Make Me: Twelve Tales of Dark Desire

by Aleatha Romig

  Her neighbors must think she was watching porn. Which…she was.

  Ian came up behind Nikki and settled her over the black ramp, swatting her naked buttocks with his hand, several times, turning the skin pink. Grace squirmed in her seat, uncomfortable with the flutter in her belly as she watched. Her body betrayed her, her nipples tightening with unwanted arousal. The spanking looked…

  (hot)

  …fun, maybe. Like something she should add to her bucket list.

  I must be tipsy to even be thinking that. She shook her head, censoring her thoughts before they could get out of hand.

  Why censor thoughts, though? They were just thoughts. It wasn’t like she was doing anything other than sitting there, thinking. No need to censor thoughts about maybe, possibly, thinking a spanking might be hot.

  How come Ian never tried to spank her? He’d never even suggested it. Although if he had, to be honest, there was no telling what her reaction would have been. Ian must have known she wouldn’t be into it, or he wouldn’t have broken things off with her so he could be free to find someone who shared his kink.

  Grace poured the rest of the bottle of merlot into her glass, ignoring the splash of red on the tile floor. She could get it later, when the floor wasn’t moving quite so much.

  Clearly Nikki was having fun with the vibrator and the spanking, but what about the gag? The whip?

  As if on cue, Ian left the screen and came back into view wielding what looked like a black leather whip, the same whip she saw in the ten second clip.

  Nikki looked at the whip with desire in her eyes that Grace could see even through the video. Nikki licked her lips, but seemed caught off-guard by that first lash. A long red whip-mark lined her right buttock now. She moaned, then basically screamed as the whip came down again and again.

  On the video, Ian paused. “Have you had enough, slut?”

  Grace hadn’t been able to make out their other words, but this sentence came out clearly, the word “slut” said almost as if it were an endearment. The word still grated on her, and she strained to hear Nikki’s answer, half-rooting for her to tell him off, half-wondering what would happen if she did. Is that why he gagged her?

  “No, Sir. Please whip me, Sir.”

  He brought the whip down on her flesh and Nikki screamed again. The scream had a lilt to it, as if the sound was fueled by passion instead of pain. Maybe it was.

  This time he smiled at her reaction. Still, he shook his head, dropped the whip, and came back with the ball gag.

  Grace couldn’t hear what he was saying, but it looked like he was asking her permission to gag her. He opened his hand twice quickly, as if showing her some sort of hand signal—perhaps a signal she could use if she needed to talk?

  And then he gagged her. Nikki looked calmer, somehow, with the gag in her mouth, and she didn’t hold back as Ian whipped her more, her sounds now muffled.

  This part must be the ten seconds she’d seen in the preview. Nikki gagged, screaming against it, being whipped brutally. But now Grace could see the truth—she wasn’t being beaten against her will. It was her job, one she appeared to get off on.

  Just like it was Ian’s job to torture her.

  And from the looks of things, he enjoyed it. Obviously, he enjoyed it enough to choose BDSM over being with someone “vanilla”—another term she’d picked up from her frantic Googling—someone vanilla, like Grace.

  Do vanilla people get a little turned-on watching their ex-boyfriend whip another girl?

  Grace turned off the computer, too exhausted by the last fifteen minutes to deal with liking her friends’ Facebook statuses or to answer emails from her mom about whatever new hypochondriacal illness she’d invented for herself lately. As the nurse, Grace got a lot of texts and emails from family and friends wondering if they could mix certain meds, if they had Lyme disease or ringworm, if they should use ice or heat, etcetera, etcetera, ad nauseum.

  She laughed, the sound like a shot in the now-silent apartment. Who was she kidding, she liked it. At least then she got some respect for her skills, a respect she didn’t receive from the doctor who employed her. Or from any of her past boyfriends, for that matter, other than Ian. Mutual respect—the one criteria in a partner she could never compromise on—was a trait sadly missing from her relationships.

  At least in addition to the modicum of respect she got from her family for being an RN, nursing was most likely a better a way to earn a living than getting severely beaten. She laughed again, but it sounded weird in her ears. Too much wine.

  It didn’t make sense—the inexplicable desire that forced her body to betray her when she watched Ian dominate that girl.

  How could Ian have changed so dramatically in three short years?

  It was clear from the video that Nikki was getting more out of it than just whatever they were paying her to be broadcast on the internet.

  But what about all those other girls? What else was Ian doing to them? The image of the clamped nipples from the website came to mind, and she felt a flush rise up her neck.

  That had to hurt, right? Setting down her empty wine glass, she leaned back in her computer chair, her breath quickening. This was crazy. She slowly reached her hand up under her pajama top and pinched her left nipple. A rush of endorphins shot through her, and she pinched harder, holding the tension the way she imagined a clothes-pin or clamp would. Harder.

  A line of sensation from her nipple went straight to her clit, causing a tingle down below without even touching herself there.

  Oh God, what am I doing? Basically masturbating to internet porn. Unbelievable.

  She pulled her hand out of her pajama shirt, sure she was red from head to toe. Her fair skin always betrayed her emotion by blushing, a trait she’d never appreciated. She supposed it went with the dark hair, although she’d rather be one of those tan Florida blondes than the pale sort she’d always been.

  Taking a breath, Grace stood unsteadily. She’d start a load of laundry. It needed to be done anyway—

  and it will give me more time to peruse the website

  —so she may as well do it now.

  No need to worry about her laundry being stolen from the laundry room at the end of the hall this late at night. No one cared about a bunch of dirty scrubs from Walmart.

  Her body felt on fire and her left breast ached a little, a leftover reminder of how hard she pinched herself. There were more videos, more BDSM scenes, and she had to see them. Had to see more of Ian. He was like a drug to her, getting a little taste wasn’t nearly enough. She’d never get tired of looking at him, even if she could only look at him online.

  Tiny butterflies fluttered in her stomach as she returned from the laundry room and sat in front of her computer. She updated her Facebook status:

  Long day, good night everyone! *muah*

  …and then logged out. It felt like she was giving herself an alibi almost, like if anyone happened to be wondering if she was looking at internet porn—scary, BDSM internet porn—she could point to that status and say, “Who me? I went to bed early!”

  But…surely she wasn’t the only one who watched these videos, right? They had to be making money from someone, and it wasn’t just the $7.50 she gave them earlier to watch Ian’s video.

  Who else watched them? The thought of men, men like Ian, watching the videos and masturbating to the scenes of beautiful girls getting sexually tortured both scared her and…she paused, unable to even think the word.

  (aroused)

  She was wet though, she could feel it as she shifted position in her chair. Her body betrayed her now just like it did when she blushed.

  One of the ten second preview clips showed Ian in the black T-shirt standing in front of a woman, a different woman, pulling her arms high above her head so she was forced onto her tippy-toes. He looked so familiar, his body, the way he moved. And yet the things he was doing were completely foreign to her.

  I’d let Ian do that to me, just to feel his hands o
n me again. To be with him once more.

  No, she was simply drunk and missed him, the usual result of any inebriation on her part.

  What would he do next?

  Download Now.

  Grace hovered her mouse of the button, then quickly x’d out of it.

  Another clip showed a woman with long dark hair in a ponytail lying on her stomach. The ponytail was attached by a band to…something inside the woman’s anus. Oh my God.

  Restrained by an ass-hook, Naughty Sara won’t be released until she shows us how well she can suck that dildo. Download Now.

  The alarm on Grace’s cell phone went off and she nearly shrieked in surprise, the sound catching on her lips. She jumped up to put her laundry in the dryer, grateful for the break. Were all those women really doing this of their own free will? What if they were impoverished, and this was their only way to make money? Where they doing it for fun, for sexual kicks?

  The thought of an actual metal hook being used to restrain someone seemed so…unsafe. Couldn’t that perforate the rectum? The nurse in her couldn’t help but be concerned, but whatever this website had awoken in her felt strangely curious.

  And…

  (aroused)

  Grace shook her head and walked back down the hallway, setting her timer again to let her know when the laundry would be done.

  She wanted to see the porn studio for herself. See the implements, see the cameras, see the women and…Ian. Just to be sure everything was the way it was supposed to be, according to the internet—all safe and sane and consensual.

  Get real. That’s not the only reason.

  Okay. A small part of her wanted to see for herself because she thought it was interesting. And she couldn’t get Ian out of her mind now that she’d seen him again, even if it wasn’t in person.

  I need to see him in person.

  Her memories of Ian as a straight-laced lawyer, always the gentleman, always so proper, were nothing like the man who held the whip. She had to see it for real, to make it mesh in her mind. And to show Ian that he hadn’t scared her off forever after all.

  On the very bottom of the website, right next to their privacy policy, was a link:

  Hot chicks click here.

  Whether or not she was a hot chick was up for discussion as far as she was concerned, but the link took her to a page that gave an address only eighteen miles from her apartment according to Google Maps, and an email address to request an “audition.”

  Was she really going to do this? Grace took another sip from her glass before remembering it was empty. So was the bottle.

  Oops. She hadn’t meant to drink the whole bottle. That explained how she’d just spent over an hour watching hardcore BDSM porn. It was the alcohol, not her own interest. She giggled.

  Don’t lie to yourself, your panties wouldn’t be wet if you weren’t a teensy bit interested.

  And not just in marching in and being the—the what? The porno police, undercover as an auditioning porn star. Ha.

  It wasn’t for real. Right? It was just so she could get in, to see Ian in action for herself. She would go in and look around and tell them she changed her mind. She agonized over the wording of her email for twenty minutes, having to type very slowly and carefully since the letters on her keyboard weren’t in their rightful places (or it could be the wine, either way) only to be answered by an auto-responder that said to come by Monday through Friday before shooting for the day began at 11am and to bring proof of her age and her social security card to prove she could legally work in the United States.

  Easy as that.

  That night she masturbated quietly, one hand beneath the sheets, visions of Ian’s arm coming down on her, wielding a long, black whip.

  Chapter Two

  ‡

  An invisible band around Grace’s chest tightened as she drove into an industrial-looking part of the city. Some houses with plywood over a window popped up here and there behind ragged lawns overgrown with weeds.

  She’d called in sick at work, something she rarely did unless she actually had a fever or something contagious. All she had today was a red-wine hangover and…an audition to go to.

  What would Ian do when he saw her again? Would he make her leave? He couldn’t do that if she was there for a purpose other than to see him, right? Right. The audition. Maybe save some girls if they don’t look as enthusiastic as that girl Nikki had been. No big deal.

  The building was a squat-looking one-story concrete block, which fit in with the surroundings perfectly. All of the windows were covered on the inside with black so she couldn’t see in, and she imagined it was how they helped control the lighting of the scenes.

  Scenes. Porn. BDSM. Ian. What was she getting herself into?

  Since she had nothing that could possibly be deemed BDSM-gear to wear to her “audition”, Grace chose a black tank top and denim shorts. Would they notice that her thighs were unmarked, that she’d obviously never done anything like this before?

  Yeah, they’d notice. She’d be lucky if they didn’t assume she was some kinda cop or narc. Especially since she was sort of going in there to check them out. See what Ian had gotten himself into.

  Perhaps she should have called the cops to check them out. They could have gone in and made sure all the girls were happy and safe and Ian was still the good man she remembered, and she wouldn’t be there, half because of that mission and half because of her own curiosity.

  Curiosity killed the cat. She laughed to herself, sitting in her car with the doors locked and the air-conditioning running, because a very dirty thought crossed her mind. One that would never in a million years have crossed her mind before she started watching the porn videos.

  Curiosity killed the pussy-cat. Pussy. Oh my God, she never used that word. Not during sex—not that she’d had any of that since the fiasco with Steve almost six months ago—and not anytime else. But now it came to mind as easily as if she was already an internet porn-star.

  Okay. She was ready. Turning the car off, she stepped out into the thick humidity and heat. Her hair was probably going to frizz before she had a chance to walk inside, but that didn’t matter. All the girls in those videos looked a bit…unkempt. Hard to stay perfectly coiffed when you’re being whipped and teased and spanked. Especially by a man as good-looking as her ex-boyfriend.

  Deep breath.

  It was 10:30am, well before they were supposed to start shooting, but hopefully close enough that Ian would be there. They couldn’t start without the man who held the whip.

  She raised her hand and knocked on the door.

  No sounds emanated from the building. Were they closed? She checked her phone again to make sure she hadn’t gone crazy and that it really was a weekday before 11am. And she had the right address.

  Well, she was in the right place, which probably meant that she had gone crazy after all. Grace turned around and headed back for her car.

  “Can I help you?” a deep voice said behind her. A familiar voice. A voice she hadn’t heard in person in over three years.

  Her pulse pounded in her ears as she turned a little too quickly on the paved parking lot and stared into the doorway.

  “Ian.”

  Yes, it was him. The man who held the whip.

  Except he wasn’t holding a whip now, he was Ian—the man who walked out of her life without looking back…now holding the door open. For her.

  The man had become even more devastatingly handsome in the years since she’d dated him, his dark hair short but with just a hint of gel in it to give it style. How could it be Ian? The Ian she knew was so staid, so normal. A lawyer with a future. This man was pure sex, pure danger.

  And yet, it was Ian.

  “I thought I scared you off for good last night,” he said.

  “Jury’s still out on that one,” she admitted. “But—”

  Blue eyes. Dark hair. And so tall…several inches over six feet at the very least. Her breath quickened at the sight of him, adrenaline pump
ing through her veins. She felt almost as if she’d already slept with this new, dominant Ian, since he’d starred in her masturbatory fantasy last night. Ironic since the sex they had together when they dated was very missionary and non-fantasy-inducing.

  Seeing him now, it seemed clear why their relationship failed, despite their feelings for each other. Perhaps he left because he wanted to do things to her, whip her, hurt her…and he never breathed a word about it. He had let her go without even asking if she’d want to try his kink.

  Grace stood rooted in one spot directly between her car and the studio. Between safety and security and something slippery and dangerous and unaccountably desirable.

  “But you wanted to see for yourself.” He looked different, taller perhaps. Like he didn’t regret finally coming clean about his new career, his new life.

  “I drank too much wine last night.” She blushed. “I don’t know why I thought it would be a good idea to show up. I—” Grace turned around helplessly and started back toward her car.

  “You did knock, right?” Ian asked pointedly.

  “I did.” Screw it. Let him see he couldn’t scare her off with…whatever it was he was into now. He had made a mistake leaving her with no explanation. Turning back to face him, she strode toward the door and stepped inside the studio before she could change her mind. “I didn’t hear anything inside so I thought you were closed or something.”

  “The building is pretty well soundproofed.”

  Of course. That made sense. But… “Then why do you gag the girls?”

  “Because,” he said, standing over her, his muscles apparent under his ubiquitous tight black T-shirt. “It turns me on.”

  “Oh.” The word came out like a gasp, not at all as she intended. She laughed nervously and tugged on the hem of her denim cutoffs, wishing she’d worn something less revealing. “I had no idea you were into this stuff when we dated.”