At the side of the room, the Spaniard stands, his timing not quite mine, but suitable. Pulling on the ropes, she rises on the strength of her shoulders, suspended—exquisitely suspended—body taut, skin stretched to its limit. Relaxed, not tense. She is a vision.
I strike quickly seeing the way she relents so beautifully. The first blows are teasing ones, almost like feathers on her skin, and she jerks lively. There is some strain on her face, but that finally eases when I back off. My crop sizzles several times, marring the skin of her thighs and an anguished cry ensues.
Her body begs. The line of it and the subtle movements are so alluring that my erection begins to pulse as I attempt to hold back my natural appetites while I work her over. She invites a sexual response. Montero watches appreciating every move.
Desperately whimpering with each strike of the crop she draws me in. We seem bound together. I’m in her head, feeling her simple thoughts. The moment when her mind silently begs for another strike, I strike. I ease off as she communicates her travail, when the pain’s too rich to bear. If this were punishment, I’d forget those things. But this is for satiation. She’s paid her dues and deserves this pleasure.
Still, I shock her several times with unexpected cuts. She wants the surprise as well. These increase her need, and she begins to reach for more, bucking hungrily inside the bondage. I can feel the weight of her in me, the expanding heaviness. The strain begins to appear on her face, and her attempts to twist away from the sensations are fraught with discomfort. At the end, I ease into her with steady strikes, until that moment of release when she rides the waves of physical joy, and there is no pain. Every strike washes through her and she is released from her enslavement. In bondage, her mind takes its euphoric flight of fantasy beyond this subterranean room and even me.
I wrap my arms around her as Montero releases the suspension and her body drops to my chest. He removes the ankle restraints while I hold her to me. As he loosens the cuffs from her arms, she falls nearly in a faint, cloaking me with her sweat and chains and female juice. We find a soft bed where she is mine inside my arms, where I stroke her cheek until she begins to smile, opening her gold/green eyes as she returns to this surreal reflection of reality.
Kirsten
I saw things as I floated in the nothing, as I felt the stretch of my arms bound skyward, my legs still tethered in chains to the floor. I am a creature of heaven and earth. Billy smiles as I open my eyes. I need to tell him everything about where I was, but not now. Now, I just want to enjoy this excellent peace.
Chapter Eleven
Kirsten
Three Years Later…
“Kirsten, you’re doing the piece with the photographer,” Joleen Dixon tells me as she rushes by me in the corridor of the magazine. “Claudia’s sick.”
“The one with Tony Flynn,” my heart jumps, loins clenching briefly as I say his name. I’m not sure, even after three years, if I’m ready to face him again. I hope he’s forgotten. But then, I haven’t forgotten him, not for all he taught me about myself and the madman, magician that I’m married to. I’ll have to tell Billy, and I wonder what kind of response he’ll give me.
I don’t have long to wait to have an answer to my wondering. Billy and I are having lunch at a downtown café because he’s leaving town before I’m off work. He’ll be gone three weeks. I’m not used to long periods of separation, and wonder how I’ll survive this one with temptation knocking at my sexually vigilant body.
“You’ll never guess who I’m interviewing this afternoon?” I say between bites of pasta.
“Who?” he looks interested.
“Tony Flynn.”
He does look interested, and his ingratiating smile puts me a little on edge.
“You didn’t plan this, did you?” I wonder aloud.
He laughs, while instantly my body is climbing through the seams of my clothes with lecherous designs toward my husband. His hair is freshly clipped, his starched shirt curtly pressed, and with his cufflinks gleaming from a ray of sunlight flashing through the window, the same alarming sexual rush shoots through me that I felt the first time my eyes were assaulted by his imperious appearance. Blythe Harris’s party seems like ancient history, but the memory remains vivid. “How would I know where Flynn’s landed?” he replies to my question.
“You know everything,” I quip.
He snickers still. “My hand’s in too many pies to be fooling with yours, my obsessive little slave. Not everything I do is to twist your mind.”
Perhaps he has me there. And I’m sure I could tell if he were lying.
“So, he sends your heart pitter pattering, does he?”
“You send my heart pitter pattering.” I take a deep breath as my lust climbs. “And right now you look so damned hot—you don’t suppose we could find somewhere to fuck this off before you leave?” I’m whispering as quietly as I can, but I can hardly hold back the force behind my desire.
“I would have thought I satisfied you last night,” he says.
Yes, I was in bondage, gagged and exquisitely tortured with everything from ice to candles wax—Billy said it was a going away present.
“Oh, you did. But the feelings are lingering and you look so, so … masterful. You know how all that goes straight inside my underwear.”
“You’re wearing underwear?”
“No, not today,” I shake my head, lest he think I’ve suddenly gone mad disobeying one of his prime directives.
“Too bad,” he almost looks disappointed. “I’d have you take them off right here.”
I gaze around the bustling café wondering how I’d follow that order. Billy wouldn’t care.
“So, about Tony? Should I seduce him?” I’m just joking, and he should know that.
“What do you want?” he asks.
“Just to get through this interview without any uproar. I have no idea how I’ll feel about him. Hopefully nothing.”
“You will get through it,” he says. “And enjoy yourself.”
“What does that mean?” I stare at his hands and think of the imposing power contained in them—the way they punish my ass, hold my face when he stares bitterly into my defiant eyes, and how they so lovingly soothe me.
“It doesn’t mean fucking him,” he answers my question.
“Good. I don’t want that much permission.”
“Let’s just say you don’t want to feel my wrath should you fall recklessly into another man’s arms while I’m away.”
“Yes, sir.”
I am in love with Billy a thousand times over. Everything he does completes me. I needed his guidance here because otherwise I’m shaking like a leaf thinking of the filmmaker I threw off in Paris—who has remained a fixture in my mind—haunting me with some curious power I can’t fathom.
***
Tony has hardly changed. I don’t know what I expected, but he has the same scoundrel’s grin I remember, the same self-effacing manner, the same sparkling eyes and broad smile. Thankfully, he hardly has the look of the man I loved, fucked, used up and pissed off. I wonder if he still thinks of me now as he did then.
We meet at the office, and I find it easier to hide behind my desk as we start the interviewing process. Even so, I can’t not give an old friend a hug when he arrives. We linger in each other’s arms long enough to remember what we meant to each other for two weeks those few summers ago.
Tony Flynn has amassed quite a body of work for himself in the last several years—a Pulitzer and several other awards that make him news outside the work he’s done. Three war zones and a lengthy stint in Africa, we will have lots to talk about.
“So, Mrs. Fitzgerald,” he makes that opening statement with a pointed tone in his voice, “he has you.”
“Has me? You mean Billy?”
“He won, didn’t he?”
This seem all too familiar. “It wasn’t about winning,” I remind him.
“And are you happy?”
“I am. I am content and fulfill
ed. We have an odd relationship that is at times as inconstant as a March wind, and at other times as peaceful as the ocean cruise where I met you.”
He smiles, knowing I wouldn’t say anything else.
“I can’t make apologies for who I am,” I add.
“I understand,” he answers. “My loss, that I couldn’t come around the way you needed me to.”
“I was and still am in love with Billy.”
“And I was just an infatuation.”
“You represent something of a trickster to me. For all the lust, the real substance between us is fleeting.” I hope he’s not offended by the way this comes out, but we seem so removed, so civil and adult.
“That I understand.”
The matter drops, and we move on to the real heart of our interview.
I find everything in Tony’s life fascinating. He laughs and smiles and reminisces in a way that tickles my crotch. It’s not fifteen minutes into our conversation before I’m thinking of him sexually again. I could so easily fall into his arms, his energy parallels mine in vibration and amplitude as though we are tuned to the same radio frequency of life… driven by a power that belongs to us alone. More than ever, I’m glad for Billy’s edict. Didn’t exactly sound like an edict, but I took it as one, and I’m sure if I were to sleep with the filmmaker, I’d feel hell before my husband was through with me, “you don’t want to feel my wrath should you recklessly fall into any man’s arms …” I repeat his words to myself… adding in memory the same sting he pricked me with when he spoke. He’d probably send me to Senor Montero—he’s threatened that move twice in the last three years when I’ve really pissed him off—one reason why I strive to keep the peace between us. Normally, it’s very easy.
Tony and I have three scheduled interviews, each one going smoothly, nothing more mentioned about our past relationship until the very end. I’m even comfortable enough with him to do our third session in a restaurant. It’s more a matter of tidying up loose ends. I have most of what I need for the article. Of course, in these more relaxed surroundings, Tony turns up the heat with old tricks: a longer than necessary hug, a hand at my lower back as we walk side by side—and one occasionally on my thigh or covering my hand.
Half way through our meal and conversation, “Tony, there can’t be anything more between us.” I speak with conviction.
“I figured you’re off limits, but being with you again, I can’t help trying. Stupid idea considering how much it hurt when you took off.” He shrugs.
That still pains me. I hate hurting anyone.
“I hope you don’t regret it?” I venture, almost waiting to feel the sting of his answer.
“Never. Never make a practice of regretting. The fact is, it helped me define myself.”
“And how’s that?”
“I am basically an adventurer. Since you, I’ve been more accommodating of women’s needs. In that I’m less selfish. I’ve even spanked a few rather playfully, a little bondage, hot wax one time—all in my own style of course.”
“You know, you’re very good at making me feel okay about leaving you, and you don’t have to do that.”
“It feels better that way. I’m not going to let anything eat at me. Maybe it’s trite, but life is too precious.”
I’m sure Tony knows that well, the places he’s been—they seem to dwarf our insignificant personal war.
“I just dust off my boots and move on.”
There, there’s the cynicism and it doesn’t become him.
“So, your next project?”
He snickers. “Looks as though I’ll be doing a documentary that’s right up your alley. I’ve been wanting this for sometime—initiated by you, of course.”
“What is that?” my heart is skipping merrily along, intrigued the way his eyes light when he’s talking about a film project.
“An expose on sexual practices.”
Oh my, déjà vu. Instantly dizzy, the familiarity of the subject sends me reeling back in time nearly four years. I feel as though my life has just completed a grand circle. It seems as though I started right at this point.
“I have interviews lined up in San Francisco, Amsterdam, among other places. Gays, lesbians, porn producers, corset makers …” he hedges for a second, “I’d love you to be one of the submissive women I interview.”
I can’t speak for an interminable thirty seconds—I actually know the length of time that lapses because I’m staring at his watch.
“You think that’s a good idea?” I ask.
“I’m not seducing you.”
“Yes, but the whole idea seduces me.”
“And is that a problem?”
“I don’t know. I’ll have to ask Billy.”
“And what do you think he’ll say?”
“I have no idea.”
“So give it a try.”
He’s throwing out a challenge I can’t walk from—like Holly, like Billy, like my desires again rising up to shake me awake. Have my husband and I become too complacent that I’m intrigued by this so? I’ve already determined that Tony is not the dominant type for me…
“I’ll ask.”
***
It takes me two days after Billy returns from England to broach the subject of Tony’s documentary. It’s been nearly a week since he made the proposal, and the thought of it has gotten no easier in my mind. Even when Billy debriefs me about the interview, I can’t mention the topic. This is truly weird, leaving me to wonder what I’m so afraid of.
Billy came home raw around the edges, one of those horrendous days that made him shrill and distant. One way for me to make up that distance is to simply wait things out, but with the topic of Tony burning hotly on my tongue, I opt for the other sure-fired means to get his attention—deliberate disobedience. It only took something very small…
The reply is instantaneous when I refuse to get up from my reading chair and bring him a beer—he’d scowled all through dinner, and I am too agitated to be at all gracious.
“What did you say?” he barks when my face remains hidden inside my book.
“I said, how about waiting until I’m done with this chapter?” I repeat my refusal.
Hearing it the second time sounds no better than the first, and he says calmly, “Go to the bedroom.”
I glare at him. He must know I have something bothering me. I know I could appease him without going through the theatrics; but it seems the punishment is preordained and I can’t stop myself from seeing it through.
“Or perhaps, you would you like to tell me what has you pissed?” he give me the alternative.
“No,” I reply.
“In the bedroom.” He points a finger that way and my body is on fire, already feeling my ass burning.
When I don’t move, he turns openly furious, assaulting me—a move that’s rarely necessary—voice commands are imperatives and should never be violated.
“Do you want to spend one more second resisting me?” he blares.
I feel it well up in me… that beautiful dread that I only rarely provoke. I can’t take the results often, but for some reason, the agitation I feel over Tony’s request brings me to this exhilarating point.
Slowly rising, I can’t shut up. “You should know what I need. You always say you do,” I sassily retort.
When he slaps my face the battle is on. I make him work to win this one. As he hauls me into the bedroom, I struggle against his powerful hands, blaring, “you fucking bastard… get your hands off me!” No, he doesn’t listen. I fight him, jerking against physical strength that he answers with the force of steel. Trying to pry his hands off, I fail, this is one fight I cannot win. There’s no way I can overpower my determined husband. Each struggling attempt makes him more fixed and me more furious.
When he successfully has me handcuffed, I know I’m almost beaten, though I refuse to give up. Flinging me over the bed, my crotch sits atop the bedrail as he secures my cuffed hands to the headboard. With my ass high and struggling lik
e a naughty child, he ties my legs apart, each one to a bedpost. I can hardly move at all.
Even now, I can’t stop. “You fuckin’ ass,” I mouth off, only to see him wad a silky scarf in his hand and stuff it in my mouth. Watching him now, my body takes all this in as desire, though I know I have a good deal to be afraid of before there’s any erotic outcome to this disaster. From the corner of my eye, I see him roll his sleeves above the elbow, a sure sign of his plans. He’s seething, but doesn’t say a word, looking dangerously beautiful, dominance reeking from his will, his fury, and the intention of his labor.
When the wooden paddle appears in his hand, I shriek silently. And before he even says a word, he lays the thing against my rear a good two dozen times. When he pauses, my ass is hot and I’m thankful for the breather.
“You will not behave like this again, Kirsten Cates Fitzgerald”—he even addresses me as he would a naughty child, and I find that stinging as much as the paddle. “You have some problem, we discuss it like adults—and you never, never fight me!”
He lays into me again, this time more hotly. And though I try to absorb the shock of the strikes, after the first dozen I go deranged. I think he’ll never stop and I my resistance does not end.
When Billy finally puts the paddle down, the burn on my ass travels everywhere on my skin in seconds. I’m so damned aroused, I’m almost in tears. I know there’ll be no erotic conclusion to this one, and just as I expect, the punishment isn’t over. When I open my eyes, I see he only stopped paddling my behind because he plans to finish with the cane.
This, I take with the same desperate fight I took the paddle. There are twelve cuts he counts aloud for me as each one sears my red-hot ass with a pain that defies description. I protest as vehemently as I can with the gag in my mouth, able only to emit a strange muffled cry. When he stops at twelve I can hardly believe I’ve been so lucky.
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