Jumping up from my seat and wiping a tear from my cheek, I screamed at him. "You went back into that house for a piece of jewelry!"
Richard reached into his pocket and pulled out a ring. "My great grandmother had this ring made for my great grandfather and gave it to him on the day they were married. Years later, he left that ring to my grandfather. When I graduated from high school, he passed it down to me. In my mind, it's the most beautiful ring I've ever seen. The chain was just something I wore."
Calming down slightly, I lowered my voice to reveal what I considered to be a weakness in his story. "Still, you broke into his house after he'd held you against your will."
"I wasn't planning on the neighbor calling him. I think he activated his security system after he got the call. He has one of those security systems he can control from his cell phone. Just as I got down the stairs into the dungeon room, I heard the locks click. I ran back up the stairs and the door wouldn't move. Realizing I was locked inside, I left the jewelry where it was.
"Henry arrived a few minutes later, before I could break out of the window. He had a pistol. I thought he was going to kill me, but he tied me to that whipping frame instead. He came down to feed me and take me to the toilet. I refused to talk to him. He wanted to know why I was there, but I wouldn't tell him. Eventually I'd had enough and we got into an argument. That's when he did what you saw on my back. I really felt kind of stupid, but since I knew he was at work, I just had to go back and get the ring."
"It seems like an awfully big risk to take for…"
Richard dropped to one knee on the floor in front of me and reached out to take my hand in his. Looking up into my eyes, he said, "I've never met anyone quite like you, Jay Davis. I know I will always need you in my life."
Logan whispered, "Oh, my God, he's going to…"
Richard continued, "I had to have this ring because it is the only ring anywhere that is the right ring for you to wear to show the world how much I love you."
All of the arguments about the ring that I had stacked up to deliver melted away.
"Will you marry me, Jay?"
"Marry? You want to marry me?"
"You said you loved me. Do you love me enough?"
"Yes, I do and I will." I looked over to Logan. Tears were streaking down his face. Marty was a complete mess and Finch just sat there with his mouth open. He'd been trying to start the video function on his phone, but couldn't focus because of the tears in his eyes. Richard slid the ring on my right hand. "Doesn't it go…?"
"It will. After you say 'I do'. When we have the ceremony, I'll move it to the other side."
I looked at Logan and Marty. "Guys, we need to be alone."
"We were just about to leave," Marty said.
Logan said he didn't believe what just happened and gestured to Finch that it was time to leave.
Richard stopped them in their tracks. "Guys, would you come here a moment?" They all stopped and turned around. "You can tell anyone you want about the engagement, but the rest of what you just heard and what you saw tonight is something I'd prefer you didn't talk to anyone about. Can you do that?"
Looking down at his nails, Logan began to tease Richard the same way he'd done to me so many times. "I don't know… There's some pretty good story telling here. I could keep the guys on pins and needles with this story."
Marty interrupted the playfulness. "Not to worry—I won't say a word, but you can rest assured that when we all get together, the conversation is likely to be about this for a while."
Heading to the door, Logan and Finch waved goodbye and prodded Marty to join him.
As they closed the door behind them, Richard rose to his feet, taking both of my hands this time. "Bedroom?"
"Are you up to it?" I said wondering about the wounds on his back.
"Oh, yeah. Something about getting engaged has me going."
"In that case, I have a better idea. I want you to show me something. Let's take this downstairs."
That sneaky looking little smile erupted on Richard's face, making the little creases I'd come to understand were happy lines. "What exactly?"
"Well, I've never been tied up the way you were."
Richard grabbed me by the shoulders and whirled me around. "You know, this is all about feeling. Do you want me to tie you up so that you can't possibly keep me from doing anything I want to you?"
Richard knew just how to phrase a sentence to send me into my zone. I could only nod.
"If we do this, I'm going to take you to a place I'm pretty sure you're prepared to go to, but you're going to need to trust me in a very special way."
"I love you, Richard. I know you'd never turn on me in a moment of helplessness. I'm so sure, I want you to put me there."
"Enough said then." Guiding me in front of him, Richard walked me to the stairway leading down into the special room. "I'm going to direct you from this moment on. Try not to talk. If anything happens that you don't like, just say 'stop.'"
He turned me toward the stairs, guiding me forward, never taking his hands from me. As I headed slowly down the stairs, the dim lights came on. I didn't know whether he had a switch by the entrance, or if it all worked on a motion sensor. When I got to the bottom, he led me into the center of the room and turned me around.
He'd managed to remove his shirt somewhere in the process. Seeing the thick dark hair covering his chest sent the usual wave of desire creeping through me. It was so liberating to be able to adore someone's body without feeling as though the balance of power was wrong. This way I knew he had all the power. He knew it too. No games. Is that the magic feeling? Is it desire times ten unhindered by the feelings my culture left in me about power?
Reaching down and grabbing my t-shirt by the sides, he said, "Lift your arms." I raised them and he slid the shirt from me and pulled my face into his chest. "Inhale," he ordered in a whisper. It had become a much welcomed opening into our intimacy.
I could smell the sweet muskiness that was Richard. Somewhere along the line, perhaps at the hospital, he'd cleaned up. He held me close with one hand while pushing me down slowly with the other. I felt the fur run up my face, until he stepped back, pushing me to my knees. He was already stretching his jeans. I reached up to unbuckle his belt. In a moment of weakness, I'd forgotten the rules. He pushed my hands away as I knew he would, stripped completely, pulled my face into the fur, and I inhaled once again. The scent was clean, but held a hint of Richard in it, and I found it intoxicating. Before I could take him into my mouth, he pulled me to my feet. Pulling off my belt, he opened my pants instructing me to remove them. He kicked them aside, this time forgetting to have me fold them. Walking me over to one of the benches, he slid my briefs down to my feet and delivered his order. "Sit here and don't move."
Once seated, I kicked the briefs to the side with the other clothes and waited.
He opened a small drawer built into the wall. He pulled out a ball of cord and returned. Looking straight into my soul, he said, "Spread your legs." As my knees moved apart, he reached down and took my sack in his hand. Pulling the orbs gently, he looped the cord around them and pulled it snug, then systematically he wrapped them, reshaping them and leaving what looked like a little fist at the bottom. The cord had a stainless steel ring hanging at the bottom. He took a two-ended clip like men use sometimes to hang their keys on their belt loops and fastened one end to a ring that was chained to the bottom of the wooden frame. He walked me to it and had me kneel above the loop. Fastening the other end of the clip to the loop that now hung down from me guaranteed that I wasn't going anywhere.
"Stay right there and don't move."
As if I could, I thought.
He stepped away a moment. I knelt facing the wall, and walking around me, he took one of my hands and snapped a leather cuff around my wrist. Then he reached over and pulled one of the chains from the frame and fastened it to a clip on the leather cuff. He repeated the entire procedure on the other side. He stood to my side. "Turn yo
ur head toward me," he commanded, and tapped his firm thickness against my face. He was gentle, but persistent. I wanted him, but he wasn't going to let me have him—at least not yet.
He stopped. I turned my head up only to see that he was watching me like a hawk. Stepping away, he moved over to the wall of tools. He picked up the whip and let the strands run across my back and ass. Leaning down, he slapped my ass with his hand: first one side, and then the other. I could feel the pain, but it didn't seem to matter somehow. I didn't feel like he was punishing me. It felt like he was doing something else.
After I got comfortable with the feel of the leather strands touching my skin, he tapped the tips of the strands gently against my back. Then he lifted them away and slapped them against me, lightly at first, then a little harder. I really couldn't tell just how hard it was. The idea that I was pinned here and he was using this leather whip on me was somehow magnifying everything, or maybe it was dulling everything. I couldn't really tell. He gradually increased the pressure, then stopped altogether.
I could hear him setting it down. "You and I are going to be doing this for a while. I better be getting you ready for later." He walked over to the rack of devises and removed something. Walking back to me, he held it in front of me for me to see. It was a plug. He squeezed a tube of lube over the plug, holding it in front of me as he covered it with the slick gel before he disappeared behind me. I just wanted him to do something. I needed to feel him. Starting with the fingers he'd just used to lube the plug, he filled me with one then two. Slowly withdrawing, he firmly inserted the device. It felt strangely cold. It was the first thing I'd ever experienced inside me that wasn't a body part. Wiping his hands with a towel, he returned to the whip.
I knew he was increasing the speed and the force he was using. There was some pain, but I didn't seem to care. I could feel the fullness of the plug, and each time the ribbons of the whip crossed my back, I seemed to feel it a little more. I wanted it to be bigger, to move. I wanted it to be him.
After a while, the whipping stopped. I could feel the plug being removed, then reinserted and removed again. The chain was removed from my wrists and the clip holding me against the floor was removed.
Richard pulled me into the center of the room, and grabbing my hair, he tilted my head back until he was sure I was looking up at him. Aiming himself carefully, he ordered, "Open your mouth." I let my mouth fall open, and he pulled me forward by my hair. As he filled my mouth and throat, I lunged forward, attempting to swallow. He was so big and with his curve it was difficult. He pulled out and once again pulled my head back.
"Don't hurt yourself." Richard pulled me back onto the floor and rolled me over onto my stomach. Twisting my head around, I could see him kneeling between my knees slathering himself with lubricant from the tube. Moving my legs apart, he lunged forward, giving me his entire length in one slow thrust. Then pushing forward, he gave me what he kept hidden under the surface. He grabbed my hands and laid them out to my sides. "Do not move your hands."
I knew that was his order. I would do anything to see to it that my hands never moved, not until I had permission anyway. A moment later, he wrapped his hands under my shoulders. "Relax. This is going to be hard," he said as he slowly began to pound. Once deep inside, he pulled me down from my shoulders and together we went to our place. A place we shared.
Richard pressed his mouth against the back of my neck. I felt like I was melting beneath him. I'm not really sure how long he continued at that rate. Somewhere along the line, it all became like a dream. I remembered the pounding becoming beautifully rough, and part of me just wished I could melt into him, never wanting it to stop. When I came to, we were still downstairs. My face was buried in Richard's chest. He was washing me with a warm cloth and talking to me really sweet. It was kind of like waking up from a deep sleep, only with wet. Then I remembered. I could recall the fever pitch moment when he slammed into me with everything he had and we both seemed to explode.
"How long have we been down here?"
"With everything, it's been a couple of hours. Now that you're back, I'll finish cleaning you up.
"What? I'm fine. What are you talking about?"
"You went really deep. Sometimes, when it's the first time like that, it can take a little while to find your way back."
"It's like a drug. I've never known pleasure like that. I didn't know it was even possible."
"You were ready. I just guided you. Now you know why people go to such extremes to get there."
"When I'm there I feel totally controlled. You do anything you want, and it turns out it's what I want too."
"Oddly, it works the same way for me."
"What do you mean?"
"If I know there is something in particular you want me to do to you, I'm helpless. I want to do that thing too. I don't know why. For us, getting pleasure is obtained through giving pleasure."
There was a warmth in what he said. The idea that two people would automatically want to fulfill the desires of someone they loved so much that they themselves desired the same thing had a beauty to it. Kneeling there unable to move I could feel myself leaving the depths of my special place and the world was becoming more real. I could have stayed that way just for the pleasure of being bound, but my senses were telling me that I had other needs. "Hey I'm starving, let's take this back up to the kitchen."
Chapter Nineteen
I went straight to the kitchen and prepared a couple of sandwiches while Richard stood around like he didn't know what to do with himself. Handing him a plate with a bologna sandwich and a glass of milk, I finally broke the silence.
"So we're getting married. How do you want to do this?"
"What do you mean?"
"Big, tiny, medium? Do you want all of our friends and family, or just Johnny and the boys as witnesses, maybe?"
"I thought maybe we could just go down to the justice of the peace or whoever does that around here and get the license and say our vows and be done with it. I know it's not romantic, but oddly, I've feared weddings since I was a kid. The little girls I knew dreamed of wearing the big white dresses in front of all their friends, and I just saw the whole thing as one big terrible trap."
"Well, thanks a lot," I said as I finished the last touches of my sandwich.
Standing up from his stool, Richard took me by the shoulders, commanding me to meet his gaze. "It was the big white dress and the girl inside I was afraid of. You, on the other hand, are someone I want to be tied to. We don't have to do this right away, but I can't see my life without you. I think it's important to protect the person you love, and there is no better protection than marriage."
Richard's desire to protect me was touching. Reaching up around his neck, I pulled him close and whispered in his ear, "I wish I had something valuable to bestow, but all I have is Scratch."
Cocking his head to the side and kissing my neck every few seconds, Richard spoke in spurts, leaving little kisses on a trail down and across my neck. "As long as his daddy… is part of… the deal." Stepping back, he returned to more practical matters. "Speaking of Scratch, what time will the vet release him tomorrow?"
"They open at 8:00. I thought I'd drive down about 9:00 and avoid most of the traffic." Looking down at our sandwiches, something occurred to me. "Hey, we're doing this all wrong." Grabbing a roll of plastic wrap, I stacked both sandwiches together and rolled them in the thin plastic. "It just occurred to me that we got engaged today." Tossing the neatly wrapped package in the refrigerator, I said, "Let's go get a bite to eat somewhere."
"Where do you want to go?"
"How about we go to that little Mexican food place we took Johnny to. Robin's boyfriend works there."
*~*~*
We pulled into the parking lot of Casa Torres Restaurant. Stepping inside, it was immediately obvious something wasn't right. Raymond was at the front desk and his dad was with him, and they were carrying on something awful. I was about to pull Richard back when I heard Raymond yell
, "He can't just quit."
At that moment, Raymond saw us standing there. "Raymond, I'm Jay, Robin's brother and this is Richard. I'm the guy who brought the little dog in here with my family the day you reconnected with Robin."
Hi, guys!" He ran over and said in a low voice, "Our cook just quit. The kitchen is a shambles. This might not be the best time. People are leaving, and we're just trying to find a way not to let everyone down."
I held up my hand. "Wait. I have an idea," I said as I speed dialed Logan. Before he had a chance to say hello, I blurted out, "What does Finch know about cooking?"
"Everything."
"There's an emergency at Casa Torres. Their cook just stormed out."
"You mean the restaurant Robin's boyfriend's family owns?"
"Yes, they need help right away."
Seconds later, I had Finch on the line. I explained again what had happened and then gave the phone to Raymond.
"We can't pay you. That's why the cook quit. His check bounced. Things at the restaurant haven't been going too well."
"What's happening?" Richard asked.
"Finch is a professional cook. I'm getting him over here to fill in. So, rather than be part of the problem, lets pitch in. I see some tables that need bussing. Grab an apron and one of those buckets and follow me."
Richard looked at the buckets and reached for one of the aprons. "Are you sure you want to do this?"
"I have a feeling we're helping out my future brother-in-law."
Richard threw the apron strap over his neck and picked up one of the buckets. "Well then, do they have any bar rags around here?"
The rest of the night, we all worked at the restaurant. It wasn't long before the whole family was there. Around 10:30, the last couple left and the door was locked. We all sat around and had a beer while Finch and Raymond's dad talked. After we finished our beers and cleaned up the place, we were getting ready to leave when Finch came out with a big smile on his face. Raymond's dad was beaming.
Scratch the Matchmaker Page 15