by Gabi Moore
Kat: And what’s that supposed to be?
He again took his time with the response.
Mark: Try guess. Sleep on it. You’ll see when you come visit me tomorrow
And just like that his avatar blinked out grey and he disappeared, leaving me holding his scalding hot words in my hands. I put down my phone and tried to think about what the hell had just happened.
Less than five minutes had elapsed, but everything in the kitchen was different somehow. My whole life was different. The only thing that was the same was the burning theatre of dirty images pulsing their way back into my mind again. I was so wildly turned on I came the instant I touched myself.
Chapter Eleven - Mark
For the thousandth time that morning, I cast eager eyes to the door. It wasn’t even noon yet and I had already died a thousand times with every phone call that wasn’t her, every buzz at the gate that wasn’t her.
I placed a swollen, purple finger on the chipboard and lined up my hammer for another strike.
I had been working wood for basically all my life. I never hit my damn thumb like some kind of amateur. And yet here I was, flustered, making mistakes, wishing she’d just come already, nervous to death that she eventually would…
The hammer came down carelessly and bounced off the already aching tip of my thumb. I roared and flung the hammer aside, thrusting my hand to my mouth and wincing.
“Fuck!” I cried and examined the damage. A red split grew angrily from the base of my nail and down. This woman was making me come apart, literally.
“Bad time?”
I spun around. She stood in the doorway, like a vision.
“The gate was already open and I called, but you didn’t answer, so I just came in…”
I waved her in and shut the door, still sucking my thumb.
“Come in. You’ll want to see your piece,” I said and hurried inside.
I was never like this. Never nervous. I was always the calm, instigating one. Always the one who lured women further and further out to more and more distant sexual horizons, the way you slowly coax baby chicks with a little grain in your hand.
But not this time.
I was surprised to see her clear-eyed, tranquil and smiling confidently. My head was a mess. I was an idiot. There were millions of women in this world, why did I have to fall for one who was getting engaged, one who expressly told me how much she couldn’t have anything to do with me?
Looking at how beautiful she looked, how perfectly open and sweet her face was, I felt a pang inside. I couldn’t do this. This was all wrong. I felt like some sleazy asshole trying to take advantage… it suddenly became clear as day to me: she was just a bored housewife looking for some distraction, looking for the thrilling confirmation that she still had ‘it’, just taking a little skip on the wild side before she fucked off to play house with the guy she really wanted.
This rush of thoughts hit me almost as hard as the hammer did. I swallowed hard and tried to act professionally. This was just another order. And she was just another customer. An ethereal, otherworldly customer, unfortunately, but one who was as good as married.
I led her over to the finished piece and watched as her hands went to her mouth and she gasped.
“This is it? Oh my god, it’s beautiful,” she whispered, eyes darting all over it.
It was a beast of a thing, more than seven feet tall and mimicking in every way a fairy tale oak tree, except without leaves. The polished wood gleamed bright and from two of the main twisted branches hung twin purple, galvanized chains, laced across the boughs like it was a witchy Christmas tree. Bolted all up the length of the trunk were velvet-lined clasps. Two for her feet. Two for her pretty thighs. One bigger one for her waist. Another two for her upper arms.
It was like nothing I had created before.
I had fretted with ideas and materials, played with leather and rope and steel, but it was all wrong somehow. She was a goddess. It wasn’t for her to be put in a dungeon and defiled. No, I wanted to elevate her, pin her to a tree, ready to be beheld. And devoured.
She walked slow circles around it as I watched from afar. She had dropped that nervous habit of giggling and blushing at things like this, and was now silent, taking it all in, dragging her fingertips over the surface.
I tried not to think what she’d do with it once it left my studio. Or with who. I tried not to think of any of that. I needed to believe it was a mere gift. A gift given because she deserved it, and nothing more.
“I want to try it,” she said quickly and turned to look at me with serious eyes.
I balked. I had sent her those stupid messages, hadn’t I? I had opened this whole can of worms. But here she was standing before me and I felt so nervous I could puke. I nodded silently and started to undo the buckles at the base of the tree. I gestured to her to come forward and put her feet in the cuffs.
She hesitated and came forward, giving me a quizzical expression. I tried the cuff round her foot as though I was nothing more than a shoe store salesman. Satisfied the fit was snug, I gently took her by the shoulders and lined her up against the trunk, seeing that each of the other restraints lined up perfectly with her shapely body. I nodded. Everything aside, it was a well-made piece, and it was built for her, no question.
“I …I must admit I kind of pictured all of this differently,” she teased, and tried to catch my eye. I avoided her gaze and fussed with the chains in the branches.
“I thought I’d be, you know …wearing less clothing, for one!” she giggled.
I gave her a serious look.
“I don’t think Anthony would feel good about that, do you?” I said curtly.
Her face reddened.
With her arms strung up high above her head, I took a step back and examined the lines of her body. The chains could be adjusted to different heights, from Jesus-on-the-cross style to straight up above. She looked like a beautiful wood nymph, or a mythical forest sprite. Well, except for the fearsome daggers she was now glaring at me.
She wriggled a little but the restraints were solid.
“You know, I actually resent that. Just because Anthony wants to marry me, it doesn’t mean I’m suddenly his now. It doesn’t mean I owe him a damn thing. I haven’t led him on. I haven’t agreed to anything. God, I haven’t even known him for two months!”
I tilted my head to the side to examine the weight she was putting on the top left branch, and wondered if I needed to make any adjustments.
“The strange cages we put ourselves in, huh?” I said and tried to smile.
She tossed her head to the side in irritation.
“Oh come on, spare me the pop philosophy please, I—”
“Kat, stop. Just stop.”
She seemed stunned.
“It’s hard for me to admit this, but I haven’t been with a woman in a very long time. I don’t play games, Kat. It took time for me to make this for you. A lot of time. I get that you’re curious and whatever, but I’m not playing around. This is important to me. Either you want to do this with me or you don’t.” I took a deep breath. It felt like the most I had ever said to her. Or to anyone.
She was silent.
“You’re starting to sound like Anthony now,” she said.
“I don’t care. I only want a woman who’ll surrender to me, completely. Nothing less. No fear. No doubt. No holding back. I’m all or nothing, Kat. Now you keep coming here to tease me, and that’s cool, but I don’t want to just tease anymore…”
Her eyes were wide as she hung onto my every word.
“Mark, he’s just …he’s just a sweet guy who’s, you know …I don’t—”
“Have you turned down his stupid proposal then?” I asked her bluntly. That was all that mattered to me. She didn’t respond. I rubbed my face and paced the room.
“I want to do this with you…” she started to say meekly.
“Well, you can’t half do it,” I said, a little angry. “Why don’t you just call it off wi
th him?”
She cast her eyes to the floor.
“Please take me down,” she said softly.
I did.
She closed her arms round herself.
Fine. If she wanted to leave, I wouldn’t stop her. I would rather legitimately lose her once and for all than pine over the stupid hope that I’d win her someday.
But she didn’t leave. She didn’t walk out. Instead, I heard a clink and looked up to see her taking her watch off and putting it on the floor. Then her earrings came off too.
“What are you…?”
She gripped the hem of her shirt and in one sweep pulled it over her head, revealing a bright blue bra against her angelic white skin. In an instant she had peeled her jeans off, too, kicked her shoes aside and stood before me in her underwear, hair tousled. She looked at me earnestly.
“I want to do this with you,” she said again, this time more insistently.
I gulped.
“I’m not a cheater,” I said through clenched teeth.
“Neither am I.”
“So you’re done with him?”
“There’s nothing to be done with. I’d be crazy to marry him.”
I took a step towards her, then slid my eyes all the way down her body and then up again. She was even more beautiful than I had imagined.
“Take it all off,” I said under my breath. Her little hands worked so quickly to tear off her blue lingerie it nearly broke my heart. Her breasts were milky; each salmon-pink nipple perched on her small breasts like a puffy rosebud. There was one long, smooth curve from her sternum all the way to her pubic bone, the lines of a ballet dancer, lean and fragile, ending in a blonde patch of fluff at the cleft between her shapely legs.
“Tell him you’ll never speak to him again,” I said. I had no idea where it came from, but it was all I wanted to hear from her, when it really came down to it. I wanted her to leave her stuffy, well-behaved life, untangle herself from all those threads of obligation, just walk away from it all and come to me. Naked.
She took a deep, shuddering breath and nodded her head.
“Nobody else,” I growled.
She lifted a cautious gaze at me from underneath her eyelashes. Her bare nipples were hardening.
I walked slow circles around her.
“Your body seems different now. More open. Good.”
Once my eyes had taken their fill, I nodded towards the tree and gestured for her to go to it. She did so without hesitation, planting first one and then the other dainty foot into the half circle of the restraint. There was a fluidity in her shoulders. Something loose and slow about her gliding movements, something nearly serpentine.
“Not like that. Turn around,” I said. She paused to give me a confused look and then obediently turned around to hug the tree, her magnificent ass now facing me.
“Now put your arms up.”
Her long, slim arms trailed upwards and I took my time chaining her wrists in, watching the folds and swells of her shoulder and neck tense and release as my hands nearly brushed against her skin. I buckled all the way down her body, till I reached the ankle cuffs, taking care not to touch her. She was breathing more deeply now, as though in a trance. Her eyes were closed. Strands of copper hair fell down her back and whispered at the skin just where her ribcage dipped in and flared out again over her tight hips. She was without question the most beautiful woman I had ever laid eyes on.
“Now it’s my turn to tease you, Kat. I knew it from the moment I saw you. I think I knew it before you even knew it. But this is what you really want, isn’t it? To be chained up there like this, naked? I suppose you want me to tell you all the dirty things I’m going to do to you now…?” I said, keeping my voice low. I could tell she was listening intently.
I went over to the work table and picked up a braided leather strip, the same on I had sent her in the message. I tightened it round and round my fist, hearing the leather creak against my fingers, and walked back over to her.
“What are you doing?” she asked, twisting her head from this side to that side, trying to understand the vague noises she heard behind her.
“I’m going to teach you a lesson,” I said. The silence in the studio was deafening. But her shoulders stayed soft, and her breath still came in smooth, easy rolls. It’s hard to explain, but I was impressed by this. I made a silent, internal vow to do whatever it would take to get that pretty breath to come in great heaving gasps instead.
“Zen Buddhist teachers sometimes strike their meditating students on the back with a stick,” I said slowly. I saw her breath enter her chest, then leave again.
“Do you know why?”
I audibly stepped closer towards her, one end of the strip knotted in my fist and the other free.
“It’s to bring them screeching right back to the present moment, to the now. To their breath. That’s all that matters, the breath.”
Her breath went in again, out again.
I took another step closer.
“I think you’re dying for me to fuck you right now. That’s all you can think of, isn’t it? Of me spreading open those pretty legs of yours and fucking you so hard you’ll have to limp out of here. You can’t stop thinking about it, can you? But I don’t want your thoughts to wander all over the place. Oh no. I want you to stay right here, right now. With me.”
I was now standing right behind her, as close as I could without physically touching her goosebumping skin. Something in the exquisite way her skin was puckering up told me she was focusing intently on the sound of my voice.
“Can you do that?” I breathed.
She gave a small nod.
The air in the room was electric. Slowed down and amplified, like the world seems just before a car crash, like the beautiful sharp moment before something delicate comes smashing to the ground…
I crouched down.
Her skin smelled like cotton and heat. I could feel my cock tightening in my jeans but paid it no attention. This was all about her. A long, slick wet trail on her inner thigh caught my attention. It nearly drove me into a frenzy to see it there. I hadn’t touched her, she had been in this studio for less than fifteen minutes, and already she was soaking wet. Fuck, it was hot.
“Tell me what you want,” I growled.
“I want…” she moaned softly, her head falling to one side.
I gently touched the looped end of the leather strip to her ass cheek and held it there. She was breathing more quickly.
“I want …I want to be fucked. Hard.”
I was silent. I only stroked the coiled strip over her defenseless flesh again and again. I wondered if I could hear her voice crackling and breaking.
“I want you to use me,” she moaned, “completely use me, and hold nothing back. I want you to take it all away from me, everything, I just want to come and come and come until I can’t think straight anymore.”
The passion in her voice sent a delicious thrill all through me.
“Good,” I said, and twirled the leather strip.
She was so fantastically wet. Little minx. I liked that. I traced the edge of the leather strip lower down until it was resting in the split between her cheeks, then slid it lower, and lower still, gently into that hidden little pool. When I pulled it away again it was glistening wet.
“Now see what you’ve done…”
“I’m so sorry, I’m just, I’m sorry I—”
In one swift movement I pulled the rope back and in a split second brought it whizzing back down again, hard, leaving an instant pink welt across the plumpest part of her backside. She yelped out in surprise, clinking the chains above.
“I told you to stay here with me,” I cooed into her ear. She said nothing. The breath only entered her chest, and left it again. The air still stung with the sound of leather against her skin. The pink disappeared almost as quickly as it had appeared. To my delight, she seemed even wetter than before.
“I’m here,” she said, so quietly I almost wondered if I had
only imagined it.
My whole body swelled and hardened at the sight of her. Any other woman I would have been balls-deep and fucking by now. But she wasn’t any other woman. In fact, I had never seen a body respond like this before. She was electric. Like a goddess kept in the cage of a normal woman’s body for too long, she was so pent up I felt like she’d ignite before my very eyes with just a touch.
I matched my breathing to hers. Every fiber of my focus went to her body, so that I almost felt melded to her, so that when the second blow came down on her milky white ass, I felt it just as she did. This time she didn’t cry out, she only twisted, sucked in breath and writhed on the tree. The tree that I had built for her.
She seemed to swell and open before my very eyes. The bud of her pink pussy peeked out from between her legs, so wet now she was nearly dripping. I had to restrain myself. I had to breath deep and tell myself to calm down. The sight of her slick white thighs had me nearly blacking out from lust, but we had a deal. We were in this moment now, her and I together. And I was going to stay here, me, her, and the writhing mess that her body was becoming.
The whip came down again.
And again.
The studio – and the world – simply fell away. All that remained now was the sound of her breath slipping in and out of her amazing body. All of reality came crushing down around us, and condensed on that bright, perfect spot on her flesh. My cock bulged and strained in my jeans.
The next strike, she began to whimper. Her head fell to the side and she began to shake a little. It was unbelievable. I felt it in my own body – she was close to coming. Neither of us needed to say a word. I watched mesmerized for a moment as her body bucked and squirmed. She was in a daze, cunt soaked, skin slick with sweat.
“I’m going to make you come now,” I said quietly. And the words were like a spell. Her body froze and tightened, her pert rump tilted upwards to meet whatever treatment I would deliver. But I dropped the strap. I took a step closer to her, feeling like it took every shred of willpower to keep from reaching out and grabbing her.