Take Me, Break Me

by Cari Silverwood

  I let out a long breath through my teeth. Even if I lost the video, I’d never forget that.

  And yet, I also felt horrified that I’d done that. How could I be both? It drew me and it appalled me all at the same time. Protect and be gentle, but turn me inside out and caveman turned up. I’d been so up-tight, so set in my way of life for so long, that this was like a black-and-white photo turning to color.

  I sat for a while, elbow on the kitchen counter, with my fork-holding hand cradling my forehead. Wing it. I didn’t know where this would lead me, but if ever there was a time in my life that I needed to just go with the flow, it was now.

  I speared the shrimp, smoothly slipping the metal into the succulence, and held it up for examination.

  I could do anything to this shrimp, but it was dead. Simple and easy to cut it up, to turn it over… Jodie had given me permission for all this. Really, I could get her to let me make love to her, to let me tie her up. In any BDSM scene, permission was required. But, according to her idea of capture fantasy, surely I had to reach beyond that permission and the rules. My mouth twisted. Did I want to? And the I was the important part.

  Head down, I stared at the fork. Beyond the rules it would be about me and not her, and this was why I’d been so pedantic about rules.

  I shook my head then popped the shrimp into my mouth, enjoying the soft crunch of the flesh and the flavors flooding my tongue. It wasn’t as if I was going to become Hannibal Lector if I went farther.

  The edge above the abyss was fuzzy. If I wasn’t careful, I might do things that pushed this too far, yet she couldn’t say were precisely wrong. Would the police see it that way? I was an accountant. I didn’t want to break the law.

  At the chorus, Tarja’s voice powered out of the speakers and her singing reached inside me, captured me. Such a beautiful bringing together of voice, lyrics and music into a singular moment, and I closed my eyes in appreciation of the appeal to that one unique sense – hearing.

  I swallowed the shrimp and the taste went away. It wasn’t the act of swallowing that made the meal spectacular, it was what came before.

  I found a pen in my laptop case and some paper, placed it square on the coffee table and sat on the couch before it, pen poised. I wrote the first words.

  New List

  Something about writing black lines on white made this spring to life. There was a bulge in my board shorts. My erection pulsed. Yes, I wanted to make love to her … no, to fuck her. I always had. Once, I’d thought I was in love, even. So what was different now? Was I going to do it then dismiss her like a snake shedding old skin afterward?

  Yeah. What the fuck was I doing?

  Then I held the pen for ages, turning it around and around, almost snapping the plastic shaft in half. I could feel my desire to take this further waiting inside me. So many needs crawled around waiting. I imagined them like patient little black spiders all piled up in the basement of my mind.

  “Ha.” I shook my head. Like anyone, like everyone, I craved stuff that could never happen. I dreaded the idea of ever letting myself go. The old Lord of the Flies book came to mind. Peel off the veneer of civilization and people are unspeakable monsters beneath.

  The only list I had in my head wasn’t civilized, not at all.

  Well this man had a fucking thick veneer.

  The camera had kicked back into showing live footage and Jodie had begun to talk. The mic picked up her words from where she stood in the middle of the room.

  “I was going to try keep this as a role-playing type of scenario and pretend when I talked like this on camera but that seems silly now.” She frowned and paused as if thinking. “So, some honesty. I’m a little stunned by what Klaus just did.”

  I sat forward.

  Still frowning she looked up, dead on the camera, as if speaking directly to me. “That wasn’t what I expected. I was, still am, a bit angry. I didn’t feel safe. And yet it also didn’t tick any boxes for me in this capture fantasy. This is all…” She shook her head. “I don’t know. It’s all feeling too pretend. Too made-up. I doubt Klaus can ever convince me otherwise. He’s too nice. And really, I don’t need a nice man for this. This is just, just wrong.”

  Yeah, I knew what she meant there.

  I placed the pen hard on the table like I could stick it down by pressing, and shoved back the couch as I stood. I needed to sort this out.

  I picked up the whole box of perverted goodies, went downstairs and unlocked the door to the basement, walked in, and dropped the box on the floor. She was doing push-ups but froze and crawled around into a sitting position with her legs off to one side. Her hair had fallen across half her face and swayed before her eye. It looked sexy, daring, like in there, behind that fringe, was the real her.

  Real her, real deep dark uncivilized me.

  End this. Because for sure, if you don’t, this will end badly. Where had I heard that before?

  “Hi.” A little crease marked between her eyes. “Klaus, this isn’t working.”

  “What?” We’d both reached the same conclusion?

  “I thought maybe this could work, but no. I don’t think you have an ounce of mean in you. Unless it’s for somebody you’re fighting in a judo match. You’re nice, but too nice. Maybe we should call this off?”

  Nice? Like some rusty machinery starting up, defiance growled to life inside me.

  I had an epiphany. That light that hits when something comes clear – one of those. I understood what was going wrong. The bondage before – what bullshit. I also understood why I felt an undercurrent of anger. All of this exercise in “capture fantasy” was her toying with me and with the whole concept. This documentary was a mockery.

  “I agree. This isn’t working.”

  Pure agreeable statement, but she rocked back slightly before she nodded.

  “Nice is bad, Jodie? You want mind fuck. You want mean. You want things you dream about. You have no idea.”

  Her eyes widened.

  “Starting now. The rules are gone. I make my own rules.”

  “Uh. What? They were your rules.”

  I took down the list from the door and held it, slowly tapping the laminated paper against my leg. “No. They were not.”

  After unfolding the flaps of the cardboard box, I tucked the list down inside and pulled out the two gags. “Rule one. You don’t talk unless I say you can.” As her mouth opened, with the buckles trapped in my fingers, I dropped both gags into view, and dangled them. “Talk and I use these.”

  Like magic, her mouth clicked shut. Now I had her attention. That had worked. I was perhaps as stunned as she looked. She touched her tongue tip to her upper lip as I stood before her, and kept her gaze swinging from the gags to my face. I had a feeling I’d never had a woman so rapt in what I said. Addictive. The pulse of excitement had centered at my groin. Nothing I could do about it. I already knew that looking at women in bondage revved my engine. But I’d never done more than look at pictures.

  Now I had an inkling that any situation where I got to hold the reins, really hold the reins, was like oxygen to a man in the throes of suffocation. Incredible.

  I ran through my epiphany, convincing myself as much as her. Bluntness was called for.

  “My conclusions. You asked me to do this because you still want me in your bed. You want me to fuck you.” Her gasp, I answered by swinging the ball gag. She uttered no words. “Somewhere in your plans, you hoped. The rules, I made up those in line with what I knew you’d be thinking. You knew I’d not step beyond, or not much.

  “This,” I swept my arm across, “This room was your idea. Your rules. Lock me up. Make me yours for a while, but not too rough or dangerous because that isn’t in my rules.” I cocked an eyebrow. “Yes?”

  Though she frowned and shook her head I went on. It didn’t matter if she deluded herself.

  “You imagined some safe little love affair, with some kink on the side? Doesn’t work that way. Either you hand over control, or I walk. No docu
mentary. Nod if you agree.”

  I waited. I could almost hear the clocks ticking.

  When she nodded slowly, my heart kicked back in. If it had beaten at all for those last few seconds, I’d been unaware.

  “Good. This room is no longer your prison. The house is secure and private enough. You’re coming upstairs as long as you behave. I’ll install more cameras.”

  No protests. Good. For a woman who liked having an opinion on everything this was exceptional. I could have walked on a cloud I was so hyper-aware of everything she did. Were her lips fuller, her cheeks flushed, her breathing faster? I thought so, but she didn’t know what I intended.

  “Let me point out what could have happened if this stupid plan had gone wrong. If you picked a less restrained, a less sensible man. You’ve given me a hundred filthy dirty ideas about what I could do to you. I never knew what depths my mind could plunge to. Now I do. If anyone was mind fucked so far, it was me. Another man would follow through. You think these gags are bad? This one with the red ball is simple, it just stops you talking.” I laid the other, metal-and-leather gag across my palm. “This one is a spider gag. With this in, you can’t close your mouth and your mouth can be fucked. Do you have any idea of the things on the internet? Wait.” I held up my hand. “I guess you do, from what’s in those books you read.”

  I bent and rested my hands on my knees. Mind fuck. This I could accomplish.

  “You want a list? How about the list of things a man could do to you in this situation? I could make you wash my dishes naked with a gag in. I could tie you up, cut your clothes off and just stare at you all day – just because I could. I could make you be a piece of furniture and ignore you. Humiliating? Yes. I could train you to be an anal slut. I could fuck your ass all day long. I could collar you and make you crawl around on the floor like a dog at a convenient height for blow jobs. I could share you with the man down the street, stick needles in your nipples and use them and some string to fasten you to eyebolts in the ceiling. Want to try that one? And at the end of it all, if I was the worst sort of man, I could kill you and bury you out there on the beach.” I swung my arm up to point. “Maybe no one would ever find you.”

  Now she was truly speechless, maybe even scared. Served her right. I watched the little swallows she made for a count of five.

  “But I’m not going to. I’m your friend. Remember that, no matter what I do.” I smiled one-sided but I’m sure it didn’t reach my eyes. The eyes are the mirror to the soul and right then my soul was very dark.

  Then I squatted in front of her, a couple of feet away, reached out and ran the tip of my forefinger along her plump bottom lip. “My rules. Open.”

  A second’s hesitation at most. She shivered and her mouth parted. Mind fuck, here we come.

  “Good. Jodie.” Then I very deliberately held up the spider gag, slipped it between her teeth, pulled her head forward, and held her there while I buckled it. Hair made a great anchor point. I slid my splayed fingers into the roots and tilted her head back then I added a rule.

  “Second rule. You do my dishes whenever I say. You wear the spider gag. You don’t speak unless I say. But first…” Eyes locked on hers, I advanced one finger into her mouth and stroked her tongue. And she let me.

  Had I hypnotized her? She did nothing but stare back. What I wouldn’t have given to fuck her mouth right then and there.

  Chapter Five

  Jodie

  I wasn’t sure why I’d done that, opened my mouth. It hadn’t been in my plan, or in anyone’s plan as far as I could tell. When he put his finger inside my mouth, though I didn’t move, couldn’t move with my hair held, a frisson ran through me, radiating out from my lower stomach. No one had ever done that to me before. Like, just, taken over something so private as the inside of my mouth…touched my tongue as if it was theirs. And it was sexy as hell.

  I knelt there while he adjusted the buckle at the back, and attempted to figure out my thoughts.

  Despite his anger and accusations, I knew Klaus. He’d never do anything bad. I would trust him to the ends of the earth. But if by some miscalculation he overstepped, I could call this off and he’d do as I asked. So I’d play along. Though for a few seconds, a minute or two, it hadn’t seemed to be “play”.

  I would have loved for this not to be play. God, the thrill that rocked me at the thought he might mean this…but no, I wasn’t convinced.

  He was right about me wanting him in my bed, or me, in his, would be better, but money was what had started this ball rolling. I mustn’t lose sight of that. Going along with this rule-less world Klaus had devised was necessary. Besides, it wasn’t fucking, as he called it, I truly wanted. Even in the capture fantasies that I read, it all came down to romance in the end. Tortured, angst-ridden love sometimes, which the hero and heroine had to crawl across broken glass to reach, but love nonetheless. The sex was just the icing on the top.

  Once upon a time, I’d thought my hero was Klaus.

  “That’s good,” he said to me after the gag was buckled tighter. I blinked at him, at the piercing intensity in his eyes, and wondered what I looked like. So strange, having my mouth open, feeling the air drying my tongue.

  I remembered what he’d said about this gag – if he wanted, he could fuck my mouth. This gag hadn’t been in my fantasies. His groin was at mouth level and, clearly, from the shape of his pants, he had an erection. Would he? I wanted him to. I wanted him to make me. Quietly, I squeezed my thighs together.

  “Come.” He beckoned, indicating the open door. On the way past the cardboard box from which he’d taken the gags, he stopped and fingered the edge of the lid. Then he fished around inside and pulled out what looked like a black collar.

  I tried to say, you don’t need that, but it came out a gurgle. With metal in my mouth speech was difficult. My intended words were what I thought I should say. I should protest like any good normal woman would. But in truth the collar was as enticing as the gag. They fascinated me. Kinky equipment always had. I was perversely pleased he’d bought these things, and wanted to use them on me.

  “Keep going.”

  All the way up the stairs, with the timber tapping underfoot from my steps, and thumping from his bigger feet and heavier weight, I wondered if he’d use the collar. Of course, when I got to the kitchen, there was the pile of dishes. Ugh. My revulsion kicked in. Sexual domination, sure. Dishes, housework, even cooking for a man, all these for some weird reason repulsed me.

  I waited, breathing slowly, surveying the yucky dishes and cutlery, aware of saliva pooling in my mouth and the bright sunshine beyond the wide window, and the line of the sea’s horizon beyond that. I couldn’t swallow properly anymore. I itched to take the damn thing off and to swear at him a little. Kinky was good. Doing dishes, no, not good. I put my hand up to the buckle, testing him.

  “Do you really want to try me so early, Jodie?” He pointed his chin at the dirty plates. The collar swung lifeless, powerless, from his hand. “Go.”

  Fuck this. Didn’t he know how to be kinky? What was he going to do? Beat me if I didn’t comply? Sure he would. Not.

  I wanted to be his bed servant not his cleaning lady. A trickle of saliva escaped my mouth and ran to my chin. While glaring into his eyes, I grabbed the buckle.

  The kitchen wasn’t huge, and he was at one end and I was at the other near the sink. In one menacing step, he arrived an arm’s length away. That was it – my anger flipped into, I don’t know, some sort of euphoric excitement.

  “You don’t want to do that, Jodie.”

  My God, the determination I saw in him – this thin-lipped, narrow-eyed man advancing on little me. This was Klaus. He’d never hurt a fly, well a human, unless by accident.

  But, he’d put a gag in my mouth, hadn’t he. What were his new rules? Did they include fighting back, saying no?

  The buckle was wrapped in my hair and I used both hands to fiddle with it as I backed a step. He wouldn’t do anything, would he?

&n
bsp; A strange feeling came over me – a suicidal courage that made me wonder if my eyes had lit up. I wanted to push him. I wanted to see what he would do. Was Klaus man, or mouse? Between my legs moistened.

  Tricky bastard. He advanced, did some judo move, and grabbed one of my hands. When I let go of the buckle to fend him off, he stuck a leg between mine and tripped me. He took me down to the ground in a smooth pivot that relied half on strength, half on gravity. I knew some judo. I’d practiced with him, years ago. I could even remember the name of one or two moves. Ippon seoi nage. That one had stuck in my memory. Not helpful.

  I garbled curses through the gag as I wrestled. I wasn’t giving in. Fuck him. In seconds though, he’d fastened me to the floor with an arm at my back. I drooled on the floor and choked more swear words.

  “Bad, Jodie. Bad.” While keeping me concrete-still, he’d leaned in and said that an inch from my ear.

  I shuddered at those intimate words, my muscles sagging as if some magic drug had stripped me of my determination to win. But his grip loosened and I revived. When I was halfway off the floor, with my hands pushing me up, he grabbed me again and held me tight. I could barely breathe.

  “Let go,” I choked out. Through the gag, the words came out like Swedish said underwater.

  But he let me go. Breathing hard, I pushed away again, and yet again, when I propped up on hands and knees, he put me in an armlock and forced me over his lap. Held me.

  Fuck. Now I was angry. Excitement drained away. I summoned energy and fought him. Desperate, raging, gasping, coughing as I fought his muscled assault. Tooth and fingernail, clawing, I even tried to bite when his arm was under my mouth but the metal of the gag stopped me.