow of pleasure emanates from my groin, down my legs.
“I’m going to help you up and then I want you to hold on to the bedpost. How does that sound?” he asks, question hot against my skin.
“Good.”
“Good.” Onyx slides away and I feel the tension of the rope change as he unfastens it from the post. “Up.” He pushes gently at my back until I’m sitting, then kneeling. Cock bobbing between my thighs as I shuffle toward the corner of his bed. It’s not like Alex’s, in the middle of his room. Not like an altar on which rituals are performed during the dark of night.
As I grasp the wooden bedpost, as Onyx winds the rope around my wrists and the post, as he fixes me in place, I feel like a normal person in his friend’s room. A lived-in room, pieces of his life scattered on the floor and furniture.
I gasp. A sting spreads across my ass. I grip the bedpost tighter.
“On a scale of one to ten, I want you to tell me how much you’re hurting.”
He slaps me again, open palm resting hot against my skin.
“Um.” I can’t think.
Onyx hits me, again, the heat compounding. I shudder and moan. “A number, Elisha, or I’ll stop.” Another hit.
I don’t want him to stop.
“A five?”
Soon, I’m a seven, then a nine. Trying to flex away from the sting of his palm. It hurts. I know it hurts, but I want it to hurt. I want more, want him to take me to ten. Instead, I feel the cool absence of Onyx’s hand and the shift of the mattress as he moves. I rest against the cold surface of the wall. Breathing. Waiting.
“How’re you feeling?”
Before I can answer, Onyx nudges my legs apart and presses a finger against my hole. It’s cool with lube and smooth. Covered in something unfamiliar.
“Good,” I say. “What are you wearing?”
“A glove.”
“Oh.” Alex and I never used protection.
“Honestly,” he says, wiggling his finger around the tight ring of muscle. I gasp and lean against the post. Onyx moves closer, cornering me while he strokes what feels like every pleasure nerve in my body. “It’s easier cleanup. If you looked around my room, you noticed, I need all the help I can get.”
I laugh, low throaty notes that dissolve into moans as Onyx’s finger slides deeper inside me. He doesn’t waste time finding that spot—I thought it was a trick only Alex knew. That I would never—
“Oh fuck, I can’t…” My knees buckle when Onyx takes my cock into his other hand.
“No, no, no,” he says, quietly, lips on the back of my neck. “Stay up. You can do it.”
My thighs burn with effort, but he’s right. “Please,” I say, searching my brain for the right words—any words. “What is that?”
“You mean this?”
I shudder again as Onyx brushes the spot. “Yes.”
“Didn’t have an anatomy tutor, I take it.”
I shake my head, unable to verbalize my no. Thankful I no longer have to.
“This”—he continues stroking the spot—“is your prostate. It’s situated between your dick and your bladder and can be stimulated several ways. Let me know if you ever want to try sounding.”
“I don’t know what that is.”
He chuckles. “Then I won’t explain until we’re both dressed. Don’t want to risk you losing this.” Onyx begins stroking my cock again.
I lean back against his bare chest. Allow my head to loll back on his shoulder, while he plays my body like a piano.
“You can come if you want to,” he says. “You don’t have to wait for me.”
I hum, satisfaction buzzing through me. If I weren’t tied down, I might float away—but I don’t want that. Don’t want only to come. “I want you to fuck me.”
“Oh yeah?” Onyx removes his hand from my body and the glove from his hand, then grabs my waist. His erection presses hard against my bare ass.
“Yes.” I arch my back, rubbing against him.
He disappears, again. I look over my shoulder to see Onyx roll onto his back and slide his trunks down his legs and toss them onto the floor with everything else.
He reaches over the end of the bed and returns with a foil packet, which he rips open, then discards the foil. “Ever use a condom?”
“No.”
“Then, watch.” He pinches the tip, demonstratively, then rests it on the head of his circumcised cock. Slowly, he unrolls the length of rubber down his shaft, until it nestles against his body. It’s so thin, I can still see his dark skin through the translucent material. “Got it?”
I nod.
I do, too. “Yes.”
I’m bracing myself against the bedpost and widening my stance when Onyx positions himself behind me. With little effort, he pushes his cock inside me, loosing a string of curses as he slides in to the hilt. I have missed this feeling. The stretch, the fullness. Being joined to another person. I squirm against him, losing myself in a burst of pleasure.
“How’s that feel?” I ask.
Onyx’s voice cracks. “Good. Really fucking good, Elisha.”
With both hands on my hips, he draws back and thrusts in, again. Again and again and again. I clench when he pulls out, drawing moans from the both of us.
Onyx kisses my neck, leaning his weight on me. Bending me forward, my full weight on the post. He kisses me with teeth, marking my skin. I expose my neck to him, needing more. The pain feels magnificent. Onyx bites me, again, then grabs a fistful of my hair and pulls, wrenching my head back even farther. I scream—desperate and satisfied at the same time.
“Was that a good scream?” He digs his tongue into the hollow of my shoulder bone.
“Yes,” I choke out. “Please,” I beg. “Please touch me.”
“I am touching you.”
“Please.” I thrust my cock into the open air.
“Tell me what you want, Elisha.” He holds my hips flush against his body and I squirm around his length.
“I want you to touch my cock. Please. Please, I want to come.” I thrust again, but this time his hands finds me. Warm and nimble.
I give myself over to Onyx. Wholeheartedly, I feel. His cock inside me, his hand around me—I am so close. My body has never been stimulated in so many ways in so short a time. His pelvis bumps into my bruised ass, forehead rests against my sore neck, lips occasionally forming kisses against my slippery skin.
I hold on to the bedpost inelegantly. I don’t want to free myself, but every time I struggle, pleasure jolts through my arms and down between my legs until the feeling sends me over the edge.
“I’m going to—oh god.” My body buckles. Hips buck of their own accord. I glow from the inside out. Throw my head back and cry out as if my body is no longer my own. I forget. No longer on this bed, in this room, on the top floor of a building in the center of Baltimore City. I’m raw energy, exposed.
Then, I’m in Onyx’s hands. His body cradles mine, thighs and chest my relief. As I come down from my orgasm, I grind down on his cock, one last time, drawing a hiss from between his teeth.
“Easy,” he says, pulling slowly from my body.
I look over my shoulder. “You’re still hard.”
“Such powers of deduction.” He rolls the condom off and tosses it.
“I want to help.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I know,” I say, feeling empowered by the option. “I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to, but I want to.”
“Then tell me what you want to do.”
“I want to suck you off.”
Onyx raises his eyebrows. “That’s a soft limit; are you sure?”
“Yeah.” I nod. “I know what I’m doing.”
Onyx and I hold each other’s gaze for a solid thirty seconds. I don’t falter. He’s judging me. Wondering whether I’m capable of this kind of decision so soon. I am. I pick out my own clothes. Lock doors, when I want privacy. Go to work, in the morning. Broke up with Alex. It’s not always easy, but I can make my own decisions.
“I believe you,” Onyx says. He reaches around to untie my hands.
“Wait!”
He stops as suddenly as if his life depended on it.
“Don’t untie me all the way, only from the bedpost.”
He smiles and begins unwinding the rope from the post.
“I like this,” I say, as Onyx winds the extra rope around my wrists and ties it off. “It makes me feel secure.”
“I mean, I’m into it.” He helps me onto my knees, beside the bed, and sits, legs spread, on the edge. Rolls a new condom down his shaft.
I lick my lips. I’ve never gone down on anyone wearing protection, before. I hope I can get him off; I want to get him off. I still like making people feel good.
Onyx holds the base of his cock with one hand and brushes my cheek with his other. Hesitates. “Elisha, I really don’t want to fuck this up.”
“You won’t,” I say with as much authority as I can muster. How do I make people take me seriously? “I know you’re having trouble believing me because of the relationship I had with”—I can say his name; it doesn’t mean anything—“with Alex. Just because I learned about myself with him doesn’t mean everything I learned is wrong. I’m allowed to want this until I don’t.”
“Fair enough,” Onyx says, then tilts his head sideways. “I have an open-mouth gag, if you—”
“Oh, put your dick in my mouth, already, for fuck’s—”
Onyx grabs my face and thrusts into my open mouth. I bend closer, taking his full length down my throat. I am grateful Alex trained away my gag reflex. Onyx gasps with surprise, holding the sides of my head tight as my lips meet the base of his cock. I swallow, flexing my throat and tongue around his length.
“Fucking hell.” He throws his head back.
This new condom tastes like plastic cherries, but I suck on his cock like it’s the sweetest treat I’ve ever tasted. I dart my tongue over every ridge, every vein. Every time he moans I go harder, faster, my head bobbing rhythmically between his thighs.
His breathing speeds up and his grip tightens. I let Onyx take control, pursing my lips around his shaft as he fucks my throat like he fucked my ass.
He doesn’t announce when he’s coming, but I feel it. Part of me wishes he wasn’t wearing a condom, so I could taste him—swallow his come. My reward for a job well done. Maybe someday.
We don’t move for several minutes. Onyx leaves his cock in my mouth while it softens and I suck lightly, teasing out the dregs of his orgasm. I’m happy to be a warm, comfortable home for his afterglow.
Finally, he reaches down and pulls the condom off as he pulls his cock from my mouth. “You’re too good at that.”
“Thanks,” I say with a smile.
This time, I let Onyx free my hands. Warmth reclaims my palms and fingers as he works. It felt good when he tied them and it feels good when he unties them, as if it’s not an undoing, but a natural progression. A completion.
We flop onto the bed beside each other and he hands me a tissue to wipe the come off my chest and cock. I flex my jaw.
“Where should I…” I glance over the edge of the bed at a trash can piled high with wrappers and tissues and condoms.
“Overflowing.” Onyx closes his eyes and smiles. “Good luck.”
“Okay.” I balance the tissue on top of the bulging trash can, then close my eyes, too. Feel Onyx pull the comforter over our naked bodies. He rolls over, curling up against my back. Drapes his arm around my chest. Kisses one of the bite marks on my neck.
“Ouch.” I don’t mean it.
I feel the heat of his laugh against my hair. “Your ass is so warm.”
“Gosh, I wonder why.”
“You like it.”
“Yeah,” I say, feeling the pull of sleep. “Thank you. For all of this.”
“Anytime,” he says.
I fall asleep thinking how safe I feel. How I’ve felt that before. I wonder whether that was real, if the safety was an illusion. Alex would’ve protected me. I never felt safer than in his arms. I think that’s real. I decide it doesn’t matter, now.
68
ALEX
I’m making myself a mediocre shot of law office espresso when my phone rings. And though I’d rather be most anywhere besides attending another one of my friends’ depositions, I like talking on the phone even less.
“Who is it?” I ask, and the caller ID answers.
“Dr. Jessica Pearl.”
“Okay, answer call.” Before she can speak, I say, “I only have a mi
nute.”
“Right,” she says. “Dutch told me he was being deposed at ten a.m. Wonder if they’ll treat him like a traitor, too.”
He is a traitor, but I don’t tell Jess that. It was cruel of my attorneys to treat her like one, without reason.
“So, what’s up?” I ask.
“I want to start testing these counteractives on people. I had some luck, this morning, applying them to samples A, C, D, E, and H, but they’re in tubes, Alex. We can’t ask if their memories are coming back. It’s all theory until we have test subjects.”
“We can’t use the lab Dociles.”
“I agree; that’s why I’m calling you.”
“Okay, I’ll do it,” I say.
“Do what?”
“Dylan’ll help. I’m sure she’d love to stick a Bishop with a needle.”
“You’re going to test them on yourself?” Jess says, disbelief in her voice.
“Plenty of notable inventors have tested their own progress on themselves.”
“Yeah, but—”
“I’m not going to risk injecting Abigail with something else that could hurt her.” I look around the office kitchen, suddenly aware of how loud my voice is. “Her family doesn’t deserve that, after everything.”
“Okay,” she says.
“I’ve got to go. I’ll be over, afterwards. Could you take a look at your results from this morning and write up detailed memos for each of the samples?”
“Will do. Talk to you later.”
“Later.” I tap my ear and the signal cuts off.
I swallow the entire espresso in one go; its heat slides down my throat and burns my stomach. I cringe, set the tiny cup in the sink, and grab a mug from the cabinet.
Ever since I started living in my office, I’ve stopped sleeping. During the day, I hide. Even though everyone knows I’m mostly stuck there, I don’t want to remind them of it. Don’t want to feel the shame of being deemed too irresponsible to govern my own life. I work after everyone goes home. Jess stays, occasionally, but not as often as she used to. I think she’s emotionally exhausted, and I don’t blame her. She shouldn’t have to give any more than she already has. Dylan, despite her snarky facade, is happy to pass along anything she and Jess worked on, during the day. And she stays with me well into the night, listening while I talk myself through our options.