by Alex Algren
The effort distracted me just enough. I still felt like I might become a victim of spontaneous human combustion if I didn’t get off soon, but I’d gotten past the critical seconds where I thought I might lose control.
Using the handle of the flogger, Enrique nudged my legs farther apart.
I held my breath in anticipation. Maybe now, at last, he’d fuck me, and I’d be allowed to come on his cock.
“Edge,” I begged on a sighing breath.
“No.” Enrique’s voice was so stern that I flinched. I didn’t shift my position, but I could feel my muscles twitch and shift under my skin.
More gently, he added, “You’re doing really well. Such a good, obedient girl.”
I thought I’d been hot already, but those words made me molten. My few remaining brain cells made a note to try to work through why, because while it’s always nice to be praised, I was astonished by my intense, intensely sexual reaction. Oh, I knew in theory that some people took joy in obedience, becoming putty in someone’s hands…but I’d never pegged myself for one of them, just a straightforward sensation slut.
I’d figure that out later. Much, much later. Right now, I just wanted to bask in the feeling.
“Don’t move and ruin it,” he said, putting one big hand on the back of my head, emphasizing I was to stay put, stay leaning against the bed with my head bowed. The feel of that hand, that weight, that authority keeping me in place, was almost too much, almost pushed me over the edge. It didn’t make a whole lot of sense at the time, but neither could I deny the sudden contraction of my pussy, or the lava flow between my legs, or the strange tug on my heart that just added to the sensations.
But I fought back against it. He’d praised me for being good and obedient, and good and obedient I would stay if it killed me.
Then he struck at the sensitive inside of my thigh, clasping the back of my neck harder as he did as if reminding me to obey. It hurt, but in my current state it was a glorious pain.
Once, twice, three times, and with each, I shrieked, with increasing desperation, “Edge!” By the third, there were tears of pure frustration running down my face, but I couldn’t—wouldn’t—let go without permission. Couldn’t disappoint him.
Couldn’t disappoint myself.
On the fourth strike, I just broke down and blubbered, “Pleasepleaseplease.”
“Do you want to come?” Enrique asked calmly, as if I hadn’t been begging for it for what seemed like hours.
I nodded, whimpered a few more pleases and thank yous.
He set the whip down on the bed, put both his hands on my shoulders. “Then come for me,” he demanded. “Now.”
And without any direct touch, with nothing but his word, I came so hard my knees buckled, came so hard I sobbed, came so hard that for a few seconds I couldn’t see or breathe and the pleasure was almost painful in its intensity.
“I’ve got you,” Enrique said, easing me down onto the bed. He curled up around me and cuddled me close as I came down.
And just when I was finally sure I wasn’t going to become the first documented case of death by orgasm, his hard cock slipped between my legs, teasing and nudging at my engorged, sensitive pussy lips. Instantly I was aroused again, wanting him in me, wanting to come again. I pushed back against him, begging for more. Begging to be fucked.
“Not yet,” he said. “Not yet.”
He had me whimpering “Edge” again as his cock teased at me without entering. This time, though, I knew I could take it, knew I could hold out.
Until he rolled me over onto hands and knees, entered me fast and hard.
I screamed “Edge,” felt the first shimmers of orgasm wash over me, tried to hold it back.
“Now!” Enrique ordered, pounding into me.
I howled and obeyed.
Later—much later, when we’d showered and were curled up together on Enrique’s couch, half-eaten containers of pad thai and massaman curry in front of us—Enrique kissed the top of my head and said, a little awe in his voice, “I didn’t expect you to hold out so long.”
“I’m stubborn,” I said, “and I hate to lose.” But I knew that wasn’t the whole story, and so did Enrique.
“That’ll do a lot,” he said. “But I saw your face when I said how good and obedient you were. That got under your skin, didn’t it?”
As I nodded, I could feel myself blushing. “I liked… the sense of being controlled, and I liked knowing you were pleased with me. I wanted to come so badly, but I didn’t want to let you down. That seemed more important than what I wanted.”
Enrique smiled a smile that fluttered straight to my groin. “I thought you had it in you, for all you thought you were only interested in a little sensation play.”
“Have what in me?” I asked, although I had some inkling. My heart and body seemed to know already; it was just my brain that was having a little trouble with the concept.
“Submission. Wanting to give your will up to me, at least some of the time. Needing to be controlled. To obey. To be told no sometimes…”
“Because it makes you happy—and because it makes the yes that much better when you give it,” I said. “That much I get from tonight. The rest…it’s a little scary, but intriguing.”
“Intriguing enough to explore further?”
“Hell yes!” I thought about it for about ten seconds more. “As long as I’m not going to always be denied orgasms, because I think that could get really old.”
“Only when I feel like it,” Enrique chuckled. “Only when I feel like it.”
And that answer, ominous as it was—or maybe for that very reason—was good enough for me.
SMALL WINDOWS
Teresa Lamai
One
Josh always forces me to come right away.
He seeks out my cunt, stretched between chilly, immobilized thighs. He traces circles through the damp hair. His mouth is at my ear, whispering promises of torture, everything he’s learned I despise, everything I need. His voice is soothing, drowsy. His other hand glides down my cheek, tests the pulse in my throat.
I don’t know the difference between lust and fury anymore. My clit is swollen tight, my hips are shaking with rage. I can’t move away but I try just the same. He laughs softly and kisses my navel. His tongue dips in and a clammy shiver moves through my stomach.
“Fuck you.”
As soon as I say it, I know what’s coming. I cringe behind the blindfold. He pulls the slap at the last second but still its impact makes my eyes burn.
My head rocks into the pillow. The camera flashes. He loves to capture the fresh imprint of his palm, stark white in that instant before it marks crimson.
He slides two oiled fingers into my cunt and his thumb circles my clit until the come builds in my stomach, my feet, the crown of my head. The relentless sting becomes a low fire, sucking all my air, suffocating me.
But tonight he stops just before the orgasm breaks, lifting his hands away and giving my slick labia a swift, feathery kiss. I inhale to rail at him when I feel his teeth close hard over my clit. A starburst of silver and violet floods my vision.
“It’s all right, Angela. Breathe more slowly.”
It’s several seconds before I feel anything but an icy rush. He takes off the blindfold and when I can see again, his palm is flat on my forehead, pressing my skull into the mattress. He forces a wedge of leather into my mouth, then reaches behind my head to fasten it there. His starched shirt has come untucked.
The pain crests and then ebbs to a dull, pounding ache. My clit throbs as if my heart has moved there.
And on the edges of the pain is a bliss so acute that my bones start to feel warm.
He kisses my cheeks. His eyes are grave, grateful. My shoulders are hitching with sobs. I try to writhe into his embrace.
“You don’t want to stop,” he murmurs. We both know it’s not a question, but it could be.
I shake my head, thankful for the gag.
“You need it,
Angie. You need it as badly as I do.” He’s trembling violently. He leans his forehead on mine. His sweat smells, sharply, of vinegar and blood. “Don’t you, Angie? Tell me. Tell me ‘yes.’”
I nod. My whole body aches for him.
“And do you want more, my beautiful girl, do you want even more? I know you do, but tell me.”
I nod. My hands clench.
“God, you’re beautiful.” His voice breaks. I close my eyes. Soon, I know, he’ll fall on the bed, his warm, clothed weight pressing gently at all of me. I go limp.
“Angie. Angie.” He slaps my cheek, lightly. I open my eyes as a tight, quick curl of brightness disappears down my spine. “Listen to me. You’ll lie here knowing that I’m coming back. Soon. Look at me. I want to give you both pain and tenderness—”
He stops, looking frightened, and kisses me. Then he’s gone.
I watch the ceiling, trying not to move. This is a new torture, being left alone. His presence, his calm breath—those are the only things that make this bearable. I’m addicted to the need in his gaze. His face is radiant at times like this; he looks at me with something like love, but sharper, more visceral and pure.
The need in him is the mystery that keeps sucking at me. This compulsion frightens both of us, at times. But we keep feeding it, as if we expect that some day we’ll just wake up calm and sated, free.
Fuck. I don’t know when he turned the recorder on. He’s left the monitor turned toward me. The last rays of sunset, pale apricot and scarlet, fall in stripes over the rumpled bed. My naked body is overexposed, gleaming sickly white in the blue-tinted screen. I don’t recognize myself; my breasts are rounds of delicate mushroom flesh, my cunt a glistening, dark-furred maw. The screen is like an opening into a smaller, more vivid world, thick with black-green air, where an unfamiliar woman has let herself be drawn into view. He knew I’d be helpless to look away.
He used to tie me with yards and yards of rope, so that I lay almost swaddled, a live moth in a spider’s web. In his first pictures of me, slivers of rosy tortured skin bulge through the nylon.
Now he keeps me down with only one or two fastenings. My wrists, cuffed and chained to the headboard. Some long metal bar attached to my ankles, keeping my legs far apart. My spine is stretched to its capacity, motionless. If I move my head it only makes me more aware of the dreadful gag. I feel my tongue swelling against the stubborn leather, and my clit heaves gently with the same movement.
Please come back. I hum it to myself from behind the gag. The sound echoes, trapped in my body. Nothing is worse than being here without you, nothing.
Two
I knew Josh by reputation before I met him. Our firm tried to recruit him two years ago, which gave me an excuse to introduce myself when he appeared at a conference in L.A. I would have found some way to speak with him in any case. He was quietly, distantly handsome, his hair ash-blond, cat-tilted eyes full of dark, shifting colors—evergreen, blue, melancholy gray.
Most lawyers are desperately loud, calling out every word like a circus barker. Josh’s serenity was strangely compelling; most feared he was vain, although he was unfailingly kind, almost self-effacing. When he first spoke to me, I felt a delicious calm.
“Angela.” He said my name carefully, lowering his eyes as if he were trying to memorize it. His smile was intimate, just shy of inappropriate. I started to wonder if his diffidence covered a detached watchfulness—almost cruel in its acuity. “You seem like such a thoughtful woman. Powerful.”
It was a ridiculous thing to say. I was, for once, speechless.
“It’s strange to think that we’ve never met before,” he continued. His eyes hadn’t left mine. The hair at his temples glittered with silver.
“Well,” I said brightly, looking past him, checking my watch. Trying to salvage things. “It’s good to… it’s…”
He took my hand in his and squeezed it gently. Heat traveled to my shoulder. My breasts stung. I pulled my hand back and walked away.
I didn’t recognize myself. I was a little alarmed.
He sat by me on the last day. There was a row of panel speakers, and I made a show of listening thoughtfully, typing gibberish into my laptop. My hands shook. I ducked out of the last presentation, afraid I’d make a fool of myself completely. I wandered about the lobby, pretending to take a phone call, shuffling some papers officiously through my folder.
I still don’t know how he anticipated me, but when I ran for the elevator he was already inside. I let my eyes go blank, staring at our burnished, rippled reflections in the brass-plated doors. The old-fashioned buttons gleamed, one by one. If I didn’t speak to him, I could take advantage of this small window of time to leave. Three more floors and this would all be over. I’d grab my suitcase, take a cab to the airport, catch an early flight.
I felt a cold draft at my back. Then my hair lifted slowly. I hadn’t noticed the movement but his fingertips found my hair and were gliding through it, testing its weight and texture. The lightness of his touch was unbearable. I bit the inside of my cheek. Silvery threads of pleasure teased down my spine, spreading through my thighs.
I should have responded with outrage but after three or four heartbeats it was too late to do so plausibly. My eyes darted about. His fingertips grazed my scalp, the gentlest touch I’d ever felt. I didn’t trust myself to speak. Two more floors.
Then his hand closed in my hair, pulling just a little, slowly. And something in me sprung open, cracked, burst, like a mechanical doll that had finally been wound too tight, too fucking tight. The soft pulling turned to pain. My hair was wrapped round his fist. I met his eyes then and he looked very serious, all smarmy artifice gone. Fuck you, I wanted to say. Help me. I was quiet.
My body knew this was what it had waited for, always. A muffled, outraged voice in my mind started shrieking at me. I swayed, softly. A stinging warmth washed through my stomach; my nipples burned like two tiny, brilliant points of light.
“In five minutes I’ll be at your room,” he explained. “You’ll leave the door unlocked if you want me to come in. Be ready.”
The doors hissed open and I was in the plush, gold-lit hallway.
I didn’t know what “ready” meant. I decided it meant undressed, my hair pinned up, kneeling on the oatmeal-colored carpet. The room seemed very hot for a moment, then cold.
After thirty seconds of studious kneeling, I burst out laughing. I shook my head. “Oh, masterrr,” I trilled up to the ceiling, then laughed some more. I rolled to my back, chuckling and snorting.
Honestly, a grown-ass woman, a bracing voice rang in my head. You read too many goddamn novels. You need a hobby.
I stood and picked up my stockings, still laughing so hard that a tear ran down my cheek. I covered my face, trying to take a deep breath. Then I sat, clutching my underwear, watching the unlocked door, laughing more quietly until just my stomach jittered, silently. I didn’t move.
Seventeen minutes later I heard his measured footfalls outside. I slipped to the floor as the footsteps neared, slowed. When he opened the door my ragged breathing filled the room. I couldn’t stop shaking.
He turned on the desk lamp as the door sucked itself closed. I cringed in the sudden light and glanced down at my breasts, lifting fitfully with each breath; the puffy, pale-violet nipples straining into the empty air. I felt small and lumpy without my clothes.
My pulse thudded through my stomach.
I ducked my head as he came near. My eyelids fluttered. He knelt at my back and I felt his quick breath as he pulled my elbows together and cinched my upper arms with his tie.
He sat opposite me. I watched his feet resting. My arms trembled with the effort of keeping still, but I didn’t dare try to move them apart. If I kept perfectly still, I could almost pretend they weren’t tied. Sweat rolled down between my shoulder blades.
“Angela, I want you to do what I say. I don’t want you to speak unless I tell you to.”
I wondered if he used that same delicately k
ind tone at work, on the street. A tone without supplication or threat, full of authority so natural it was unnoticed by the mind, but felt as deeply as sunlight.
I met his eyes then. I cast about in my mind for a long time, forcing my gaze to stay on his. “Why?” I said finally. My hair fell in my eyes and I tilted my head, blinking it out. I still hadn’t let my arms even twitch.
I stood.
“I didn’t tell you to stand, Angela. I didn’t tell you to speak.” His eyes lit up unmistakably, two phosphorescent points in the bland brown dimness. His glance traveled down my body. I fought down a moan as my cunt gripped itself.
I took a step back. My inner thighs kissed wetly and I blushed.
I willed my heart to beat more slowly, squinting in the gloom to find some sliding uncertainty in his smile, some twitch around his eyes that would show his disappointment. I felt as though I was backing into nothingness. His eyes were so still I couldn’t look away. I wondered if it was sadness that weighted his gaze, kept it so steady.
“Do you want me to go, Angela?” His voice was tender. “I’ll untie you and leave, I will. Just say that’s what you want.”
My heel crashed into a chair. I sank to a squat to catch my balance. My breasts slid against my knees. I tried to bring my arms forward but they were trapped. Panic spiked into my throat.
I saw his lips press together as I struggled instinctively, rising again.
“Kneel on the floor, Angela.”
Now I couldn’t stop struggling but the more I struggled the more I wanted to scream. “And if I don’t?”
Fuck. Wrong response. His teeth flashed as he laughed, standing.
“Ah, you want to find out.”
I backed away. As if I’d make a break for it, naked and half-tied. He reached me in two steps and his palm nudged into my breastbone. I shrieked, falling backward, my hands splayed desperately to break my fall.
My scream ended in a puff as I landed on the bed.
Before I could move again, he gripped my right thigh and folded my leg to my chest. His cheeks were flushed, but his breathing was still steady. My shoulders were burning, shocks of pain traveling to my neck. I tried to heave upward but his hand was like steel on my leg. His other hand rested softly over my cheek, brushing the hair from my eyes.