Take Me There

by Tristan Taormino

  His eyes before they focus on my face will be wild and full of pain and fear, but in an instant the look in them will harden. It will be a look of hate, hating what I do to him but still needing more and hating that, too. It will always be like that. He will say, “No, sir.” He will say, “Fuck you, sir.”

  So I will reach under his scrawny belly to unbutton his jeans and yank them down, and this time I will lay angry stripes across his naked ass. I will lay welts of pain that blossom into purple bruises and blood blisters where the edge of the leather has bitten his flesh, and I will not stop until there is no unmarked skin to hit, until he breaks down, face wet with tears, and begs me to stop.

  This is a boy I will not daddy. I will be his Master, and he will be a thing I possess. I will not comfort him. He will hate what I do, and I will take all that I want. What the Beast wants.

  I’ll unbutton my own jeans—next time I’ll make him gnaw on my denim crotch for the privilege and unbutton my jeans with his teeth—and haul out my hard cock for him to suck, gagging and hitching, snot running down his face. He’ll kneel before me with his pants at his knees and swallow my cock to the hilt, so help me God he will, and I’ll fuck his face until he knows exactly what that hole is for.

  And the boy wants it. I know he wants it, and so does the Beast, and I know what I’ll find when I’ve had enough of my cock down his throat and I turn him around, belly down on the hassock. My cock will open him up easily, slipping into him like a key in a well-oiled lock, because this is the thing he wants most of all, whether he knows it or not. His most shameful, unwanted part will betray him, and he will be grateful. His wet cunt will need no lube at all; I’ll pound him until the Beast is finished with both of us, slamming against his ravaged ass until my own need for orgasm reminds me of mercy, and I reach around to jerk him off, my cock buried in him, my breath hot on his neck, my weight on his back.

  In the end, I’ll make him lick my boots to thank me, letting the Beast in me doze and dream of next time.

  I’m sorry, I tell my lovers, silently. I’m sorry it’s not you I imagine. And I know what you would say, each of you: “That’s not so bad. I could give you that. I have given you that, or nearly, or would have, if you’d only let me.” But it’s only the beginning, don’t you see? The Beast wants so much more than that. The Beast wants blood, and the cane that puts down pain like napalm, and doesn’t care if it turns you on or not. The Beast wants to hear you scream. The Beast wants you to be so afraid you will thank your God when it’s over that I am not really insane, that I did not actually spill your guts out on the bed of a cheap motel or crack open your skull on the dungeon’s cinder block wall. The Beast wants to call you things you do not want to be called. The Beast wants to hit and kick and gouge and tear, the Beast wants to become a whirlwind of pain and fear, abandoning all control, abandoning love and conscience and hope for the future. The Beast—my Beast—is a beast of rage.

  A woman I know, another switch, tells me that her inner sadist has several forms of expression, one of which she calls the Vampire, and he reminds me of my own Beast—amoral, hungry for pain and fear, satisfaction of his own desires his only care. There are other ways her top self can express itself; in me it seems that there is only one Beast, and every other way in which I might play top, even Daddy, is only a pale shadow of it. In my musings, considering what his nature is, I thought at first that there might actually be two Beasts—one that wanted a victim’s fear and another that wanted to explode in physical violence. It made sense that there should be two, because I know where they come from, just as I know who my imaginary boy really is.

  My mother’s powerlessness. My father’s burden of control and responsibility. She had no one but me on whom to let loose her fear of being a helpless cripple, her resentment of the trap she came to by circumstance and poor judgment. He did everything he was supposed to do, and God help anyone who got in his way when his leash finally broke. I am the child of both my parents. My Beast is their child, too. There is only one of us.

  Do you see why it can’t be you I imagine, my lovers to whom I owe much more than I’ve given? It has to be the boy who lives only in my mind; the sullen, angry, injured boy who hates the things I do to him, hates me, and still comes back for more. He is as tough as he is fragile. He needs pain like the rest of us need air and water, shelter and love. He needs to die so he can be born again, and maybe this time, someone will want him. I can hurt him because I don’t love him like I love you. I can hurt him and scare him and even hate him. After all, he’s only me.

  If I say it often enough, write about it, describe him to myself, imagine what I will do to him in loving detail, maybe the Goddess will let me have him.

  THE MAN WITH THE PHOENIX TATTOO

  Laura Antoniou

  Of course I will; why wouldn’t I want to see you writhing in pain while a big, burly, bearded guy hurts you?”

  She accepted the request lightly, with good cheer, and left the obvious corollary unsaid. Because it had been a while since the last time she’d seen such a thing.

  She picked him up in Brooklyn and they kissed in the front seat of the car. It was early evening, chilly and damp; their kiss was brief and functional. Through the open car door came the scent of fireplaces and layers of wet leaves still piled in the tiny squares in front of brownstones, trapped in the narrow spaces between stoops. Yellow and flickering blue light filtered from barred front windows when he closed the car door, putting them both in comfortable darkness.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t call sooner,” he said quietly.

  “You’re such an asshole, Parker,” she said, turning the wheel.

  “I’ve missed you, too.”

  The studio was two flights over a pizzeria in Jersey City. The sign on the steel door was faded, and Rachel hit the buzzer several times before they heard the click of the lock releasing.

  “Let’s see the patch,” the artist and proprietor said in way of greeting. Chris hung his motorcycle jacket up by the door and pulled his shirt up, turning to show the small area just over his waist, a spot of color on his skin.

  Wolf nodded as he examined it. Bald as an egg, he wore a tapered black-and-iron-gray beard; his skull was etched with a ring of black barbed wire and his earlobes elongated by 00-gauge plugs. “Yep, looks good! Let’s get you under the lights and make sure you’re properly crazy.”

  “No doubt about that,” Rachel muttered. But she hung her own coat up, and followed them over to the table under the spotlights. Ink, needles, wipes and gloves were all in place, and different prints of the final design were pinned up for reference.

  “You should talk,” Wolf said cheerfully. “How’s your cat tat doing?”

  She grinned at him. “Still biting me, but not much lately.”

  Chris heard the message and stripped without comment, down to the waist and then peeling his jeans back down his hips.

  “I still like that rose,” Wolf said admiringly as Chris prepared to get on the table.

  “Thank you,” Chris said. Rachel turned away to examine one of the drawings, and Wolf picked up the stencil and started the transfer. When he was done, he nodded briskly as he stripped off his gloves. “Okay, take another good long look and make sure it’s what you want.”

  Obediently, Chris got up to use the mirrors. The design was huge, covering his ribs and the lower part of his chest. On his smoothly shaven skin, the transfer ink looked blurry, but the lines were right where they should be. Without the thin, dark hair that dusted his body, he looked pale; his eyebrows and the curly hair on his head seemed as dark as the transfer lines. He didn’t touch the outline, but stretched and examined the way his new body looked, adorned only with scars and years of self-discipline.

  “You look so hot,” Rachel said from behind him. In her heels, she was two inches taller than he was, exactly. He smiled at her in the mirror.

  “You always thought so,” he said.

  “Imagine that.”

  “You want musi
c?” Wolf asked, as he started measuring ink into a disposable cup.

  Chris shook his head and stretched out one more time before getting back on the table. “Feel free to put on whatever you like to work to,” he offered.

  “Hah! You don’t know what you just got yourself into,” Wolf warned. He used a remote to turn on the stereo and the sound of an older recording started coming from the speakers: heartaches.

  ZZ Top would have been the obvious guess; heavy metal or something tribal and trendy might have been good follow-ups. Patsy Cline, though...

  “Yeah,” Wolf said cheerfully. “I am one badass motherfucker. Ready for the pain? Most people say this part is the worst.”

  “Hurt me now and get it over,” Chris said. He reached out a hand; Rachel sighed and took it as the needle gun descended.

  Rachel pulled off the road before they got to the Holland Tunnel and Chris looked up in surprise.

  “You don’t get to go back yet,” she said.

  “Ah.”

  On top of the cheap floral bedspread, she unbuttoned his shirt. The outlines were glistening under sheets of plastic bandaging, and she poked at one spot.

  “Hey, now,” Chris said.

  “You asshole,” she said softly. He reached up and ran his hands into her mass of thick, curly hair, pulled her down for a better kiss than that first one in the car. She pressed against him and the outline of the tattoo flared with tiny pains and itches. Their bodies shifted and he turned them onto their sides, pushing his knee between her legs and she moaned. “Yeah, that’s it,” she growled lightly, grinding her hips so she crushed herself against his leg. Her brief leather skirt rode up and she ran one stockinged leg across his, abrading her inner thigh along the rougher texture of his jeans.

  He helped her, tugging the skirt up farther, around her waist. He ran his hand across her ass and made false disapproval sounds in her ear as he bit the lobe. “I didn’t realize you’d want to fuck,” he said in a low voice, not stopping as he worked her panties down her asscheeks. “I didn’t…”

  “Pack?” She arched an eyebrow at him in amusement. “Since when did you need anything but what you came with to fuck me silly?” Pulling back just slightly, she reached one arm between them, into her bra, and pulled out a small tangle that unfolded into two black latex gloves.

  “If lube is a problem, it’s your fault.” She bit him back, on the lower lip, sharp enough to break the skin, and he grabbed her head again to force their mouths together so hard their teeth scraped. They laughed as they wrestled for position and clothing removal, and when he finally managed to sink his fingers through the tangle of her pubic hair, she stopped her faux struggle to work her hips and take more of him.

  “I guess you forgive me then,” he said, twisting his hand to turn his curled fingers up against her G-spot. He rocked his hand steadily, her slickness easing the way, the smell of her salty and spicy.

  “Hell, no,” Rachel gasped. “You make me…crazy.”

  Crazy for loving you, she didn’t add. Instead, she arched and slammed her hips down over his hand, engulfing him to the wrist and then farther, getting that treasured exhalation of surprise and that brief look of ecstasy in his eyes before he closed them.

  True love, she thought. Or something close to it.

  Two weeks later, the coloring and shading began. Rachel made the drive from Long Island to Brooklyn and then to Jersey City. Wolf met them at the door, tobacco on his breath, the studio sparkling and ready and smelling of pepperoni. Chris once again let the man choose his sentimental old music.

  “You know, k.d. lang had her start as a Patsy Cline tribute singer,” Wolf said, as he put out the array of deep reds, oranges and blues. “Looks like you took good care of the outline. Let’s get you colored in, shall we?”

  Rachel watched as the claws were done first, Wolf expertly working the gun with one hand and wiping away pools of ink and dots of blood with the other. Chris ground his teeth as the needles worked on his lower abdomen.

  “Aww, it doesn’t hurt that much!” Rachel chided.

  “Tickles,” he responded between his teeth. She rolled her eyes.

  “It’ll hurt more when we get to your ribs,” Wolf promised. “Not that much, though. You’re real good about sitting still. Sometimes, I swear I want to take these young fuckers who come in to get the latest tribal fucking thing they saw on TV and strap’em down to the table. Guess you have more experience with that, though.” He chuckled as the claws began to take shape, reaching for the skin under the pubic bone.

  “Are you kidding? Chris thinks bondage is insulting to his personal honor,” Rachel said.

  “At least he don’t go all moaning and humping the table like some people I know.”

  Chris smiled and raised an eyebrow at Rachel. She shrugged and grinned back and for a while there was only the buzzing of the machine and the orchestral and choral accompaniment to a rich, bold contralto voice pining away for loves who would never return.

  That time, he knew to be prepared for the exit before the tunnel. Much better prepared.

  “You fucker, you fucker,” Rachel cried, as she pulled against the rope anchoring her wrists to one leg of the sturdy old bed.

  “Insulting to my personal honor?” he teased, sliding his cock very slowly into her body then easing it out again. The bandages crinkled across his lower body and he hissed through his teeth as he moved. “Feeling insulted yet, sweetheart?”

  Snapping her eyes open, she lifted her legs to wrap around his waist, kicking him as she did. “Don’t fuck around with me, Parker, do me right!”

  He slammed all the way into her and stretched his body on top of hers, pressing his forearm across her collarbone to push her down. “I’ll go one better and do you the way you need,” he whispered. “But you’ll have to ask nicely.”

  “Fuck you!” she growled, and tried to kick him some more. But he was stronger now, so much stronger than she was these days! He slapped her once to startle her and used the surprise to force one leg and then the other from around his body. Withdrawing from her soaking pussy, he rose from the bed for more rope and she cursed him. But there was a feral glee in her eyes, a kind of mysterious pleasure that only came when this one man treated her so badly—made her into someone she really wasn’t, just as he had made himself into the man he really was.

  It didn’t matter that she had another lover who aroused her body and pleasured her mind; it didn’t matter that she had occasional partners to delight her senses and provide variety. The parade of desperate-to-please slaves and would-be slaves were just so many sprinkles on her erotic sundae!

  But they don’t dominate me, she thought with a savage bolt of hunger as Chris tightened the ankle ropes. She pulled against them anyway, hating that hunger, loving it, cherishing it. They don’t dominate my mind and soul like you, God damn it.

  The few times she’d tried to turn those tables had been complete failures, culminating in that time she tried to get him in a skirt for her pleasure. It wasn’t that long ago, but she couldn’t ignore the fact that shortly after that disastrous vacation he’d left Long Island. Sure, it was because that woman summoned him, the woman he always obeyed.

  But the timing was just so painful.

  Almost as painful as his cock shoving into her ass, while his fingers tugged on the gold rings through her nipples. Jolts of pleasure mingled with the bright, fiery pain, and she groaned at the stretching heat in her ass.

  And as usual, she swore to herself that she would not ask nicely.

  As usual, she eventually did.

  The wings of the phoenix took shape over his ribs and their flames flickered over the scars.

  “The second surgery did the job,” Wolf said with admiration. “The old scars would have been a bitch to cover. But you know, there’s no telling how the ink will stay over the tissue. You might have to have them re-inked sooner than the rest of the tat if you want to keep the colors consistent.”

  Chris nodded, his eyes clos
ed. “That’s fine,” he said.

  “No one will ever be able to see them under all of this,” Rachel said, watching the colors come up. “Not that you’re such a fucking exhibitionist anyway.”

  “That’s what the arm tattoos are for,” he said to her. “I can show them off.”

  “Do you? Did you show ’em to that pretty boy you told me about?” Rachel didn’t ask if he’d shown them to the woman whose call he’d answered, the woman who could draw him on some invisible leash.

  Chris controlled a disdainful snort of derision so he could keep still. “Why would I do that? He’s an ass. Clumsy, dimwitted, spoiled...I have no idea why he’s even there.” She was surprised to hear genuine annoyance and confusion in this little explosion and eyed him curiously.

  “I think you like him!” she announced.

  This time, he did snort, and Wolf pulled the gun back. “Hey, careful with the sharp movements, I want to get these feathers right.”

  “Sorry,” Chris said, as he stilled himself. He glanced at Rachel and said, “No. I don’t.”

  “Whatever,” she sighed. Tra le la le la, she thought in rueful amusement. Yeah, you do.

  That night, she rode him while he stretched out on his back, trying not to claw at his chest and nipples the way she usually did in that position. Instead, she caressed the growing portrait on his ribs and chest with the lightest of touches, avoiding the freshly inked areas. As she got close to orgasm, he reached for her hands and they twined fingers so tightly she felt her wrists aching with the strain.

  She fell against his body, the thin plastic under his chest crinkling against her breasts. I should hate you, she thought, cuddling against him. You come into my life and love me and fuck me and make me crazy and then you leave any time she crooks a finger and you don’t answer calls and you fall in love with other people and I should hate you so much.