Caught in the Middle

by Kira Barker

“Awesome.”

  “If you keep using language like that, I’m going to gag you.”

  “Is that a threat or a promise?” I quipped back, smiling brightly at him.

  “Not sure, but either way I like the idea,” he pointed out, making swallowing even harder than it had been moments ago.

  “So we’re doing this today?”

  “Unless you got cold feet in the meantime?”

  “Nope.”

  I shook my head, exhaling slowly. My heart was already beating a mile a minute, and I had a feeling that would get worse all too soon—but not soon enough.

  “Do you want to go through what I have in mind, or just take it as I deal it out?”

  Somehow this was all going a little fast, but I wasn’t sure if my suddenly frayed nerves would have turned me into a very thoughtful negotiation partner.

  “Honestly? I trust you to know what you’re doing way more than what my mind could come up with. Surprise me.”

  “Will do,” he agreed, only half as cryptic as I’d expected. Right then, Simon sounded more like he promised to get the right things from the grocery store than, well, drag me through the first stage of hell and back. “Anything you feel the need to stress, or that I should know? I know this might be a little overwhelming, but it will get better once we get things started.”

  “Well,” I began, then forced my thoughts to get out of the gutter and that supply closet. Stapling my fingers, I thought about the few things I’d come up with since Saturday, trying to decide what to say and what was too stupid to mention.

  “Anything that bothers you, I need to know. Remember what I just told you downstairs?”

  “About brutal honesty?”

  He nodded.

  “Trust me, things will go wrong. If not today, then next time, or the time after. I will judge your reactions wrong, you will get cocky and get in over your head, or a knot slips, a flogger strand hits inches away from where it should have. There’s no way of preventing that from happening, but scrapes heal, and mistakes are there to not be repeated. What is vital is that we can both trust each other to communicate well, and then we’ll get through this without it all crashing down on us like a house of cards. I’m not telling you this to scare you, but simply because it’s the truth. That can’t be that different from your daily grind in the ER.”

  “Yeah, I hate it when patients don’t tell us that they have a weird feeling in their chest, and ten minutes later we have to wheel them back into the OR because they collapse.”

  He nodded, then reached up to cradle my cheek in his hand. Even after Saturday, the gesture was strange, unfamiliar, and fucking intimate. I hesitated, then turned my face into his palm, letting it comfort me for a second.

  “I’m here, and I will catch you when you fall, each and every time. And if I know that you’re already teetering on the edge, I’ll be extra careful to open my arms wide. But for that to work, I need to know of all the possible obstacles in the road, even if it sounds insignificant or stupid to you now.”

  Taking a deep breath, I inclined my head as air whooshed out of my lungs.

  “My hands. The cuffs were fine last time, but I don’t think I can stand any stronger restriction. You know that I freak out when there’s anything wrong with my fingers, and having them fall asleep from restricted circulation will likely make me use that safeword before I can even think rationally about it.”

  “No problem. Pulling your arms back like last time was okay, or should I keep that to a minimum, too?”

  I thought about that.

  “I honestly don’t know. I felt a little banged up Saturday night, but keeping my arms up wasn’t a problem, really. Can I just, you know, let you know if it gets problematic?”

  He nodded.

  “Sure. Most bondage anchors here and here”—he lightly touched my sternum and lower stomach—“or at the center of your back. I can make sure not to stress your arms too much. If we get there, that is.”

  “I think I would like to get there, yes.”

  That got me a quick smile.

  “Anything else?”

  Making a face, I got to the point of my agenda I was less convinced about.

  “I’m not sure the verbal component of this all works so well for me?”

  “Like me calling you a slut?”

  I wasn’t surprised that he picked that. Pursing my lips, I shook my head.

  “No, that part wasn’t really a problem. Might sound weird, but it made me feel kind of empowered, you know? I don’t have to tell you that under any other circumstances I wouldn’t let anyone else refer to me like that, but in the heat of the moment, it kind of fit?”

  The look in his eyes was a lot more knowing than I’d expected.

  “Context can make a huge difference.”

  “It does,” I agreed, strangely elated that he didn’t make me explain any further. “No, I think I have a serious problem with calling you ‘Sir.’ And I’m not sure about that asking for permission to come part.”

  Now it was clear amusement that took over his face.

  “Let’s make a compromise here. You don’t have to call me anything, but at least once I want to hear you beg. If things go according to plan, I should get you into the right mindset today. If not, we can change that up next time, but humor me?”

  “Sure,” I agreed, then frowned. “I thought that would be more of an issue for you.”

  The grin he flashed me showed a lot of teeth.

  “Because I’m a pompous asshole and you can’t fathom how I’d pass up a golden opportunity like that?”

  “Well… yeah?”

  For the first time, it occurred to me that this brutal honesty thing might be hard to swallow for someone other than me, but he didn’t seem to have any issues with it.

  “Ego doesn’t have a place in the playroom. Maybe the role I slip into seems like an extension of what you usually refer to as my winning personality, but unlike outside of a scene, here I have the weight of responsibility solely on my shoulders. If anything goes wrong, it’s my fault, even if it happened because you didn’t tell me something I should have known. In that case, I should have made sure you’re completely honest with me first. I get a lot out of what actually happens, but it’s that responsibility and trust you place in me that gives me the greatest satisfaction. If you boil things down to the actual dynamics, the Dominant is always the submissive’s bitch. Anything I do is to let you get the biggest kick out of it. A small detail like whether you pretend to be meek or not doesn’t change a thing for me.”

  “Not really a big concession then?”

  “Not for me,” he agreed. “Someone else may very well think differently about this. I told you before that the biggest appeal for me is the physical side. Someone who’s way more into the dominance and submission part will likely balk at the suggestion to keep protocol completely out of the scene. It’s a wide playing field, and it works best if you find someone with similar interests.”

  “Okay.” Then something else he’d said on Saturday flitted through my mind. “You warned me that if I mouthed off to you, you’d make me rue that—does that still apply?”

  Now his smile turned evil, and I couldn’t keep a shudder of excitement from running through my body.

  “Let’s phrase it this way. If you still have enough breath and energy to mouth off, then I can push you a lot harder, so I will. Does that answer your question?”

  “Yes. Yes, I think it does.”

  My voice had lost most of its strength, and my knees might have gone just a little weak.

  “Ready to start?”

  “Very.”

  “Good. I need to get changed. You need to go use the bathroom and get rid of all these superfluous clothes. When you’re done, wait for me here”—he pointed at a spot in the middle of the open space—“kneeling. You remember what I told you about position?”

  “Legs apart, arms behind my back?”

  “Perfect,” he more purred than said, then g
estured toward the door. “Shall we?”

  Chapter 7

  Ten minutes later, my knees hit the floor, and I exhaled what felt like the hardest breath of my life.

  So this was it. The moment of truth.

  Saturday had been different—still nerve-wracking in a way, but not like this. For one thing, even with all the excitement, it had felt a lot more like fooling around. Jack had been there, adding a certain buffering layer to things. No doubt, I trusted Simon explicitly to keep me safe, but now things were more serious, starker somehow.

  Intimidating.

  Exhilarating.

  I wondered how exactly I should keep my arms behind my back, then crossed them, my hands gripping the opposite forearms. Looking down my body, I quickly sucked in my stomach and tried to straighten my back into a perfect curve. The floor was hard and cold under my legs, and it took less than a minute for my knees to start aching. Damn, but I was getting old.

  A sound somewhere behind me made me perk up, my entire body slamming into alert mode. Had that been a creaking stair? How long exactly was he going to let me wait here for him? Was this already part of the game? I didn’t doubt it. And it was definitely working. Five more minutes of being alone with myself, and I’d be putty in his hands.

  I really didn’t know what to think of that.

  The sound repeated itself, then the door swung shut, startling me. The impulse to crane my neck and look over my shoulder was strong, but I cut it short. I wasn’t exactly a creature of grace, but I was sure that kneeling like this I gave a pretty picture, and I didn’t want to destroy that by falling over because I shifted my balance wrong.

  His footsteps were almost silent as he advanced on me, and I saw why when he walked by close enough to touch if I’d let go of my arms—Simon wasn’t wearing any shoes, or socks, for that matter. I’d kind of expected him to wear a T-shirt and jeans like last time. The black tee was back in evidence, if hugging his torso tighter this time. I definitely approved of the leather pants he’d donned. They made his long legs look more buff and accentuated his ass perfectly.

  I quickly looked away before I could start a hymn to praise his gluteus maximus. Then looked right back because he’d reached the cabinet he’d described as the storage place for his bondage equipment. Now he definitely had my attention. I couldn’t exactly see what he was rummaging around for, but when he turned and came over to me, he carried several coils of rope, neatly rolled up and wound around themselves.

  “Hard night at work?” he asked conversationally, which was about the last thing I’d expected.

  “Not too bad,” I replied cautiously.

  Simon flashed me a grin, obviously amused about the fact that I didn’t really know how to behave yet.

  “Relax. I told you, if role playing and keeping to a strict protocol isn’t your thing, I can do without that. Besides, it takes time to tie someone up. I don’t want you to nod off in the meantime.”

  “I doubt that will happen,” I snarked back before I could rein in the automatic impulse, gaining another smile for my effort.

  “Would be quite the rude awakening, that I can tell you already.”

  As if anyone could nod off after that!

  Still keeping with the laid back theme, Simon stopped behind me and let the rope drop to the floor. Leaning over me so that his head was upside down, he crouched until our faces were almost nose to nose when I leaned my head back.

  “Does it distress you if I keep talking to you as if you were anything else but my wanton little slut?”

  A second later his hand was in my hair, wrenching my head back hard enough to make me gasp, while the other grabbed my wrists just as they slid by each other when I tried to extend my arms to keep my balance. The look in his eyes was hard, but did oh so delicious things to me.

  “Don’t think for a second that you’re anything else to me but a body to use, three holes to fuck for my pleasure only. Understand?”

  “Yes!” I hissed, then sighed when he let go, almost missing the contact. How was it possible that a few words like that combined with a hint of being manhandled could make me so fucking aroused?

  “Get up and follow me.”

  Curiosity let me do so without putting up a fight. I was a little disappointed when of all possible venues, he led me over to the padded bench, which he pulled away from the wall, the heavy wood needing his entire strength to be moved about. On closer inspection, it looked more like the box-like benches found at the foot of fancy beds than what I’d expected as dungeon furniture, but it was covered in black leather on the top, and a multitude of attachment points were distributed all over the sides, the purposes of which I felt only halfway qualified to guess. Once he had the bench positioned to his satisfaction, Simon told me to sit down, and dropped all but one coil of rope onto the bench next to me.

  “Hand,” he prompted, and when I extended both arms in front of me, he glanced from my wrists up to my face briefly. “I can use the cuffs, too, if you prefer, but let’s try this once, okay?”

  “Okay,” I agreed, then watched as he wound the doubled-over rope around my right wrist, crossing and twisting it around itself several times. There was still a long tail left when he tied off the rope, and he held on to it as he nodded toward the newly created rope manacle.

  “Yank.”

  I did, maybe a little harder than I’d intended to because of his single word orders, but besides putting tension on my upper arms, nothing much happened. The thick bands of rope didn’t have much of a give, and also didn’t tighten, making it obvious why he’d just told me to test his knots. I nodded mutely, and he set to creating a similar cuff around my other wrist, then also around each ankle.

  I had to admit, I hadn’t anticipated that just sitting around waiting was as much a part of bondage as everything else. I must have appeared a little bored because when he straightened, Simon grinned as he reached for the last remaining coil of rope.

  “Bored already? The part they never show in porn is just how awkward and endless the rigging can get before you have your victim exactly where you need her to be.”

  “I haven’t complained yet,” I pointed out, slightly petulant.

  “Probably because I haven’t accidentally whipped you with a flying rope end yet,” he remarked as he stretched my arms out in front of me, side by side, and started tying them together just below the elbows. “That will get better once you’re in position,” Simon went on when I rolled my shoulders a little to keep my arms from squishing my boobs.

  “Has anyone ever told you that you’re such a tease?”

  He let his grin be the only answer while he threaded the rope ends into that last tie.

  “Get on your hands and knees. Or elbows and knees, I should probably say, toes at the end of the bench,” he instructed, then stepped up to wind a strong arm around my middle while I shimmied around, surprisingly constrained and unbalanced already. When he had me where he wanted me, Simon took the loose rope ends from the wrist cuffs and pulled them taught as he tied them to the front center of the bench. So far our light banter had kept me mostly calm, but when he moved to the foot end of the bench and ran his warm palms up the back of my thighs, I felt my pulse pick up further.

  “Spread your knees as far as it’s comfortable.”

  With his fingers only inches away from my pussy it was hard not to get even more excited about his command than I already was, but in line with my former observation, he didn’t make true on that unspoken promise but instead reached for my ankles and pulled them even farther apart. Then he tied the rope leading from those manacles to the sides of the bench at the very end, right next to where my toes hung off the thick padding.

  “I expect you to keep your knees in exactly this position. You won’t like it too much if you’ll make me get more rope to restrain them.”

  Right then, that didn’t really sound like much of a threat, but testing my bonds, I couldn’t see how I would even be able to move them much. It certainly felt more comf
ortable to keep my thighs further apart than trying to close them, thus rotating my knees uncomfortably.

  “A sign of acknowledgment would be nice, even if you can’t swallow your stubbornness and do it in a courteous fashion,” Simon remarked dryly, and gave my ass a whack that was hard enough to make me cry out and rock forward.

  A part of me that I hadn’t realized existed was about to offer a loud, “Yes, Sir!” but I nodded instead before I could paint myself a hypocrite.

  Simon made a sound low in his throat that probably started out as a snort, and stepped away from me to admire his work.

  “That should do nicely.”

  He returned to me then, squatting down in front of the bench so that we were at eye level. Glee filled his face, and it wasn’t exactly the nice kind of glee that gave me a warm feeling in my heart.

  “You realize just how helpless and vulnerable this position leaves you?” he asked, his voice sliding like velvet over my skin.

  Holding his gaze, I swallowed but didn’t reply. We both knew that was true.

  “Maybe you want me to demonstrate?” he offered, still sounding so very pleasant.

  I opened my mouth, ready to tell him that wasn’t necessary, and he shamelessly used that to lean in and kiss me hungrily. Well, that wasn’t so bad, even if there was a light strain on my neck from having to push my head up.

  My eyes drifted shut, and for a few seconds everything was forgotten—my unease-laced excitement, the perpetual horniness. There was just his taste, so tantalizing on my tongue, his lips, insistent but gentle—until his fingers skimmed down my side, hitting all the ticklish spots over my ribs, making me shriek and try to wrench away. Yet the wrist ties made it impossible to do more than pull my shoulder to the side, shifting my balance slightly, and the wide spread of my knees guaranteed that my hips moved even less. My knees did slip a little, the position becoming painful immediately, and as soon as his fingers stopped tormenting me, I quickly moved them back to where they belonged. Simon must have noticed but he didn’t call me out on it, just kept staring straight into my eyes.

  “I can be nice. Much of what I’m going to do to you depends on your reactions. Your problem might be that I really don’t want to be nice. You’ll have to convince me.”