“But?”
“I thought I would try again. I may be wrong, but we’ll find out, I suppose.” She frowned, realizing probably that she was being cryptic.
“I haven’t had much luck finding that connection with someone. And,” she smiled, “I’ll admit, when I first met you I thought ‘not a chance.’ But now I’m not sure. I’ve thought about you a lot.”
She said it with wonder in her voice, as if she didn’t understand why she was doing this exactly, but found it fascinating all the same. Like her thinking about me was some puzzle to be solved.
I put my hands on the table, turning the palms upward and offering them to her. I didn’t dare to take her hands.
“I know,” I said. “I don’t know why, Nova, and you confuse the hell out of me, but I want you in a way…I just want you.”
For a minute more, she sat still, thinking over my simple, desperate confession, maybe trying to decide if I was worth it after all.
“But would you want me in my way?” she asked, at last. She was serious, no hint of flirt or flippancy in her eyes as she held my gaze. “Would you let me create my pleasure with you? Would you want that?”
A strand of hair slipped loose to lie against the side of her neck, a dark line snaking down her pale skin into the shadow at the V of her blouse as she leaned over the table. I’d never felt more like the stupid jock, never felt more out of my depth. Or more hopelessly in lust.
“Yes,” I told her.
She reached forward and closed her fists over my hands—or as much of them as she could grasp—and I sighed with relief because she’d accepted me after all. Because she’d given me that chance to be hers.
I drove the forty-odd miles out to where she lived in a pretty little restored house with rosebushes out front. Just the kind of place she should have lived in. I stopped at the foot of the front steps and looked up at the door, my heart pounding with anticipation and dread. For the thousandth time I wondered what I was doing. For the thousandth time I gave up trying to find an answer.
I was here. I was hers. That mattered.
She came to the door and stood looking down at me with her tilted smile. Her hair was loose, tucked behind her ears, falling to her elbows like a veil and she looked like a figure out of her own paintings. Or maybe a religious painting. Except that she would be a temptress, not an angel. Not in those jeans that clung to her curvy ass and a silk shirt that just begged to be ripped off.
She held a hand out to me and I ran up the stairs to take it. I kissed it and she stroked my face. Petting me. Rewarding me for my obedience. I was in love.
“Come inside,” she told me, and I followed, blood tingling at the excitement in her voice. She took me to a room filled with light and clutter: sketchbooks and papers and ribbons and half-folded laundry. Pieces of her, scattered everywhere.
“Stand there by the sofa,” she told me, pointing, and as I moved to the spot, I saw the dark purple coils of rope shining in the afternoon sunlight. Out of place against the dainty throw cushions and white fabric of the sofa. I stared at them, transfixed, and I felt her light touch on my arm.
“If this is not what you want, it’s okay.” Her voice was gentle, questioning, and I turned to her to smile. To reassure her.
“It is.”
She told me to stay still and I did my best. But with her hands tearing my clothing away and her nails stroking my skin as the fancy took her, with the scent of her in my head as she walked around and around me, admiring, touching, sometimes caressing, sometimes bruising, my muscles trembled from the effort to not react. To not reach out for her. I wanted to pull her into my arms, throw her on that couch and smother myself in her. I wanted to enter her so slowly, watching for that moment where her face transformed and betrayed her pleasure.
I wanted to thrill her in the way I knew how to, but that wasn’t her way.
So I remained still. Clenching my jaw when she finally, finally unbuttoned my jeans and let my aching cock free. She stroked it, making sure I was fully hard, before she went on undressing me, every so often letting her hair brush my skin, now and then pressing her lips to some tiny inch of my body. Making me sweat from the most innocent of touches, in places I didn’t know could feel such sensation. My arms, my back.
I knew why I’d been drawn to her. She was a master at her art.
Only when she’d caressed me long enough for the cuckoo clock on the wall to chime half-past and the shadows had grown a little longer across the floor, and my cock was in pure torment, only then did she pick up the rope. My cramped muscles demanded movement. When she proceeded to slowly unwind one coil, smoothing and testing the rope, the effort to stay still hurt. Physically hurt. I gritted my teeth, feeling sweat inch down my spine.
She looked up at me and shook her head, smiling.
“Kneel down, you big monster. I can’t reach you.”
I laughed, with half-relief and half-pleasure and an extra half of disbelief. This was really fucking going to happen, wasn’t it? And I was going to let it happen. Let her tie me up. Jesus.
“Think it’ll hold me?” I asked, teasing, as I eased to my knees while my joints protested the controlled movement. My body wanted unlimited, brutal motion.
She paused in the act of running the strands of rope through her hands to double it and looked at me.
“Yes,” she said and her eyes were serious. “It will hold you.”
I couldn’t breathe. I longed for her kiss on my mouth, but I hadn’t earned it yet so I lowered my eyes and nodded. I felt her lips brush my cheek. She smelled like heaven: sweet and light, just a whisper of scent to make me even harder than before, gone before I could get my fill. And then she’d moved behind me.
She reached for my arms and folded them together behind my back. Instinctively I crossed them, but she uncrossed them and rearranged my hands flat against my forearms, her touch patient, sure and unhurried. I closed my eyes, felt the rope slide over my arms, again and again, rough on my skin but so loose I barely felt the weight of it at all.
I felt her knot it, and the strands tightened. She knotted it again and the pressure increased. Solid, constant weight now, constricting flesh and muscle. I twisted my fingers back and forth experimentally but they met only air and flesh. The knot was square in the middle of my back, out of my reach, and a few tugs assured me I wasn’t getting loose without a lot of effort and a lot of pain. If at all.
I began to wonder if this had been such a good idea after all. I began to think about my career, about whether I could trust her. I barely knew her.
My eyes flew open and she was standing before me, another strand of newly uncoiled rope draped over her palms. Waiting. She saw the panic in my eyes and bent forward to kiss each of my cheeks.
“I understand,” she whispered. “It’s okay.”
Again, another tiny whiff of feminine perfume, promising soft, sweet things. It robbed me of all common sense. I would do anything for more, anything to have her close to me.
She knelt in front of me and sat, legs tucked under her, watching my face. I was ashamed of my thoughts from a minute before. How could I have distrusted her? I wanted to say, “Go on,” but my tongue wouldn’t work. I could only nod, but that was enough.
She ran the doubled length of rope through her hands a few times and I watched, fascinated, as the strands coiled on the floor around her. I was reminded again of a painting: a girl with long hair kneeling, focused on her task. Innocent. It would stay with me, added to the scrapbook in my brain that was all her. I was pleading silently with her to look up at me and she did eventually, when she had satisfied herself about the condition of the rope.
She smiled and reached up to drape a loop of rope like a garland over my head. I could smell her skin now, the scent of her body touched with that hint of something sweet. It wasn’t perfume, maybe deodorant or shampoo. Whatever it was, it drove me insane. I tightened my stomach, fighting the urge to lean into her. To bury my face against her neck and taste her soft
skin. What if I did? Would she be annoyed? I decided I didn’t want to know, I didn’t want to risk ruining this perfection.
The rope lay on my chest like a bruise, the dark purple bright against my skin. She knotted it, feeding the rope through the knot like liquid. The loop around my neck scratched like tiny claws on my shoulders and back, irritating, frustrating. I was in hell, one worse than when I’d waited, desperate for her to call. Worse because now she was so close and my own obedience was all that lay between this torture and getting what I wanted. Yeah, I was crazy all right; I had to be to give in to this.
She smoothed the knot and then tied another, against my belly this time. I swallowed in an effort to fight the irritating rope sawing and scrabbling at my skin, and, distracted by the ripple of movement, she stopped. Mischief in her eyes, she gave me an unfathomable look. Then she bent and kissed my stomach. Her hair was silky on my skin. Her lips were moist, the kiss softer, more intimate than any she’d given me before. Sucking gently. I couldn’t help it—my hips bucked forward, seeking relief, and I moaned. She laughed.
“Oh Dustin,” she said, leaning back on her heels and looking at me. “You’re perfect. You’re only half-finished and you’re perfect.”
I laughed, but it was laughter tinged with desperation, and I shook my head. “Not bad for a dumb jock, huh?”
She frowned at me in mock annoyance and lifted her rope again. “You’re not. You’re more than you realize. That’s why you’re here and why I want you.”
I was silent. What do you say to that?
She was knotting the rope again, this time on my lower belly, and I was on fire, sweating despite the open windows, as if I’d been running sprints. I wanted to ask her what came next but I knew better. Biting my tongue so hard it hurt, praying for an accidental touch on my cock that was throbbing with painful need after that kiss, I watched as she parted the strands and brought them down around my balls and cock. She crossed the strands just beneath my balls and brought them up between the cheeks of my ass. I clenched my jaw hard, harder, doing everything I could not to twist away. Pain radiated through my head; the muscles of my lower back knotted with tension. Urging fight or flight. Anything, anything but allowing her to continue.
I had expected it, but I wasn’t prepared. How the hell can you be? I couldn’t breathe; panic and anger ran through my veins instead of blood. She was running the rope up under my tied arms, up to the loop still lying loose over my shoulders. The rope between my legs was tightening, rubbing and tickling along my privates, between the cheeks of my ass. It was tightening all over my body, pressing the knots into my chest and belly, reminding me they were there, that they couldn’t be ignored. With every breath I took, every little motion, I felt that rope, the pressure and friction and violation of it on my flesh.
And whether I wanted to be or not, I was aroused by it. I was on fire because she had done it, and I’d let her. I was fucking sick for wanting it, but I was already craving the next kiss of rope.
She was making me. Creating me. I didn’t know myself anymore.
She never showed that she was aware of my excitement, binding my knees with the same slow care. She was too disciplined to allow her art to be rushed, but I saw the sheen on her skin, saw her parted lips and the flush on her cheeks and neck. Outside I didn’t move; inside I was wild. I was so caught up in the heat, the sensation, the guilt and the desire, that I forgot what this all meant.
I didn’t realize it until she tightened the last knot on my ankles and came to sit on the sofa once again, panting a little from exertion or lust as she looked me over. Finished at last. Bruise-purple rope and white skin. Did I please her? That was all I could think about.
She regained her breath, ran a hand across her forehead and looked at me. A little frown and she stood again, came forward to adjust the rope across my chest, making it even. Fixing. Perfecting. I smiled and watched her smooth each of the trio of knots down my torso. She paused at the lowest and looked up, searching my face. Then she stepped back. Had it been worth the loss of my male pride? Did she like what she saw?
She clasped her hands behind her back and looked me up and down, pursed her lips and gave me her crooked smile.
“So now that you can’t move, how do you feel?”
I went hot all over, hotter than before, and then cold. Fucking Christ. I couldn’t move.
Any attempt and all I’d succeed in would be overbalancing. My weight and height worked against me now, liabilities instead of strengths. Even my hands were hopeless; she had tied the ends of the piece wound around my body to the knot over my arms. I was 204 pounds of solid muscle and I wasn’t going anywhere.
She saw me figure it out at last and laughed.
“I’ve taken your strength from you. I’ve taken your pride and your power and everything you could use to resist. I’m your Delilah now, love.” She paused. She was right; she’d taken everything that made me feel safe, stripping more than my clothes away. She had taken all of my control because I had given it to her.
I didn’t have anything left now to offer her, just me. My heart was still racing, but my brain had finally realized the helplessness of my body, finally realized panic was useless. I was finally giving in fully to my submission and the delicious, sodomizing touch of the rope. I nodded.
“So do you still want me? On these terms?”
Her voice was soft, her eyes a little shadowed in case the answer might be no after all. Why did it matter? My body was hers if she wanted it, along with my career and my money. She could take anything she wanted now and I didn’t have a say. There was a sense of crazy, twisted relief in the thought.
She ran a fingernail down my cheek and played with my lips.
“Do you want this?”
“Yes,” I said. “Yes. Yes.” Because I adored her and feared her. I’d be hers on any terms. I didn’t care.
I knew her body would be beautiful, but watching her strip was still an incredible, sinful delight. She pushed me down to lie on the floor first, then stood over me to peel away her clothes, while I lay helpless with the rope digging into my crack and my weight pressing down on my bound arms. I thought maybe it was better I was tied up; I didn’t know if I’d be able to touch her gently enough and I worried I might break her in half, she was so petite. But also so soft, every one of her curves round and erotic. I wanted to taste her, but I couldn’t.
I could only gasp as I felt her mouth, warm on my hard cock, as she lavished moisture and torment on me with her tongue. She sucked at my erection, one finger tracing the line of rope around my crotch, pressing the crossed strands into the space behind my balls. I was dizzy with the overload to my senses, and I was almost there.
So of course, she stopped. She let me writhe and beg and she laughed and scattered kisses on my stomach until she thought I could control myself again. I hurt myself on her knots, the rope cutting into my flesh as I twisted and turned to escape the relentless pleasure of her mouth, as she almost made me come again. As she drove me mad with frustration.
“Do you enjoy this? Does it get you wet to do this to me?”
I was shouting it in anger, but I’m sure she knew I was really just begging for mercy.
She laughed and drew one slender finger between her legs before bringing it to my mouth. Her scent was strong and maddening as I licked eagerly at her wet fingers, but it wasn’t enough. Not near enough. Just a cruel promise of what she wouldn’t let me have.
“Does this answer you?” she whispered. And laughed. Oh, but she was evil.
She finally let me in, climbing over me and fitting her pretty body to mine. I wriggled to fit my cock inside of her. So wet, incredibly wet and silky around my cock. So easy to thrust up into that softness, so hard not to let the wetness of her push me beyond my control. I’d waited and suffered too much for my reward; I would enjoy every second of fucking her. I would give her the best fuck of her life.
I watched her face like a hawk and she didn’t disappoint. Her lips parted
in a soundless “Oh” of satisfaction, her pussy clenched around me, wet and hot and excited, and she rode me. Her breasts swayed as she leaned over me, nipples so full and begging to be kissed, tantalizingly out of reach. She let her hair fall to hide the sight of her perfect tits from me, making me thrust even harder so that she would toss her head and I could drink in the sight of those delicate light brown nipples again. Wild and willing, and all I did was thrust and thrust and pray that I’d last long enough. Because she was just too god-damned beautiful.
I thought about losing in the Final Four. I thought about fumbling a game-winning touchdown. I recited stats and scores in my head and mentally replayed every ass-chewing I’d ever got from Little League to last week. Anything to keep my mind off the excruciating pleasure between my thighs and the burning, raw ache of rope scoring my flesh, the pounding pain in my head demanding I let the pent-up need out. Anything to keep thrusting through my agony until she finally cried out my name, her head flung back and her nails buried in my chest.
And then at last I gave in to my desperate body.
I thought that orgasm would kill me, but it didn’t. I lived and came back to earth, to her lying across my body and her hair tangled over my face. I closed my eyes and breathed her in. Sighed as she lifted herself because my arms and hands were killing me as the blood began to flow like needles again, and everywhere the rope was like sandpaper driven into my skin. Still, I didn’t want her to move.
“Stay,” I said.
She hesitated a little and I strained to kiss the tip of her chin.
“Please.”
She smiled. “I have to untie you.”
“Kiss me first,” I begged. While I was still inside of her, while I was still bound and utterly hers. “Kiss me.”
She looked at me for a long, long minute; she let me suffer for just a little bit more. And then she kissed me.
HIS LADY’S MANSERVANT
Yes, Ma'am Page 13