Pausing to admire his handiwork, he could hear Lindsey snuffling, crying into the pillow. Probably drooling into it, too, because of the gag. A complete mess, and utterly beautiful.
“That looks perfect. I think you need a little more bling, though.”
He moved to the bag again, ready to amp up his implementation. He’d already opened the next package once, so he could clean the toy inside thoroughly before it was used. Now he pulled it free from its shaped foam cradle and ran the chilly metal over the reddest part of Lindsey’s thigh. The cold seemed to jolt her out of stillness, get her moving restlessly again, hips working against the air.
“Settle down. Be still,” he warned her. He ran his fingertips lightly, soft as butterfly kisses, from the small of her back down to her tightly puckered hole. When she tightened her legs at his touch, he gave her a careful slap on the abused skin of her rear. “Stay open for me. Relax.”
They’d experimented with back door action before but not often, and it had been a while. And there hadn’t been a costly hunk of metal to smooth his path and stretch the way for him. This was another second chance, and he’d done enough research to feel more confident about his performance at it this time.
Ben applied a liberal dose of lube to the toy, then teased his way down to Lindsey’s asshole with the cold, slippery tip. He pressed it against her and reveled in her humming grunt, in the flex of her hips toward his hand as she bent from the waist, lowering herself to her elbows. Making herself even more accessible. Ben couldn’t resist touching her with his other hand, sliding his fingertips along her folds, which were slippery with lube of their own.
At a glacial pace, he worked the fat bulb of the plug into place, biting his lip to refrain from cursing out loud and giving his impatience away. It nearly did him in, the sight of her snug hole stretching to take the sleek metal then contracting around the neck when it finally slid all the way in. Only the large, sparkly blue faux gem showed outside her body. It might have looked ridiculous on anybody else, or to anyone who wasn’t so aroused he could see the outline of his dick head against his pants. To Ben, it looked like the sweetest invitation to sin he could imagine, a jeweled door to paradise that only he could open.
Except that at the moment Lindsey could also open it, technically. Time to see to that. The cuffs and tether straps were the last thing out of the bag for the evening. A full set, once he added the ankle cuffs that had come with the spreader bar. He started at Lindsey’s hands, securing them snugly but leaving some slack in the tethers for the moment. The cuffs on her thighs looked starkly obscene, black against white skin in front and black against paddled red in back. They framed her pussy and ass perfectly. He attached the cuffs around her ankles next and gave a hard tug towards the foot of the bed, chuckling cruelly as Lindsey flattened out in one quick slide with a startled “Mpfh!”
When he’d fastened one ankle cuff to each corner of the bed, he went back and clipped tethers to the thigh cuffs as well, but hitched a pillow under her hips before finalizing his bondage arrangements.
“There. You’ll never escape me now,” he said in his best evil-genius voice. “Your ass is mine! Bwa-ha-ha!”
She giggled, sounding breathless and slurpy around the gag. And shot him a thumbs-up. Her ass, it seemed, was indeed officially his.
Time for clothes to be off next. He shed everything in record time and ripped a condom package open with his teeth. A little too much zeal rolling it on—he caught some hair in it and had to rewind, cursing frantically to himself, before finally getting it situated. He jumped on the bed, lined himself up below the lodestar of the sparkly butt plug, and thrust for home.
Chapter Nine
Lindsey had never realized heaven featured cuffs and paddles. But when Ben pushed into her eager pussy and his body slapped against the sore skin of her ass and thighs, she knew she’d found her own twisted version of paradise. He felt huge, insanely hard inside her, and each rough thrust made the butt plug move as well for an added thrill. She was becoming more aware, coming down from the pain high she’d coasted on during the paddling. But she still didn’t feel quite lucid. The pain, the arousal, the combination was powerfully intoxicating. She was drunk on what Ben was doing, and eager for another round.
She struggled against the tethers, trying to move with him. He’d done a good job, though, with the fastening. The thigh cuffs were an especially nice touch. Lindsey was restrained, exposed, splayed open for her Master’s use and completely unable to resist. With the gag in, she couldn’t even speak a word of protest. No choice, no agency...a delicious fiction she could bring to a halt at any time she chose. She couldn’t imagine that happening any time soon, although if she didn’t get some stimulation on her clit she might well explode from unappeased lust.
Ben slowed down, taking his time now that he had adjusted to the heat and friction of fucking her. He’d explained it once, the way the first minute or so was the biggest challenge to his stamina in bed. The sensation of sliding into her pussy—any pussy, she supposed, but hers was the specific one under discussion at that time—almost tipped him over every time. When she was already hot and slippery with need, and he’d been pushing himself to wait while he teased her to a frenzy, it was all he could do not to rut into her like an animal. But he’d found, through experimentation with previous less-fortunate girlfriends, that he could forestall his climax if he pushed through that initial danger period with thrusts that were either faster or slower than he really wanted. Either too much or not quite enough to put him over. Tonight he’d opted for fast and rough, which made it all the sweeter when he finally slowed to a languid, fluid pace and let her feel every inch of him sliding in and out. Despite the cuffs, she felt like she was floating, anchored to the world only at the one place where she and Ben were joined.
“God, you feel so good on my cock. You’re so tight and wet, like you couldn’t wait for me to fuck you. You love being my little sex slave, don’t you?”
She groaned an affirmative around the gag, biting down in frustration as he shifted his angle and pushed more firmly against her G-spot. Dirty talk. Who knew Ben had it in him? He was shockingly good at it, and if he was this good as a mere beginner...
“You’ve been a very good girl so far, too. I think it’s time for a reward.”
Ben worked his hand under her hip, finding her clit with the ease of familiarity and pinching the ring. He held it in place as he thrust into her, and the subtle tugging was the final element Lindsey needed. What put her straight over the top, though, was Ben’s voice.
“Come for me, slave. Come on my cock.”
Her arousal flew out of control, racing rampant down her legs and up her spine, then pierced straight through her, where her body was open to his. Sharp and sweet, coaxed into wave after rippling wave by Ben’s insistent fingers on her clit and the perfect weight and heft of him fucking into her in that slow and steady beat.
He drew it out, stroking with cock and fingers until her shudders began to ease and her body relaxed. Then he shifted his attention to the plug in her ass, rocking it in and out in time with his thrusts a few times. When he tugged it from her body, Lindsey felt the absence like a keen ache, a new species of longing. She tried to think what she looked like from Ben’s point of view. So open, so ready. He slicked another dollop of lube inside her, then pulled out of her pussy and positioned himself at that other, strangely more significant entrance.
Slowly, slowly. The only other time they’d taken their play to this stage, Lindsey had been vaguely disappointed. They’d been careful, used lube, and she’d enjoyed Ben’s enthusiastic reactions. But there had been some unpleasant friction, too, a sense of wrongness that wasn’t exactly delightful. This time Ben eased his way along so incrementally she almost wanted him to hurry. Her body stretched to accommodate him, and dark arousal flared between her hips and along her back. Electric, unfocused, primal. By the time he seated himself inside her with a final push, she was on the brink of another orgasm.
“Oh, god, Linds...so good. God, and it looks so amazing.” His fingers brushed around her entrance where they were joined, firing nerve endings with every soft touch. “Love the way my cock looks fucking your ass. Love the way it feels with you tied down like this.”
If she could speak she’d tell him much the same thing. Instead she whimpered around the gag as he started fucking into her more steadily. He was close, she could tell. But his thrusts were also pressing her sensitized clit against the pillow, and it was all she needed. The orgasm built slowly, a groundswell of zinging, nebulous pleasure that gradually took over her body and brain. Slow, sweet bliss that seemed endless, made all the sweeter when Ben began to swear softly and pump faster, finally shuddering and stiffening as he came. And then silence, except for their breathing and the soft whoosh of the air conditioner coming on.
Eventually he had to move. Of course he had to—they couldn’t stay like that forever. There needed to be cleaning up and all the usual things. But all the same, when he vacated her body Lindsey felt like he was taking a piece of her soul with him.
She ached all over, she realized as the endorphins and excitement ebbed away. Not just the paddled skin of her butt and thighs, though that was certainly stinging from pressure and sweat. And not just the leg muscles subjected to stress from the restraints, or the jaw she didn’t realize was killing her until Ben took the gag out and pressed a tender kiss to her lips. Her entire being was exhausted, depleted. It felt good, though. Like something she’d needed for a very long time.
Ben removed the cuffs gently, rolled her over, and scooped her up.
“Hot shower time.”
“I still have my boots on,” she reminded him, her voice slurring as though she were three margaritas into an evening.
He settled her back on the bed and unlaced her boots, removing them as efficiently as a Victorian ladies’ maid, then picked her up again and carried her into the bathroom.
It wasn’t until later, after they’d napped away the rest of the afternoon, that Lindsey realized the danger in needing this particular thing. In having Ben provide it, in falling into the seductive comfort of familiarity with him again. Because he liked to try all sorts of things, but he adopted and dropped new hobbies in the blink of an eye. Only a few of them stuck. He’d given up on going for what he’d always said was his dream career, based on what seemed to her like a spur-of-the-moment decision. And he’d left her, she thought at the time, over this very topic, her interest in things that deviated from his idea of the norm. Things he might dabble in, but never adopt for his own.
She’d been heartbroken when he left, and was only just getting over that. This convention hookup was probably an all-time low on her personal Bad Idea Scale, because it had made her realize she was still in love with Ben. And, frankly, because it had been so good, so promising. If they got back together officially, if she let herself come to depend on him as a Dom, and felt like they were embarking on this journey of discovery together...how devastating would it be to lose him a second time, if he decided one day that he wasn’t into this sort of thing anymore?
She wasn’t sure that was a risk she was willing to take.
* * *
It was too bad, Ben reflected the next morning, that Lindsey wasn’t spending the day in her Sub Red costume. At least her butt would require no makeup for that night’s costume contest, after the previous day’s paddlings. Most of the pink had faded but her skin was still marked here and there with red welts and a few bruises. She winced every time she sat down...then smiled at him, eyes going a little glassy. He spent the morning fighting off a hard-on and trying valiantly not to think of all the ways he could be fucking her instead of sitting in a series of hotel conference rooms listening to people talk about comic books and the finer details of cosplay.
Oh yeah, I paid good money to do that, he reminded himself. But he’d pay twice that much and more to skip out on the whole thing and retreat to the hotel room with Lindsey for more insanely hot, kinky, back-together sex.
Or just to cruise around the con holding hands and occasionally making out, as they’d done at last night’s round of parties and impromptu hotel room gatherings. He’d forgotten what it felt like, how much he enjoyed being part of a couple with Lindsey. Having his touchstone with him from the moment he walked through the door, knowing when he left that he wouldn’t do so alone. The sex was just icing on the cake, really.
Of course, he had always liked the icing best. The cake was great, sure, but the icing...that was really the point of cake. It was simply a vector for icing delivery. Just as salad was a vector for dressing delivery.
Lindsey, he recalled from somewhere out of his store of old boyfriend knowledge, preferred pie to cake. This recollection confused Ben, messing with his metaphor and making him edgy. How did pie fit in? And she liked the crust best, saved it for last and everything. Was that even compatible with his icing preference? Wasn’t pie filling analogous to cake icing, the crust analogous to the cake?
Next to him, Lindsey sighed and crossed her legs. Shifting her weight, she leaned into him. He caught a whiff of her perfume and lost track of everything else—the guys on the panel talking about a cancelled TV show, his tortured pastry metaphors, his sanity.
“It’s almost lunch,” he whispered. “Nooner?”
She chuckled, the husky sound tickling down his spine like teasing fingers. “I guess. The conference is almost over. Might as well make the most of it.”
He heard the “I guess” and the rest was barely a blip on his radar. But her words and tone lingered, nagging at him from the back of his mind, for the rest of the session. In the hotel elevator afterwards, the curiosity bubble finally burst.
“What did you mean by ‘make the most of it,’ before? Because if anything, I feel like the con is taking up time we could be spending in bed.”
The other two occupants of the elevator, a middle-aged couple who looked unrelated to the convention, shuffled their feet and coughed ostentatiously. Ben continued in a whisper, letting his breath tickle Lindsey’s ear in the way he knew she liked.
“Besides, I’m looking forward to doing this in the comfort of my own home. And your home. Whoever’s home. I’m thinking about all the places I can install ring bolts to tie you to. And how sturdy your dining table is.”
No chuckle, no giggle, no heated sigh from Lindsey. Instead she bit her lip and looked to the side, and a sick heavy lump began to form in Ben’s stomach.
“Let’s talk about that later. Like I said, make the most of this.”
“Later, like when we get to the room?”
“Well, I meant later, like...I don’t know, maybe tomorrow? Or when we get back to Houston?”
The bell dinged for their floor, forcing a pause in the conversation. Silence hung over them on the walk to the room, thickening as Lindsey found her cardkey and swiped it. Ben’s mind was a blank, a frightening empty space. He was afraid to let his thoughts coalesce. He suspected Lindsey would clarify things all too shortly, and that he wouldn’t like her clarification at all.
The door closed behind them with a loud snick, highlighting the quiet. Just when Ben was about to break, Lindsey spoke again.
“We probably should have talked about it from the start. It makes sense that you’d assume...I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. Not with my head, anyway. Obviously.”
“What are you saying, exactly?” He knew what she was saying, but needed to hear it. And needed time to figure out how he felt about it, other than panicked.
She wandered over to the dresser, flipping her cardkey down in front of the mirror. “Just because we’re doing this here doesn’t mean we have to get back together. I wasn’t assuming that.”
“You were just using me for sex? Why doesn’t that sound as great as I always thought it would be?” Good. He was starting to get angry, a better feeling than panic. More useful.
“I wouldn’t say just using you. And I wouldn’t say just for sex.” She finally
turned to face him, leaning back against the dresser. He could see her back in the mirror, the full scope of her outrageous hair, the vulnerable nape of her neck and the way her shoulders flexed back as she rested her weight on her hands.
“Special sex.”
“Very special. But...I don’t want it to be special sex, Ben. I don’t just want this stuff for fun during a con when everything is crazy. I think I may want it all the time. As the norm.”
Ben stalked to the edge of the bed and sat down, poleaxed. “I see.”
“You’ve been amazing these past few days. But I don’t see you as somebody who would be in a long-term relationship that involved this kind of thing.”
“This kind of thing? What kind of thing? Sex? Because it’s all just sex, Lindsey, whether it’s kinky or not. And it isn’t what the whole relationship is about.” Anger plus righteous indignation. Great. Perfect. Fuck. “Were you seriously just planning to do this for the convention and then walk away? You thought I was playing around? I want you back, Linds. Not just because of the sex. I’ve wanted you back since I walked out, and doing this just made me acknowledge that. Besides, I’m the one who was talking about putting fucking ringbolts all over his house, did you think I was talking about hanging some lamps?”
“Ben,” she sighed, then stopped as if to consider her words carefully. “Do you remember when you were going to get a tattoo?”
He shrugged, not sure why she was asking. “I guess so. When you got Cthulhu. Why?”
“But you didn’t. You spent weeks talking about it, looking at designs. You got so excited about it, like you were really into the idea. Let the guy test the needle on you when you went with me to the tattoo parlor, so you could see what it felt like. But you never made the appointment.”
“Okay. So...?”
“So...you do this. You know you do. You get all excited about a new thing, a new game or an idea. You’re going to get a tattoo or learn to do crazy complicated yo-yo tricks, or ride a unicycle or spend a year living as an extreme minimalist. You halfway plan and you make little moves, practice moves. But nine times out of ten you lose interest. You don’t follow through.”
The Seduction Hypothesis Page 10