“Dinner can wait,” he says, as he reaches around me with a towel and wipes my wet fingers until they’re dry. I feel the handcuffs secure my hands in front of me, their tightening grasp of my flesh secure enough to keep them fixed. I can hardly move them inside the confines of the steel. Remembering what I wore today, he reaches around and unzips the zipper of my sweater. I feel a waft of air against my skin and my nipples harden poking though the lace of my bra. He pushes me silently into the living room where he extinguishes the light.
Bathed in the ghostly glow of the streetlamp, with the masks looking as though they’ll fly off the walls into my face, with my heart beating so fast I think it’s racing on beyond me, I find him raising my hands above me. A hook from the ceiling comes down to hold my cuffed hands. Immobile and stretched, I wonder how he’ll use me, but that becomes an even greater mystery when a blindfold slips over my eyes.
While my sweater hangs open, he cuts away my bra leaving my bared breasts to feel the tease of the air. Undoing my pants, he strips everything away below my waist. When he walks away, I am more alone than ever, afraid that his next move will come to me out of the darkness and bring me pain. I’d welcome pain now, but it’s the impending first strike that frightens me most.
Out of the silence, I begin to hear the noise of him at the fireplace, fixing the fire I was too afraid to light myself. Hearing the wood crackle as it’s lit, the warmth soon follows, but it doesn’t take away my fear. I only imagine how my skin gleams by the light of the fire’s leaping flames. I move unconsciously to the beat of some rhythm, like this is someone’s bonfire I’m bound before, not the genteel fire at some gentleman’s hearth. I suppose I think of the stranger more as a savage than a gentleman, even though he seems to thrive in a gentleman’s surroundings.
The first touch to my skin is that of something as savage as my imagination conjures. At first, its thin form makes me believe he holds a cane to my skin, prodding it along my sex-flushed pores, teasing me with the threat of that first explosive slash to a thigh or breast. I wait impatiently, my blinded eyes peering upward toward the heavens as if penitent. I wonder why he punishes me. Is this just for sport, or is there some psychic reason for my present captivity? I shudder with each sensation he draws from my expectant skin. My eager loins betray me, gyrating as though they beg for a harsher touch.
The more he runs his implement over my swaying body, the more I become aware that this is not something as refined as a polished cane, or even a smooth bamboo rod. The end of it tickles my nose and I smell the raw freshness of trees. The aroma of it takes me from a city living room into a woods with verdant greens and the smell of darkness—into a forest where a hundred more saplings like this tender birch wait for a man to snatch them.
“Will you beat me?” I gasp thoughtlessly.
“You should worry that I will,” he says, “not beg for it.”
But I do beg for it. I hate this waiting game.
The froth between my thighs grows thick and it’s there he focuses this cutting shoot, pressing it into my labia, running it along the pathway between them where he draws it meanly against my throbbing clitoris. I ask for more with each movement of my hips, each appeal I make with my ready ass and cunt. When at last he begins, he doesn’t shock me with a painful bite, but taps my pubis, first lightly, and then harder. At first my voice sounds that peculiar sexual melody, whimpers and sighs meeting the air almost silently. Then as he begins to flail the thing against that rocking, bucking mound, I gasp harder, my whimpers turning into cries. Words of fear fall from my lips, “ah noooo, pleeease, I caaaaaaan’t ….” and caress the air with such woe.
The stranger makes no sound as he moves around my body to my backside. There is just the sound of the sapling cutting the air and my cries that rise from the steady shock of pain. When he reaches my behind, he picks up speed and intensity. I could scream, but I fear he’ll gag me too—even though he hasn’t made that threat. More lashes land and I’m beside myself, writhing. I believe he’ll never stop and my resolve for self-control is at its end.
He stops when I least expect it and I sense him steal away from me to another room, vanishing with his heavy aura. I wonder if he’s displeased. I sense his return simply feeling the atoms in the air part for him as he passes. On me, his hand clutches my neck, another presses that dreaded sphere into my mouth.
“You didn’t want this, did you?” he purrs. There’s no way for me to answer him. But he knows. “You tried to be silent. You tried to please me. And you tried to remain haughty, beyond the power of my birch to effect you.” I shake my head, no. I could never imagine myself haughty, beyond the power of any of his implements to affect me. He can’t hear my rebuttal with his ears, but surely he can with his heart.
He drops back and I begin to feel the birch again at my ass. Its repeated strikes burn like the fire in the grate that causes me to sweat. I feel that sweat trickle down my leg, though I wonder if perhaps it mingles with blood he’s drawn from my tender bottom. More, and I struggle for a while … more yet and I find the birch landing on my sides where the sting of it makes my blind eyes cry into the mask that covers my face. When he suddenly stops again, I pray he’s finished with me, but instead, he addresses my front side again. I know he’s standing close; his breath moves my hair, his hand takes my chin and fondles it gently. When he strikes with the birch, it’s to my breasts and the ripe pain makes me lurch and cry more. Backing away, he alternates from my breasts to my thighs, delivering blows that I don’t believe will stop.
And then, I sense he’s finished. The fire is snapping in the background; the heat makes my skin piping hot like smoldering embers. He walks twice around my hanging body as though he’s inspecting me. The tip of the birch pokes at a fresh burn and occasionally delivers a sharp nip to my sides or agonized breast. I cry with any measure of abuse he wreaks now. I hate this bondage that keeps my hands from his body, that prevents me from kissing his lips with mine, that denies me any kind of reply but this whimpering servile one.
When he finally removes the blindfold, his message is simple, “Keep your eyes closed, Ellen Laurey. Open them only when I tell you.”
This is as much a burden as any he’s had me bear, but I survive this one too. When I finally hear his command, and lift my lids, I gaze at him. He’s sitting in a chair before me, a look of satisfaction on his face.
“You make a good slave,” he says. “Seems that you enjoy being beaten as much as I enjoy delivering the blows. You know my cock’s hard?”
I can imagine so. I stare at his denim-covered crotch and think I see his penis surging with arousal. My lips, still occupied with the ball-gag, beg to know his taste again. I long for the perfume of his balls, the feel of the masculine thatch of hair, the brawny thighs, the firm, sculptured ass in my hands. I would devour him.
He mocks me sitting aloof in his chair.
Oh, how I’d trace the line of his mouth with my finger, or if not my finger, then my tongue. I writhe before him pleading for his mercy. My eyes caress him, tears beginning to well there. Such desperation grips me.
“All I can think of, Ellen Laurey, is how much I desire to control you. I cannot imagine loving you any other way than this.”
If he’d only let loose the gag, I’d tell him the same thing.
“You want to orgasm, don’t you?” he says.
Until that moment, orgasm has seemed so far away, locked inside the never-ending cycle of pain. But now, at its mention, my hips buck with the answer. He moves forward in his chair, and I can feel his body drawing nearer.
“The hair between your thighs tickles you now. You can almost feel it move with my breath as I speak … ah, but it’s only the air gliding around you that has you aroused.” There’s a smile now on his lips, though the look of steel remains in his cobalt eyes. “You’d beg me to place a gentle finger on your clit and rub it, or perhaps press my mouth against the wetness there, or if I was especially inspired, come at you from behind, burying my face in
to the fragrance of your crack, where my mouth could find all your holes and explore them.”
His words make me jerk involuntarily as I imagine his every move matching this long discourse of propositions. He sits even farther forward in his chair, so I expectantly wait for him to rise and come to me.
“You have no choice but to relent to me, Ellen Laurey.” Using that name now, not only mocks my attempts to hide myself from him, it comes out tender as a lullaby sung by a mother soothing her child. “I could make you wait,” he says, “or I could make a feast of you for myself,” he pauses, “or I could pleasure you. Which would be the most distressing? Which one your richest desire?”
If I had my mouth to use now, I couldn’t answer his question because all his suggestions please me and all hold such painful promises, I’m sure none could satisfy all of me. I fall against my bonds, realizing my hands ache. He realizes this too. The fire I see sparking in the depths of his eyes simmers.
As he rises, I watch his approach, filled with wonder at each move and how it energizes me, thrilling all the atoms not yet permeated with sex. Each piece of me awakened makes the guarantee for pleasure rise another impossible degree. He slowly paces around my hanging body as I feel his eyes inspect the crude designs that remain on the canvas of my skin. Then, standing again in front of me, his hand finds my slit waiting. I gasp, realizing that he fondles me with a leather glove on his fingers. My face screws into a painful expression, more tears form, and while his face is just inches from mine, he watches as the explosion begins, and the new ways I find to contort myself. Even with this hateful ball-gag blocking the sound, preventing the natural grimace from appearing on my face, I communicate my climax to him. I writhe on those leather-covered fingers as the orgasm rockets from my cunt to my spine to the top of my head and the settles around my shoulders with a shudder. I sigh at the finish, the ache in my arms taking away the bit piece of pleasure.
Before he releases me, he rubs away the pain in my limbs, and my belly feels the last of the spasms drift on. He knows how I yearn for freedom, but the sadist in him delights in the torture.
When he begins to untether me, it’s the ball-gag that goes first. Then I kiss him, reaching out to find his lips, that seem to shy away from the attention, but at the same time demand it. “Your lips have another occupation,” he says, as he unhooks my handcuffs from above.
As he backs away, I drop to my knees and negotiate my way three feet toward his boots and jeans. I’m hardly able to make my sorry but submissive-looking trek. He opens his fly because I can’t with my handcuffed hands. With his cock unencumbered, I take all of it into my mouth, drawing it deeply inside, finding the desire to gag almost non-existent. He uses my mouth with a hand holding the back of my head so I can’t back away from the deep-throated satisfaction. I pour myself into his thick meat, let my tongue wind its way about the stalk, tasting the sour and sweet flavors, desiring them all. I lick lavishly as if I’m eating some fine repast. As he ejaculates, I swallow; not a drop escapes my mouth.
Rocking back on my haunches afterwards, I look into his face, considering him carefully, just as I see his careful consideration of me.
“You made dinner?” he asks.
“Almost,” I say. “How was your meeting?”
“I didn’t argue.”
“I can see that. You were back sooner than you said.”
“I like surprises,” he replies.
“I guess I do too,” I add, although I’m so exhausted that I don’t know how I’ll even get through dinner.
Before he unlocks the cuffs, he’s risen and poured me a glass of burgundy. I find I can drink even handcuffed, and that he expects nothing from me other than I sit submissively on the hardwood floor and sip the aromatic liquor.
“Will I eat this way too?” I ask, when I see he’s finished making our meal and two places are set at his table.
“Is that what you want?” he asks.
He comes to me, and taking the glass from my hands, he helps me rise.
“No, I think I’d like to use my hands so I can touch you freely, Nicholas Riley.”
Now his name fits. There are glasses teetering on his nose, and he’s almost the professor I met with this afternoon, though there’s much of the stranger in him too.
Removing a key from his pocket, he frees my hands. And like the massage he gave my limbs, he restores some of the feeling in my wrists. There are little indentations around them that jar me with the sensation of pain and yielding that remains. I hope they’ll stay a while.
With my hands free I’m able to dress, though I wait for his permission which he gives me with a nod of his head.
Sitting down to a normal dinner almost seems absurd. I should be at his feet feeding him, beneath him, dining on the scraps he scraps into a bowl. I’m beginning to think he breaches the gap between this bizarre sex and the rest of our lives easier than I do. He’s certainly not as grim and dour as he was, and yet I remain in the abject subservient attitude. The blues playing in the background begins to lift my mood with a gentle flood of notes soothing my wounds.
During salad and soup, our conversation is augmented by the drama of his eyes. They still hold me firmly in their grasp, and with a hand on my thigh he reassures me that he’s still there commanding. He asks me about my classes, sounding as if he’s interested, and about my husband and if I think I’m really leaving him.
“I am,” I tell him simply. I want to tell him that I’m doing this because of him, because he opened me with such a jarring crowbar that I can’t close myself to what he brings me. Still, I don’t want him to think that I have to have him, that I’m doing this only for him, that if he plans to drop out of sight after this night, I’ll be shattered. I know that whether or not our affair continues, my life with Robby is over.
Nicholas doesn’t reply to my confession about my broken marriage. He seems to know everything anyway and it’s not necessary for me to speak. Moving the conversation along he compliments me on my salad then finally says, “You will spend the night here.”
I am feeling transported now, nurtured by the curious content of our minutes together. There’s this schoolgirl whimsy developing in my toes, a giggle of delight knowing that he wants me in his bed.
I’m beginning to understand more about who he is when he’s not capturing me. His style is direct and without great embellishment, though what embellishment he chooses really matters, because it’s a statement of himself. His apartment reflects that statement with the masks, the spears, the hand-carved wood, and the African rug hanging on the wall. The rug’s one of the few pieces with color; the rest just endless shades of brown and tan. Even so, the blue is a muted tone, and the ochre and vermilion shades blend into the soft light and exude mellowness so characteristic of the man. I love the feeling of a man who is comfortable in his surroundings, comfortable with himself.
When we finish eating, I clear his dishes and clean his kitchen while he spruces up the fire, and lights a pipe, which he puffs contentedly as he waits for me to be done. I think back on the afternoon, when he handed me his key and I felt more like his wife than lover. It feels that way now, being with him. I can hardly believe that he just had me strung up and dripping sweat in the center of his living room, or that he once had me tied to a chain-link fence in a cold basement, or that this image of harmony has pursued me as much as my desire has pursued him. I would think, by the casual way this night has proceeded since he uncuffed my hands, that he’s aloof to my passions; his own seem hardly engaged.
As I come to his living room where he sits by the fire in a great leather chair, I sit on the floor at his feet and gaze into the flames. It’s not meant as a submissive act, but a familiar one that tells him I’m comfortable with him even if this seems so utterly absurd.
“I’d like to know what you want of me?” I ask him. I can’t get my mind off our afternoon’s conversation. I can’t ignore the need for him beyond the sex we share.
“What I want doesn’t
matter until you’re disentangled from your husband,” he answers.
“And if I do that this weekend?” I say. “Then will you tell me what you want from me?”
“Yes, I probably will. But you can be sure of one thing now; I don’t want anything more from you than sex, unless I can have all of you. Let’s wait until you can give it all before I answer your question.”
I sit by the fire and stare into the expanse of flames.
It’s late. Once he finishes his pipe, he tells me to get naked and go to bed. I do this happily, glad for another moment to lie with him, the length of me pressed against the length of him and our arms wrapped around each other, even if words of love aren’t yet ready to be spoken.
In his room, I undress before a lengthy mirror on his bathroom door. Seeing marks on my breasts, I move closer to inspect them. When I turn, I find others have cut into my ass and there are bruises forming at the center. Turning back, I wonder that my face is so soft. The endless stream of thoughts that pour into my brain have ceased for the moment. I can think of nothing but the stranger’s hands on me and his face beside my face.
When I feel him move behind my nakedness with his, I do shudder, though I’m not so fearful of him as I once was. His hands glide with grace over the skin he flawed with his birch. The surfaces quake in anticipation. A commotion of desires enlivens me everywhere his hands make contact. At the crook of my neck, along the baby smooth skin under my arms, and the tentative sides of my waist where I’m prone to be ticklish, his deft hands move with ease. I stare in the mirror at myself as he places his fingers against the marks on my breasts. One finger runs over a blemish. That stripe of red still holds the energy of the slim sapling, and the powerful arm that laid it against my skin. I think of it as a piece of him he’s burned into me that will never go away. Even when the mark disappears in time I’ll still hold the memory of it within.
Rendezvous With A Stranger Page 10