After he had come, the warmth behind him began to ebb. The air seemed chilly as her breasts and stomach lifted from his back. She eased away from his buttocks, her pelvis leaving a sticky film. And then she withdrew the hardness in a slick maneuver that had him reeling between pleasure and pain. Rolling him on to his back, she lay on top giggling.
“Like that?”
“Yeah, but—”
“No buts. Well, just yours and mine. Those are the only butts in this.”
There were a thousand things he wanted to say, but he was not given to speeches and certainly not spontaneous ones. He knew the words would come to him later, perhaps much later, and that he would torment himself with what he should have told her. Perhaps that was part of it, the expectation of a lifetime of replays flitting through his daydreams.
* * * *
Once again she surprised him, this time by what she said, or rather whispered.
“How do you feel about restraints?”
Had he heard right? As usual, she sensed his confusion.
“Restraints,” she repeated. She was staring into his eyes, and the challenge made him quiver. “You know, handcuffs and ropes.”
She began to laugh in that conspiratorial gurgle of hers that made resistance seem so much weaker than going along with whatever she wanted. “And if you’re lucky,” she added, “masks and who knows what else?”
“I never know what to expect from you,” he said, with a smirk to disguise the edge in his voice.
“That’s the way I like it,” she replied.
What she hadn’t told him was that they would not be alone. Once his wrists and ankles were secured to her bedposts, there was little he could do about it, of course. He lay on his stomach, his will subdued and his ego as vulnerable as his naked body. She placed the blindfold over his eyes, and cradled his head against her thigh while she adjusted the fit. Then there was the click of buttons as she selected an ambient soundtrack, and a stereophonic suite of whispers and giggles as unseen feet shuffled around the perimeter of the room.
“What do you think?” she asked, and he heard murmurs of approval in a variety of male and female pitches.
“This is one place where ‘don’t touch’ doesn’t apply.” She laughed as she said it. And then, as if to pacify, she kissed him on the neck, so lightly it tickled.
The yelp that followed was so sudden and unanticipated he thought for a split second it came from someone else, or that he was possessed and his voice usurped. It wasn’t so much that he was hurt, just caught off guard. The sting radiated through his flesh from the slap across his buttocks, and then a hand burnished the tense, heated muscles. The touch was gentle and assured.
“Easy, baby. Let the sensations free you.” Miranda’s voice came from near the headboard. He tried to calculate how far that was from the hand on his buttocks. Too far, he concluded, to be connected.
In his isolation, her bedroom lost its familiarity. He wondered about the voices he heard and the skin that rubbed and stroked his own. Who was Miranda sharing him with? How many and what were they like? And what would they do to him next? He thought of the drawer she had shown him, with the collection she called her “tools of the trade,” and the chest where she kept the larger items like manacles and harnesses. Sure enough, he heard the brisk clatter of a lock and the groan of hinges, and flinched as the scent of leather mingled with the perfume of unseen spectators.
“Now what shall we play with today?” he heard her ask. A round of giggles and grunts was the response.
Clearing his throat, he was about to introduce a note of caution. For there was a gathering tension in this scenario almost to the point of alarm. Being in a state of ocular deprivation in front of an audience seemed to make his skin supersensitive. He swore he could feel breath on the small of his back.
Loss of dignity was a factor. What could they be thinking of this manacled body in their midst? Furthermore, the usual cast of relatives and colleagues and people he respected entered his mind. What would they think of him? Not that they’d ever know. Would they? Suppose though, just suppose, someone here talked about it to someone else. Six degrees of separation is all there is, so they say. Word spreads.
And then the image of Miranda came to him. Dazzling in her nakedness as always. Breasts and buttocks shapely and tanned. That predatory sparkle in her eyes. He pictured her hovering over him, those manicured nails dancing the length of some implement or other.
For a moment he felt caught between bad options. Was it better to say something and sound stupid or keep quiet and feel stupid? Before he could decide, he felt a hand, unmistakably female in its warmth and delicacy, glide across his shoulder and throat. The next he knew there was a smooth globe between his teeth and a strap secured around his cheeks. He tried to speak, but there was just a rumble from his larynx.
“No need to say anything, baby,” Miranda said with a snigger echoed by the chorus around him.
He anticipated force. The sting of something thin and pliable across his back, or a cylindrical nudge of the prostate. A touch as light as a feather didn’t occur to him. At first it was almost indiscernible. Fingers brushed against the sole of one foot, as if in passing. Then against the other foot, lingering this time. They were women’s nails, of that he was sure. Long and playful, they sought out the tenderest skin in the arch of the foot. Were they Miranda’s? The uncertainty was a torment, although nothing of the magnitude of the sensation itself. Never before had he suspected such fires existed. It was as if a needle had been inserted, and ignited an inferno in another part of his body entirely. If the cuffs around his ankles and wrists hadn’t been so strong, he would surely have writhed onto the floor.
Was it then that he first heard Miranda talk of Julian? Looking back, he wondered whether the name had surfaced in the darkness of that room. There had been so much to absorb, pinned as he had been on the bed. A whispered name could easily have been forgotten, or suppressed.
When she released him from his bonds and removed the blindfold, there was no one else present. It was almost as if he’d made them up, that gathering of voyeurs and fetishists. In fact, she teased him about it as they lay together that night.
“You wish,” she’d said with a dismissive laugh. On a whim she bent over her music collection by the bedside, the bare oval of her sex taunting him. Then she smiled as he recognized a favorite golden oldie.
“Dear Mr. Fantasy,” she lip synced, and then a few measures later: “You are the one who can make us all laugh…”
But was he the one? Or rather, was he still? Up to that point he had assumed so. She’d made him feel that way. Okay, so she’d played games with him, perhaps gone a bit far tying him up in front of her friends like that. But it was still him at the center of everything. At the center of her attention, that was.
And then that name began to crop up again. She couldn’t meet him that evening because there was something Julian wanted her to do. He had only the vaguest notion of who Julian might be. Couldn’t recall ever seeing him. Not sure how he fitted into her life at all. Only conscious of something inscrutable about the way she mentioned the name in passing. As if it wasn’t important.
“What’s he want now?” he asked, trying not to sound as if he was interfering with her schedule.
“Oh, something to do with work,” she told him as they parted.
“And it can’t wait until the morning?” he wanted to say, but of course he didn’t.
Julian’s name came up again in a phone conversation she was having with one of her girlfriends. There was a titter, and then a string of curt responses of the kind that people give when their phone calls are being overheard. A cryptic “yes” and “for sure” that made his heart race and nerves quiver.
His rendezvous with Miranda became less frequent. Things she had to do, she said in a harried tone. When they were together, her evasiveness startled him. It wasn’t the Miranda he thought he knew. She had been so engaged in all they said and did. No matter h
ow slight the sensation or mundane the comment, her pointed stares had always made it seem as if it was, in that moment, all that mattered. Now it was as if her mind, maybe her heart too, was elsewhere. Was she growing bored with him?
He was bewildered, and then in stages grew more resentful and brooding. There were the usual comparisons made on occasions like this. What did Julian have that he didn’t? Some password to her heart? Some occult touch to her G-spot that turned it into a double-G?
When they did meet, she seemed distracted and relieved to cut short their shared time. No longer did her palm sweep across his cheek and her eyes plumb his own. She busied herself with grooming, pouting as she stared into a compact mirror and filing unseen blemishes from her nails. Excuses became more frequent. He’d suggest a quiet evening together or a lunch, but there were already things she had to do. It was driving him crazy.
In spite of himself, his mind surfed images that set him on edge. It was relentless, like a TV grafted above a dental chair. He pictured her pursing her lips as Julian clutched her. He wondered how those perfect nails looked when they glided over Julian’s washboard stomach. It wasn’t even as if Julian’s name came up often. It didn’t have to.
Where once he would have fondled her without hesitation, he became conscious of propriety. Did she want an arm around her shoulder or a kiss on the cheek? If so, was it his arm and his lips she desired? He retreated from intimacy, and waited for permission to touch, feeling that same inhibition he had felt as a boy in museums. Worst of all, she seemed oblivious to these changes. Did she not realize what she was putting him through?
There was the temptation to pull her into an embrace and just tell her. But accepted wisdom suggested that wouldn’t be a good idea. It would show weakness, he decided, and he’d risk her pity or, the unthinkable, her contempt. On the other hand, it couldn’t go on like this. He couldn’t stand it.
He looked for omens in everything. What she wore or said became a crucial concern. Did that neckline plunge to catch Julian’s eye? When she said she’d had a good day, what unspoken pleasures were going through her mind? The slightest gesture, such as her hand brushing aside a curl, produced an agony of heat and palpitations. The eyeshadow with its lustrous semaphore. The spangled lip gloss made for contact and yet defying his approach. His throat would grow parched and he’d stammer or snort in an effort to calm himself. She had to know what she was doing to him, he was convinced.
When he was apart from her, which was most of the time now, he told himself he had to end it. If he was to stay sane, he must put her out of his life. But then what would life be? He thought about being without her. Not that he saw much of her anyway. But being without even the possibility of her, even a phone call – it was too much. He couldn’t do it. He’d disintegrate, self-destruct until he was fit only for a straitjacket.
In exasperation he obsessed about her body, the way it looked, and the way it felt. The way she had imposed each sensation upon him until he was mesmerized by skin smooth as feathers, the rubbery nudge of her nipples on his torso, maverick tresses tickling his neck, her scent a bewitching bouquet.
In retrospect, her knowledge of ecstasy seemed encyclopedic. She had measured his sighs on a sort of Richter scale and awakened latent appetites hitherto hidden from him. Truly she had possessed him, and—once he had accepted that—he had delighted in it.
For hours at a time, this was as far as his mind could range. Then gradually his desires became more desperate. Somehow he had to recapture what they had shared. Passion melted his doubts as he imagined them together again. This time he wouldn’t be so passive in his lovemaking. He just had to make it happen.
He saw her leaving work one evening, quite by chance really. At least, he wasn’t stalking exactly. Just happened to be in the neighborhood. Most people had already left for the day. She looked so slick and resolute in her business suit, although he did notice the top buttons on her blouse were undone, as if she’d been unwinding after a stressful meeting. Perhaps Julian was still in there, adjusting his tie or making a note to call a florist in the morning. The creep.
Back at home he sat by the phone for a few minutes and then muttered, “What the hell!”
She knew his voice of course, as soon as she answered. What caught him off guard, though, was how friendly she sounded. There was a reverb to her voice that wasn’t at all what he expected from the woman he’d watched hurrying out of the office earlier. They began with impersonal things, like the weather and TV, and then out of the blue she got more personal.
“Why don’t you come round?” she asked, not even allowing for the possibility that he had a schedule of his own.
“What, now?”
“Well, that is unless…”
“Now is fine,” he said, remembering his vow to be more assertive. He tried to sound firm and yet indifferent, a combination he felt sure he could master with practice. “I’ll be there in a while.”
He put down the phone without waiting for a reply, scared he might reveal his racing heart.
At the door to her apartment, he called out “Hi, it’s me,” and sounding offhand, she answered, “Come in.” Inside, the lights were low and she wasn’t to be seen. She’d be at the computer, he concluded, catching up on paperwork. All of a sudden, the promise slipped from his evening. As so often recently, she’d be busy. There’d be halfhearted dialogue and lukewarm coffee, and then she’d be tired and he’d have to leave, wracked by the frustration of being close, but so disconnected.
As he walked toward the small room she used as a home office, it irritated him to think about it. He felt wound up, muscles stiffened. The old visions of being naked with her flashed into his mind. But there seemed no point. He couldn’t make her want him.
She glanced around with a passing smile as he walked up behind her.
“See what I have to get through?” she said, her focus on a screen packed with data. He bit his lip as he lusted for the fingertips skipping so daintily across the keyboard. He was near enough to brush against blond curls as he pretended to look closer at the screen. Her black satin chemise displayed cleavage and gym-conditioned thighs. Why was she dressed so scantily? Was she trying to tantalize? Or was he incidental to her bedtime informality? Catching him off guard, she leaned back, her head pushing against his pelvis.
“Oh, my aching neck,” she said.
It was the moment, it dawned on him, to display the boldness of his new resolution.
“Let me rub it for you,” he said. Giving her no chance to consider his offer, he began to push his fingertips against the tension in her shoulders. Then he gripped around the sides of her neck, tempering the urge to press her down in submission as in his dreams. The chemise was slipping lower on her breasts, and she tried to straighten and turn.
“That’s better. Thank you,” she said in a businesslike tone. He refused to be rebuffed.
She stood with her back still to him, but stayed motionless when his curled fingers slid down her forearms and he pressed his pelvis gently against her buttocks.
“I’m starting to feel tired,” she said. Was that a hint, he wondered? Next she’d show him the door. If he didn’t act decisively. For a moment he stayed put, weighing her words and actions and gauging his prospects. Then his hands surged forward until he could feel her nipples through the black satin. At the same time, he began to plant a row of kisses across her collarbone. She gasped and made an attempt to wriggle free. But it wasn’t much of an attempt. Nor was there any desperation in her struggle as he shunted them both towards her bed.
For a few seconds the arsenal of restraints and implements in the room distracted him from her protests.
“What are you going to do with me?” she asked with a calmness that was the antithesis of his own state. He ignored the question, and with a firm grip bent her forward on the bed.
Her arms flailed briefly, until he snapped the cuffs around her wrists. And then, tucking her knees under her stomach, he lifted the chemise away from her
behind and contemplated the sheen on those smooth curves that had made him suffer so.
Miranda stayed still, her arms stretched across the bed and her torso arched.
“Well?” she murmured. “What are you waiting for?”
Just to be sure of her cooperation, he picked up a chain and ran the delicate filigree across her back so that it connected with leather cuffs he placed around her ankles and throat. He stroked her buttocks, and then gave each a light slap. He did it again, this time eliciting a muffled groan. Several more times he struck, each time with slightly more force. Then he stepped back to view the glow he had created.
Her crouch hardly stirred. Her breath rippled across a pillow in measured gasps, and she seemed to have withdrawn into a trance. From this, he drew confidence. On the spur of the moment, his attention wandered to the drawer by the bedside. It had always been Miranda who decided when and how to use its contents. Now, surely, it was his turn.
He opened the drawer and studied clamps and whips. Perhaps later, he decided, when he grew surer in his control of the situation. For the moment, he looked for something assertive and yet relatively benign. He settled on a wand shaped like a well-contoured penis.
At first he used it to caress. Lubricant dripped onto the moist ridges between her legs as the tip slid over her skin. The implement impressed him. The smooth surface felt delicate, and yet the shape was so uncompromisingly firm. A synthesis of opposites. She flinched as it burrowed between her labia and moaned when the batteries gave it life.
It was time for a more direct intrusion. His own hardness demanded it. In fact, it banished all other considerations. He withdrew the artificial device and prepared to replace it. Miranda was still motionless, as if the gap between her buttocks were an offering. He paused to enjoy the experience, one he wasn’t sure would ever return. Miranda’s rear view was as near perfect as a man could desire. He parted her buttocks with his hands in admiration. Apart from the labyrinthine folds of her vulva and the rosy crater of her anus, her skin was smooth and taut. His fingers played in the soft, moist crevice as he considered how to make the most of this opportunity.
Wicked Pleasures: Stories of Kinky Love Page 3