by Sionna Fox
By the time we hit Boston, I was wound up like a spring. Anxiety and anticipation rolled around in my belly. I needed to get to the soft, quiet place where I could focus solely on Matthew’s voice and the sensations in my body. As soon as I chucked my stuff in the door and unloaded our leftovers, I let him know I was home.
He told me to pack a bag and be ready to go in twenty minutes. I swapped the dirty clothes from my duffel for clean ones and parked myself by the window, ready to run down the curb the second he pulled up.
“You’ve got it bad.” Izzy laughed at me from the kitchen where she was making a leftovers sandwich.
“I know.” No use denying it when I was at the window like a dog waiting for her human to come home. Matthew’s car turned the corner onto our street and I reached for my things. “I’m not sure when I’ll be back. Maybe Monday.”
“I figured. Your mom stocked us up, don’t worry about me.” She waved her sandwich as proof. “Tell Matt I said hi.”
“Uh-huh.” I raced to the door and flew down the front steps as he parked. He got out, came around, took my bag in one hand, pinned me against the passenger door with his body, and took my mouth in a searing kiss.
The window opened above us and Izzy yelled, “Gross! Get a room!”
Matthew raised his free hand behind his back in a one-finger salute and kept kissing me. I shivered all over and he pulled away. “You should have put on a jacket, little mouse.”
“I hadn’t noticed the cold, sir.”
He bundled me into the passenger seat and tossed my bag in the back.
“How was Thanksgiving?”
“Let’s not talk about it. I’m just glad to be home.” Home. There it was again. When had this started feeling like home? Probably around the same time I started spending every possible second with him. A tiny feeling of dread curled up from my stomach, not for the first time. He was not my home, my life raft; he wasn’t even really my boyfriend. I bit the inside of my lip. I was here, in his car, and I might as well enjoy this while it lasted. “How was yours?”
“Good.” He didn’t elaborate and I didn’t much care.
The second his door clicked shut behind us, Matthew dropped my bag and pressed me face-first into the wall. He ran his nose from my earlobe to the sensitive place where neck meets shoulder, breathing me in like a man starving for air.
He reached around and unbuttoned my jeans, shoved them roughly down my hips along with my underwear, and ordered me to kick off my shoes and step out of my pants. He pressed the full length of his body against me, his sweater soft, his pants rough against my bare skin where his erection strained his zipper.
He slid his hands slowly up my rib cage, pulling the hems of my sweater and T-shirt and yanking them over my head. His hands pulled down the cups of my bra and lifted my breasts into his palms, rolling the tips in his fingers while I tried to wriggle even closer to his body. He dropped my tits. With his hands on the small of my back, he pushed me hard into the wall, pressing my front against the cool surface as he unhooked my bra.
I half expected to hear the sound of his zipper and for him to simply fuck me against the wall with his clothes on. I more than half wanted him to. Instead, he yanked my bra the rest of the way off and pulled me back along his body. With his forearm wrapped around my throat, he tipped my head back and whispered instructions.
“Go to the bed. Lie down, face up, with your hips at the edge of the mattress. Let your feet hang and spread your legs as wide as they will go. Put your arms over your head, close your eyes, and wait for me. Do. Not. Move.”
He pushed me away and smacked my butt as I took off down the hall. I was giddy with a heady mix of anticipation, arousal, and a tiny hint of fear. I lay on his bed, every muscle in my body tensed with the effort to keep still. He wanted me to wait, would make me wait. Testing my limited patience had become one of his favorite ways to toy with me.
Lying there naked, spread, waiting, I was utterly vulnerable, and yet I had never been more certain that this was exactly where I needed to be. Where I belonged, where I was safe, cared for, and understood. I trusted Matthew. I trusted him in ways I had never dared to think possible. I had to, or there was no way I could possibly be lying in his bed, eyes screwed shut, straining to hear his footsteps as he entered the room.
Matthew was the predator and I was his prey. My heart thumped wildly, waiting for the first touch, the first taste, the first bite. Except when he ate me, I wasn’t going to die a violent, painful, and bloody death, I would have orgasms instead. I nearly burst into giggles. I started to cover my mouth with my hand. Two heavy, deliberate footsteps thudded across the carpet. A swish and a slap echoed in the room as a crop landed on the inside of my thigh. That shut me up. As the sting faded, my system flooded with pleasure. The heat and blood throbbing where the crop had marked me echoed in my clit.
“Do I have your attention now, little mouse?” He pitched his voice low and rough. It sounded deliciously sinister in the darkness behind my closed eyelids.
“Yes, sir,” I whispered.
“What about this situation is funny to you?”
“Nothing, sir.”
“‘Nothing’ doesn’t make you disobey. ‘Nothing’ doesn’t make you lie to me.”
With every word, I braced for another smack of the crop that didn’t come. “No, sir.”
“Tell me, little mouse, what was so funny?”
“I—” I stopped and started a few times. “I was thinking of you pacing around, stalking me like prey.”
The mattress dipped as Matthew sat beside me and began stroking my thighs with the back of his hand. “Did you like that thought, little mouse? Is that why you laughed?”
“No, sir.” I grimaced and squeezed my eyes shut tighter. “I was thinking about predators eating their prey. And you, um, eating me… And how that’s very different from what happens to animals.”
The mattress shook as Matthew laughed and a large, warm hand stroked my cheek. “Good girl, little mouse. Was that so hard?”
“Yes, sir. I feel like a dork.”
“Open your eyes, Jolene.” I did as he asked. His face was mere inches from my own, his eyes lit with affection and amusement. “Thank you for telling me the things that make you laugh.” He kissed me gently and sat back up. “You did, however, disobey me, then you lied about it. But now I know exactly how I’m going to punish you.” He chuckled evilly. I was going to hate and love this in equal measure, he’d make sure of that.
Matthew got up and rummaged in his closet, emerging with several lengths of rope, leather thigh cuffs, and a blindfold. He set each item on the dresser, slowly and deliberately, in my full view. “Since you can’t stay still, I’m going to bind your wrists together over your head and tie them to the headboard. Say ‘Yes, sir,’ if you understand and agree.”
“Yes, sir.” Dear god, yes. Duh.
“Do you really want to sass me right now, little mouse?”
“No, sir.”
“Good. I’m going to cuff your thighs and tether them so you can’t close your legs to me.”
“Yes, sir.” I had a terrible, wonderful feeling about this.
“Then I’ll blindfold you because I want you to focus on what I’m doing. Understood?”
“Yes, sir.” My chest was heaving, and he hadn’t even touched me.
“Good girl.” He picked up the rope and climbed on the bed, looking every inch the predator as he straddled my waist and pressed a hand to my chest. “Breathe, Jolene. What do you say if you need me to stop?”
His touch was calming, but only just. “Red, sir.”
“Good girl. Keep breathing.” Without thinking, I followed his breaths, in and out. He smiled. “And if you need me to slow down?”
“Yellow, sir.”
“Where are you now?”
“Green, sir.”
“Good girl. Give me your wrists.”
I held up my hands for him to tie simple cuffs that would hold my arms in place above me. He
used a long bit of rope to bind my wrists to the headboard while keeping my butt at the foot of the bed.
He kissed me and slid down my body to strap the leather cuffs around my thighs. As promised, he tethered me wide open while I stared at the ceiling and heat crept up my cheeks. Matthew was intimately acquainted with my pussy, but being bound open made me feel acutely exposed.
“No hiding now, little mouse.”
“No, sir.”
A long, dexterous finger ran up my wet slit. “You’re soaking.” He sucked his fingertip into his mouth and hummed.
“I know, sir.”
He retrieved the blindfold from the dresser and kissed me again as he placed it over my head and covered my eyes. Soft, black velvet blocked my vision, and I strained to hear what he was doing, to feel his presence next to me in the shifting coils of the mattress, or the warmth radiating from his body.
“We’ll start with the crop.”
The braided nylon of its shaft passed up my leg as Matthew snaked the leather keeper closer and closer to my pussy. I whimpered in reply.
“Tell me you understand, Jolene.”
“Yes, sir. I understand.” I tried to press myself into the crop to prove it, but he had me well immobilized and at the mercy of his far greater capacity for patience.
He began gently tapping my skin, covering every square inch between my knees and my shoulders. I whimpered and struggled and moaned, begging him to stop tormenting me with taps so light he could have been hitting me with a marshmallow. He kept right on tap, tap, tapping me all over, refusing to be rushed, pausing occasionally to run the keeper softly over my nipples or my clit.
So slowly the waiting was more painful than the actual blows, Matthew increased his force. Blood rushed to my skin in his wake, suffusing me with warmth. When he finally landed a smack hard enough to make me flinch, I wanted to cry with relief. The minutes passed like hours, suspended in time, waiting, straining to hear, to feel.
He kept me right on the edge of pain and pleasure, until I wasn’t flinching from the blows to my inner thighs or my tits but arching into them as much as possible. He went harder. He repeated that cycle of increasing intensity, allowing me to plateau there, to beg for more, and finally increasing again until I was mindless and babbling for him to please let me come.
Matthew ran the shaft of the crop along the seam of my pussy then tapped my clit. A shock of pain melted into an intense, aching pressure as my pussy clenched. “Fuck, sir. Please. More. Again. Please, please, please.” Another tap, harder, a jolt of electricity that made my thighs shake with the effort not to come. “Please. Gonna come. Please, sir.”
The soft fall of the crop, two thuds as Matthew dropped to his knees, and before I knew what hit me he wrapped his lips around my clit and sucked me into his mouth. I tugged on the restraints at my wrists and thighs, my body shaking as I came. Behind the blindfold, I squeezed my eyes shut so hard I saw stars. A long, high wail ripped from my throat. He didn’t stop.
I kept coming. The pressure of his mouth and the sharpness of his teeth on my clit didn’t let up. I couldn’t come down. I couldn’t catch my breath. I couldn’t get away from his assault on my overtaxed nervous system. Mindless pleasure spiraled tighter, higher, my pulse pounding, my breaths shaky and too short. Each shuddering wave brought diminishing returns of pleasure, and increased anxiety. I started to cry, sobbing between gasping for breath as I shook and hyperventilated. Panic and nausea rolled through me as I struggled to breathe through my swollen sinuses, coughing and heaving between sobs. The ropes at my wrists burned into my skin as I reflexively pulled, desperate to curl into myself, to shield my soft middle from danger. Knowing what was happening didn’t make it stop. I did the only thing I could.
“Red. Stop. Please.”
He let go. Swiftly and efficiently, he stripped off the blindfold, unbound me, and climbed onto the bed with me. He pulled me into his arms and tucked us into the blankets while crooning nonsense into my ear. He held me tightly, running his hands slowly over my back and through my hair as my body continued to tense and convulse, my arms and legs twitching and kicking as adrenaline spiked in my bloodstream. I pushed out of his arms, dry heaving over the side of the mattress as I bent double, wheezing and shaking. He pulled my hair out of my face and rubbed my back, waiting for it to pass. He didn’t shush me or ask me to stop crying. When my sobs had reduced to mere snuffles, he drew me back to him, kissed my forehead and wiped my tears with a corner of the sheet.
“I’m sorry.” I looked up at him through wet, spiky eyelashes. Shame flooded my system. I’d tried so hard to keep this from him, to not be this fragile, shaking person crying all over his chest. Who the hell has a panic attack from too much orgasm?
He pushed my hair out of my eyes, running a thumb over my wet cheek. “Don’t be sorry. You needed me to stop and you let me know. I’m sorry I pushed you too far.”
“I got overwhelmed. I didn’t know what to do and…” I buried my face in the crook of his neck to hide the fresh tears that wanted to come.
“It’s okay, little mouse. You’re okay. That was my fault, not yours.”
I stayed there, hiding against his neck, until I could almost breathe through my nose again, and the shakes had completely left me. I was exhausted, but I took a deep, unsteady breath and propped myself up on his chest. “Can we still finish?”
He studied my face. “Are you sure?”
I nodded. I didn’t want it to end like this, for my panic to be burned into his brain the next time. I needed to know I could come back from this. “Please.”
“We don’t have to.”
“I—I think I need to.”
He laid me down and kissed me slowly. “You can always tell me to stop if it’s too much, little mouse.”
“I know. Please.”
His hands passed gently over my skin, soothing away the aches he’d created. I hummed in the back of my throat, comforted by the closeness of him, the warmth of his hands under the pile of blankets. He stripped off his clothes and let me touch him all over, the feel of his skin under my hands grounding me. He still wanted me. We kissed and groped, making out like teenagers, until he rolled away and donned a condom, then nestled in the cradle of my thighs and slid into me slowly. Propped on his forearms, he kept me close, fucking me with long, slow strokes that replaced the frantic, overwhelming sensations he had wrought in me with tenderness and calm.
When Matthew increased the pace and force of his thrusts, signaling his own impending end, I tumbled softly with him. In the aftermath, we lay limp, sweaty, and entwined. As we both drifted off to sleep, my heart constricted behind my ribs. I belonged here. I needed this. Please let me keep him a little longer.
A long, post-panic attack nap and full of a dinner of leftover stuffing later, we sprawled on Matthew’s couch. I was still wrung out, and my stupid mouth got the better of me.
“So, I get what’s in this for me, I mean, aside from the orgasms. But I don’t understand what you get out of it.” I wrinkled my forehead, and Matthew pressed his thumb to the crease between my eyebrows. I leaned into the touch like a cat, unable to help myself from collecting his affection.
“I have orgasms too, you know.”
“I’d noticed that part.” I poked his chest with an index finger. “It seems like so much work for you. You could come having regular old vanilla sex too.” We’d had sex like that. As far as I could tell, everyone still left the room happy.
“I could, I do, but it’s not the same.” He tipped up my chin to look me in the eye. “I think you know that too.”
I blinked and ducked my gaze. “I do.” I took a deep breath. “I want to understand, though. Why do you do it? Why is it different for you? I’ve never had sex that made me feel like this. Ever. And I kind of get why, endorphins and subspace and all that stuff. No one has ever made me feel like this.”
“I haven’t made you feel anything, little mouse. You’re doing that on your own.”
I was about
to argue, but he raised a hand to stop me.
“Everything you’re feeling is yours. Not everyone processes those sensations or the pain like you do, my little masochist. I’m the facilitator, the architect, and that’s part of it for me, but you’re the raw materials. It’s beautiful to watch you, not to mention a stroke to my ego to be the one who gets you there. If you didn’t genuinely enjoy having your ass flogged red while you’re tied to the bedposts, it wouldn’t be arousing for me. Watching your whole posture and demeanor change when you slip under, the way your skin flushes and your breathing changes and your eyes go dreamy, that’s what gets me. If you didn’t lean into it and get so wet you leave puddles on my sheets, I wouldn’t be so desperate to fuck you when I’m done torturing you. It’s a positive feedback loop.”
He shrugged. “I’ve seen people play to please their kinkier partners or because it’s trendy this week, and I’ve known people for whom kink is a profound part of who they are. You’re one of those people, Jolene. I was terrified you wouldn’t be, that first night, but you were perfect. And you trusted me to take care of you. And I am so sorry that I might have damaged that trust.”
He was babbling and I had no idea what to say, so I leaned over and kissed him instead. “No harm done. Promise.”
He was right that this was a part of me, and I’d never known it. Or never let myself know it. The dreams I’d had of him holding me down and fucking me, taking complete control of my body, didn’t come out of nowhere. I’d always wanted this, even if I’d never had words for it. I wouldn’t be able to go back when this was over. I needed this.
I’d never been with anyone as concerned with my pleasure as Matthew was. He needed the control, and he needed my pleasure in it. I gave willingly, and he took, for the purposes of our mutual satisfaction. He needed this as much as I did. But for how much longer would he need it from me?
I burrowed my face into his neck, breathing in the smell of him, letting the shaggy hair at his nape tickle my nose, wanting to hold on to him for as long as I could. I dreaded the day I would have to let him go. He kissed my head and stroked my back. “Come on, let’s go to bed.”