Three and a Half Weeks

by Lulu Astor

  “Now, allow me to return to the reasons to prompt your apology: first, for having absolutely no faith in me,” he says, his voice dropping into a deep, husky register while his hands rapidly slide the arms of my cotton shirt off my shoulders. He effortlessly unclasps my bra and slips it down.

  “Additionally,” he adds as he moves to the belt of my jeans, “you obviously put no stock in my word, my vow to be monogamous.”

  Feebly, I try to resist him, but I’m restricted by my arms pinned behind me by my own damn shirt—it’s currently half on and half off my body. His deft fingers skate over to my breasts, eliciting more immediate response from my disobedient body.

  “Now that I have your unwavering attention, allow me to explain—the explanation you should have demanded from me this morning when you visited my bedroom unexpectedly.”

  He drops down to his knees gracefully, taking my jeans down with him in a fluid motion, every move efficient and almost balletic. I’ll admit that I’m not struggling as much as I know intellectually that I should but I’m flustered by his undeniable sexual gravity. Seriously, I’d like to meet the woman who could resist the libidinous magnetism of Ian Blackmon—I’ll buy her a new pair of Blahniks. Still, I make a halfhearted attempt to give him a hard time.

  He looks up at me, his eyes alight with a fiery glow. “Do you still have that lovely antique four-poster you used to have?”

  I ignore him, suppressing an urge to stick out my tongue. The stupid, arrogant, perplexing… gorgeous bastard with the dazzling smile.

  He rises to his feet, his shoulder dipping into my stomach to lift me over his shoulder—again!

  “Ian, for fuck’s sake, I’m not a sack of potatoes!”

  I know he’s smirking as only he can, a look that says I see you… and I raise you, as he chastises me, “Tsk, tsk, such language, Ella. I think I’ll add a few extra swats to your punishment.”

  With his free hand he grabs a leather duffel bag from the chair where he deposited it and begins searching for my bedroom. In this vintage house, all the doors look the same, so the first one he opens is a closet, the second one a bathroom. The whole time I’m shouting profanities and pummeling his muscled back and lovely, tight little ass with my fists as hard as I can, but he just ignores me as thoroughly if I’m an annoying gnat. Finally, he finds the master and that four-poster bed… and drops me unceremoniously upon it. Quickly he finishes removing my shirt and bra and, wrapping his hand around my throat in a blatant display of dominance, gently pushes me flat onto my back.

  “Don’t move,” he orders, “not an inch.” My eyes dart up at him and note that any amusement whatsoever has drained out of his face and his mood has visibly shifted in a markedly different direction. Aha, alpha Ian returns for a visit.

  Well, tough. “I’m not done cursing at you, Ian. I still haven’t heard your so-called explanation.” His eyes are devoid of any color right now and look so odd that for a moment I’m transfixed. I shake myself out of it—my wits cannot escape me, especially at this particular moment.

  He inhales deeply as if collecting his patience with my infernal interruptions to his attempt to torment me. “It seems I have a stalker and that’s the woman you saw in my bed. Sometime last night, she broke into my house—and I still don’t know precisely how—and got into bed with me. I didn’t discover her presence until I opened my eyes this morning.”

  I bestow upon him my most skeptical frown ever and say nothing, as if his explanation does not even merit a verbal response.

  “I should have told you about her sooner, Ella, but I didn’t want to worry you and frankly, I thought my security staff had everything under control. I came home from the office very late last night—it was close to midnight. I had a fierce headache so I took a couple of Tylenol PM and went directly to bed. Honestly, I slept like the dead all night long and woke up to a rather titanic shock.”

  He reaches into his bag and pulls out some things—looks like some kind of nylon twine and a small metal ball. I’m wearing nothing but my ivory lace panties that seem to mock me now, as if I wore them to entice him—I probably did, now that I think of it since early this morning I still liked him. He lays the objects on the bed and sits down on the edge of the mattress, crooking his finger at me. I shake my head no.

  “Oh, yes. I think you owe me that apology now.”

  “Ha, forget it. Assuming your story is true, and the jury’s still out on that one, you should have told me about this woman sooner and I’m still having a hard time believing you knew nothing about it—you had your arm around her, for God’s sake, Ian—you had your whole body around her!”

  If I didn’t know Mr. Cool and Aloof better, I’d say his expression actually became contrite.

  “In my sleep, I thought she was you. She’s been arrested, Ella.”

  He’s silent for a moment, letting his words hang between us. Then a sharp light comes into those mesmerizing eyes and that infamous smirk makes its appearance as he says, “Now come here and tell me how sorry you are for inconveniencing me to this very considerable extent.”

  “No.” I cross my arms for punctuation. “I’m not sorry.”

  Without another word, he reaches his long arm over to yank me by the wrist, pulls me over his lap and swings his leg over mine so I can’t move. I’m hanging off lopsidedly so my feet are off the floor. He’s done this purposely so I have no leverage to pull myself up. I feel him touching my posterior and then, slam!

  “Ow! That hurts, you bastard!”

  He hits me harder this time. “Ahh!”

  “Until you stop cursing at me and start counting respectfully, your count remains at zero.”

  “What? That’s incredibly unfair. I didn’t even agree to this punishment and I’m not the one who should be spanked, damn it. Ow!” Another one. They’re getting harder and harder.

  “Count, Ella, and start from one.”

  Wiggling doesn’t help and I can’t stand up. My butt is on fire already and I don’t how many he’s planned. Do I truly owe him an apology? Wasn’t the conclusion I’d drawn the only reasonable one to reach? He hits me again. I refuse to count—I don’t care how many times he wallops me. So he keeps on swatting me with so much force that my hindquarters are growing numb.

  “Okay, then. I was going to give you twenty but now I’ll just keep going until my hand gets tired.”

  “Good. I hope your hand hurts like hell, you asshole.” I pay for that remark with the next slap but it’s worth it in satisfaction.

  When he is finally done, he flips me over on the bed and I can barely tolerate even the silky sheets on my tender skin. I watch as he takes the nylon twine and stands to tie it from the right post at the head of the bed to the left post at the rear. He orients my body so that I am in the center of the queen-size bed.

  “How did you have time to bring your bag of toys? Wasn’t this an unexpected trip?”

  He barely looks at me to answer, so engrossed he is in what he’s doing. “I’d left the bag in the jet when I flew to New York—which is why I had to buy new toys in New York. It worked out nicely this time, though.” Cocking his head, he finally glances at me, waiting for some response. “Well? Am I going to get that apology?”

  I shake my head emphatically—I still feel as if I were wronged.

  “In that case, you’re not permitted to speak any more.”

  I finally give in to my baser instincts and stick out my tongue at him. If he has any reaction, he chooses not to show it.

  He clips leather cuffs on my wrists and thighs and secures them to chains he wraps around each of the head posts. I’m not fighting him but I’m also not helpful. Instead, I’m watching his every move, suspiciously eyeing that diagonal line above my head. I see him remove something else from the bag and then he leans over me and his mouth descends on my left breast, and he sucks... hard… almost painfully. I close my eyes to process the sensations when I feel something bite into me. My eyes fly open: he’s attached a jeweled clamp to it wit
h a long delicate chain hanging from it. He does the same thing to the other breast.

  I gasp. “These really hurt; they’re too tight.”

  “Just breathe, Ella. The pain will fade to something more bearable in a few moments.” He watches intently until I somewhat relax and then he drops a kiss on my lips and continues to do whatever he has planned.

  “Now,” he whispers, “I’m going to help you keep quiet. Remember last time you had some difficulty?” He holds up the metal ball: it’s the size of a large walnut, made of metal, and doesn’t look very intimidating. He attaches a nylon rope section to it and then clips the rope to the chain that links to the two nipple clamps, tossing the ball over the other side of the nylon string above my body.

  “Here’s how it works,” he says, feeding the rope slowly over the twine until the ball lands on my stomach and jerks the clamp chain up, tugging painfully on my nipples as I swallow a shriek of pain. Then he pulls the ball back up and takes the slack rope and puts it between my teeth and tells me to bite down… and smiles the most malevolent grin I’ve seen in a long time, if ever, and his eyes are filled with carnal promise.

  “If you keep the rope in your teeth, you’ll be just fine, Ella. But if you attempt to talk or even scream in ecstasy, then you’ll lose the rope, the weight will pull down on the other side of the twine and it will yank up the clamp chain. Might hurt a bit. So you see, incentive to keep quiet and all without a gag.” He leans his head close to mine and whispers in my ear, “You’re welcome.”

  If looks could kill they’d be digging his grave by now. I flash him the filthiest possible one ever and he couldn’t seem to care less. Truly.

  He holds my face in his hands and gazes into my eyes, his expression entirely unreadable. If I were forced to guess, I’d say he looks… hurt. Ian is so mercurial, his mood changes are so fast and frequent, they’re dizzying. He takes the rope out of my mouth to kiss me—deeply—and I realize with a start that he is expressing himself. He’s upset at the rift between us and he’s trying to make it better in the only way he knows how. In light of this revelation, I feel the sexual pull to him grow ever stronger and gain momentum.

  He puts the rope back into my teeth, “Bite down,” he commands and I comply. “So, Ariel, I’ve taken away your autonomy and movement. I’ve taken away your ability to speak.” He picks up a satiny black blindfold off the bed. “Now I’m taking away your sight, so you’ll feel everything more intensely. You’re entirely exposed, open and available to me, and at my complete mercy. Right now, to be perfectly honest, I’m not feeling inclined to have any. Of course, if I receive a penitent apology, I might change my mind and develop a bit.”

  How I’m supposed to deliver the penitent apology is anyone’s guess since I can’t open my mouth—I can’ t say anything or the clamp chain will pull up and it will feel like fingers tugging viciously on my breasts. Sharp fingers.

  My mind stays focused on the hurt look in his eyes. Finally, after a year of mental anguish caused by meeting him, then falling for him, I feel that I have a clear insight into Ian now. Though he’s scrupulously honest, he has great difficulty sharing his emotions—or admitting he has any: if he is guilty of any lies, they are lies of omission. He’ll never be honest with his feelings because he denies them even to himself, I think, and even if he eventually acknowledges them to himself, he won’t give others the emotional power over him. Even me.

  I hear him moving around my bedroom but I can’t fathom why until I hear strains of music, a trumpet and piano, and I realize he was looking for a dock for his iPod. The composition is achingly familiar to me but I can’t identify it and I obviously cannot ask him… anything. I refuse to give him the satisfaction of losing the rope between my teeth. Not for the first time I wonder if the man is a sadist.

  As I wait, anticipation building—which I’m sure is the point—my mind shuttles back to the day Ian first showed me his dungeon and explained about himself. As I strolled through the room, examining his lovely little torture chamber, he’d regarded me intently, alternating between agitation and fascination. He’d been nervous on the way there, even apologetic, yet he went through with it anyway. He could have instead tried to establish a normal relationship with me, but, no: he didn’t want it. Everything always has to be on Ian Blackmon’s terms.

  I consider my own reaction to him during our first discussion, after that initial encounter at the shop. Everything about him seemed either anachronistic, as if he belonged to another era in time when men had to keep their emotions in check, or somehow forced, as if he were an actor playing a role. It’s almost as if he started with a blank slate, zero personality, and researched the kind of man he wanted to become. Perhaps he read 19th-century literature for manners and studied the robber barons of the same century for disposition and reputation. Or even more likely, the Marquis de Sade.

  What I do understand thoroughly now is that he has a knack for speaking directly to my body, completely circumventing my mind, and it infuriates me at times. Whatever my brain may instruct me to do in an act of self-preservation and sense of self, my body is heedless, wantonly falling prey to his every whim and dictate. Perhaps other, stronger women could suppress libido for intention and I applaud them for it. Personally, I find I cannot manage it comfortably—not with Ian, anyway. He is the one man who has been able to shut off my mind and turn on my body—I just have to go with it. I send my female brethren, my sisters in arms, a silent plea for forgiveness, and await his next move.

  “I do hope you’re not attached to these sexy little panties, Ella,” he says as I hear cutting sounds and feel my panties slip away from my body. “Like unwrapping a gift, you know; it increases the anticipation and isn’t that what it’s all about?”

  Time ticks by slowly and I’m feeling increasingly desperate. Nothing is happening—I don’t even hear him moving about and it occurs to me that he must be watching me lie here, watching the edges of panic begin to claim me. As if in direct response to my thoughts, he runs one finger down my arm for reassurance so I know he’s there but the only sound is the soft music playing. Not being able to see ratchets up the stakes exponentially; I have no idea what’s coming so when I feel something very hot splatter on my belly, I begin to scream and catch the rope between my teeth in the nick of time.

  “It’s only hot wax, Ella and it won’t get any hotter than that.”

  He drips it up my belly, around first one breast, then the other. Each sensation seems to travel directly to that heated spot between my legs and by the time he finishes circling each breast, I’m beginning to feel an urgency for satisfaction. Something tells me, though, that it will be a long time in coming—as I will be too. He circles each breast again and then a hot drip lands right on top of one captured nipple and this time I don’t catch my shriek in time and the rope slips and the tug burns; I scream again from the pain.

  He sighs dramatically. “Ella, you must be more careful to keep the rope in your teeth. Now, bite down again,” he says, as I feel the burn ease and I want to cry in frustration. He starts up again with the other breast. This time I’m prepared for the nipple splatter and I manage to stop myself from making any noise. The hot liquid works its way back down my belly, down one thigh and calf and up the other. Now I understand what his ultimate target will be and I begin to perspire, a sheen of sweat covering my entire body. Will I be able to keep the rope from slipping?

  The drips get closer and closer and then move away again. By now I’m hurting for the physical satisfaction he’s been denying me. When he finally runs out of thigh, I hold my breath, and he seems to pause… and then splat! Right on top of my clit and the orgasm just rips right through me. I don’t even realize I’ve screamed and lost the rope until I feel the aching burn of the clamps as they get jerked up.

  I hear a deep laugh and then he removes the clamps entirely. The pain is worse when they come off than when they go on and I whimper. He soothes the pain with his tongue on each one and then lifts the blindfold. M
y eyes take a moment to adjust to the light.

  “Hi there,” he says softly, and I feel close to him again. I badly want to touch him but my arms and legs are still restrained. He kisses me, and this time I’m an active participant, entwining my tongue with his eagerly. Ian has beautiful sculpted lips and they’re velvety soft. His tongue is warm and wet, and touching it with mine makes things deep inside of me dance.

  He sits up and begins to take off his clothes, treating me to an eyeful of his Greek-god physique… and his monstrous erection. My anticipation begins to grow potent again.

  But instead of getting on top of me, he dives down between my legs and whispers softly, erotically, “Watch, Ella, keep your eyes on me” and then that tongue, the one I was just marveling about a moment ago, begins to relentlessly circle my clit until I feel like an overfilled balloon about to burst and forever disappear from the face of the earth.

  I can’t watch—I don’t know exactly why but I can’t. He’s beautiful and sexy but I can’t do it so I close my eyes. After another astounding orgasm, he looms over me. “Untie my hands, please, Ian. I need to touch you.”

  He unclips one, then the other, but leaves my legs chained, open with knees bent. I wrap my arms around his head, running one hand through his silky hair as he pushes his huge erection into me. We moan in unison and I watch his face as first he coaxes another orgasm out of me, commanding me to come for him, then as he struggles to defer the inevitable, wins a few times and then finally surrenders to it, coming with my name on his lips and a violent jerk inside me.

  Minutes later, we’re still lying in the same position, perfectly spent, when the doorbell chimes. Ian picks up his head. “Are you expecting anyone?”