by Rose de Fer
He looped an arm around my waist and the other strayed up to cup my throat. His hips pistoned forward and I felt my pussy growing tighter.
‘I’m—’
‘You may,’ before I even finished the sentence. ‘You did a very good job, Anna. I’m proud of you.’
That was all it took. Those words. I came with a sob and I felt the vibration of my cries trapped beneath his palm on my throat.
He released me so that I could put my hands flat on the mattress again. His fingertips painted across the welts and the small bruises on my bottom. When he pushed a finger into my ass, I bucked and mewled. He began to slowly thrust it in and out. My entire body jittered involuntarily and he made that dark animal noise he only makes when he’s close.
‘I want you to come with me,’ he said, voice rough. ‘It’s your final assignment.’ His rhythm had picked up and his finger drove into me slowly before being withdrawn. And then again.
‘Will you accept it?’
I chewed my lower lip. I was ready then but I had to wait. Wait for him to say.
‘Words, Anna,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ I gasped.
He fucked me harder then, holding on to me with one strong hand. ‘Come with me,’ he finally growled and I lost myself when he lost himself. We tripped into the release together, each body anchored by the other.
I let out a long sigh and dropped to the bed. His kisses along the tortured flesh of my bottom lulled me into drowsy silence.
‘I missed you,’ he said.
‘Do I even have to say I missed you?’ I asked, laughing.
‘But I kept you occupied?’
‘You did.’
‘Good. Because next month I have another short trip.’
I groaned even as he dropped a soft kiss on the small of my back. ‘Shhh,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll make sure to leave you some challenges.’
I smiled. ‘It’s the only thing that will make you being gone bearable.’
Two-faced
CeCe Marsh
The first time they had sex she was barely eighteen, a virgin, but she was afraid to tell him that second detail, afraid that he wouldn’t want her if he knew the truth. So she kept the information to herself and just acted the way she felt: shy, overcome by how attractive he was, amazed that someone so much older, so much more accomplished, wanted anything to do with her.
He’d undressed her himself, slowly, deliberately, and she stared into his eyes as he did, silent, blushing, not knowing what to say. All she knew was that she wanted this, wanted him, more than she’d ever wanted anything. She didn’t want to say anything to mess it up.
Because she’d never been with a man before, she thought maybe it wasn’t unusual when he positioned her face-down, her ass up high. Or when he stood at the end of the bed without undressing, just opened his pants and pulled out his cock to ride her. Or when he grabbed her hands and held them tight behind her back as he fucked her. Sex with him was nothing like it was in the movies, but really, what in real life was?
‘God, you’re tight! How many men have you had sex with?’ he asked her.
‘Just one,’ she replied, meaning him. But she couldn’t keep her secret despite how she tried. She bit her lip when she felt the pain, not wanting him to hear her cry out, but when he pulled out of her, there was blood on the condom.
‘I thought you said you finished your period last week,’ he said to her, momentarily confused by the contradiction between what she had told him and what he saw, and without thinking she answered.
‘I did.’
As soon as she said it, she realised what had happened; so did he. ‘You were a virgin?’ he asked, shocked, and she knew she couldn’t lie to him now.
‘I was. But I’m not now, and since I never will be again, let’s just forget about it, OK? I’m sorry I didn’t tell you – please don’t stop seeing me because of it.’
She was stunned when he laughed out loud. ‘Oh, my God! I haven’t fucked a virgin since I was fourteen. I never thought it would happen again.’
He pulled her up to him and kissed her. ‘You’re really mine, now. All mine. And you’ll never be anyone else’s. Will you?’ As her heart soared, he took off his clothes and repositioned her on her back, with her knees wide open, pulling them up as far as they’d go. Then he drew her hands up over her head and held them tightly in his once again as he fucked her a second time. When he was finished, he asked her to wear a pair of leather cuffs to sleep in, to show how much she trusted him already, and she held out her hands without another word.
On their second date, he brought her to his tiny apartment again, and they went right to the bedroom. Sex, for him, always had to come first. Dinner, movies, drinks, sports – if there was an activity planned, it was always Act 2 of any date. Act 3 was more sex. From his dresser he took out the leather cuffs he had slipped onto her wrists the last time. He held them out to her, saying, ‘Remember these?’ and she nodded. ‘I like a woman to be bound or in cuffs when I have sex with her. It’s why I held your wrists when I fucked you. Tonight, I want to cuff your hands first, OK? It turns me on. Do you mind if I do that?’
‘No, I guess not. I guess it’s OK.’ She thought about how it had felt when he held her hands tight as he took her the last time, how easily she had relaxed once she was under his control.
‘You can tell me if you don’t like it, and I’ll take them off. Just try it first, though. Do it for me.’
But she did like it, just as she’d liked when he’d held her wrists before, as she’d liked sleeping curled up beside him, wearing his cuffs. It made her feel safe. Loved. Held tight by him. In fact, she found that she liked it very much. And when, a few weeks later, he told her he wanted to spank her, because it would turn him on, she said that was OK, too.
He said if she didn’t like it, he’d stop. But she found that, just as with the cuffs and the other bindings he’d used since then, she did like it. She loved the feeling of his skin on hers as he struck her; the pain felt like his special gift to her. He made love to her when he spanked her. Not only after; the spanking itself, the pain, was lovemaking. It imparted an intimacy, forged a bond between them unlike anything she’d ever experienced before. And it was secret. No one knew what they did together but the two of them. The pain was a gift.
A few weeks after that, he said to her, ‘Tonight, after I spank you, I’m going to whip you with my belt. It’ll hurt, but you won’t mind that, will you? I think you’ll like it, really. It would mean so much to me if you’d do it. It would really turn me on.
‘I’ve been thinking about whipping you all day, about how pretty you’ll look with the marks I’m going to leave on you. You can lift up your skirt and look in the mirror any time you want, and you’ll see them and think of me. You’ll think about our secrets; about everything we share. Is it OK if I whip you like that? You can stop me if you don’t like it.’
She thought about what it would be liked to be whipped by him, about the marks he would leave on her naked skin. About how they would remind her of his love even when the two of them were apart. She didn’t care how much it hurt. She’d never care about that. She wanted the pain. She wanted to wear his stripes. And everything he’d done to her so far she’d liked. More than liked. She wanted this as much as he did. Everything she said yes to just proved to him how much she loved him. Proved it to herself. The marks from his belt would be a sign of how much he loved her. She would do anything to look in the mirror and see his stripes on her naked flesh.
‘Yes, it’s OK. I want you to whip me. Will you do it hard? I want you to. I won’t ask you to stop – I promise. I want you to decide when to stop.’
Then one day, at the end of her first semester, after she’d moved out of the dorm and in with him, he told her he wanted her to submit to him completely, and she said yes. He asked if she would agree to obey him in everything, to give herself to him without reservation, to do whatever he asked, whatever he said. He asked whether she trust
ed him that much. And she said she did, that she would be happy to belong to him, that she wanted him to think of her as his possession. And her surrender to his control released her; she didn’t have to worry about anything so long as he was in charge.
He made rules for her to follow and, when she broke one, he punished her. He said he loved to punish her, that her submission was the most precious thing in his life. It pleased him in ways nothing else had ever done. And she wanted more than anything to please him.
More than that, she understood. What she had with him made her life complete. When he tied her up, when he spanked her, when he took charge of her, it released something in her, set her free. She belonged to him. That was the important thing: She was his – always, only, his.
* * *
Kristen shifted the expensive leather tote that functioned as her briefcase into the hand holding her purse, so she could unlock the door to the condo she shared with her husband. As usual, the Schuylkill Expressway had been a bear – keeping her from arriving at six-thirty, as she’d planned; as she always planned. As she entered, she smelled dinner – he was just putting it on the table. A quick glance told her Dillon had made one of her favourite meals: chicken roasted with sweet potatoes, fresh broccoli, a green salad. She’d bet he’d made the Dijon vinaigrette that she loved, too, and had dressed the salad with it. He was so good to her. Her stomach rumbled. Work had been busy; there’d been a problem that had necessitated an unscheduled meeting, and she’d missed lunch. She hadn’t eaten all day. She was really hungry.
Kristen slipped out of her four-inch heels, flexed her toes and took off her stone trench-coat. Stone for spring and summer, black for autumn and winter. She’d started wearing the light-coloured one last week; she would pick the black one up from the cleaner’s Saturday morning. It would sit in the back of the coat closet, swathed in its flimsy plastic, until after the next equinox.
The youngest vice-president at the largest downtown bank, Kristen had a closet full of neutrals. Her skirt suits and sheaths were arranged by colour: black, charcoal, navy and shades of brown from the darkest chocolate through tobacco and taupe to the palest beige, all of them complementing her chin-length, dark copper hair. When she felt like wearing something different, she’d don burgundy or aubergine. Her blouses were white, ivory, blush, the lightest blues, pale silvery greys. Her heels were high, her skirts straight and narrow. She knew how to look the part. And she always pulled it off, perfectly. Never a hair, a thread, out of place.
Her job performance was impeccable, too, and she got off on the day-to-day of it, on working her way up the food chain, on the idea of the money that moved through her institution every day, in, out, the money that cloned itself even as the people who handled it, managed it, slept. But the best part of each day was this part: when she walked through this door, to this living room, this man, this life. When she hung up her last name, her title, all the bullshit that even the best job entails, along with her trench-coat. When she slipped off her shoes, slipped off her clothes, slipped off her bullet-proof skin, became simply ‘Kristen’ and turned everything over to him.
Dillon looked up when she entered, glanced at the clock, smiled. Seven on the dot; that gave them roughly three hours tonight. She was supposed to be home by six-thirty, but rarely made it. Her tardiness never made him angry – she couldn’t do anything about the traffic on the Schuylkill – but he would use it to his advantage, nevertheless. To both their advantages, really.
He was a doctor in emergency medicine, a trauma surgeon who usually worked the night shift. Dillon hated rotating hours, and other doctors were all too happy to pass on the gruelling nights, so he requested them; it meant he had some consistency, helped him maintain a sleep schedule. Besides, he’d always been a night owl. He left home promptly most evenings at ten, after a fresh shower and shave, wearing a clean set of green scrubs he would change yet again when he got to work. The trauma centre of the Philadelphia hospital – the busiest one in the city – was always a zoo at night, and his evening routine, between the time when his wife got home and the time that he left, gave structure and sanity to his world, a structure that work often lacked.
Kristen, whose life at the bank was far less variable, whose days (although they had their own stresses) didn’t tend, as a rule, to lurch start to finish from one crisis to another, left the house every morning at seven, before Dillon got home. They were two ships passing, living most of their lives in a three-to-four-hour window every evening. They’d learned to make the time count. He got up at four in the afternoon, sometimes hit the supermarket, then either cooked or picked up takeout before she got home. She cleaned up the kitchen later, while he was in the shower, just before he left. In the five years they’d lived this schedule, they’d become a well-oiled machine.
‘Do I have time to get out of this dress? Or do you want me at the table now?’ she asked, willing to go either way, do whatever he wanted.
‘Let’s eat first,’ he said, and she took her place at the table. They chatted about her day, his last shift, plans for the weekend. She had a glass of white wine. Dillon drank water as he ate; he’d have a beer in the morning, when he got home.
Kristen listened to her husband describe his work the night before on a sixteen-year-old shooting victim. ‘I don’t know – gang- or drug-related, probably. Or both,’ he said, shaking his head when she asked what had happened to the boy. ‘Maybe it was over a girl.’ She knew this was the hardest part of his job – that despite his years of training, his experience, his best efforts, there was so much he couldn’t control. She looked at his face – the soft grey eyes and lines that showed his concern for everyone he knew, everyone he met; his strong jaw, his full lips that slipped so easily into a smile, the straight light-brown hair that fell over his forehead. She loved this face, Dilly’s face.
And she knew he loved hers. As he looked across the table at his wife, he smiled into her deep-blue eyes, taking in her upturned nose – barely dusted with the freckles she still hated at almost thirty – her pointed chin, her sleek, shiny hair. She smiled back. She was so glad to be home. So glad to be with him.
They cleared the table and put the leftovers away, dividing the food into containers for their lunches before making their way into the bedroom, their favourite room of the condo. It was where they spent most of their time outside work. They’d gotten rid of the living-room TV – the only one they had – soon after their marriage, when they finally admitted there was no reason to keep a television; they never watched it. All it did was take up space, gather dust. They got their news online; when Dillon had time to watch a game, on the weekends maybe, if he wasn’t working or spending time with Kristen, he’d drive to a sports bar, have a beer or two with a friend, another doctor, sometimes an old frat brother. Their evening entertainment was each other, and what they did together. And there was nothing on television like that.
As they crossed the threshold, the mood shifted, small talk ceased. In this room, Kristen maintained silence, spoke only in response to a question or prompt from her husband. In front of the large bedroom closet, Dillon took Kristen’s arm and turned her, then reached out to unzip her dress, kissing her shoulder as he pulled the sleeveless black sheath down both her arms at once. Under it, she was wearing a black lace bustier and a matching garter belt that fastened to stockings trimmed also in lace. No panties. Kristen wasn’t allowed panties. And she knew better than to wear what she wasn’t allowed. She slid out of the dress, then, as Dillon hung it up for her, she spread her legs automatically, waiting. He didn’t even have to ask. He rarely did. He’d trained her too well for that.
The bustier held her breasts up high and away from her body, the way Dillon liked, and the lacy garter belt and stockings framed her smooth, shaved sex in front, her softly sloped ass behind. Dillon reached down and pulled at a garter, then let go, listening to it snap hard against her leg. He ran his hand over her cheek, beside the garter, then trailed his fingers down between her legs, over
her clit, all the way up, dragging them slowly through the very top of her slit.
Suddenly, he raised his hand and brought it down hard. Crack! Kristen knew without looking that his handprint remained on the left cheek of her ass, covered it almost. It stung, and she sighed. Now, finally, she had it, what she’d waited for all day: his first mark on her. And as she waited for the next, as he teased and pinched her burning cheek before giving her what she needed, her pussy started to cream the way it always did with that first delicious strike. She reached out her hands to him as if she were praying, waiting for him to slip on the cuffs. But he had other things on his mind just then.
‘Take off the belt,’ he growled in that voice that he used every evening, and she silently unhooked the garters and slid the belt off, giving him even freer access to her ass. She noticed the bottle of lube on the nightstand. That’s right; it was Thursday. There was always lube on Thursdays, because that was when they reconciled Accounts Receivable, when they settled up what she owed for the past week. Payment in full was what was required, and that required lube. She squirmed as she stood up, thinking about what the bill would come to. It wouldn’t just be the hand spanking she got every night, not just the dozen strokes of his belt, the foreplay as integral to an evening’s fun as his cock, her cunt. Not on a Thursday.
‘Now, cuffs.’ She put her hands out again, dutifully, and he snicked the metal rings into place before settling into the upholstered chair in the corner, the one with no arms. She approached, eyes down, and draped herself over his waiting knee, noticing the erection just beginning to form in the front of his pants.
The burn of his hand striking her ass, the sting that crept up her back, forward to her belly, lodged in her clit – it was what she lived for. Work was great, her friends were great, but this – what they had together, what he gave her every night in this room, what she gave him when she submitted fully – there was nothing like this. There never had been. Never would be.