Passion

by Rachel Kramer Bussel

  Enter Hayden and the incredible, magnetic sexual attraction of avoidance.

  The attraction I felt to Hayden was sincere, I didn’t doubt. But I saw then that the fixation I had experienced around him was an unconscious redirection of my attention. It was the loud, fearful part of me doing its best to direct my awareness away from what it found so threatening. Ultimately, it wasn’t about intimacy with another person. It was about intimacy with myself.

  Looking at Chris that day, I understood that for me, the intimacy had always been harder. Harder than leaving and starting over again, only able to reach a certain level before I found something new that magnetically called to me. I felt that magnetic intensity with Hayden, for sure. I had felt it many times in my life. And while at that moment I saw the pattern that had played out over and over in my past relationships when I resisted calls to go deeper inside and went after what was new instead, I saw as well that at those times, I wasn’t ready for it yet. The emergence of this precise opportunity was unique—unique to here, to now, to this.

  And as always, I still had the option to turn it down.

  So, when winter came, the bushes outside the reception venue topped by domes of smooth white snow, I entered the room on Hayden’s arm. The bridal party followed behind us as we made our way to the head table amidst the excited chatter of the hundred-plus guests.

  Hayden pulled my chair out for me, and I smiled as I thanked him and released his arm. He gave me a wink and turned to find his seat on the other side of Shawn’s. I watched him, recalling the various fantasies I’d entertained about the two of us on this day. The attraction was still there. Had I been at liberty to do so, I would have fucked Hayden silly every chance I got. I would have jumped him in the guest bedroom at Sarah and Shawn’s engagement party, I would have sucked his cock in the dressing room of the men’s formal wear store, I would have dragged him off for a quickie in one of the back rooms prior to the ceremony that had just taken place.

  As it was, I was not at liberty to do that. I arranged my belongings under my chair and stood to dismount the platform, holding up my royal blue floor-length dress with one hand as I descended the steps and crossed the dance floor.

  Chris met me at the edge of it. He stepped forward to kiss me, and my dress swished around my ankles as I dropped it to wrap my arms around his neck.

  “I have to go back to the head table,” I whispered. “I just wanted to say hi and I’ll see you as soon as the first dances are over.”

  Chris ran a finger along my jaw, sending a shiver down my back as his hand rested suggestively on my hip. I suspected he was thinking of the new fantasy I had shared with him before he had dropped me off earlier for photos. It was cold outside, and I doubted anyone else would venture out and find us behind the building, my hands planted against the wall and Chris’s cock buried deep inside me.

  I had also told him, I recalled now as I kissed him a final time and turned to head back to the platform, I didn’t mind if it remained just a fantasy either. I gathered my dress again in one hand as my eyes found Hayden’s silver gaze across the room. I had certainly developed an appreciation for the value of fantasy, even if it was never acted out.

  GETTING IT RIGHT

  Teresa Noelle Roberts

  Heather knelt down at her boyfriend Jesse’s feet. It wasn’t something she normally did—at least not outside the bedroom or wherever they happened to get their kink on—but it was a safe position from which to say what she was about to say, a safe position in which to feel small and soft and submissive, nervous and wet at the same time.

  Jesse hit the remote, obviously figuring news delivered by a kneeling lover would be more interesting than anything CNN had to offer. “Yes?”

  She took a deep breath, took Jesse’s hands, looked into his eyes. “I want to feel the cane again. Please.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes…” A split second’s hesitation. “I hate being afraid. The longer we wait, the more I’ll build it up as a big deal in my mind. So I figure we just do it—but do it right this time. “

  “That’s my brave girl.” He raised their joined hands to his lips and kissed hers, letting his tongue dart out to tease her knuckles. “I love you.”

  She grinned, a little weakly, trying to hide the way she was lurching between arousal and terror. “I love you, too, but it’s not unselfish, Jesse. I need the closure. That was a weird night and I need to get past it. And besides,” she added, hoping she sounded more confident than she felt, “I bet it’ll be fun when we’re not both being stupid.”

  He smiled. “Stupid’s the word. We both know better than to play when we’re mad.”

  “This time we’ll do it right.”

  Almost a month ago, UPS had delivered the cane they’d ordered. They excitedly made plans for a lovingly kinky evening experimenting with the new toy, starting light and working up, since while Jesse had some prior experience wielding a cane, Heather knew only it sounded hot in erotica.

  There must have been something nasty in the air, though. On the night they’d planned for their cane experiment, Heather came home grouchy after a bad day at work to find Jesse just as irritable. They couldn’t remember, afterward, how it had started, but they got into an argument after dinner, the kind that would never reach a resolution because it wasn’t actually about anything.

  The only points they agreed on were that Heather had started it, and they both wanted to stop it. For some reason, at one in the morning on a weeknight, it had seemed like a great idea to use that new cane for a punishment scene and work things out that way.

  Maybe it wouldn’t have been such a bad idea if they’d ever done a punishment scene before, or if Heather hadn’t dropped so hard, worn by pain and emotion, that she forgot to use her safeword before Jesse broke skin. As it was, it had ended in tears, and not the good, cathartic kind, but the kind that left both of them wondering if they were both crazy to be playing games with pain and power.

  A few nights of attempting to be vanilla had convinced them they’d be even crazier if they didn’t play those games. But the cane stayed buried deep in the toy bag, and neither of them had been sure it would come out again.

  Until Heather asked.

  This time they pulled out all the stops. This time the room was full of flickering vanilla- and cinnamon-scented candles, adding a medieval, almost religious air to Jesse’s plain bedroom.

  This time there was no anger, no exhaustion, no confusion, just lust and love and, at least on Heather’s side, a lot of sexy anxiety. Under the angst and foolishness, that first time, she’d caught hints that she’d like the cane under better circumstances.

  But it still scared her.

  And Jesse saw her fear and helped her through it.

  They necked like teenagers on the couch before moving into the bedroom and kissing and caressing some more, so Heather was wet and quivering even before she began to undress.

  This time, Jesse sat on the bed and put her over his knee, as he had their first night together. Starting with light, loving smacks that sent the blood rushing, stimulating her skin, stimulating her sex, he warmed her up until she was pushing her backside up to meet his hand. Then he stepped it up a little, cupping the sweet spot of her ass with each blow, half watching the color turning from creamy to pink to almost red, half watching Heather’s reaction, the pleading little yelps, the squirming, the way she parted her legs, letting loose some of her aroused musk.

  “How I can resist that invitation?” Jesse stroked her vulva, then slapped it lightly, teasingly. His fingers came away wet and slick. “Now that’s what I like to see,” he said, his voice breathy, smoky.

  He pulled her up and kissed her, lingering and deep. “Now lie on your back,” he commanded. “I have a vision.”

  Then he started arranging her.

  He arched her over so her thighs rested on her chest and told her to hold herself in place with her arms.

  He tucked several pillows u
nder her, raising her ass. “Perfect,” he said. “I have a gorgeous target, but I can watch your face.”

  He didn’t add in case you need to safeword and can’t find your voice, but he didn’t need to.

  “I can’t hold this,” Heather said. “I’m afraid I’ll move at just the wrong time.”

  “That’s what rope’s for.”

  Slowly, sensually, he tied her that way, ass in the air, pussy open and exposed, muscles straining. She was deliciously helpless, and the embrace of the ropes made her feel safer.

  Juice poured from her pussy.

  Jesse lay on the bed; buried his face in her wet, exposed slickness and took a deep breath as if the scent intoxicated him. “Yum.” He began to lick.

  “Jesse…what are you doing?” Heather was genuinely confused. The last cane scene had been so rough his gentleness caught her off guard.

  “Making you come,” he said simply, before going back to what he’d been doing.

  Already wet, her pussy flooded as he tongued her, and he licked as if trying to get every drop. Of course, this just made her produce more. At first, though, he kept his attention on her lips, keeping away from her clit.

  She mewled, tried to squirm to get her clit under his questing tongue, but there was only so far she could move in her current position, especially with his weight on her. He licked and licked, pausing only to take his hard cock into his hand and say, “See what you’re doing to me already? I love having power over you. I don’t need to hurt you to have power over you, just offer you pleasure and the possibility of more. But I want to hurt you a little. Do you want that?”

  “Yes, I do. But what you’re doing right now…it’s so good.”

  “Come for me,” he whispered, just before he put his tongue where she craved it.

  And she did.

  While she was still riding the waves of orgasm, he slipped away and picked up their favorite leather slapper.

  A few good whacks took her butt from pink to red—and pushed her over to another orgasm. “That’s my girl,” he said, pride in his voice. “That’s the good naughty girl I love. Are you ready?”

  When she nodded, he reached for the cane.

  Heather took a deep breath, bracing herself for the onslaught of pain. She thought she could bear it now, after all the pleasure and tenderness, but when she heard the cane hiss through the air toward her, she held her breath and tensed her muscles in fear, waiting for the fire.

  First came a tap; a very stingy tap, but a tap. It felt like nothing at first, then like a long paper cut, stinging, but not too intense.

  Then fire coiled through her, merged into the heat between her legs and deep inside her body.

  She’d figured that after two orgasms in quick sensation, she was somewhere in the sensation Himalayas.

  No, she’d only been in the foothills. Erotic energy snaked through her, setting her alight, carrying her higher. “More,” she groaned, straining against the ropes that held her safe, unable to articulate clearly the strange but beautiful sensations inside her.

  The next blow was harder but sweeter, pushing her deeper. The next took her even farther. “Still okay?” she heard Jesse asking, but it was as if his voice was coming from another planet. She tried to speak, but wasn’t sure it worked because all her energy was turned elsewhere: to her raging pussy; to the lines of ecstatic fire on her ass.

  Unable to find her voice, she smiled and nodded.

  He grinned back evilly then struck her again. This time the initial reaction was downright painful, and she yelped, but it transmuted to pleasure even as she cried out, spiraled deep inside her, seemed to reach her heart and soul.

  “Another?”

  She meant to say something truly deep along the lines of “Oh, god, yes…” She didn’t even get out that much, just a deep, throaty noise, but apparently Jesse understood.

  He took her there—gave her the pain, not once, but three times in rapid succession, harder than the others. With the first two, she bit her lip, fought despite herself, despite feeling the pain transform itself almost immediately.

  On the third, he ordered, “This time, come.”

  And she did.

  They fucked after that, and somewhere along the line he untied her, maybe before or maybe in the middle—because at one point she was on top and couldn’t have been if she were still tied that way—but it was foggy. Wave after wave of orgasm and what felt like a serpent exploding up her spine and Jesse’s cock, Jesse’s body, Jesse’s beloved voice her only connection to the planet.

  Afterward, when she could talk again, when the rest of the world coalesced around her again and she became aware of anything beyond the feel of Jesse, the scent of Jesse, the sound of Jesse, and later still her own vaguely aching muscles and tender ass, she turned to him and said, “Cheater.”

  “Whaa…?” He sounded about as vague as she felt.

  “You didn’t hit me anywhere near as hard as before.”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “But…but it was amazing. The other time just hurt.”

  He helped her stand, walked her over to the mirror, turned her around.

  Her ass was a mottled mess, marked with seven distinct stripes.

  “I…I…” She couldn’t speak, just turned and buried her face in Jesse’s chest.

  “You’re welcome,” he said. “And thank you for trusting me to try again.”

  A noise somewhere between a sob and a laugh bubbled out of Heather. “Of course I trust you, Jesse,” she whispered. “I know you. I love you. We both made mistakes that night, but we know what went wrong and we know better now. Thank you for believing me when I said I was ready to try again.”

  “Any time.”

  Heather stroked her tender ass and giggled. “I think we should wait awhile before any more caning. But the oral sex when I was tied up…I could stand a little more of that.”

  Laughing, getting hard in anticipation, Jesse reached for the rope.

  THE MORNING RIDE

  Delilah Devlin

  With a schedule more predictable than the subway train she waited for, Sophie’s chest constricted as though a cinch were slowly being tightened around her ribs. Leaving her breathless every morning as she waited on the platform beside the tracks, her odd affliction only intensified once she boarded. The journey never varied, beginning in Upper Manhattan and continuing southward. Her body had acquired the habit, which was reinforced not by some psychological disorder, but by the need for one specific miracle to occur every morning as she took her usual seat along the far wall of the car.

  She sat, then rose and sat again to rearrange her skirt beneath her. She pulled at the hem and then slid it just high enough to attract attention but not so high that she looked like a slut. She ignored the low “Mmm-mm” from the college-age boy with bed-head who sat beside her.

  Her attention remained focused on the stations as they were announced. “One-hundred-and-twenty-fifth Street.” She straightened her back and took a deeper breath, hoping to quell the heat entering her cheeks. “Fifty-ninth Street.” She unwrapped her fingers from around her purse straps because her knuckles were whitening. When the car slid to a stop at 42nd, she held her breath and averted her glance from the sliding doors, watching instead from the corner of her eye as passengers stepped inside, sought their seats and settled in for their morning commute.

  She saw him, at least from the knee on down: shiny black loafers, knife-edge creases in his charcoal trousers. Sweeping her gaze upward, but still not looking directly, she eyed his tall, lean body, embracing the quickening tattoo of her heart. Dark hair, still glossy from his shower, curled close to his scalp. The scent of aftershave, spicy and fresh, followed him, and she inhaled sharply to catch it. When he took his seat along the opposite wall and two seats down, she let out the breath she’d held, the pinpricks of darkness that had narrowed her vision to a tunnel, fading back. All was right in her world again.

  Never mind that she’d spent another restless nigh
t, fighting the blankets and the dreams that left her so hot and frustrated she’d retrieved the vibrator from under her bathroom sink to take off the edge. Last night had been the best, or the worst, depending on whether she wanted to sink into the dream or cry over the fact that she was tired. Even now, the potency of the dream was so strong, the details so vivid, it was easy to slide back into the moment when she’d stumbled against him as they both debarked at Chambers Street and he’d slid his hand around her waist to steady her….

  He’d caught her against his chest, and she’d been forced to glance up, staring into his face fully for the first time.

  “Gotcha,” he said softly, the corners of his eyes crinkling.

  When he didn’t release her, she didn’t comment, not even when people jostled past them. “I’ve noticed you before,” she said.

  “I wanted to say something, but…”

  “Yeah.” She pried her fingers from the lapel of his suit and backed away. His arms slid slowly from her, as though he was reluctant to let her go, and she glanced up again.

  He swallowed hard. “Coffee?”

  She shook her head, not understanding for a moment, then gasped. “Please.”

  Only when he pushed through the glass doors of the coffee shop he’d led her to, they entered a bedroom. Hers. And it was pristine for once, covers turned down, rose petals spread across the robin’s egg blue cotton sheets.

  He bent to pick her up, and suddenly they were both nude. Climbing onto the mattress, he lowered her slowly to the bed. He didn’t give her time to savor the moment, coming over her, a knee between her thighs, opening her.

  His hand cupped her pussy, and his lips pulled away from his teeth amid tight, reddened features. “Sorry, I can’t wait. Been waiting so long…”

  She embraced him, pulling him closer as the round knob of his cock nudged her lips. When he thrust straight toward her womb, her back arched and her breasts tightened. A long, thin moan ripped from her throat. It took only three strong thrusts before she came.