Bound to Accept

by Nenia Campbell

“I'm not, though.”

  “I know that now.” He lets out his breath. “You made that quite clear.”

  “And now here we are.”

  “Yes.” He starts wheeling his bike. “Walk with me.”

  “Okay.”

  All that fish and rice from the sushi is starting to swim around in my stomach. I'm hoping the walk will ease the jitters, though with Tristan here, that seems unlikely.

  “I'll be honest,” he says. “I still don't feel entirely comfortable with the idea of taking you.”

  I glance at him. “Taking me where? Where are we going?”

  “Fucking you,” he corrects himself in a low voice, that makes me stop walking. “Fucking you—hard.”

  I open my mouth, but no sound comes out. It isn't fair. It isn't fair that such a simple, crude phrase can be so evocative. I've always thought I wanted to be made love to, but fucking—being fucked—sounds so hot when he says it.

  Tristan watches his effect on me, studying my face for further reactions. “I dreamed about you last night.”

  “What about?”

  I'm still a little shaken from the fucking comment, and that he said it to me where anyone could hear. And that this doesn't bother me as much as it should.

  “It was a sexy dream.” He gives me a wolfish grin. “If I tell you what you were doing, you might run away.”

  My heart hammers in my chest. “You won't know unless you find out.”

  “Are you teasing me, Kelly?” He runs his hand down my arm, closing his fingers around my wrist. “Or are you saying you're planning on letting me find out?”

  “Maybe both,” I whisper.

  Tristan stares at me. Then he slowly shakes his head. “Jesus,” he says under his breath. “If you were any other woman, I'd…” But he doesn't go on.

  “You'd what?”

  “Punish you for teasing me.”

  I pull my hand free—or try to. He's holding on just a little too tightly, and it strikes me like a fist to the gut that he's really that strong. “I am like any other woman, Tristan. I think you need to get that through your head.”

  “No, you're not. You're my best friend.” He loosens his grip on my wrist but doesn't let me break free. “The girl who has all the Japanese shit on her desk.” He steps closer, putting my arms around his neck. “The girl who's daring me to tell her about my wet dreams in the middle of a very public park.” His hand slides down to cup my ass, and when he leans in I feel the stubble on his cheek graze my skin. “The girl with the kind of breasts that keep a man up at night, thinking about all the ways he can play with them. The one girl in this world I don't want to hurt.”

  He pauses.

  “But if we start going out, I will want to hurt you. Just a little. I'll want to make you feel pain—pain and pleasure, combined to heighten sexual gratification to its fullest potential. I'll want to fuck you.” He tucks a strand of hair behind my ear, letting his fingers linger against my throat. “Tell me, how do you feel about that? Me wanting to fuck you?”

  “Turned on,” I blurt out, flushing.

  Tristan rests his forehead against mine. His skin feels a little feverish. “That's a good start.” I can feel his eyelashes flutter against my cheekbone as he rubs his face against me, and I'm reminded of a cat marking its territory. His nose brushes against mine and then he grazes my lips lightly with his. “You're shaking, Kelly. Are you afraid?”

  Honesty, I remind myself. I know this man. I know he wouldn't really hurt me. I nod my head. “A little.”

  “Here's a secret,” he says. “Fear can actually make sex better. But only if it is controlled.”

  I wouldn't know. But I think I understand what he's getting at. It's like the thrill people feel when they ride a roller-coaster. The giddy euphoria that you've cheated death. “What if it's not controlled, though?”

  “You can try and ride it out. Or you can request that I stop.”

  That's the first time he talked about BDSM in an active way, instead of an abstract way, involving the two of us as participants. He seems to be warming to the idea.

  Tristan releases me and we're once again walking through the park. It's a sunny day and people are playing with their dogs, or letting their children run around. Even so, it's pretty quiet.

  “I want to try,” I say, surprising myself. But the moment I say the words, it sounds right. “I want to…submit to you.”

  Tristan studies me for a moment. Then he nods. “Then come to my place tonight. Make sure you wear something comfortable. And don't eat a big dinner.”

  Like me, Tristan lives in his own apartment. His is nicer than mine because unlike me, he actually has a “real job.” He works as a software engineer at some small, local start-up. I ring the doorbell. The door opens to reveal Tristan. He's wearing True Religion jeans and a fitted black shirt that I've never seen him wear around me.

  “I thought I might have scared you off.”

  “Nope!” I tuck a lock of hair behind my ear.

  “Don't front with me,” he says, pulling my hand away. “This won't work if you lie to me about how you feel.”

  We stare at each other awkwardly.

  “I guess I do find you a little…intimidating.”

  He watches me shift from foot to foot. “That's normal.” I watch his eyes flick back to my face. “Are you going to come in?”

  “Um, yeah.” He doesn't move, so I sort of have to squeeze past him to get through the door. I think he's wearing some kind of cologne, too. It smells nice.

  “Patchouli,” he says, when I ask. “I'm glad you like it.”

  We walk past his kitchen, and into his bedroom. I start to feel nervous—well, more nervous. He isn't going to jump on me now, is he?

  “Nervous?”

  “Yes.” It's like he read my mind. His TV is facing the bed. The two of us have sat here multiple times, controllers in hand, duking it out on Super Smash Bros. He's got it set to VH1, which confuses me. I thought we were going to talk about BDSM. “Are we…are we watching a movie?”

  “Sit down.” It's as much a question as it is a command. I get the impression that he's watching me, measuring my worth. I hoist myself up on the mattress and sit cross-legged, scooting over to make room for him. He doesn't sit, though. Not right away. He's fiddling with the DVD player.

  “This will explain things better than I ever could.”

  The screen flickers to life.

  “Dungeon Masters,” I read. The words are in this bizarre neon font that looks right out of the 80s. “Oh jeez. Not the D&D kind, then, I'm guessing.” I can't seem to stop babbling.

  Tristan hops on the bed and sits very, very close. We've sat this way before, but now there's a sexual charge there that wasn't present before. “Stop talking.” He says the words right into my ear and I have to try hard not to shiver. They seem to drip right down my spine like cubes of ice, seeping into my skin, an erotic cold-hot feeling that settles way down low in my gut.

  “But—”

  “I'll gag you, Kelly.”

  Looking at his face, I believe him. I shiver a little.

  Dungeon Masters is definitely not referring to the D&D kind. The movie starts in a dark room, with a cloudy lens. As it sharpens in focus, it shows a woman bound to a chair. Okay. I'm a little disturbed. That's new. She is wearing a series of crisscrossing black leather belts in place of undergarments, some cinched tightly around her breasts.

  She also has clamps on her nipples; they have gone an alarming purplish color—the nipples, I mean, not the clamps—but the woman doesn't seem to mind. Not that she'd be able to tell you if she did: there's a bright red ball-gag stuffed into her mouth.

  A man in leather pants walks onto the screen. He's got a riding crop under his arm, but I can't take my eyes away from his pants. They've got all these complicated looking buckles that emphasize his well-built hips, and he's got one of those deep Vs that means his abs are really defined. The crotch of his pants is unsnapped, revealing his penis, which is fucki
ng huge. It is red and glistening, with thick purple veins that wrap around it like the garland on a Christmas tree. From the look of it, the man seems to like what he sees.

  He runs the flogger down the woman's front, from her chin to her groin. Her legs are spread, bound to the back legs of the chair, and her vagina is pretty much open. She's completely shaved. It's like looking at the pages of an anatomy textbook and not very sexy, although it does make it easier to see what's going on. He gives her a single, controlled tap, concentrating on her clitoris, and I flinch in sympathy. The woman writhes and arches in the chair, but doesn't make a single sound. He smacks her breasts next, first the left, then the right, before dropping to his knees.

  Is he going to go down on her? No. Instead, he inserts the end of the flogger into his mouth, sucking on it suggestively, letting his tongue play over the tip like he's giving a blowjob and—

  Oh my God, he's inserting it into her vagina. I dig my fingers into the sheet. Fingers lightly brush against my thigh, close to where the woman on screen is getting violated.

  “Do you want me to turn it off?” Tristan asks softly, rubbing my thigh so gently, such compassion in his voice, that I can't imagine him doing the things I'm seeing on the TV set.

  He's enjoying it, too, though. I can make out a telltale bulge in the crotch of his jeans. Or is it my fear that's making him that way? “No.”

  He presses a light kiss to my cheek. “My brave girl.”

  “Does she…” My mouth is having trouble forming the words. “Does she like that?”

  “Oh, yes,” he says in a low voice.

  Even if I decide that this isn't my—what did he call it?—my scene, I think it might be good to understand. He was right; this really isn't anything like what my friends write about in their books. Usually, their books are about some beautiful woman getting abducted by a foreign millionaire, who has sex with her while she's imprisoned in the Waldorf Astoria-esque basement of his mansion in the Hamptons.

  Except for the handcuffs, and the fact that the sex in those romance novels is usually non-consensual, at least at first, they're pretty boring and tame.

  This, on the other hand, would make a great story.

  Tristan hasn't taken his hand from my thigh and leaves it there as the scene changes. The woman from before is now spread-eagle on a bed, her gag swapped for a blindfold. The man in the leather pants is there, and his penis is still out, though he's not quite fully erect anymore.

  “Please,” she begs, “Master, please, may I come?”

  “Yes,” he says. “Come like the whore we both know you are.” He removes the nipple clamps, and the woman gives a full bodied shiver, along with a small cry.

  “Thank you, Master,” she gasps, weeping. Tears trickle down from beneath the leather blindfold.

  The man wipes the tears from her face with his thumbs, making the gesture look almost affectionate. It's the first show of compassion he's given so far, but he ruins it by snapping a thick leather collar around her throat.

  A chain runs from her collar, and he draws it out lengthwise down her body, running his finger along her skin as he follows the chain's path, until he comes between her legs. He spreads her labia with his fingers in a V-shape and affixes the charm—it's another clamp—to her clitoris.

  I wince.

  “Clit clamps actually make the skin very sensitive,” says Tristan. “It's a lot easier to achieve orgasm that way.”

  “You want my cock as a reward,” the man on the TV says, and for the first time I notice his voice is shockingly high. Not at all what I was expecting, which was a deep baritone, like Tristan's.

  “Oh, yes, please, Master.”

  “Show me, then,” he says. “Show me how much you want me inside of you. Show me what you'll look like with my cock buried deep inside your slutty, wicked cunt.”

  Slutty, wicked cunt? I choke back a nervous giggle, darting a sideways look at Tristan—and am shocked into turning my head in a full-on double-take. Because Tristan's not watching the movie. He's watching me, and the intensity in his eyes makes my mouth go dry. Slowly, I tilt my head back towards the screen, but I can feel the weight of his eyes on me.

  The man bends out of sight for a moment, and then comes up holding what looks like a penis made out of glass. He lubes it up with his mouth like he did with the flogger in the other scene (that can't be sanitary) and inserts it into her vagina, pushing it in and out, slowly at first, and then faster, and the woman's hips pump with him, lifting her rear almost off the mattress. Every time she arches her spine, the clamp fastened to the collar around her throat by the chain tugs on her clit, and her moans are so loud, almost like she's in pain, but not quite.

  As he services her with the glass penis, the man in the crotchless leather pants fists his erection. It doesn't take long before he's hard again, and then he swaps the dildo for his own penis. He thrusts into her—without a condom, I can't help noticing with disapproval—and traces the woman's mouth with the glistening tip of the glass dildo. She parts her lips, and her tongue comes out to taste herself. He pushes the dildo into her open mouth, keeping time with his own thrusts, in, and out, it's almost hypnotic. I couldn't stop watching even if I tried.

  The man climaxes first. He pulls out, and ejaculates over her stomach and breasts, his come splattering her torso like a Jackson Pollock painting.

  “Master,” the woman says hoarsely, visibly straining. “May I please come?”

  “No,” he says coldly.

  The woman struggles to obey, and sweat beads on her skin as she clenches her teeth. Then the muscles in her thighs clench and she lets out a gasp, a tight, high-pitched sound that's half-relief, half-fear. I see the liquid seep out of her glistening vagina, staining the sheets as she makes a low, mechanical groan that reminds me of that creepy woman from The Grudge.

  “I told you not to come,” the man says.

  The woman makes a sharp intake of breath. “I'm sorry, Master. I didn't mean to. Please, forgive me?”

  “You'll have to be punished,” he says, in that same boyish voice, and I start to really not like him. He sounds like a bratty teenager telling his mom he won't clean his room. “Punishment always comes before forgiveness.”

  “Then please, Master, punish me. Please, let me show you how sorry I am.” She arches herself in appeal. “Master, let me suck your cock.”

  “You aren't worthy of my cock right now,” he says, and there is steel in his voice, and I think he really might be angry with her. “No, I think what you need is the whip.”

  “Oh, Master, no!”

  “She wants to be whipped,” Tristan says. “Some subs find the sensation of pain triggers orgasm. They will even go so far as to provoke their Dom in order to be punished.”

  “But she said no.”

  “That's why we have safewords.”

  I stare at him, uncomprehending. “What?”

  “Only safewords mean 'no.' Everything else means 'yes.'”

  “Ten lashes.” The man in leather pants produces a whip with about a dozen silky tails, and when he cracks it in the air it makes a horrible sound like a gunshot. “One lash for every minute of disobedience.”

  And he does it—he whips her, leaving red welts over her breasts, her thighs, her belly. And each time, the woman bears it stoically, saying only, “I'm sorry, Master, please, forgive me.”

  When he's finished whipping her, he grabs her by the hair and takes her roughly from behind.

  Tristan turns the TV off and that gives me a start. I'd forgotten he was here. “What did you think?”

  “I don't know.”

  “Does that seem like something you might want to try?” he asks levelly. “With me?”

  “I don't know.”

  “You look like you're thinking about running away.”

  That's exactly what I was thinking, which annoys me. He sounds amused, like he thinks I'm a total weenie. “What did Ashlee say when she saw the video?” I blurt, although when I see the expressio
n on his face I wish I didn't say it.

  “She called me a 'sick fuck' and ran out of the room,” Tristan says tightly. “Is that what you wanted to know?”

  “Shit, I'm sorry. It's none of my business. I shouldn't have asked.” At least now I have an idea of what they had their big fight about. “I'm sorry.”

  I sound like the woman in the video. All this apologizing is contagious.

  Tristan nods his head, though I'm not sure whether he's actually accepting the apology or just acknowledging it. Man, I was really out of line there. I feel terrible.

  Swallowing hard, I run my hand over his bed, smoothing out the wrinkles in his white sheets. “As for the video…would you want to do all of that?”

  “Not all at once.” His eyes are the most intense shade of green. “I'd start slowly. BDSM is about staying safe, sane, and consensual. I wouldn't do anything you didn't want.”

  “That sounds nice.”

  He smiles, and runs the back of his hand down my cheek. “It is. And we could have that.”

  I close my eyes, savoring the sensation of him touching me, touching me the way I've always wanted him to. He rubs my lower lip with his thumb.

  “May I demonstrate?”

  That breaks the spell. “What, you mean now?”

  “Don't worry,” he says. “I'm not going to fuck you.” He has a silk tie in his hand, which he pulls taut as I watch. He must have reached over and gotten it when I closed my eyes. “I'm going to blindfold you.”

  “Blindfold?” My voice sounds like I've just sucked down dangerous amounts of helium. I wet my lips, and regret it when I see the way his eyes fix on them. “W-why?”

  I forget my fear when he puts his arms on the bed, and leans over me, like some lithe beast of prey. He strokes a finger up my neck, tipping my chin up.

  “I believe you were telling me how sorry you were. Well. Now I want you to show me.”

  Chapter Four

  He wants me to show him I'm sorry.

  “It isn't going to hurt.” Tristan is holding the blindfold out like an offering. “I won't be inflicting any pain.”

  What's the point in persuasion, I wonder, when he could easily grab me and blindfold me, if that's what he wants?