Another way

by Anna Martin

  My heart broke again. I wanted that, too, with him, in this ideal fantasy world where things like that were okay. But I wasn’t living in a fantasy world. This was Seattle in 2010; one of the kinkiest cities in America, sure, but not the most liberal place on the planet.

  “And I can’t give you all of me. Not at the moment. I’m sorry, Will.”

  “Shh,” he said softly, his fingers gently kneading the back of my neck. “I’m being so selfish, I should be the one apologizing to you. I just want you to know that this part of our relationship can always be this way. As long as you’re my sub, I’ll put your needs first every time.”

  “That’s not fair though—” I started, but he interrupted me with fingertips on my lips.

  “That’s my responsibility. Anything else that’s going on is for me to figure out. If you’re happy and floaty and safe, then I’m doing my job properly.

  “Anyway, come on,” he said, nudging for me to stand up. “I need to check I haven’t left bruises.”

  “I feel fine,” I said honestly.

  “I’m sure you do,” Will said, kissing my temple as we both stretched out the kinks in our muscles from being hunched down together for so long. “But it’s my job to check. I’ve got some stuff in the bathroom. Come on.”

  “You’re so damn bossy,” I muttered as I followed, teasing him.

  He laughed, a deep, throaty sound that was so genuine I couldn’t help but smile in response. He was so incredibly beautiful sometimes.

  Will flicked the light on, and I blinked at the brightness of his bathroom. It was always so… clean in here.

  “It’s around here somewhere,” he muttered, sorting through a wicker basket full of toiletries.

  “Shit, you’ve got more potions and shit than Adele,” I said, feeling in a teasing mood now.

  “You’re not beyond another spanking,” Will said, raising an eyebrow and wagging his finger at me. “Don’t tempt me.”

  I only just managed to contain my laugh.

  “Go on and drop your shorts,” Will said, turning back to me with a tube of something and folding his arms across his chest.

  “Ooh, naughty doctor fantasy,” I smirked as I did as I was told and braced my hands on the counter, arching my back and looking over my shoulder at him. “Is this a good position for you, Dr. Anderson?”

  “I don’t know what got into you tonight, but I like it,” he said as he gently ran his fingers over my skin. “Any tenderness?”

  “Fuck. Yeah,” I said as he traced the line of the one hard cane mark. I remembered it well. “There.”

  “I won’t apologize, but I will kiss it better,” he said, following through by inching his lips across my upper thighs, then licking away the soreness. “Oh, and you still can’t come.”

  I was humping the air as all the blood from my head pooled in my cock.

  “Why?” I was aware that I was whining.

  “Because I’m your Master and I said so.”

  I whimpered, then he spread the cool lotion on my ass, and I sighed in contentment. It really did feel better.

  “Seriously, Jesse, I won’t apologize for these because they look really fucking hot, but you’re going to need to be careful for the next day or so.”

  “It’s fine. Adele is majorly bitching at me at the moment, so I’m guessing she’s due on her period anyway.”

  He laughed again. “Okay. If that’s what it takes, then okay. You’re all set.”

  I pulled my boxers up again and turned to him, only noticing when I did how close he was. It felt right, so natural for me to wind my fingers around his neck, into his hair to tug his mouth to mine, then to capture his lips in a soft and hungry kiss. Will’s hands locked around my lower back and I sighed into his touch, warmed and aroused by the way he tasted, the way his body felt against mine.

  Maybe I had an epiphany of sorts in his clean, white bathroom, with the too-bright light and the smell of arnica lotion coming from my warm skin and his—how easy this relationship could be. I had fun with Will. I enjoyed his company. He took me places and did things with me that no one had ever done before. I had never felt like this about anyone before.

  I needed to stop before I fell in love with him, to make a decision before I hurt anyone. It was becoming clearer and clearer to me, though, as his tongue crashed into mine, that walking away from Will simply wasn’t an option.

  Chapter Five

  THE night was long. I couldn’t sleep on my back because my ass hurt. I couldn’t sleep on my front because my nipples hurt—Master had used crocodile clamps on them in our session that afternoon, which had little sharp, biting teeth. I couldn’t sleep facing her.

  I couldn’t turn my back from her.

  The TV was no distraction.

  Music hurt my head.

  The Internet was full of porn, and my poor dick was so tired he couldn’t even wake up for a quick one.

  I wanted Will.

  I wanted Adele.

  I needed space in a house that was so full of life and energy and my girlfriend that I felt suffocated, somehow. I needed, in short, to sort my shit out.

  After watching the clock on the wall creep around in its never-ending circles for most of the night, I finally fell asleep sometime during the early hours, curled up in the recliner.

  “Jesse.” I felt female hands on my face, a sweet smell and a soft voice jolting me awake after too little time in the nothingness.

  “Hmm? What time is it?” I asked groggily.

  “A little after seven. I was missing you.” Her fingers in my hair. “Come back to bed? We don’t need to be up for ages.”

  I didn’t have work and neither did she until the night shift rolled around. I took her hand and followed her back to bed. Sheer exhaustion nudged me back to sleep with my head on my girlfriend’s stomach.

  When I woke again, my face was sweaty from being pressed against equally warm skin, and I had to peel myself off Adele’s smooth, soft stomach to stretch out the crick in my shoulder. She was still sleeping deeply with her thumb lodged in her mouth, a habit she hadn’t broken since childhood. I’d always found it endearing, but now it made me worry how she would cope if I were to leave her. Her vulnerability scared me, and I knew that I’d have to do something to try and reconnect with her. Things between us had been too scattered.

  I tried to find the place in my mind that wanted to do this, sure that it couldn’t be too deeply buried underneath all my other worries. I started with her stomach, which was one of my favorite places on her anyway. Her skin was so wide and smooth and pale; even and soft and she liked it when I kissed her there, my early-morning bristles rough against her skin.

  She started to stir as I kissed along her ribs and up, nudging her loose cotton tank top out of the way as I went. I inhaled deeply as my nose ran underneath the swell of her breasts. I loved the way she smelled, slightly worn in from sleep but still of her apple perfume and the lotion that, once upon a time, I was allowed to massage into her breasts before she went to bed. It was a luxury I hadn’t been afforded in a long time.

  Adele had always been all curves for as long as I’d known her. We’d met when my family had relocated to Seattle from Louisiana, and she was the reason I’d stayed when my mother and father and my sister, Jennifer, had moved back only a few years later. Despite her traveling for a year, I’d stayed in Seattle and made it my home, turning it into home for us when she returned.

  We were only teenagers, I remembered as I kissed the dip in-between her ribs, teenagers when I had first put my lips on her skin. I learned things about myself when I was with Adele, learned to define myself, in some respects, in relation to her. I was Adele’s boyfriend.

  Her body stretched as she grabbed the hem of her tank and pulled it up over her head, thrusting her breasts out into my mouth. I wasn’t gay… I couldn’t be. The feel of a writhing woman underneath me, the feel of her hard nipples under my teeth and tongue, and the noises she made when I did that, made me grind my hard dic
k into the mattress for some kind of friction.

  My fingers slipped under the side of her panties to where she was already wet for me, so fucking wet and needy, and I was in control of this. I could rub her clit and make her gasp and arch into my touch. I could slip my thumb inside her and make her groan low in her throat. I could lick her belly button and make her giggle as I slipped her panties off her legs and buried my face in her wet heat.

  I could make her come, her voice crying my name and “yes” over and over as my tongue lapped a regular rhythm and my fingers sought out that special spot, making it feel good for her. I didn’t give her long to recover, quickly slipping into her and finding that familiar rhythm, one that we had made together so many times before.

  I could come with my nose in her soft red hair to remind me who I was with and not to call out the wrong name. I hated the way it was nothing like the way I would orgasm when I was with him. There were no fireworks, no explosions—just like scratching a hard-to-reach itch.

  Showering her smell off me, I hated myself.

  “WHAT are your plans for the weekend?” Adele asked me as she made toast for us both.

  “Umm,” I hummed, thinking ahead. “I think I’m going over to Will’s to watch the Seahawks game.”

  “That sounds nice,” she said absently.

  “How about you?”

  “Working,” she said with a smile and a shrug. “We’re going to be bringing the new menu in next weekend, so there’s loads of stuff to be done. You should come and check it out.”

  “I will. It’s a shame I can’t take you there on a date,” I teased her.

  “Oh, I’d never get a moment’s peace! There’s always some disaster that they’d need me to avert.”

  “You work too hard.”

  “But I love my job,” she said seriously, passing me my toast.

  “I’m jealous,” I laughed. I pulled her onto my lap and held her close for a moment. “Sorry we don’t get to hang out much at the moment.”

  “That’s okay,” she said, kissing me on the cheek.

  I glanced at the clock. “I need to go. I’ll see you tonight, baby.”

  “Probably tomorrow now,” she said ruefully.

  “Tomorrow, then.”

  I LET myself in through the kitchen door, as always, but the kitchen was not empty as was expected. Master was sitting at the table with a petite girl who had short, angular blonde hair, and for a moment I forgot my place. It took only for Master to clear his throat softly for me to sink to my knees in the space to the right of his chair.

  “Good evening, Jesse,” he greeted me with his hand in my hair.

  “Good evening, Master,” I replied, turning my face to kiss his hand.

  “I’ve invited a good friend of mine to have a session with us this evening. Jesse, this is Shannon. She is not a submissive, but her situation is rather unique. Do you mind if I tell him?”

  “Not at all,” Shannon said in a warm voice. “Don’t mind me. I’ll make some coffee, if that’s okay?”

  “Make yourself at home, you usually do,” Master laughed. “Shannon is probably one of the only women I would ever play with, and the reason for this is not mutual attraction, rather, mutual unattraction. Shannon is asexual; she has no sexual desires toward anybody of either gender. She doesn’t desire me, just as I do not desire her.”

  “No offense,” Shannon offered from the coffee pot.

  “None taken,” Master said, and I could hear his smile. “Shannon is also a heavy masochist. Her sexual desires seem to have been replaced with a craving for the need of pain, and I can provide her with that while attempting to keep both her body and mind healthy.

  “Our relationship is not based on sex, or sexual contact,” Master continued, gently scratching at my scalp with his blunt nails. “I think it’s rather special, even in our very open community, and I’d like for you to take part. If you’d prefer not to, you can wait for us to finish our session, then I’ll invite you up to the playroom. It’s your choice.”

  “No, I would like to watch, if it pleases you, Master.”

  “It would please me greatly,” he said and tugged on my chin until I was kneeling high enough for him to kiss me on the lips. Then he patted my head so I would sink down into my waiting position for him again.

  “You have him well trained,” Shannon commented as she brought her coffee to the table.

  “Jesse is special,” Master agreed. “We just recently signed a new contract.”

  “Congratulations,” she said, raising her mug in a toast. “You’re obviously very compatible.”

  “Come on, I want to hurt you,” Master laughed and stood, a small hand gesture telling me I should fall into step behind him.

  “I can’t wait,” Shannon said with an excited shiver, and jogged up the stairs to the playroom.

  It was only then that I got a good look at her. Shannon was wearing a short denim dress with purple tights and knee-high leather boots, which gave her a vaguely Domme-ish look; I couldn’t help but like her. She had a very carefree attitude, and I knew I should probably be threatened by the relationship that she had with my Master, but I wasn’t. It might have been Master’s assurances that she was asexual, or the fact that I just trusted her straight away.

  Master went about setting things out for his session with Shannon, and I knelt in the corner of the room, trying not to get overexcited. I was aware that the session wasn’t about me, and I was genuinely interested in the dynamic between Master and Shannon. Any jealousy that I may have been harboring was pushed away by Shannon’s sexuality, or lack thereof, and my knowledge that Master just wasn’t into girls.

  “Are you just going to leave him there?” Shannon asked, sipping her coffee as she also watched Master, although she was standing and looking through the CD collection. “I mean, you could at least tie the poor boy up or something. Let him get his rocks off too.”

  Master shrugged. “I was going to just let him kneel and watch, but if you have a better idea, go ahead and get it ready. I’m busy with your torture devices.”

  Shannon smiled and crossed to the other side of the room, poking through our Plexiglas boxes. She selected a few things, then came over to me, showing me the gleaming chrome and steel toys.

  “How do you like those, boy?”

  “If it pleases my Master, ma’am,” I said, keeping my head down.

  “Oh, I like him!” Shannon said, turning back to Master.

  “I’m rather fond of him too.”

  “Can I put him in some ropes?”

  “Jesse?” Master asked, making sure I was okay. “Talk to me. I want your honesty.”

  “I am happy for Shannon to put me in ropes, and to use the toys she has selected,” I said, trying to make my voice clear. It had been some time since I was dominated by a woman, but the thought didn’t repulse me. Shannon was nice.

  “In which case, go ahead,” Master said, turning back to his equipment.

  “Come on, boy,” Shannon said, snapping her fingers and indicating I should follow her on my hands and knees. Master didn’t often make me crawl. It wasn’t something I was particularly into, but Shannon was obviously at least partially experienced as a Domme or Master wouldn’t trust her with me, so I obeyed. If he trusted her, then I did too.

  “Strip,” she commanded, and I shed my few layers of clothes, folding them and piling them where they wouldn’t be in the way.

  Shannon fixed a black climbing rope through the ring in the ceiling, then attached it to the anal hook and lubed it up generously before nudging my feet to a wide stance and pushing it into me. I sighed in contentment as the cool metal found its base inside me. The second rope was wound around my wrists, binding them securely behind my back, and the first rope was then attached to my wrists. It was a simple rig, which meant if I tugged on my ropes, the hook inside me shifted. Shannon spoke as she worked.

  “These are breakaway bonds,” she explained, placing one end of a rope in my hand. “If you pull
on this then everything will come unraveled. Since we’re going to be leaving you here, this is for emergencies only. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I agreed, keeping my head straight and eyes lowered.

  She walked around and showed me the nipple clamps again—clover clamps, my favorites. The deep burn in my chest as she attached them warmed me and helped me sink into my subspace. I tested my footing, rocking on the balls of my feet and wishing for a spreader bar, or a gag, or something else, another element to this perfect torture.

  “Calm down,” Master said as he came over and checked Shannon’s work. “I’m not going to do anything else to you for a moment. This is a treat from Shannon. Just watch, Jesse. There are no limitations on your orgasms this evening.”

  “Thank you, Master,” I said, keeping my sight line low. He turned to go back to Shannon, then hesitated at my soft intake of breath. He was by my side again in an instant.

  “Okay?” he checked, searching my eyes.

  “Yes, Master, of course,” I said, trying to figure out how to ask him. “It’s just… can I have my collar, please?” The last words were whispered.

  “Of course you can,” he said warmly, fetching it for me and fastening it around my neck. He stroked my cheek with the back of his hand. “Is that better?”

  “Yes. Thank you.”

  My cock twitched at his words, then grew in length as he kissed me passionately. Master kissed over my cheek and bit my shoulder, then went to Shannon and the area he had set up on the padded table. To her credit, she hadn’t commented on our exchange.

  “Strip,” Master commanded of her, turning the tables from the earlier command she had issued to me, and she did, silently finishing her coffee and piling her clothes on my spanking chair. “Let’s get started, shall we?”

  I HAD a perfect view of them from where I’d been tied up, and Master made quick work of attaching Shannon by the wrists and ankles to the table with thick leather straps.