Tied Between

by Kira Barker

  “How do you feel?” he asked, his tone as gentle as his touch.

  “I don’t know,” I admitted, surprised to find my voice husky but working.

  “It happens,” he replied, and I felt like he was answering all the questions that were only now seeping into my brain.

  “I just—“ I started, then cut off because I didn’t know how to finish that sentence. His smile grew, and I could tell that while empathy was strong in him right then, so was the innate satisfaction of being responsible for putting me in this place.

  “Don’t talk yet. Just relax and relish the feeling while it lasts. Just wanted to know that you’re okay.”

  “Very.” That at least I could confirm, and because he’d given me permission to—not as in allowed, exactly, but offered that possibility, really—I snuggled back into him and closed my eyes, loving the sense of calm now spreading through my body. He was there for me. He was taking care of me. Right now I didn’t have to do anything and could just let go.

  More time passed, and while that strange sense of confusion and displacement slowly disappeared, the calm didn’t fade. I was used to physical exhaustion—both from twenty-four-hour shifts and what Simon had put me through in the playroom before—but this was different. I could tell from the tension alone that my muscles would hurt tomorrow and I would be a little sore, but that was the extent of what I felt. On the physical side, this had, in fact, easily been the least demanding scene we’d done so far, but on so many other levels it had been so much more intense…

  Pulling back from him just enough that I could see his face, I studied him, trying to find something in his features that would help me make sense of the fragments of thoughts drifting through my mind, half-formed and too fragile to grasp.

  “Sometimes I wonder what you do to me,” I said, without being able to truly voice my sense of wonder.

  The smile from before resurfaced, if a little more teasing now.

  “You don’t always have to be able to explain everything,” he replied.

  “Yes, I do,” I pointed out, then grinned when I realized that I felt a little more like myself already—and not in a bad way. “But that was—“

  “Something else?” he offered when, again, I couldn’t finish the sentence.

  “Kind of?” I admitted, clearing my throat. “I don’t think I’ve ever been so out of it in my entire life. And that includes a few spectacular instances of drunkenness.”

  “All part of the deal, baby,” he replied with what I thought was supposed to be his best car salesman voice, but it only made me grimace.

  “Don’t ever—“

  “I won’t,” he promised, a wide grin splitting his face in two. “But it was too good an opportunity to pass up. Besides, it’s my responsibility to make sure you’re really okay.”

  “By royally annoying me by using the one term of endearment you know I hate?” I accused.

  “A short and very effective method,” he said, still grinning. “If you’d just blinked at me in confusion, I would have known that you’re not quite back yet.”

  Stretching, I couldn’t help but feel like my body had absolutely no drive to shake off that languid feeling of contentedness. Behind Simon, there was only the wall he sat leaning against, so I craned my neck as I looked over my shoulder. We were in the back part of the room, maybe fifteen to twenty feet away from the bondage frame that was once again being put to creative use. Just seeing the crowd of people in front and to the sides of it made me feel as if I should have gotten self-conscious all over again, but my mind was still convinced that giving the finger to society was the way to go tonight.

  Simon was studying my face intently as I looked back to him, and I couldn’t help the slight blush creeping onto my cheeks.

  “Guess I should reevaluate my list of limits now? Can’t really go on having a set hard limit on all kinds of humiliation when I come hard from coming in front of a million people.”

  I could see that it pained him not to correct me on that exaggeration, but he refrained from it.

  “You like me calling you my slut, too, so it’s not exactly a hard limit to start with,” he pointed out. He might let some things slide, likely because he knew I wasn’t quite back in the intellectual saddle yet, but that didn’t mean he’d just give me carte blanche on everything.

  “Yeah, but we both know how you mean it and how it is received,” I pointed out, then laced my fingers behind his neck so I could better pull myself up and rearrange my legs until I was straddling him rather than sitting across his lap. Looking deep into his eyes, I put my most alluring smile on my face and rolled my hips suggestively. “And we both know that, with you, I am a slut.”

  “And that’s always appreciated,” he agreed, but didn’t let me sidetrack him. Not that I actually intended to have sex with him right then and there, the dungeon rules be damned, but it felt great to not feel like I shouldn’t be behaving like this at all.

  Moving around like that also made me acutely aware of just how tired I was, although we couldn’t have been here for more than two hours.

  “How long do you still want to stay?”

  “However long you want to. I’ve gotten more than enough out of this,” he replied, then suddenly grabbed my hips and pulled them down and forward, making me grind myself against his crotch. “And while I absolutely understand if you say that all you want to do is sleep, I can’t deny that my pants got terribly confining tonight.”

  “Let’s see if we can find a remedy for that?” I proposed, then laughed when he bucked his hips up to meet mine.

  “Let’s,” he agreed. I had a distinct feeling that my night wasn’t quite over yet.

  Chapter 7

  Although pretty much every inch of my body felt gross, I forewent taking a shower at the dungeon and instead opted for putting on the sweat pants and hoodie Simon had wisely packed, hoping that on the way home we wouldn’t get held up by the police and no one would be the wiser that I hadn’t bothered with underwear.

  Jack was easy to locate, still lingering in the common area at the front, although luckily not accosted by any former fuck-buddies of his. I still gave him a “you and I need to talk” look that he, as usual, ignored. Beth was a little harder to find, but Simon eventually tracked her down and she came out to send us on our way.

  The drive home was uneventful. I still felt too gross to occupy myself with anything but checking my phone, and as the guys were both rather quiet—and not fighting with each other—I chose to join them in this. As soon as we were through the door, I made my way to the bathroom and put the entirety of my clothes in the washing machine and myself into the shower, turning up the water to the point where it was almost too hot to stand. Not because I felt the need to clean anything except for the sweat and grime, but because it effectively stopped anyone else from coming in with me. I didn't feel antisocial or anything, but after that night, I needed a few moments to reassemble myself, and luxuriating under the hot spray worked better when there wasn’t someone around who felt the need to touch or comfort me.

  That still didn’t stop Simon from waiting in the bathroom right outside the shower stall, ready to hand me my towel the moment I stepped out. I gave him a pointed look, then accepted the towel as he retreated to lean against the sink.

  “I do respect your need for privacy,” he said as I started to towel myself dry. “I just feel like we should maybe talk a little more, which we would likely have done in the car if not for Jack.”

  “What, you feel absolutely no remorse including him in a scene—and don’t even pretend that wasn’t all set up beforehand! But you don’t feel comfortable talking about it in front of him?”

  “You aren’t,” he pointed out, sounding as calm as ever, ignoring my accusatory tone. “And of course I talked things through with him beforehand. I also had him practice on a pillow with the flogger. How irresponsible do you think I am?”

  I stopped, one hand under the bend of my knee, and looked up at him. Th
e previous calm was quickly dwindling, it seemed, but I was too tired to really get annoyed with Simon.

  “I wasn’t implying that, so get off your high horse. But you could have said something. I spent the first half of the evening wondering if you two would start bitching each other out any moment now.”

  “I think we both have better self-control than that,” he offered, then shook his head as I just stared at him. “Or maybe not. I was just stating that—“

  “You were getting defensive,” I pointed out.

  “Would you please let me talk for once?” he bit out, then waited until I’d closed my mouth with a snap. “You do realize that this is our first scene since that night that started the whole shit storm? I know that it wasn’t what caused it, but I still wanted to make sure that no one took that as an opportunity to ring in round two. Maybe I wouldn’t feel the need to get defensive if you didn’t shut me out all the time?”

  That hit me completely out of the left field.

  “Where am I shutting you out?”

  “You literally just spent fifteen minutes cooking yourself in the shower,” he replied.

  “Because hot water is relaxing!” I shot back, hating that now I sounded defensive as hell. Simon just crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back, regarding me levelly. He should not have been able to look just as imposing wearing sweat pants and a ratty T-shirt now rather than the black leather pants and fitted shirt before, but clearly clothes mattered a lot less than I thought.

  “You were hiding. Maybe not from me, but I still don’t like it when you do. This was easily the second most intense, if not the most intense, scene of your life, and I won’t let you slink off and internalize it all now so it can fester and bite me in the ass as soon as you need a reason to get in my face again.”

  He had a point there, even though I hated to admit it. It also made me feel stupid, and nothing that might intrude on my buzz right now was welcome.

  “I won’t do that. Promise.” I also wanted to protest that I had never done such a thing, but that would have been a straight lie. “And there is actually nothing that can fester. I feel okay. I feel good. Sure, thinking back about what we did tonight still kind of makes me cringe, but in a good way. Don’t tell me you’ve never done anything that makes your skin crawl if you just think about it, but you’re still happy you did it and would probably do it again in a heartbeat.”

  He shrugged, a little mollified. “The list is endless. And I’m okay with it if you say that’s the case. I trust you to know yourself better than I do. I just needed to hear that, I guess.”

  That sounded a lot more appeasing than I’d expected, particularly after that outburst in the middle.

  “That’s all? First you get in my face, and then you just back up?”

  Another shrug. “Why not? You just told me you don’t need to talk about it and implied that I’m annoying you with my worrying, so I’ll stop. You’re damn hard to please sometimes, you know that, Erin?”

  “No, I’m not,” I groaned and hid my face in my hands as a new wave of embarrassment swept through me. How fucking long was this going to keep happening?

  “Not really,” he agreed, grinning, then pushed away from the sink and came over so he could brush away my hands and replace them with his own, cupping my cheeks. “But I don’t see where that’s a bad thing.”

  That made me snort.

  “Doesn’t it take the mystery out of everything when whatever you do makes me scream within minutes? Aren’t you going to tire of that eventually?”

  Simon considered that, long enough that I was sorely tempted to poke him somewhere it really hurt.

  “No, don’t think so. Your screams are a little like dark chocolate. I can never have enough of that.”

  Grinning, I reached up and plucked his hands from my face so I could start hacking away at the black tangles of my hair with a comb.

  “Thanks so much for not equating my orgasms to fried chicken, or something.”

  “Not just your orgasms,” he whispered into my ear from behind, then slapped my ass lightly as he turned to leave the room. I grunted but wouldn’t have minded him to linger, yet it was probably for the best that he didn’t.

  Ten minutes later, I slipped into the fifth outfit of the day—first jeans for the commute, then scrubs for work, skirt for the party, sweat pants for the way home, and now not much more stylish in yoga pants and a tank—and joined the guys in the kitchen. It was after midnight, but thankfully that had never kept anyone here from raiding the fridge, or, in a few cases, even stocking it. Jack was busy heating up some chili leftovers while Simon griped that it would have been so much faster if he’d just stuck it in the microwave rather than use a pan. I lingered at the door of the hallway, just watching them, feeling a smile creep onto my face. Domestic bliss as cheesy as I could stand it.

  Yet remaining in the background got old fast, so I pushed myself into motion and padded into the kitchen, aiming for the stove. The bananas on the counter looked really good, but with hot food only a minute or two away, I chose to abstain. Besides, just looking at them made color begin to creep back into my face, because apparently, my oversexed brain was worse than a ten-year-old’s.

  Simon stepped around me in order to get the bowls from the top shelf while I cozied up to Jack, giving him a reverse bear hug as I pushed myself against his back.

  “You’re not getting any before it’s done,” he told me succinctly, holding the wooden spoon he used for stirring out of reach.

  “Wasn’t even thinking about it,” I lied, and gave the bananas another sidelong glance.

  “Sure you weren’t,” Jack replied and freed himself from me. With my supporting pillar of muscle gone, I leaned against the counter next to him, not incidentally cozying up to the chili now. Already it smelled heavenly, and I really didn’t see the need for it to be hot enough to burn my tongue.

  “You know—“

  “No,” he interrupted me firmly and bumped into me sideways to push me a little further away from the stove. I let him, mostly because my leg muscles weren’t quite up for supporting me in a fight, and the balls of my feet still ached from wearing the stilettos for so long. Jack gave me a surprised look when I didn’t resist, but left it at that.

  “Wanna know one thing I miss about living on my own? That no one dictated what I ate, and what I didn’t,” I pointed out. Simon snorted—long since accustomed to the treatment and circumventing it by keeping a surprising amount of secret snack stashes all over the house as I’d found out last week—while Jack just shook his head at me.

  “You already eat enough crap at work. Besides, if I were to dictate what you stick in your mouth, it wouldn’t be chili.”

  That confused me until I got a glimpse at his shit-eating grin, which made me groan out loud. And my cheeks flamed up horribly, because Jack being Jack, he had to lick his lips just then, which, of course, reminded me where that agile tongue of his had been, oh, say an hour ago, and that was all that my mind needed to induce a sunburn-level of a blush.

  “Asshole,” I grunted, then pressed my hands to my face in an attempt to, I don’t know, physically push whatever this was away. Jack raised his brows in astonishment, but the chili demanded his immediate attention, leaving only Simon to grin at me from where he was leaning against the island across from me. “Please tell me this is going to stop! I can’t go to work like this!”

  “Like what?” Jack asked, but Simon ignored him, yet had the grace of toning down that grin.

  “It’ll pass,” he promised. “Does it help in the meantime that you’re looking damn cute when you get like this?”

  I glared at him, then snatched up the filled bowl Jack was holding out to me.

  “Very funny.”

  “To me it kind of is,” Simon remarked as he followed me to the couch, sitting down in his usual spot. That much hadn’t changed.

  “What am I missing?” Jack asked, leaning unnecessarily close as he was staring straight into my face
. “You do kind of look a little flushed.”

  “More like flustered,” Simon offered helpfully, then quickly leaned away as I tried to slap at him. Normally, only Jack deserved physical retaliation, but of late Simon had started to provoke me every so often, and there was absolutely no reason not to treat them as equals.

  “I’m not flustered!” I protested, wolfing down a spoonful of spicy deliciousness. “And it’s not my fault that you broke my mind, or something.” Jack’s confusion clearly increased at that and a tiny line started appearing between his brows, a first precursor of a frown. Realizing how what I’d said could lead to another round of bickering between the guys, I forced myself to put my spoon down after swallowing to quickly explain. “I’m still not quite down from that high from earlier. And now my mind’s weird. Whenever I think of anything that even remotely reminds me of what happened, I’m getting all red and blotchy in the face. It’s distracting and annoying as hell, and, you know, decent people would feel sympathy for me and try their best not to make it worse.”

  The last part I added when I saw that look in Jack’s eyes that was a clear, “Challenge accepted!” if there ever was one. A glance over to Simon revealed that he was smirking into his bowl but was at least trying to hide it.

  “Seriously?” Jack asked, then moderated his disbelieving tone when he caught my glare. “I mean, I get that it was more intense for you than us, with the blindfold and shit, but we didn’t even do that much.”

  “You did enough,” I griped back, resenting that he made me feel kind of defensive.

  “Could have done more,” Jack replied, raising his eyebrow suggestively as if that required any explanation.

  “Oh, I don’t know, I had enough,” I offered with a bright grin and concentrated on finishing off the chili. “You know, now that you mention it, I am kind of tired. I think I’m going to hit the sack.”