by Vivien Sparx
“We are passed that, Renee,” Stefan said. There was ice in his voice, drained of emotion. “You are not my submissive – and I am not your Master. That life has passed for us. Surely after all we have been through you must understand that.”
Renee stood slowly. Now suddenly she felt exposed and vulnerable. She felt foolish, like a little girl who had been caught doing something wrong by the headmaster. She wanted to cringe – she wanted to zip up her dress and cover herself from the humiliation of his rejection.
But she didn’t. She shook her head, and took a deep breath before launching into the impassioned plea she had been planning for so long.
“I understand that our relationship has changed,” she said. Her voice was measured and restrained, but already she felt an edge of frustration and anger flushing hotly on her cheeks. “It changed the moment baby Storm died. It changed the moment you came back to me with the crib and we began to rebuild our lives again. I get it, Stefan!” Renee bit back on the words, hearing the tone of her voice rising, and wanting desperately to stay calm and in control. Stefan could not be argued with. Her only hope was to stay calm and reasoned. She spun away from him for a moment, hugging her arms tight around herself, as though physically trying to restrain the outburst of her anger. On the wide screen of the television, the Master had the dark haired model bent over the edge of the wooden bench now, her legs spread apart and her hands cuffed behind her back. There was a gag in her mouth and he was standing behind her, driving himself into her with long powerful thrusts. The woman was sobbing great gasps of arousal and desire with every new stroke. Renee turned back to Stefan, and tried to keep her tone placatory.
“But all that happened six months ago, Stefan. And we never once asked ourselves how we should rebuild our relationship. We never asked whether we should go back to the lust and sex of BDSM that drew us together in the first place. We merely picked up from where we had left off before we lost baby Storm. And maybe that was already a relationship under strain. Maybe we have moved too far away from who you were as a man – and who I want to be as a woman.” Despite all her efforts, Renee could feel the first sting of tears at the corners of her eyes. She blinked them away, but she could do nothing to control the tremble in her voice – or the tone of desperate fear and anguish.
Stefan sighed and stood. His eyes were blank and black. His expression scared Renee. He seemed so remote.
“Forget it. It’s not the way.”
“Forget it?” Renee glared at him. “Just like that?”
Stefan could tell by the rigidness of her body that Renee was hurt and angry at his dismissal. But his mouth remained a firm, bitter bloodless line. “Yes. Just like that.”
“Stefan our lives have stopped! We’re not building our relationship. We’re not growing stronger or closer as a couple. Everything between us is slowly crumbling. We don’t talk like we used to. We don’t share the things we once did. And we don’t make love like we used to. Hell, we don’t even have great sex any more. It’s like every time you touch me you are afraid I will break – or that you will hurt me! Dammit! When we first met you thought nothing of taking a riding crop to me. Now I can’t even get you to fuck me!”
The last words came out wobbly. Renee tried to swallow back the anger and humiliation but she couldn’t. Thick slow tears rolled down her cheeks. She broke off, shocked by her own outburst, and suddenly apprehensive. She had spent so long maintaining their brittle, fragile existence that her anger and pain surprised even her. Instinctively she shrank back from Stefan, seeing the glowering rage that seemed to sweep across his face like an approaching storm.
“We can’t go backwards,” Stefan said stiffly but there was a sharp edge of warning in his voice that Renee did not miss.
“I don’t want to go backwards!” she pleaded. “I want us to go the full circle. I want us to rediscover who we were as a man and as a woman. I want my Master back. I want to be your submissive. Damn it, Stefan. I need to be your submissive, and I need you to be my Master again before we can build on our relationship as man and woman… or as husband and wife. Without a foundation built on what first drew us together, we have nothing,” she paused one last time to choke down a shuddering breath before she finally whispered, “Because I want another baby….”
Everything stopped. Time seemed to stop. Stefan’s face, bordering on an angry outburst, suddenly lost all its heat and all of its anger. The outrage in his eyes seemed to melt away like mist. He stared at Renee for long silent seconds, and she was too scared to speak or move.
Finally Stefan shook his head in slow, confusion. “A baby? Are you sure?”
Renee nodded. She cuffed the tears from her cheeks with the palm of her hand and stood, small and frail before him. “Yes, I want another baby, Stefan. But I want a baby borne from our lust and passion and love for each other.”
Four.
He went to her then – two long steps, bringing him so close to Renee that the shrunken space between them seemed to vibrate with crackling tension – a tension that made her breasts ache and hardened her nipples. There was a wildness in the air and within Renee’s body her own frustrated anger had ignited a reckless force inside her that was overwhelming – and desperate to be quenched.
Then she was in his arms and he was kissing her tenderly, passionately.
Stefan’s hands went down to Renee’s waist, pulling her close against him and Renee went willingly. She pressed herself hard against him, her fingers frantic as they sought out the buttons of his shirt.
Her kisses became fierce and overwhelming, driven by the desperate ache of her need. She felt giddy, her senses heightened to every touch of Stefan’s hands as she pressed the hollow between her thighs against him. His shirt fell open quickly, and then her hands were down once more within the open front of his jeans. She felt the length of him leap within the soft warm clutch of her fingers, and she moaned breathlessly into his mouth.
Oh God, how her body burned. She felt the tight cramping pain low in her stomach that was the strength of her wanting. Her breasts felt swollen and sensitive so that even the contact of her lace bra was almost too painful and abrasive to tolerate.
“Take me, Stefan. Right here. Take me now, like you did when we first met.”
Without realizing it, yet the movement borne out of instinct, Renee lowered herself to her knees before Stefan. Her hands dropped reluctantly from her hold around the hardness of his shaft, and she clasped them behind her back.
“I want to submit to you again,” she looked up into his face, her huge blue eyes glittering with the intensity of her passion and desire. “I want you to want me.”
She was in Position One, and the sight of her in that submissive pose brought a sudden flood of emotions to Stefan. He felt the turmoil – the conflict between a primitive desire and the protective instinct that defined him as a man… and he wavered.
“Please…” Renee’s voice was a plea.
Stefan reached down slowly and his hand slid within the gaped opening of her dress to cover the swell of her breast. Renee gasped, and as his fingers gently teased her nipples through the sheer lace of her bra, the gasp became a moan. Renee felt the sudden flare of heat reignited between her thighs. She closed her eyes and gave herself over to the sheer pleasure of his touch. The dress had fallen off her shoulders into a tangle around her waist. She looked down and saw the way her breasts rose and fell with the strain of every breath. She watched the way Stefan’s skilled fingers teased her nipple so stiff that it ached. And then she lifted her eyes and saw the rampant vaulted hardness of him.
Renee slowly licked her lips and then opened her mouth wide. She remembered the early lessons of her training with Stefan and how he had demonstrated the position to her – and why the position was important; it was so that a Master might use his submissive’s mouth for his own pleasure. Now he was hard before her eyes, and she wanted so desperately to feel used again.
She closed her eyes and waited. Stefan’s fingers
cupped beneath her breast and pulled it from the confines of her bra. She felt his whole body shudder. She felt a sudden rise in the tension of him – as though his body was being drawn tight. His hands went to her hair, tangling around her long golden tresses so that she felt her head being pulled closer and closer. She kept her eyes closed, and let the delicious thrill of anticipation overwhelm her.
And then suddenly he pulled himself away, thrusting himself backwards and wrenching his body upright again as though the small space that widened between them was a barrier, and a chance to regain his self-control.
“You’re not my submissive,” he said slowly, the words carefully measured and restrained, but his voice ragged and unsteady. “And I’m not your Master anymore.”
He turned his head suddenly, avoiding the bewildered look in Renee’s eyes, and avoiding the lustful temptation and promise of her perfect breasts and the wide wet opening of her soft mouth. Then she was on her feet, the dress falling to the floor so that she stood confused and defiant before him in just the red panties and the bra hanging from one sun-browned shoulder.
“What do you mean?” Renee reached out for him. “What’s wrong, Stefan?”
He turned back on her, his eyes blazing. “This is wrong!” he snapped, thrusting out his hands. “You’re asking something of me that I cannot give you.”
Renee shook her head, it was like an angry lioness tossing her mane. “I don’t understand!”
Stefan sighed, but the anger stayed flashing in his eyes and distorting the hard rugged features of his face. “I love you, Renee,” he said, and suddenly his voice sounded weary and tired. “And I can’t bring myself to hurt you. We’ve been through so much. You have suffered so much. I don’t want you to ever feel hurt or pain again. When I came back to you, I promised myself I would do everything in my power to protect you from harm. Now… now you want me to treat you like my submissive again? Can’t you see that I care too much for you to ever treat you that way?”
His face was close to hers. Renee could not bear to see the expression in his eyes, for it was pitying and sympathetic. She lashed out at him with her open hand. Stefan pulled back, but her palm slapped wickedly across his cheek. He caught her wrist but she twisted against him, and there was a wild and wounded hiss in her voice.
“If you cared for us and our future, you would give me what I need,” she hissed. “But you care more for yourself, Stefan. You care more for your code of honor than you do for me.”
“That’s not true! You are everything to me, damn it. Everything!”
“Then prove it, Stefan!”
He lunged for her suddenly and for a split-second Renee felt a flash of real fear turn her bones to jelly and scald the back of her throat. She gasped as his hand snapped out and locked around her wrist. She was spun round, lifted from her feet. The next moment she was down on the coffee-table, her legs spread wide, the smooth wood cool against the burning skin.
Stefan went down on one knee and moved his mouth to the edge of her panties, licking around the elastic with firm rapid flicks of his tongue. Then he ripped at the material and it fell open so that the soft glistening lips of her sex pouted swollen before him. Renee gasped.
“I want to make a baby with you, Renee,” Stefan said. “I want to pleasure you and make you happy. We don’t need BDSM.”
He lowered his head between her parted thighs and Renee held her breath. The touch of his tongue was electric, and a million sensitive nerves suddenly screamed their release in a single moment. She gasped again and felt her hands clutch desperately at the edges of the coffee table to restrain herself. Stefan’s tongue licked higher across the opening folds of her, and as the force of his tongue became firmer, she felt her back begin to arch and her vision blur.
Renee could feel herself being swept away; the sensations were building, the pressure low in her abdomen began to writhe and uncoil, readying to explode. She knew the signs – she knew that at any moment she would explode.
Suddenly she sat up and eased herself away from Stefan’s mouth.
“You do know how to pleasure me, Stefan,” she said, her voice tightly strained and thick in her throat. “But it’s not enough anymore because you have forgotten how to excite me. I want you to make me feel like a woman, and I want you to make me feel like the woman you want… not just the woman you love. BDSM is the only way that can ever happen again.”
And then she stood – her legs shaky – and picked up her dress.
Five.
Renee made coffee and set Tink’s cup on the table. Then she dropped herself down into the kitchen chair and sighed. Tink glanced around the kitchen. She noticed the two candles, still in their silver holders, standing in one corner of the kitchen counter. She turned back to Renee, and there was a question in her expression.
“Want to talk about it?”
Renee sighed again. She stirred her coffee, staring bleakly into the cup as though the answer might be there. It wasn’t. In the end she simply shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know what to say,” Renee confessed. She felt tired and listless. She had spent the night alone in bed, tossing and turning, while sleep had completely escaped her. Now she was in a dark defeated mood. “It’s not working out between me and Stefan.”
Tink didn’t look surprised. She knew all too well what a strain the past six months had been on Stefan and Renee. In a way she felt guilty, for it was a time in her own life when she had never felt happier.
Tink took a careful sip of her coffee and set the cup down on the table. “So you talked to him?”
Renee nodded. “Last night. When he came home.” She sighed once more. “It didn’t go well.”
Tink nodded, and then her manner became direct and brisk. “Did you tell him you wanted him to be your Master again? Did you tell him you wanted to go back to being his submissive?”
Renee nodded. Tink frowned.
“Did you get him in your mouth?”
Renee looked at Tink, her expression bemused and bewildered. She laughed awkwardly and felt a flush of embarrassment at the young woman’s forthright question.
Tink shrugged matter-of-factly. “There’s not a man in the world who can resist a woman who knows how to use her mouth,” Tink explained.
Renee laughed again. Tink might have been young, but she was a woman, and she had learned the weaknesses of men at a young age. It was probably the only way she had survived at the hands of her brutal Master before Stefan and Renee had freed her from the man.
“Yes…” Renee said slowly. “I got him in my mouth, Tink. Sort of…” she shifted on her chair, disconcerted.
Tink frowned. “So he’s not willing to be your Master again?”
Renee shook her head in a dejected gesture. “He doesn’t think we need BDSM in our lives. He doesn’t see the spark of what we have is being extinguished. He doesn’t even seem to hear me when I explain it to him. It’s like he’s scared or something. Either scared of hurting me, or scared of letting go.” She shrugged again. “Maybe getting married wasn’t the best idea for us,” Renee said finally. “Maybe Stefan and I would have been happier if we had stayed as Master and submissive – and never changed the dynamic of the relationship we had.”
Tink shook her head. “I don’t believe that, Renee” she said softly. “A piece of paper doesn’t change the dynamic of your relationship. It’s the people within the relationship that change.” Then she smiled abruptly. “But that means they can change back, too Renee. So don’t give up hope, and don’t stop trying. You and Stefan are such good people, and after all you have endured, you both deserve every happiness. You just need to keep fighting for it. Stefan’s stubborn and old-fashioned… but he’s not stupid. He will come to realize. He will…”
Renee smiled, but it was a lopsided, tired little thing that barely reached the corners of her mouth. “I hope so, Tink. Because I don’t think I can keep doing all the fighting to save this relationship for much longer.”
Tink finished her coffee and rai
sed her eyebrows suddenly. “Why don’t we all go to a BDSM club?” she suggested. “There’s one in Bishop’s Bridge that Master Peter and I go to often called ‘Heaven’s Gate’. It would be the perfect way to open Stefan’s eyes and remind him of the energy that is part of the lifestyle – and remind him of everything he is missing, and denying you.”
Renee thought about that. She had heard of ‘Heaven’s Gate’, and she had seen the black timber door in Weaver Street. She nodded thoughtfully, her mind playing forward and trying to imagine Stefan’s reaction if she made the suggestion. “I’ll ask him,” she said at last, “when the time is right.”
Tink nodded. She got up from the table and went to the kitchen counter to re-fill her cup. Renee followed the young woman with her eyes, and watched as she spooned in coffee and sugar. Then, as if drifting into a trance, Tink stood perfectly still and stared out of the kitchen window for long dreamy seconds –humming the tune of a song while she waited for the water to boil.
When Tink came back to the table, Renee was frowning at her thoughtfully.
Tink tilted her head, an expression of puzzlement that made her look almost childlike, and Renee caught herself admiring the girl’s fresh and genuine beauty. She wore no makeup, and yet her skin glowed with a healthy radiance that defied cosmetics. Her short blonde hair was tousled and ungroomed – and yet somehow she looked stunning. Not fashion-model stunning – more beautiful than that. It was something intangible – something that Renee had never noticed before. Something that….
“Oh… my God!” Renee breathed suddenly, her own woes forgotten in an instant. Her hand reached out across the table and snapped tight around Tink’s wrist. She stared at the young girl, studying her eyes, searching her expression. “You’re in love!”
Tink flinched – recoiled guiltily – and her eyes widened with feigned innocence. Then she suddenly began to smile until the smile became a grin and finally a throaty joyous laugh that sounded like bells ringing.