Bound by Lust

by Shanna Germain

  “Why do you hate your father?” I asked.

  Marcelle parted my lips with her fingers. She slid two fingers into my mouth. “Suck my cock,” she said.

  My brother had teased me about the T-shirt. “Mr. Happy?” he’d said. “That’s hilarious, you fucking crybaby, Ro-Ro the Twitch.”

  As usual, I’d stared at the ground and blinked it back and twitched.

  “You’ll never get girls like that,” he’d said.

  “Mom got me the T-shirt. It’s just a shirt.”

  “It’s gay,” my brother had said.

  Whenever I went to his soccer games, I’d flinch when he kicked the ball down the field; I’d marvel at his agility and prowess: I’d sit in the bleachers and give way to the sun and melt.

  “That’s good,” Marcelle said to me with her fingers in my mouth. “Make me happy.”

  Marcelle said the reason she liked her job in the lingerie shop was the old men who tipped her to model the merchandise. Every morning she got into her uniform: a white dress and sandals. She put on lipstick and parted her hair in the middle. The dress was transparent. I saw a silhouette of her legs behind the material. Marcelle wore flower-printed underwear.

  “I never give them more than a show,” she said one morning.

  “They’re desperate though; they try. I mean, they want control, don’t they?” Marcelle looked at me as I knelt on the floor.

  “Yeah,” I said, and it scared me a little, some old guy getting the best of her.

  “I like to be mean,” she said.

  I shivered.

  “People like you are stronger than people like me.”

  I touched the back of her knee at the hem of her dress. I shook my head.

  “Think about it,” she said. “Who’s stronger? The sadist or the masochist?”

  I wanted her to be stronger. That was obvious. I twitched touching her knee again.

  Marcelle went to the toilet, lifted her dress, and then crouched above the bowl before releasing her bladder. I listened to the patter of her piss against the water. I imagined it neon-yellow in the bowl. The scent of her ammonia was faint but acidic. I wanted to press my nose to her crotch and inhale it. Marcelle dropped the tissue in the bowl then flushed it. She stepped over me to leave the bathroom. I followed behind. Foggy sunlight illuminated her at the front door. The air smelled like rain behind her. I panicked.

  “Aren’t you going to cuff me to the table today?”

  “You’re not working?”

  “No.”

  “Oh.” Marcelle thought a moment. “Be good. Why don’t you clean the house?”

  “Okay.” I twitched.

  Marcelle waved from the sidewalk.

  “I love you,” I called to her. She walked away. I twitched. After a moment, I crawled to the front door and shut it. Left to my own devices, what would I do? Well, clean the house first. Then call Cade maybe. “Want me to come in a few hours?” I sat on my haunches. Who’s stronger? The sadist or the masochist? I wanted to run after Marcelle. Tell me what you mean.

  I closed my eyes. I saw myself at the porn shop. I saw a handsome faggot knocking me around. Last week, a guy had removed his belt, then hit me in the head with it. Hurt. I’d come home and told Marcelle about it. She’d asked me to describe the scene over and over while she used a vibrator. I was with her in the bed but couldn’t see anything but her bare calves and knees and her arm that led to her hand holding the vibrator to her cunt under her nightgown.

  I’d gotten hard and embellished the story each time I told it. The handsome faggot said I looked like a girl. The handsome faggot hit me in the side of the head more than once. The handsome faggot pissed in a corner then told me to kneel in it.

  “Oh,” was all Marcelle had said before she’d shuddered, then sagged against me and drifted off to sleep.

  My humility brought us both peace.

  I’d taken her vibrator and held it to my nose, then licked the oily stain of her cunt.

  I’d jerked off imagining a garden of bruises flowering across my gut.

  I’d fallen asleep remembering the handsome faggot, what he’d said to me in secret. “Know why I don’t admit I’m a faggot? Cuz I’m macho shit. Who’d let me play football then? They’d expect it of you, of course, but look at me: I’m macho shit. Know what it’s like to be the macho shit, honey? Terrible. That’s what it is.”

  After Marcelle left for work that morning, I went to the turntable and put on the Germs, then regarded the spinning vinyl like something I’d thought gone forever was back from the dead.

  I caught my brother once sitting on the edge of the bathtub naked and holding his foot in his lap. His legs were muscular, sinewy, and covered with short blond hairs. He said, “Look at this.” Broken blood vessels snaked the inside of his foot. His toes were misshapen, his ankle bruised. “I hate soccer,” he said.

  “Why do you do it then?” I regretted the question soon as it was out of my mouth.

  I started to twitch.

  My brother stood off the tub, all tan shoulders and hands; his cock swung from a bird’s nest of pubic hair. His eyes flashed as he grabbed my hair.

  “Wait, shit, ouch!”

  I fell when he yanked the strands from my scalp. I cowered beneath him.

  “Why do you do it?” he repeated. “Why do you do it then?”

  Marcelle came home from work and stripped in front of me, then tossed her underwear at the floor. “Put them on,” she said. I stared a moment at the ripple of fabric on the throw rug. I hadn’t told her yet. Marcelle put on a pants suit. She looked at me, waiting. “Well?”

  I crawled toward the panties, twitching.

  We walked east up Hawthorne Boulevard. I wore a pink skirt with a ruffle and flower-printed underwear, my tennis shoes with no socks. My T-shirt said, “Mr. Happy.” Same one. Marcelle walked with her arm looped through mine. Hardly anyone looked at us. She took the lead. I felt giddy, like we were walking naked down the street. I was naked. Look at me!

  Ahead Marcelle saw a pair of glasses on the sidewalk, abandoned or lost or something. She stooped to pick them up then put them on her face, perched on her nose. The lenses made her eyes appear three times larger than normal.

  “Everything’s magnified,” she said. Marcelle looked through the glasses. She looked adorable like that. “Isn’t it weird, the closer things are, the harder it is to make things out?” Marcelle looked past me. “Is that a tree over there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Take me.”

  “Really?”

  “Let’s go.”

  I studied her a moment. Her expression was cool. “Now,” she said. Her mouth twitched in one corner. I took her arm, felt a short line of hairs beneath her elbow. I led her toward the tree through the people; she followed without wavering, like she trusted me.

  “You could walk me right into a manhole,” she said.

  “I wouldn’t.” My skirt swung against my legs. I liked the ruffle.

  “Because you’re not mean,” Marcelle said. She moved her hand up my arm. She held me.

  “You’re not mean either.”

  “Yeah, I am. I pushed you into the street once.”

  “You measured it,” I said. “You knew how close the car was.”

  “Maybe.”

  I turned and looked at her. “I love you,” I said.

  Marcelle blinked at me through the glasses. “You do, don’t you?”

  “Yeah.”

  At the tree, Marcelle put the glasses on me. Glorious smudge.

  Marcelle straightened my skirt. “So sexy.”

  “Thanks.” Giddy again. For a second, I stared into the sun. Marcelle instructed me to turn and face the tree. She said to wrap my arms around it. I held the tree. Marcelle patted my ass.

  “Guess what I have?”

  “What?” My cock twitched.

  “A dildo.”

  “Really?” My cock went hard.

  “I’m going to lift the back of your skirt,” sh
e said. “Then lube you.”

  “Okay.” I hugged the tree. Traffic went by in the street. Marcelle ran her hand across my ass under the skirt. She pressed her finger between my ass cheeks, then found my hole. She lubed me up. The sensation was incredible. I quivered inside the skirt.

  “Can I jerk off?”

  “No.”

  “Okay.”

  Marcelle pushed the head of the dildo at my asshole. “The man who lets me fuck him is the man for me.” Her breath tickled my ear. We were going to do this. She’d do this for me. Marcelle pushed the dildo deeper. I felt my ass open. The dildo filled me. Cars went by. People passed on the sidewalk. My cock throbbed. She fucked me. I hugged the tree and stared up at the leaves, how they’d become one glorious garden green. She found my prostate. Oh Jesus.

  “What do you see?” she asked. “Look.”

  Fuck. Give me a minute. I saw how nobody looked at us. Impossible. We were invisible, no magical, on another plane. Marcelle hit my prostate again. “What do you see?”

  I caught my breath, not twitching. “You love me,” I said.

  Every Friday night she watched this show, Supernatural. Two brothers, Sam and Dean, fought evil. The evil things could not defeat them. They were strong; they were bound by blood.

  “Love between brothers is holy,” Marcelle said. “That bond sticks.”

  I didn’t look at her. I stared at the floor and twitched.

  “Ronan?”

  Soon enough, I crawled to her. “I killed my brother,” I said.

  He used to stare at me across the dinner table, a round table with a glass top smudged by fingerprints, the ones I pressed into existence rather than hold my fork or eat. I wasn’t hungry for the stuff on my plate. I looked between my parents while Dad went on and on about Aiden, my boy, my son, and he’d project this joy around the table that circled like a hawk before landing on my mom. She’d smile and say, “We’re so proud of you. You’ll get the gold.” My stomach kicked up bile: I tasted a ball of it on the playing field of my tongue. My dad’s joy took flight again, then reached my brother and settled on his shoulder; it dug in its claws as he stared at me. I decided to keep his secrets for revenge. He hates soccer. He does it to please you. He’s afraid to be less than great. Amazing. My brother had been so fragile.

  Marcelle held me around my head. I pressed my face to her stomach. A piece of her dress stuck to my mouth. Tears drowned my eyes, snot clogged my nose. I was wracked by guilt.

  “He hung himself,” I said. “I never told anyone his secret, how he hated soccer. I knew and I never said anything. I just let him suffer, I let him hurt me.”

  Marcelle pet my head. “Look at me, Ronan.”

  I looked.

  “I’ve wanted to kill myself before,” she said.

  I hugged her around the waist. “Please don’t, please. I love you.”

  “Of course not.” Marcelle hit me so hard I fell sideways. “You’re saving me.”

  WHIPPOORWILL

  Teresa Noelle Roberts

  A whippoorwill shattered my attempt to sleep, calling out over the lake with a startlingly loud demand that someone beat him. I sprang bolt upright in the narrow camp bed. “I’m going to kill that fucking bird!”

  Ben, who’d had the fun of a four-hour drive on top of our shared end-of-the-first-year-of-law-school exhaustion, had slept through the whippoorwill and the other weird, unexpected woodsy night sounds that kept me from sleeping. Hell, he’d even ignored the lumpy mattress that was just as vintage as the rest of the furnishings in our borrowed cabin. But my burst of temper woke him.

  “It’s nature, Cathy. It’s supposed to be relaxing,” he murmured, nuzzling at the small of my back. “So relax.”

  Normally Ben’s lips tracing my tailbone and working up my spine would have set me shivering so much that I wouldn’t care I was desperately underslept. Sex had gotten us through our first year at Yale Law. Granted, most of it had been rushed, without the energy for bondage, beatings, or any of our shared kinks. Sometimes we’d fall asleep partway through and wake stuck together like dogs.

  This week, at his uncle’s cabin on a secluded New Hampshire lake, was supposed to recharge us so we had the energy for properly improper sex. But how was I supposed to recharge if I couldn’t sleep? I hadn’t brought ear plugs. I hadn’t thought I’d need them way out here. “Who knew peace and quiet would be so damned loud?” I groused, sliding out of Ben’s arms and out of bed.

  “You can sleep through car alarms, sirens, and screaming drunks, but not a bird?”

  “Those are normal, constant city noises. I can ignore them. But first this place seems spooky quiet and then…” The bird call jarred through the air again. “Some kinky bird starts screaming for kinky love—in the third person, no less. Why doesn’t his damned top show up and give poor Will his beating so we can get some sleep?”

  I stomped to the kitchen and poured cabernet into a Looney Toons juice glass. Wine might help me sleep, or at least relax me enough that I wouldn’t be Grumpy McGrumpypants at Ben.

  As I poured, I looked out the picture window. The lake was moon-illuminated, and the sky was domed with more stars than I’d ever seen outside a planetarium. I couldn’t see lights from any of the other cabins on the lake.

  Okay, there was something to be said for the boonies.

  And here, I had a chance for a pleasure a city girl rarely experiences—sipping wine outside stark naked on a lovely night.

  Glass in hand, I wandered onto the deck overlooking the lake.

  The whippoorwill was still begging for a beating, but under the stars, it sounded more lovelorn than annoying. A light, pine-scented breeze cut the humidity and caressed my bare skin, perking up my nipples and reminding my pussy that I’d left a handsome, naked man alone in bed.

  A poor choice, that. A few more sips of wine and I’d rectify that mistake. If nothing else, we could smooch and cuddle, and maybe I could drift off to sleep in his arms.

  Before I could, though—before I could even have that next sip—a strong hand plucked the glass from my hand, then bent me forward over the railing.

  My ass cocked back in response. I knew that position. I liked that position.

  “How long has it been, Cathy?” Ben’s voice was full of silken menace. “How long since I’ve beaten you?”

  I shivered and clenched at the memory of pleasures long neglected. “So long we didn’t even bother packing toys. Damn it.”

  “I still have my hands, Cathy. Do you want a spanking?”

  The wave of lust that crashed over me suggested I’d been mad at the poor bird because I was jealous “Will” might be getting something I wanted.

  The first hard thwack sent fire through my out-of-practice butt. I was still considering whether to submit or squirm away when Ben struck three times in rapid succession.

  Submit, definitely submit. I needed that hurt to release the stresses of the last few months, and Ben needed to give it. My ass throbbed already, but the throbbing started a matching rhythm in my pussy. “More,” I begged. “Please.”

  Ben stroked the curve of my ass cheeks, lulling me with gentleness—then dug his fingers in hard. “Do you deserve it? You threatened to kill a poor, horny bird earlier. A bird you might have sympathized with. Not very nice. Only good girls get spanked.”

  That had always been our game. Good girls got spanked, or maybe flogged or caned or something else painfully yummy. Bad girls didn’t get anything.

  “I’ve been good!” I sought desperately for examples. “I did well in school. I came to the north woods because you like it up here. I…I cooked dinner!” Grilling up a couple of burgers hardly made me Rachel Ray, but it was better than either of us managed toward the frenzied end of the semester, when PBJs seemed like gourmet treats.

  He pretended to consider, alternately petting and pinching my butt. “All right,” he conceded, “but only because I want to.”

  I thanked him, knowing I’d want to curse him before I thanked him
again.

  Ben wasn’t in the mood to build up slowly. He spanked again and again, his hand hard and hot against my tender butt. He pushed me fast to that place where pleasure and pain blurred, a place where I couldn’t think of anything except sensation—of the fire building as his hand blasted into my ass over and over again.

  God, it stung.

  If he stopped, I’d strangle him.

  The breeze picked up, teasing at a trail of moisture trickling down my thigh.

  But much as I craved this sweet, hot annihilation, even good pain hurts. At home, on the rare occasions when we had time to play, I’d stifled the urge to scream, knowing I was sure to disturb the next-door neighbor, who worked two jobs and caught naps when she could, or send the undergraduates across the hall into spasms of giggling. Out of habit, I tried to stifle cries of pain and pleasure that would shatter the night.

  But the nearest neighbors here were probably half a mile away. If they heard anything, it would be muffled and disguised by distance. They might write it off as an animal in heat.

  And that was what I felt like, an animal in heat.

  I let go with a roar, and as I roared, I came so hard the stars blurred and swirled around me.

  Ben thrust into me as I spasmed, setting off another wave of orgasm and another wave of cries that echoed in the silence. He pounded into me, each thrust pushing me higher. I’d have bruises on my hip bones from slamming into the railing, bruises to match the ones on my ass. In the state I was in, that felt good. My ass throbbed, my pussy clenched and gripped. The noises coming out of me didn’t even sound human, but they blended into the wilderness perfectly. Ben, too, was noisy, his curses and grunts building to a crescendo. Finally, he yelled for anyone around to hear, “Come for me. Now. While I…”