How can I submit to him in a cheap bar, let him order me naked in an alley and not tremble with fear… but I’m too afraid to answer my own question. If I stopped to listen to myself I’m sure I’d hear that I’ve gone crazy, one step shy of deranged. I drive home, my home in Isaac’s apartment, with my heart furious for having danced this tango with an unknown man who won’t even share his name with me. Heart still thumping with an anxious dirge, when the apartment door finally closes behind me, I try one sigh of relief. I try to laugh as well. Perhaps this fear is as much madness as anything real, though it seems to have taken any peace of mind I might have found on my night away.
Trying for some sanity, I flip on the TV, and then fix a plate of nachos in the kitchen. Thumbing through the channels for something to take my mind off my madness, I find the panic ebbing like the tide. It returns in small surges, but then seems to fall away as long as I keep the stranger’s face from my mind.
Oddly, it’s ten o’clock before I go the bedroom. I haven’t even unpacked my clothes. Maybe they remind of the panic when I left the B&B, or maybe it’s the note inside my suitcase crumpled with my crumpled clothes.
Finally having the peace of mind to tackle the task, I make my way to the guest room at the back of Isaac’s apartment. He’d told me to use his king-size bed, but there were those memories of him that I didn’t need. I’ve been happy to sleep in the daybed down the hall where the morning light hits the windows, and it’s shady in the afternoon. There’s a balcony just outside French doors that leads to the rooftop patio and what makes this apartment so especially appealing.
Turning on the light, I’m about to throw my satchel on the bed when I spot something unfamiliar lying there. I cringe. Fear returns like an old lover and grabs me with unwanted hands. I can’t begin to move or fathom what’s happened. A hundred scenarios pass through my mind. Is Isaac home? Has he planned this silly stunt to scare me? Has one of his old girlfriends with a key decided to lodge with me and perform kinky rites in my bedroom? Or is there something more sinister going on—a stranger lurking in the shadows?
I can’t take my eyes off the object on the bed. A sleek black leather riding crop lies where I lie at night, where I’d nap in the afternoon, or masturbate in the morning. Looking like a wily snake I think it’s going to slither on its own, but it’s as immobile as I am. Backing away, as though I see a ghost hovering over the implement, I sniff the room for his aroma, swearing now that I’ve sensed his presence since I returned. He’s been in the apartment, inside my room, leaving traces of himself, telling me he owns more of me than I’ve ever consented to give him. Will he come in the night? Rape me without warning? Will I wake to find myself tied to this bed, strung up for a battle with this riding crop?
Finally taking a bold stride across the room, I test the outside door and find it locked just as it had been before I left. There are no marks of forced entry. How could he have gotten past the dead bolts? Does he have a key? My fear increases with each dire thought that pours into my head. And still, how that sleek leather taunts me—as if it’s reaching out for my hand. Inching closer, I’m finally standing right over the menacing implement, so near, all I have to do is reach out and pick it up.
This belongs to the stranger, I conclude. Not new, but used. I can that see by the wear on the woven handle and how it’s been molded by the warmth of his fingers, conforming to the palm of his large hand. I can’t stop what’s happening in my body, the way sensations of desire are bursting loose, the way our conversation in the restaurant comes back to me—about his binding me. I imagine him using this leather nightmare against my back, or perhaps it is my pussy that he wants to flail with the cut ends of this piece.
I pick it up and it feels hot to touch. My pussy’s frantic, hoping I’ll use my hand to get off, or even the butt end of this inside my cunt. I can’t. I can’t let it lure me into that kind of world. I won’t. I won’t relent to him. I won’t let him have me again. I won’t let him bind me, abuse me or bend me to his will. I think that with my whole being, sure that I’ll throw off his next overture. He’s making me immune to him with these dangerous intrusions, and I believe that I’m free of him—all except the part that’s wedded to the power of his voice and anxiously awaits his next words.
Afraid of what the riding crop is doing to me, I let it fall from my fingers and watch it bounce lightly on the bed and finally settle. I’ll sleep in Isaac’s room tonight, there’s sure to be less of the stranger inside those walls.
g
I fall asleep quickly in Isaac’s bed, and am too exhausted to let my fears into my dreams. In the morning, I decide it was foolish to fear of the riding crop, or even be unnerved by the stranger’s access to my life. I’ll simply take control and kick him out. I’ll let the bastard have a piece of mind for having presumed so much about me. I have the power to choose and I’ll decide if I’ll submit. With that kind of resolve, I toss the riding crop into the back of my closet and take up residence in my room where I belong. When I sleep easily another night, I figure I’ve won a great battle.
After three days with my resolve firm I think I’ve cast the man out of my life for good. I’m so busy at the university with classes and conferences that I have many hours when I’m not directly thinking of his next appearance in my life. I know he’ll surface again, he wouldn’t have left these signs of himself otherwise. But I’ll have a different answer for him the next time he finds me. Woe to him who stalks me, or even thinks of shattering my peace with intimate invasions. He can have me on the street, but not where I live. This place will be safe, I vow. And to implement my determination, I change the locks on the apartment doors.
It’s dark when I move through the village outside the campus, but there are, as always, dozens of students milling about, going from coffee house, to tavern, to hole-in-the-wall theatre. I stop and talk to two students I recognize from my classes and their cheerful tone infects me, so I’m smiling happily.
Thinking I’ll go home and answer e-mail, even call Robby at ten as I promised, I’m looking forward to the evening with little to do. By nine o’clock when the phone rings, I’m at the computer expounding to a friend through my keyboard.
“Hello,” I answer. Holding the receiver between my cheek and my shoulders, my fingers continue to fly across the keys with my last thought.
“You have my crop?” I hear his voice, the low timbre of its earthy quality vibrates through me. For an instant my body reacts to the sound, then I stop the feelings cold.
“Yes, and you should take it back,” I tell him forthrightly. “You won’t be using it, at least not on me.” I don’t know how many times my inner voice practiced this line and it still comes out stilted.
“Are you wearing clothes?” he asks.
“I’m wearing my robe … but that’s not important,” I shoot back.
“Then put on your coat without your robe, your black heels will do, and I’ll meet you on the street. Bring the crop.”
“I will not!” I say, about to slam the phone in his ear.
“Be sure to bring the crop,” he replies calmly.
“You’re not hearing me,” I’m sounding shrill.
“But you’re listening to me,” he replies as if nothing I’ve said, not one determined feeling makes any difference to him.
“You want the crop back, you can have it. I’ll meet you in the lobby.”
“It’s cold, you’ll need your coat.”
“Thank you, but I’ll put on my clothes,” I say. Even as I speak I can feel my words begin to fail, my resolve a hairsbreadth from crumbling altogether.
“Just your coat is all that’s necessary, ” he tells me.
“Naked underneath?” I ask. I’m shivering as the picture of myself clothed only in coat and heels barrels through my imagination. I’m relenting to the steadfast resonance of his simple words, turning meek.
“Where you’re going you won’t need clothes,” he explains.
“But I can’t,” I sh
ake my head only to myself, “no, I won’t go with you!” Still, my voice falters.
“You have three minutes,” he says, and the phone clinks off, with the long monotonous sound of the dial tone replacing his voice.
The dead silence of the room closes around me. He has me seduced just as he had before, with little effort. I feel no panic, no intense fear, and none of the resolve I’d used for days to barricade me from this feeling of surrender. It all comes back. I sigh quietly, realizing that my desire for the stranger has never left me.
I hear him in my head as I move to the closet and remove my robe. I’m naked underneath. Pulling out my red high heels—purposely not the black ones—I oddly think of this moment as though I’m dressing up for a date. I even run a comb through my hair and wonder if my make-up hasn’t worn away. But then there are just two minutes left. With the crop in hand—pulled from the messy back of the closet—I head for the front door stopping by the hall-tree to grab my coat.
In the elevator headed for the lobby I feel as if I’ve had all my will stunned out of me. I’m hardly thinking as my body has its way, as I should have known it would.
When I see him, he’s on the street wearing an Army jacket, his shoulders looking broad. His hands are in the pockets of his jeans and I can see the steam of his breath in the air. The night is cold. I only stare for a few seconds before the stranger turns sensing my eyes at his back. Then opening the broad door for me, I move into an angry night of wind and honking cars and the stranger’s blank expression.
He turns me into his side, his arm around my back to guide me as he has before, like a gentleman lover. I must look strange to anyone on the street, with a riding crop in one hand and naked legs. Even with a thick wool coat, it’s hardly enough protection from the dissonant elements of this autumn night.
“You’ll be warmed soon,” the stranger whispers, reading my mind once again.
I’m glued to his side, as though he’s protecting me, and not the dangerous man I fear. We’re three blocks down in a direction I hardly ever go, so I’m not familiar with the neighborhood. Suddenly darting down a street-side staircase, we’re at the basement door of an abandoned building. The stairwell is littered with debris and beyond the padlocked door I can see a clutter of old furniture and castoff machines. I suspect this was a small factory that’s been deserted for years. Vines have crawled around the door so half of it’s covered with a delicate lace that looks like black in the night.
I guess it’s no surprise to me that the stranger has a key to the rusty lock, and when he tries it, the hasp gives way without a struggle. Just like me.
I’m led inside, my guide pushing boxes and leftovers out of our way. Led by the hand through this wreckage, we end up in an open space with a chain link fence that separates this half of the room from the basement on the other side. Though this underground space is large, the close proximity of boxes and refuse contain us in an intimate niche with just enough space for us to maneuver. I imagine the stranger has planned it this way.
He stops and I’m in front of him. Fearful, I shudder. Anxious, I gaze down not wanting to look into the vast caverns of his empty eyes.
“The crop,” he says. I lift the implement for him to take, having almost forgotten that I’ve brought it with me. Delivering it to him seems the last step in my surrender. “Now, take off your coat.”
It’s hardly warmer in here than on the windy street. With my coat my only cover against the drafts of air, I shiver before I think of undoing the buttons. Staring up at him, I consider all the resolve I’ve lived with for three days and find none of it returning in face of his command. As one at a time the buttons are slipped through their broad holes, I realize that I have no will of my own any more.
My body quakes with chills as the cold air hits my naked skin. Despite the fear of freezing, I shake the black wool from my shoulders. When it drops to the cement, the stranger bends down and takes it in his hand to throw in a corner out of the way.
“You have a fear of being violated,” he begins to speak. “You think I’ve stalked you. You trembled when you read my note at the hotel, and panicked even more when you saw the crop lying on your bed. I entered your borrowed apartment without your knowing how I got there. No locks were broken, no window smashed. Perhaps I crawled in through heating ducts, or have the ability to materialize where I choose, in whatever form I desire.” He moves effortlessly before me as he delivers his soliloquy, speaking with the intensity of a viper hissing, staring at me with eyes that inspect me like I’m the target of an inquisition. “You resolved to end these rendezvous with me, that I was dangerous and you’d gone mad. And with a modicum of natural spit and fire, you were sure that you’d conquer me, that you’d have a ready retort for my next command.” He shakes his head as his amusement appears on his lips and takes over his vacant eyes. “But look at you now… look at what you’ve become? Shivering, there naked in your red high heels.” He gazes at them with a air of disapproval. “Is this your act of rebellion,” he wonders, “putting on the red ones when I asked for black?”
I don’t answer him.
The stranger mocks my very soul. He’s summed up three days in my life with such ease, I realize how obvious I am to him. Even when he’s a mystery to me, and I still have no clue to his real life, I’ve become his open book. With his deft hand he’s become the author of the pages. With pen in hand, he has the ink to splash on my body if he chooses, or he may use a neat scrawl. Another sentence has just begun.
I smell his aroma again. It wipes out the stench of the basement, just as with his perfume, he wiped out all the familiar smells of Isaac’s apartment. He’s earthy but very vital, not dead the way these walls and empty spaces feel. He’s close, so his breath is on me. As I breathe, I warm, wondering if he’s turned on the building’s furnace. I hear no clanking pipes or feel hot air blowing. There’s just his silence and mine, and the sound of him moving in to kiss my neck. I stand stark still, as though he ordered me not to touch him. I know he’d hate that. I suppose in this way my instincts for him are as keen as his are for me. The nibble at my neck is like a fly tickling me there. I cock my head and smile as his face burrows into the cranny where my head and shoulders meet.
I hear myself gasp. A flow of mirth and sweetness rouses me. With one hand he caresses my skin gently, moving along my thigh, around behind me, to my ass, between my legs with a single finger darting along the smoothness. His gentleness clouds my perception of the terror he holds in his other hand.
The crop that dangles there seems as tender as his hand when the leather glides along my body. I jerk as he presses the thin staff between my labia. They naturally part, slick with juice as he works the piece between them to the stiff female head at the center. My hips wiggle as though they could take control of the rising pleasure. But as soon as I find the inherent rhythm of my body and his, he takes the crop away and starts again with my toes. Slowly drawing the split end up my calf, he begins to back away. The scent of him diminishes only slightly, but as he withdraws I miss the beat of his heart so close to mine.
I stand naked for him in my red high heels as he stalks my quivering form. Moving boldly around me, he taunts me with the tip of the crop. As it finds a breast, he pushes it into the skin bending back the flexible leather end. Then drawing it up fast, I see him come down with it rapidly, kissing my skin with an angry bite that leaves its mark. My cunt tightens. As another bite of his crop hits my other breast, the sensation turns to pain. Three, four, a half dozen strikes, I’m falling off my shoes, hardly able to remain immobile. I count this as obedience he demands of me, even though he hasn’t ordered me not to move. Then, as he begins to rap the ends at will on my thighs and breast and undulating stomach, I’m dancing for him—rising on tiptoe, squirming to take the next and avoid it at the same time. Each strike makes my pussy spasm. My cunt begins to juice. And then, I cry for him to stop but he only smirks hearing my plea.
“You want me to end this, Ellen Laurey?” he m
ocks me sneering.
“Oh, but …” I start, but there are no words behind my protest.
He’s behind me, prodding my ass with the crop.
“Move,” he orders.
There’s no where to go, just forward. Just two steps and I’m at the chain link fence. Though I stop short of the metal, he prods me more, and I move. Pressing myself against the fence, he continues urging me forward as though he intends me to blend with this unbending wall of steel, or maybe walk right through.
When he stops poking my side with the crop, the pulse between my thighs is so great, I’m tempted to fuck this rough-linked barricade. I think I’m pleading for him to continue just by the action of my wriggling ass. It must look lewd, stuck out and gyrating the way it does. But the feelings have me in their hold. My cunt’s a happy whore right now.
“Spread your legs,” he orders me in a whispering voice and I obey him. “Your arms over your head, Ellen Laurey, and move on that metal like you’re making love.” His purr is like that of lion about to rip at its meek prey.
I reach wide and clutch a triangle of wires in each hand, holding them tightly. Then writhing against this lover I think the stranger wants me to cum.
Behind me with his hand at my neck, he presses my cheek into the fencing. With his teeth at my ear, he nibbles as he speaks to me. “You like this hell, slut, that’s why you can’t say no,” he utters it like an accusation, but yet, his voice is so tender I think he’s saying, “I love you.”
He wraps a leather strap around my neck and threads it through the fence and back again, leaving my face immobilized. Moving to my feet, he jerks each wide and then ties them as he did my neck. He repeats the act with my wide stretched hands, and then, as though I might break free of all this, he rivets me in place with a wide strap at my back that loops around in front and bolts to the chains.
Returning to my ear he murmurs, “Such beauty, Ellen Laurey. And so much peace. How you bloom in confinement, and how perfect your ass will look when it’s thoroughly beaten.”
Rendezvous With A Stranger Page 5