by Eden Myles
As we traveled by limo back to his penthouse, I sat on his lap in a contemplative silence, the last strains of the opera ringing in my ears. Finally he said, “What did you think of the story, Felix?”
“I think it’s terrible what Butterfly did, giving up her son and her life to her husband like that.”
“She loved him,” he reminded me.
“He didn’t deserve her love. He was unworthy of it,” was all I answered.
When we arrived at the penthouse, Mr. Ishikawa said, “I have a surprise,” and led me to the now-familiar playroom. As always, it had fresh flowers and beautiful satin sheets on the bed. “I’ve decided this should be your room for the remainder of our time. Please examine the wardrobe.”
I opened the carven wardrobe door to find it stocked with clothes of every kind—kicky cocktail dresses, casual wear, nightgowns and negligees, even big poofy ball gowns for any further ball dancing lessons he might subject me to. I saw shoes of every kind, everything I might need, all in my size. I knew he probably expected me to squeal and jump into his arms, but the truth of the matter was, I just wasn’t the clothes-horse kind of gal. Except when I was with him, I wore all practical clothes, and I hated shopping. Besides, the sight of the wardrobe he’d bought me made me feel sad. It made me feel bought.
I turned with a polite smile and said, “Thank you, sir.”
“I thought you might wear the red cocktail tonight. Very few women can wear red effectively, but you do it wonderfully…” he began, but his cell went off, interrupting us, and he apologized. He had forgotten to shut it off after leaving work.
Since it was some kind of emergency, he excused himself but asked me to look through everything and approve it. I nodded, but after he was gone, I went exploring the rest of the penthouse, instead, checking the rooms I never saw. I found his bedroom, which was surprisingly spare but—not surprisingly—neat and orderly, then his office. There were blueprints spread across his huge, onyx desk. I was looking them over with great interest when he walked in.
“Ah, there you are, my dear.”
He didn’t seem upset that I was snooping through his things, so I asked about the blueprints.
“It’s a miniature hemodialysis device we’re hoping can replace the use of a machine for dialysis patients.” He came around the desk to show me on the diagram. “If we can just shrink the technology here and here”—he pointed to key areas—“we can have an implantable device that would take the place of a patient having to use a machine up to fifteen hours a week.”
I marveled over the diagram. “This is really amazing. I had a cousin who was on dialysis, so I know what that’s like.”
“But we’re having some trouble with the device’s power source. That’s what my call was about. The battery source makes it too cumbersome to be implanted and the designers are at a loss as to how to miniaturize it but still keep it holding a charge over a long time.”
I looked it over. “What about a nanowire?”
He looked impressed by my knowledge of circuits. “We’ve tried that with limited success.”
“Have you tried it with a wireless nonoscale device?”
He looked up at me. I saw the question in his eyes.
“Remember when I told you about my dad? He’s a traveling engineer onboard the new, all-computer-driven offshore drilling rigs in Texas. Everything has to run off power packs, and for safety reasons, they all get their power fed by satellite signal,” I told him. I grinned up at him. “I used to help him repair circuits all the time. I’m a bit of a geek.”
“Satellite-driven power packs. What kind did he use?” Mr. Ishikawa asked. He reached for his handheld device and a stylist to make notes upon it.
We discussed tech for the next hour. Mr. Ishikawa went to make one more call to his people. He was in a much more playful mood when he got back. He seized my cheeks and kissed me. “I may need to keep you around for a little while, Felix, my dear. My company could benefit from your geekiness.”
I felt my heart swell at his words. I felt my courage and playfulness bolstered. That put my desire for him off the scale.
We retired to the playroom. He showed me the ropes he planned to use in my training with Kinbaku. The jute rope he favored was a soft, hemp, three-strand rope made of natural fiber. He took pains to explain he had no plans to use the synthetic fiber ones used in the American version of rope play, which could abrade my skin. He asked me to strip and sit properly in a chair while he dragged the jute over my skin. He rubbed it against my arms and between my breasts until my skin pebbled from the contact.
“How does it feel?”
“Nice. It doesn’t hurt at all,” I told him honestly.
“We’ll begin slow, with you sitting down, so there will be less pressure on the ropes.”
We started with him binding my wrists behind the ladder-back chair I sat in, slowly working his way up so the rope was braided around my arms up to the elbow. He made the knots loose, only tightening them slowly when I allowed him to through a series of safewords. Go meant I was all right. Slow was for when something had begun to hurt. Neko was full stop. I only screeched neko once when he pushed for an over-the-elbow knot. My arms had begun to cramp uncomfortably from the unnatural position. Obviously, I needed to continue my pilate classes if I had a prayer in hell of doing this correctly.
The next set of ropes he crisscrossed across the trunk of my body. As he tightened them, they constricted around my breasts and brought them to full attention. The increased pressure made me pant and moistened the folds between my legs. He knelt down before my chair, still fully clothed, and began to bind my legs to both sides of the chair. As he opened me fully up, I blushed uncontrollably. “You’re wet,” he told me, looking me over carefully. “Are you enjoying this, Felix?”
“I like what you’re doing,” I whispered, embarrassed by my own admission.
“You have a beautiful cunt,” he told me. “Like a rose in full bloom.”
His words only made me wetter still. Being so exposed, I was acutely aware of my own excitement spilling between my legs. He scented me there, breathed me in, his tongue darting out to taste a drop of the moisture I was generating in abundance. That one little lick wasn’t enough, and soon I was whimpering, straining against the ropes to reach him, but he drew back and gave me a wicked look from beneath his dark, heavy eyebrows. “Aren’t you being a bit of a slut tonight,” he said in reprimand. But the way he said it, the hoarse desire of his voice, didn’t offend me. It just made me want him more.
His boldness fed into mine and I told him the truth. “I want to feel you inside me, sir. I want you to fuck me and make me come.”
“You’ll have to wait.”
“Please, sir.”
“Felix…”
“Now, sir,” I told him, ordering him.
He frowned. “I’ve spoiled you, I think. I’ve let you get away with far too much.” He slapped my exposed pussy and I jumped for him. The quick transition from a man I’d been controlling to one controlling me took me by surprise. The quick, stinging pain did nothing but feed into my lust for him, my hunger to come, and I immediately wetted myself and the seat of the chair.
“You weren’t supposed to enjoy that.”
“Too late, sir.” I gasped and leaned back in the chair as far as my bonds would permit, hoping to entice him to lick me, to take me.
He didn’t fall for my game. He stood over me, staring down upon me like some disappointed schoolmaster. “I should put you on the ropes for your tone of voice.”
He untied me and ordered me to stand and to raise my arms and cross my elbows at the base of my neck. Standing there, with my breasts jutting forth, the Kinbaku began in earnest. “The aesthetics of a proper position are important,” he explained in a soft monotone as if he were teaching a class. “Kinbaku has a series of very specific katas and aesthetic rules. Sometimes, asymmetrical and intentionally uncomfortable positions are employed.” He tied by wrists together very tightl
y this time, until I gasped, and then secured them with a series of long, intricate knots to a long rope he wound around my waist and then beneath my legs in a similar harness style to what rappellers used to support the weight of the human body on high cliff faces.
The ropes rubbed against my bare skin, particularly between my legs, but the way he’d bound me made it difficult to move or find any comfortable position. I gasped out, “It’s a little tight…” but he ignored me.
“Kinbaku is very much about the way the rope is applied. The pleasure—or pain—is more in the journey than the destination.” He secured the rope to the human mobile through an intricate knot-and-pulley system rigged to it, and then tightened the ropes. It was only then I felt the full pressure of them as he forced the ropes to constrict around me and the mobile took my full weight.
I gasped and was rendered breathless as I was left swinging with my knees bent and my pussy exposed. Fear rocketed through me. “Fuck, sir, let me down!” I cried, and almost used the safeword until I realized that even though the pressure was substantial, the pain was fairly minimal. My muscles protested the unusual position I was in, and I was feeling a bit of vertigo from hanging from the ropes, but the jute itself held me without cutting into my skin. It was more like being in a giant swing.
I heard him undoing his belt and I swallowed hard as I imagined him doubling it over. “That mouth of yours just earned you twelve punishments, Felix,” he explained with his customary whispery calm. “We’ll start with a belting, but then I think we’ll move to caning. I think it’s time you felt some bamboo on your ass, my courtesan.”
“Please, sir, no.”
He waited to hear the safeword. “Shall we continue?”
My temper got the best of me and I bit out, “No, sir. Fuck you, sir!”
The quick snap of his belt left me snorting and smarting, rocking gently in the ropes, but the caning was worse. So, so much worse. In the beginning, he let me see it. He drew the hard bamboo over my shoulders and down my back. He traced my already sore and well-spanked ass with it. He showed me how whippy it could be by cracking it against his knee, and he informed me that some courtesans considered caning to be one of the most difficult punishments to endure at a gentleman’s hands.
“I love the sight of stripes on your ass. Your ass was made for my cane,” he informed me. He then asked me if I wanted to continue.
I thought about using the safeword and ending our play. But then I realized that nothing he’d done to me in the past had harmed me. Even the belting had hurt my pride much more than my skin. I trusted him, and I knew he wouldn’t be threatening me with this if it was actually going to hurt that bad. I took a deep breath and said, “Slow, please, sir.”
Unfortunately, I quickly learned there was no “slow” with the cane. The first well-placed impact, a crack that echoed around the room, left me screaming and wallowing in tears of rage and pain. He immediately stopped and asked me if I was all right.
I clawed at the ropes as I worked at controlling my temper and separating myself from the sharp, resounding pain that seemed to go straight to my pussy. There was no “slow,” only “go” or “neko.” I looked inside myself, took a deep breath, and decided if I could endure five more strikes of the cane. I pushed my shoulders back as much as was possible and said proudly, “Go.”
Mr. Ishikawa set the cane aside. I was confused until I felt him press his weight against my back. He hugged me against him, teased and plucked at my nipples while he whispered in Japanese against the side of my neck. I didn’t know what he was saying, but the soft kiss of his voice drove the tension from my body and I began to relax, to sag against him. “You’re amazing…simply amazing, my courtesan,” he said. “It’s a shame I still have to punish you.”
His hand slid down my now fully relaxed body and he fingered my cunt and bit the back of my neck. The sudden sensations brought me back to roaring life and I cried out in both delight and surprise. He held me tight in his embrace, his arm around my midriff, and rubbed his greatly engorged cock against my back and ass, then lifted my bottom slightly and sheathed himself deep inside of me.
I screamed out his name, but he didn’t stop. He held me fast in his teeth and sexed me hard until I was whimpering and rocking in the ropes, submitting to him completely. He grunted out his pleasure against the back of my neck and pounded me from behind, finally emptying himself inside me with a few quick thrusts and a shiver. I felt every contraction, felt the heat and force as he shot his load deep inside me, as he triggered my own release. My entire body was rocked by our collective climax, and when he withdrew, I was left swaying in the ropes, groaning and gasping in the warm afterglow of yet another mind-blowing orgasm.
After that, he untied me and scooped me up, rubbing at my sore spots and holding me like a precious child in his arms. “Good girl,” he said.
“Thank you, sir,” I told him as he took me to bed.
***
The following weekend he took me to the ballet. And the weekend after that, Yankee Stadium. I liked the diversity, how we were able to see something he liked and then something I liked. And often we wound up liking what the other liked. By the end of the second month, with only a week before we were to debut at the Dollhouse, we’d done almost everything you can think to do in New York: ridden horses, seen Broadway plays and operas, played miniature golf, seen all the silly, ridiculous movies I loved so much. That last week, we went to the top of the Empire State Building and stood on the Observation Deck, looking out over the city with powerful binoculars until we were dizzy with the view.
He knew I loved the danger dogs they offered out on the street, so when we went back down, he offered to buy me one. I wrinkled up my nose. “Not today,” I said.
“Ah, perhaps something more elite?” he offered. “I could take you to the Royal if you feel your tastes are beginning to mature.”
I ignored his ribbing. “To tell you the truth, I haven’t felt very good since I got up this morning.”
“Migraine?” he asked, suddenly becoming very concerned.
“No, I feel a little green, is all. Could we get an ice cream? It might settle my stomach.”
We found a street vendor selling those Good Humor bars covered in almonds that always seem so elusive and hard to find when you look for them in the supermarkets. We sat on a bench side-by side and people watched while I bit into the frosty cold ice cream. It settled my stomach a little.
“You’re not getting sick on me, I hope?” Mr. Ishikawa asked, keeping his arm around me in a protective and slightly possessive way that seemed to tell everyone on the street that I was his, that I belonged to him. It had bothered me once, but now I found it comforting and romantic.
I knew he was afraid I might be putting him on, or overly nervous about our appearance at the Dollhouse the following weekend, but I’d really been sick this morning, no lie. I hadn’t thrown up, but I’d come pretty close. As I chewed on frozen almonds and ice cream, I started feeling even sicker to my stomach. Now that I thought about it, I was more than a week overdue for my period.
We watched a procession of bicyclists in the street, riding for a cancer cause. A popular celebrity was among them, waving to everyone. Mr. Ishikawa was asking me a question and it took me a moment to backtrack and understand what he’d ask.
“The article?” I said. “I did all right on it.”
In the end, I’d chosen to submit my article on the BDSM scene in New York, but without making mention of the Society. I’d thought it was a pretty extensive and well-researched article, but it turned out a lot of other students had chosen a similar subject and had done a much better job than I had, one actually scening with a well known Dom in order to better understand her subject.
I’d been left with material better suited to an erotic novel than a news article. I looked at Mr. Ishikawa and wondered if it was worth it, giving up the chance to be famous just to protect a group of men whose world I would no longer be a part of in just another wee
k. I could feel the tension mounting in my shoulders, and the ice cream was doing nothing for the seed of worry taking root in my belly. “Would it be okay if you drove me back to my apartment? I still don’t feel very good and I’d really like to lie down.”
“Of course.” He looked worried but stood up and took my hand. We headed down the street toward the waiting limo.
I was in only five seconds before Cookie bounded out of her room. She was sweaty from aerobics and doing a series of cooling-down stretches. “Spill. How was your date?”
I stopped and looked at her. “You know, you really need to stop living vicariously through me.” She looked confused by my words, so I added, “You know, go out, eat some ice cream, get some take-out or pizza or beer. Find someone to take you around the city. Live, Cookie. You need to loosen up and go live your life.”
She looked hurt and I realized I’d really overreacted. “Sorry,” I muttered, looking down at the plastic sack in my hands with a popular pharmacy logo on it. “I didn’t mean…”
“Are you okay?” She looked at the package. “Are you having another migraine?”
“No…I just…yeah, I think I feel one coming on.” I skirted past Cookie and aimed for my room. I locked the door and shucked off my spring jacket. I stood for a long moment in the dark, breathing hard, trying to control my panic. From inside the plastic sack, I unscrewed the bottle of Polar Spring I’d bought. I drank down the whole bottle and then waited.
Ten minutes later, my mind still full of rambling, half-panicked thoughts, I finally picked myself up and took the plastic bag to the bathroom adjacent to my room. From there, I dug the Clearblue box out and read over the instructions four times before following them.
For a while, I mused on the irony of the manufacturers putting little crosshairs in the window to indicate pregnancy. I threw the stick away and ripped open the second test I’d bought. Crosshairs again. Maybe it’s wrong, I thought in an attempt to calm my panicked heart and whirling, stuttering thoughts. These things were wrong sometimes. Weren’t they? And stress made me late. Stress had always made me late.