Story of L

by Debra Hyde

  I will not feel badly about my desires, she asserted. I will not feel badly about myself.

  She deserved better; reasoned discourse would prevail. Yet assessing her desire in the face of recent history was not an easy endeavor. Ever since Karen had left her, Liv had, almost without exception, been a free-range switch, topping or bottoming as opportunity or need presented itself, and caring little for anything of lasting depth. Oh, she'd had wild, white-hot affairs. More than once, she'd given herself to a top in the heat of infatuation. She'd thrill as her counterpart twisted and teased her to orgasmic exhaustion. But when that heat extinguished itself? Invariably, only cold ash remained.

  Liv never faulted herself or her lovers for the flame-out. It was the nature of the beast, nothing more. It had given her a measure of satisfaction and its pitfalls were easily forgivable. The void, however, had not yet emerged. She had not yet become a needy, bottomless conduit of its appetite. And once she had, only Cassandra had completely sated her.

  Perhaps submission was the key to squashing the void. Maybe it had reared up in the first place because she had too long skimmed the scene, avoiding the depth inherent in submission.

  Because it scared me.

  The words blurted across Liv's mind, an impulse that felt like she had just swerved into a sudden word association. But they represented a frank admission, real and undeniable.

  I'm afraid of submission. Afraid of giving in to it.

  Liv saw herself as a strong woman, an equal among peers, and although she'd seen plenty of breathtakingly strong submissive women in the scene, she had never figured herself as yielding enough to count herself among them.

  Yet I long for it.

  Because of Cassandra. And because of Cassandra, Liv dialed Quinn's number.

  Chapter Four: Thresholds

  Quinn watched Liv slide the gold ring from her clit hood and slip it into the ecru envelope. She looked perplexed and summed up her reaction with “I can't believe you're doing this.”

  Liv half-expected it. Sometimes it wasn't easy for a dominant to watch a friend undertake submission to another. She remembered when an old flame—one of those nova-like affairs that had run its course—took the flip for a stone-cold dominant. It hadn't been easy, watching her old flame kneel before another. But where Liv's discomfort had been in seeing a good top take to the bottom, she suspected Quinn's ambivalence was more complex. She suspected some territorial instinct ruffled Quinn's dominant feathers, leaving her gripping and grumbling.

  Her sensitive take on Quinn aside, Liv remained undeterred. Cassandra's note was specific. Return your favorite piece of jewelry to me as a promise that you have complied. Elated, Liv sealed the envelope.

  “What's done is done,” she issued blithely as if platitude would, without question, placate Quinn. Or at least resign Quinn to Liv's decision. Instead, it reinforced her own certainty and confidence.

  She had struggled to achieve the latter. Between the trial of the blouse and her fear of the unknown, her thoughts had raced in circles. But in that chaos, a realization took hold, one that resonated with her: by removing all her jewelry, she would wipe the slate clean for Cassandra. She would present herself as ready for Cassandra's imprint.

  That discovery had inspired Liv. It allowed her to leap forward.

  Quinn, however, stared at her unadorned cunt, perplexity still apparent but nuanced, with an awe Liv did not recognize. Her words, however, made clear the mystery.

  “I don't think I've ever seen you without piercings.”

  Quinn's voice was hushed, reverent, and they both knew something had come to pass in this moment.

  “I'm glad it's you I'm sharing this with,” Liv offered. Despite the difficulty of her request, they both knew she couldn't entrust the matter to anyone else. However clichéd, Best Friends Forever went the distance.

  A crooked, facetious smile eased across Quinn's face. “Normally people acquire piercings as a sign of submission,” she observed.

  “Whoever said I was normal?” Liv countered.

  “Not me!” Quinn scoffed.

  “Which is why I count on you,” Liv admitted.

  Quinn blushed, a dereliction of her butchness, and Liv knew better than to speak further. Instead, she pulled on her pants, zipped them shut, and offered Quinn a beer.

  The package arrived twenty-three days after Liv had first engulfed Cassandra's fist. She set it on her kitchen table along next to two pieces of garment leather, heavy, fusible interface, and thick linen thread. Her table cleared of clutter, Liv set up her sewing machine and, nearby, her ironing board and iron.

  Liv worked in determined precision, sizing the leather pieces, cutting a hole in the center of each, then stabilizing them with interface. She seamed the pieces together, turned them right-side out, and sewed shut the last of the seam by hand. At her machine, she reinforced the center hole with two fine rows of stitches.

  Its assemblage done, she stared at the leather, the base of what she hoped would help hold the essence of Cassandra. Liv wanted a token, a tangibility in this ongoing game of ephemeral absence. She wanted a talisman, an amulet, something that would capture the intoxicating thrill from three weeks ago. Something that would stoke Liv's longing every time she held it.

  How long would Cassandra make Liv wait? An eternity had already passed and in it, Liv had hung, suspended in limbo. At least Cassandra knew how to keep her bated. The notes, the fulfillment of their commands, and that one attendant reward at Reese's expert hand, all had kept Cassandra and the tug of her promise alive. But how long could Cassandra operate in absentia before Liv's desire waned? Absence was no guarantee that her loins would grow fonder.

  All the more reason for this, Liv thought as she moved to the next stage in this odd, eccentric plan.

  She opened a certain book, found a certain photo therein.

  A Tenerife lace pattern.

  A century ago, Tenerife lace had adorned table linens and women's dress collars galore. A woven lace, it was crafted for and sold to the rich visitors to the island of Tenerife and much of South America and Mexico—fair trade before fair trade existed. Spanish in origin, it had traveled the world with explorers and conquerors. In Paraguayan, it was call nanduti. Spider web. And Liv ached to be the fly to Cassandra's spider.

  The pattern reminded her of a sunburst, its arms radiating from the medallion's center in heavily darned complexity. Liv wanted a thick darning—it would hold the final element of her token well—but she'd first have to build the medallion on the pincushion—the Tenerife wheel—her grandmother had fashioned for her long ago. Then she'd finish its edge in buttonhole stitching before tacking it to the leather.

  Liv gathered up the requisite supplies, book included, and sought out an Indian summer's warmth on her porch. Curled up on her porch swing, she anchored the linen yarn in the wheel's center and wove its length around the pinheads that jutted from the cushion's edge. The pinheads held the thread in place, allowing Liv to weave the lace's foundation.

  The spokes in place, Liv traveled the circumference of the foundation, gathering and knotting together pairs of spokes. Liv's thoughts wandered as needle and thread worked in concert. She imagined a flood of notes from Cassandra, each with a message more demanding than the last.

  Wear this leather wristband.

  I want you more feminine—grow your hair out an inch.

  Heels: a two-inch minimum. For every stacked heel you buy, a pair of stilettos too.

  Skirts only. No slacks, no shorts.

  Fantasies, all, but the thoughts were intrusive, plaguing, and Liv blanched at them. She knew better than to entertain them too deeply. Going there—fueling her longing with femme stereotypes that ran counter to her self-image—would only make her dread Cassandra. And it would be a dread of her own making, not one of rational patience.

  She finished the perimeter knotting and began darning the interior pattern. At once, she recognized the rhythm of the needle she'd long ago known. It reached down int
o the core of memory where her heart and soul welcomed it. It mattered not that the technique bucked the common sense of other embroidery techniques and required a 48-inch length of thread—nor that the darning required careful patience as the thread routinely snarled upon itself and the wheel until Liv had used enough to shorten it to a workable length. It remained familiar to her, an artifact of childhood days spent with her grandmother, sitting and weaving to pass the time.

  Liv looked up from her work and surveyed the neighborhood, pausing for a moment in her quiet industry. A neighbor, home from work, fetched his mail. Kids chased about in another yard, a small dog yipping at their heels. College students hiked along the sidewalks, returning from classes, backpacks loaded down with the day's work.

  Grandma taught me this too, Liv reflected, the art of porch-sitting. She had loved the practice so much as a child that she fell in love with her home the instant she saw its porch. A calm undertaking, porch-sitting soothed. Burdens fell away. Anxieties went dormant. Porch-sitting was Liv's old-fashioned solution to the all too modern rush of life.

  She returned to her work, aware that the peacefulness of her front porch and the industry of her needle had chased her uninvited thoughts away. She smiled and, plying her needle, began weaving the portion of the medallion that would become her ray of hope.

  By the time Liv finished darning the sunburst pattern, daylight had faded to shadows. She surrendered her porch to the encroaching evening and resumed her work indoors, this time in the comfort of her recliner. A reading lamp arched near her shoulder, its bright light perfect upon the medallion. Finally, Liv removed the lace from the wheel, ready to work its buttonhole edging in hand. Nearby, the package that she had resisted earlier sat within eyeshot, a temptation that she continued to refuse. It constituted the final step, the very essence of this obsessive little effort of hers, and she would not touch it until the medallion sat mounted on its leather base.

  Its presence, however, drove her. She worked relentlessly, ignoring hunger and fatigue and refusing her throat's ache for water in the process. She rose but once, when her bladder threatened outright mutiny, and finished the edging soon after, just as the Weirs’ old grandfather clock chimed seven from the communal hallway. Stretching, she yawned and considered taking a break. Slaking her thirst, she realized her hunger had faded from neglect—and her eyesight was beginning to blur from too much close work.

  Liv stared across the room at the package. Could it wait until another day? Could she? Unsure, Liv rose and retrieved the leather swatch she'd create and brought it to her nose. She inhaled.

  Leather. It was its own heart note, a scent complex and rich, an intrigue. But alone, it stood incomplete now that Liv had met Cassandra.

  No, I cannot wait.

  With a sharp needle and a fine thread, she struggled to tack the medallion to the leather swatch. Tired, her fingers close to cramping, Liv poked herself to the point of bleeding twice—once bloodying the leather itself—yet she kept at it. With each tack, she grumbled in exasperation as the leather managed to resist its puncturing and she cursed the sharp needle when it slipped in her hand, but she managed to finish the task.

  Crafted with skill, driven into being by desire, leather and lace came together. Yet it had yet to see their real baptism, the final element that would forge them into something greater—Liv's talisman.

  Finally, Liv reached for the package. Within it, squirreled down deep within a thick bed of gift-bag tissue paper, sat a perfume bottle. An aging bow hugged its neck, obscuring where stopper met bottle. Cabochard. Age had darkened its contents, but only slightly. Liv remembered how aged her late mother's perfumes had appeared when she and sister undertook the sad task of sorting through her belongings—and how capable their scents had remained despite the passage of years.

  This bottle looked far fresher than those, two-thirds full as well.

  Liv opened the bottle and let a moment's fresh air reach its contents before replacing the stopper and tipping the bottle upon it. She brought the stopper nose level and, closing her eyes, savored the aroma that rose from it.

  It whispered Cassandra.

  The end in sight, Liv renewed her focus. As if in ritual, she dabbed each arm of the sunburst with a stopper's worth of the scent. As if by rite, she whispered Cassandra's name upon each dab. When all twelve arms had absorbed the perfume and heard the benefit of Cassandra's name, Liv was done. And done, she savored the combined scent of leather and linen.

  Liv knew no magic would come of this; she knew better than to pretend any such superstition. But if this amulet kept her longing alive, if it could help her endure Cassandra's absence, then that would be magic enough.

  For a split second the next day, Liv reconsidered her opinion of magic when another of Cassandra's communications appeared in her mailbox. This time, she had not tortured herself by waiting on ritual. She had torn it open and read its message right on her porch. One of her boarders giggled from the porch swing, commenting on the “cute guy” who'd left it for her. A queer grad student, the boarder knew Liv knew what kind of “guy” she meant.

  Liv smiled and laughed weakly, just enough to be sociable, and hurried into her apartment, feeling oddly taller and strangely elongated as she went. She knew it was the shock of finding the message. Perhaps, she mused, I've found an alternate route to Cloud Nine.

  The note was stunning, a brief but grand validation. I expected a tepid gesture, a pair of cheap earrings; perhaps, if I was lucky, one of your labial rings. To my utter amazement, you sent me gold, the very symbol of the seat of your desire. Superb, absolutely superb. No one before you has ever been so thoughtful in her response—or as courageous.

  Liv soared at the compliment and at her apparent success. In Cassandra's eyes, she was accomplished. In her heart, she wanted nothing more. But Cassandra set the bar higher.

  I will ask more of you than I ever have of others. The quest I set before you will soon challenge you far beyond what you would expect. But I do this not to stymie you, but to bind you to me. Soon, you'll see what 1 mean.

  The cryptic paragraph should have evoked a nervous anticipation. Liv felt its tinge, but the note's concluding words overrode it and took command.

  If you can attend to me this Friday evening, call Reese.

  A phone number trailed the invitation. Her hands trembling, Liv barely managed to dial it.

  Chapter Five: Reward

  At dusk, she waited for Reese, feeling nothing like the adventurer of that night at Hippolyte's. Wearing the blouse he had left her and a skirt, a demand Cassandra leveled by way of Reese, she waited on her porch, far more ladylike than she found comfortable. Liv had grimaced when Reese informed her of the evening's dress code—the blouse, a skirt that did not hug, her best heels, no undergarments. But complying would take her to Cassandra.

  And I'll be damned if I let a skirt get in my way.

  Reese, however, was a different matter. He intended to get into the way. He arrived, all smirk and dominant self-possession, and escorted her to the car. As Liv settled into her seat, Reese interrupted her progress.

  “No, not like that. I want your naked bottom on the seat.”

  Unfamiliar with such feminine vulnerability, Liv blushed. But she complied, lifting her skirt and tucking it up behind her torso. As she settled into her seat-belted place, Reese grinned like a diabolical imp. She saw why: he pulled a blindfold from his pocket.

  “Thought you'd see Cassandra tonight, didn't you?”

  Liv stared at him. “Damn you, Reese.”

  “Please do!” he countered in bad-boy glee. Privy to the game and all too willing a lackey, he drew the blindfold over her eyes and tightened it into place.

  Robbed of sight and waiting for Reese to take the driver's seat, Liv sat amazed at herself, at what she would willingly cede for Cassandra. With the cold vinyl of the car seat against her naked skin, she sat in heightened awareness, keen to what her body felt. Desire, want, need, facets of the heart, deeply carved
. They drove Liv's courage, nearly breaking every rule in the book in the process.

  Responsible sadomasochists met over coffee to establish rapport and find common ground. They negotiated upcoming scenes, laid out limits, and revealed what led to wet-making play. They took a sensible, guarded approach when hooking up. Liv, on the other hand, had thrown caution to the wind and, as Reese started his car and put it into gear, she asked, “Am I nuts, doing it this way?”

  “No, you're not,” he counseled. “Just a risk taker. That's what drew Cassandra to you.” He chuckled. “And why I love to do her biding when it comes to you.”

  “But am I safe?”

  Reese drew up at her question—the sound of shifting clothing told Liv so. “Interesting that you would question your safety rather than Cassandra's motives. How utterly demure of you.

  “But, yes, you're safe. Cassandra will poke and prod to see where your buttons are. And she'll press them, often and sometimes hard. Don't worry—she knows how to read people. She knows a bottom's abhorrence when she sees it and a land mine when it's stepped on. She's a damn good crisis manager.”

  Liv sat quietly, absorbing Reese's answer but needing more.

  Casually, he added, “I survived it just fine, happy and intact.” He sounded downright chipper and carefree. Yet he understood the weight of her concerns and sobered. “Listen, you're okay. You're just making your choice without orthodoxy at your back. And the poking and prodding I mentioned? That's one of Cassandra's ways of discovering who you are. She might have her blind spots, but she's never ignorant of the submissive before her.”

  The car wound through streets Liv knew but could not see except for a sense of street lights that seeped through the blindfold. Frequent stops spelled stop signs and signal lights until the car entered a long turn that forced Liv toward the car door. The highway entrance, bearing right. We're heading north. A minute's ride confirmed the direction. Driving south required the car to climb one side of the long incline of Mount Tom. Instead, a long, minimal incline met them, the kind that would take a car from the river valley and away from Southern New England.