by Sionna Fox
She braced her hands on the floor and rose to her knees. Slowly and unsteadily, she got to her feet.
“Good girl. Lie on the bed. Facedown.”
His hand on the small of her back guided her into position on his large bed. She waited. He’d always loved to test her patience, but she was spent enough to be barely aware of the wait. Vaguely, she heard the sounds of him tidying up around her, tucking the flogger, the cuffs, and the crop back into their places. She watched him undress, carefully folding his shirt and trousers onto the chair in the corner, placing his undershirt and boxers into the laundry basket. On any other night, she would be internally cursing him for his stalling tactics, desperate for whatever was coming next, to feel him naked against her, inside her. Tonight, she waited quietly, content to float along in her half-dreaming state. She snapped back into her body when cool, hard nylon rolled slowly up the backs of her thighs and over her buttocks. She tensed, anticipating the first blow of the cane.
“Breathe, kitten. You’re going to count for me. Say ‘Yes, Sir,’ if you want this.”
Kate gulped a breath. She’d come this far. And she needed to see this to completion, to take what he gave and receive the sweet release of his body covering hers, one last time. “Yes, Sir.”
“Good girl. Are you going to hold onto the quilt, or do I need to restrain you?”
She took a slow, deep breath and answered, “I can hold on, Sir.”
“Good girl. Take a deep breath. Now let it out.”
As she exhaled, a line of fire lit across her ass. She flinched and rocked her hips against the mattress, making pleasure from the pain. With a steadier voice than she expected, she counted, “One, Sir.”
He rolled the cane down over the burgeoning welt and stopped just below it. Kate breathed deeply, trying not to listen for the telltale whistle that would make her flinch. Flinching only made it worse. She heard it. She flinched. The cane bit into her flesh a second time. For all that it hurt, her clit throbbed in tandem with the two stripes across her bottom.
She inhaled through her nose and counted, “Two, Sir.”
The cane rolled over the welts, paused, and landed again. Her whole body was on fire with pain and pleasure, the line between the two bleeding and blurring, her sinuses swelling as she started to cry. “Three, Sir.”
The fourth strike landed at the crease where her ass met her thighs. “Four, Sir,” she sobbed into the mattress.
“Good girl, kitten. One more. One last deep breath for me. That’s my good girl.”
Kate exhaled, and he laid the last strike across all four welts, setting them alight all over again. Kate bit down on the quilt to keep from screaming. She writhed and squirmed and kicked her feet, trying to escape the fire that licked across her skin. Several minutes passed before she spoke, “Five, Sir.”
With those final words, he climbed onto the bed, turned her over, and plunged his sheathed cock inside her in one hard thrust. The quilt chafed against her tender skin, but nothing could take away from the pleasure of being taken, filled, fucked at last. Kate wrapped her legs around his surging hips, lifting her own to meet his hard, fast thrusts. There would be no drawn-out lovemaking, not when they’d been waiting all night. Not when she couldn’t bear a tender goodbye.
One last good, hard fuck after he’d teased and tormented her body was all should could ask for, all she wanted, and he knew it. He pinned her wrists above her head with one hand and placed a palm on her sternum, holding her down as he rose to his knees, then dropped her wrists and used the free hand to reach between their bodies and thumb her clit.
“Come for me now, Kate. One more time. Now, kitten.”
Kate arched her back, dug her toes into the backs of his thighs, and came so hard she saw stars. She went limp as he pumped into her and found his own release with a stuttered groan. He collapsed on top of her, still inside her, and lay his head on her breast. She wrapped her arms around him and cradled his head, carding her fingers through his graying hair and fighting the urge to cry. They lay together, Kate tangled around his body while his weight held her to the mattress.
He carried her into the bathroom to clean up. He wiped her down and rubbed cream into the welts. She’d be bruised in the morning, temporary mementos to take with her. He put her to bed and climbed in beside her, pulling her to his chest. She’d be gone before he woke.
One
One year later…
* * *
“Oh my god, you’re back!”
Kate got yanked into the umpteenth overly enthusiastic hug of the night by yet another person she hadn’t seen or thought of much for a year. She would have felt bad stealing Jolene’s thunder at her own engagement party, if she didn’t know that Jo was secretly delighted to have some of the spotlight taken away from her. She and Matt were happily snuggled up in a corner, taking a breather from well-wishers while Sarah directed everyone at Kate, who’d been holed up in her sublet not seeing anyone until this celebration forced her out.
She wondered how long it would take for the news to circulate through their small circle. She was back. Yep, her hair was short now. Her fellowship research had gone well. Yes, she was all-but-dissertation. She was subletting a studio. No, she hadn’t seen him. Not since that last night. The memories were burned into her brain, refusing to fade the way the last of his bruises had, weeks after landing herself in the California desert.
Her side of the story was the split had been amicable. They’d grown apart, and when the opportunity to join a team implementing best practices for maternal-fetal health in low-income hospitals had come up, their relationship was past the point of surviving a year apart. It had been for the best.
In practice, they hadn’t spoken for a year. She’d had a few terse emails about where to send the odd thing of hers she’d forgotten to put into storage at the beginning, but then the things she’d accidentally left behind had run out. They had no reason to speak to each other. No reason for texts or emails or god forbid, phone calls. It was done.
Ian had always been chilly. It had been part of the attraction at first, his being so cool and implacable. Always in control. But in the end, she’d wanted something else, something warmer. And Ian wasn’t that.
She glanced back at Matt and Jolene. She would never admit it out loud, but she had something of a crush on them. Not an attraction to either of them personally, but to their relationship, the way they were with each other. Partners who treated each other with warmth and affection and still managed to be kinky as fuck. Kate watched them in the corner, beaming at each other, oblivious for the moment to the people around them, Jolene’s legs in his lap while he absently massaged her calves through her thick tights and whispered in her ear. Jealousy flared in Kate’s chest like heartburn.
Maybe it was heartburn. Drinking coffee like water while working on her dissertation was becoming a bad habit.
Right, tell yourself that, Katie. She drained the drink in her hand and went over to their table. “Congratulations, guys.” She raised the glass she’d forgotten was empty and immediately felt like an asshole. Toasting with an empty glass had to be bad luck.
Jolene looked up with entirely too much sympathy. “Thank you.”
Kate stepped back, keeping herself out of Jolene’s reach in case she tried to pat her hand in sympathy or something.
“Have a seat.” Matthew disentangled himself from his fiancée for long enough to indicate the chair across from them.
“No, no. I just wanted to say congratulations before I took off. Lots to do before the semester starts.” It wasn’t a total lie. Now that she was on her own, she needed to supplement her stipend with teaching, and she still had a mountain of data to get through from the pilot program hospitals she’d been shadowing for the last year, and she was meeting with her advisor to talk deadlines for submitting to defend this spring. She actually had a shitload of work to do. It had nothing to do with the fact that he was bound to show up at some point, and she’d rather not be around when
he did.
But Jolene made that face again and put her feet on the floor like she was going to stand and give her a hug. Kate loved her dearly, but she’d had more than enough physical contact for the night and one more hug might break her. She backed away.
“Congratulations, guys. Really. I’ll talk to you soon.” She tipped her empty glass a second time.
She weaved her way through the crowd to the door, where Sarah waited with one of her mother hen looks.
“Everything okay?”
“Fine. Tired. I have a ton of work to do tomorrow.”
Sarah eyed her dubiously but stepped out of her way of the exit. She retrieved her coat from the overstuffed rack by the door and bundled herself into it, wrapping her scarf tight around her neck and pulling a hat on against the January wind that waited outside. She was still getting used to not having a thick hank of hair as an extra barrier to the cold.
It had been hotter than balls the day she’d said screw it and plopped herself into a cheap vinyl chair and asked the stylist to cut her near waist-length hair into a neat bob. She’d almost cried, watching in the mirror as a foot of hair came free, and with it her memories of the way he’d grasped it, used it to direct her mouth, to arch her back to get deeper inside her. She didn’t even leave enough behind for a short stump of a ponytail. He’d never do any of those things to her again. Maybe no one would.
She pulled her hat tighter around her ears and stepped outside into the biting cold coming off the Charles. Still, she thought about walking to the next T stop down the line to clear her head before going into the fetid heat of a station and making the two transfers that would take her back to her tiny sublet.
She glanced up from calculating how long it would take to walk to the next stop versus how cold it was outside, to a punch in the gut.
“Kate.” Ian stepped into the glow of a streetlight, deepening the shadows around his eyes, sharpening the finely honed planes of his face.
If she didn’t know him so damn well, he’d almost look threatening. But she could see how frayed his edges were. His hair needed to be cut. The top button of his topcoat was open, scarf forgotten, revealing a rumpled shirt collar and a loosened tie.
“Rough day?” On another man, being slightly askew at the end of the day would be standard after-work guy, but not on Ian. She wished she didn’t remember these things. She wished more she didn’t immediately respond to it. A pained look crossed his face, and she regretted opening her damn mouth.
“Fine. I assume the happy couple is still in residence?” He nodded toward the door of the bar.
“Jolene’s about peopled out, so they’re hiding in the back. Not sure how much longer she’ll last. Sarah’s in there too.”
He crossed to the entrance and reached a bare hand for the door. He’d forgotten his gloves. “Good to see you, Kate,” he said with a tight smile and stepped through the door.
Well, that could have been worse.
* * *
Ian deposited his coat on the rack, still shivering from the cold and the sight of Kate after a year. She looked good, healthy, rosy-cheeked, and bundled up properly. Unlike his dumb ass who kept forgetting that January in Boston generally called for a scarf and gloves to go with his coat. But he’d been too busy wondering if he would see her tonight, too distracted knowing she was back in town, to pick them up on his way out the door this morning. He forgot most mornings, if he was being honest, lingering grief making him absentminded at best, completely inattentive at worst.
He stepped up to the bar, ordered a Scotch, neat, and scanned the room for Matt and Jolene. He would have one drink, wish them well, and be on his way. He could pour himself another drink at his house.
His house, not his home. It hadn’t felt like home since Kate left. No kitten there to warm up the space, to fill the kitchen with smells that weren’t meal-kit dinners or takeout, to fall asleep on the couch halfway through movies, to hog the kitchen table with her books and papers and journal articles, or to be found in bed, passed out with one finger still stubbornly marking her place in her book. It was nothing more than a too-large holding space for a lot of stuff he didn’t even use.
Seeing her tonight was another kick in the teeth on an already crap day. He had missed her every single day for the last year, whether he admitted it to anyone or not, and it was fucking with his life outside of the house. He missed the way she smelled. The way she tasted. The little unconscious hum she made when he came to bed late and spooned up behind her to kiss her hair. He missed it all so much it made his bones ache and his stomach feel hollow.
She’d had to go, and he hadn’t even fought her. He’d been so distracted, so comfortable in the routine of their lives that he hadn’t even known she was applying for research fellowships at all, let alone ones that would take her to the other side of the country for a year. He couldn’t argue when she said it was for the best, a clean break. How could he have convinced her that he would change, be more present, pay more attention, when she said she didn’t love him anymore? So he’d let her go.
He picked up his drink with a shaky hand and hoped he could fake a sincere enough congratulations for his friends. He was happy for them. Truly. He was. He’d known Matt since not long after he’d started hanging around Sarah, and seeing him happy and grounded with Jolene—it was the way he should have been with Kate. Present. Aware. He’d failed her so many times.
“You just missed her.” Sarah had snuck up behind him while he was ruminating into his Scotch.
He made a noncommittal noise in the back of his throat. This was supposed to be a celebration, not another opportunity for him to drown his sorrows over how badly he’d fucked up.
“Ah. You saw her.”
Another grunt, and he poured the drink down his throat like a cheap shot. Waste of perfectly good whisky, that. “I did. Excuse me, Sarah.”
He strode off to the corner Matt and Jolene were huddled in. Ian almost couldn’t stomach the sight of them. He’d had that once, and he’d irretrievably broken it somewhere along the way. He couldn’t point to the day or the moment when it had happened. He got too comfortable. Relied on her to simply be there and didn’t give her a reason to stay. He didn’t know anything except that she was gone. He forced his feet to keep moving to their table.
“Congratulations to the both of you.” He lifted his empty glass. Stupid, probably unlucky thing to toast with an empty glass.
Jolene looked at Matt and back at Ian. “Kate was here.”
“I know. I saw her outside.”
“Oh. Do you want to talk about it?”
Sweet Jolene. No, he absolutely did not want to talk about it. With anyone. Ever. Except Kate. She was the only one who could forgive him. “No. I won’t spoil the occasion. Have a lovely evening and congratulations again.”
He pushed his way to the door and picked up his coat. The temperature shift once he got outside had him practically running to his car, swearing he was going to set out his gloves and scarf for the morning so he wouldn’t forget again, knowing he would.
Back at the house, he poured himself a Scotch and sat in the comfortably battered leather club chair in the office. This one he sipped slowly instead of dumping it down his throat like a teenager. He had spent the day caught between hope and dread that he would see Kate, and now it was done. The sight of her, the way her face flashed concern and annoyance and trepidation all at once under her thick, woolly hat—god, he’d missed her face.
Sipping his Scotch, staring off, he noticed that the bookshelves needed dusting. He’d have to add that to the list for this most recent housekeeper, if he remembered it by morning. Kate would have made sure it was done. Fuck, he missed her. Nothing in his life ran correctly without her, not his house, not his head, nothing. He was a walking cliché of a man unmoored by the loss of his woman.
She could take one look at him and ask if it had been a rough day. It killed him that she could do that, that she’d always been able to do that. He felt like he co
uldn’t have ever known her at all. Not when he’d had no idea that she’d been drifting far enough away from him that she had actually left him.
He was angry at himself, furious even, that he had failed her so spectacularly. It was supposed to be his job to see to her welfare, and he had completely and utterly failed to see that she had been unhappy. He had been a self-absorbed prick. The kind of dominant he’d warn his friends away from.
When they had started out, he sat her down regularly to check in, to review the terms of their agreement. And for so long she had laughed at him every time, and beamed up at him with such unfettered devotion, and proclaimed that there was nothing she wanted to change, that he stopped doing it as often. Then they stopped doing it altogether. True, she had never initiated that conversation, but she shouldn’t have had to. How long had she been waiting for him to get around to it until it was too late?
He scrubbed his fingers through his hair and downed the last of the alcohol in his glass. He really had to stop drinking the good whisky when he was like this. Now that she was back in town, he had a feeling it was going to become a much more regular occurrence.
Two
Between the walk in the freezing cold and the convoluted train route back to her sublet, Kate was physically less wound up by the time she let herself into her apartment, even if her brain was still running a million miles a minute.
She hung her coat on the hook by the door rather than trying to shove it into the closet stuffed with the clothes of the undergrad who was taking a semester abroad and didn’t want to lose this place. It was tiny, a short entry hall with the bathroom and closet to the left leading into a single room. The kitchen—and calling it that was a stretch—was tucked into what had clearly been a closet at some point. The fridge and miniature gas range were literally hidden behind bifold panel doors. It was sparsely furnished. A small dinette table that pulled multiple duties as prep counter, dining table, and desk; a bed; a coffee table; two chairs; and a chest of drawers she couldn’t even use because they were full of the other girl’s clothes.