by Jenna Barton
In one smooth movement, he released my arm and was before me again. His arm rose and fell in an arc, skipping between each breast, then my stomach and thighs, never in the same place. But when I expected the bite and slap to fall on another stretch of skin, it stayed, fanning the burn. The lack of cadence frustrated me, and I turned my bottom lip under my teeth. This was how he’d decided I should be, and he’d told me so during our first real date.
Your head needs fucking with.
He knew, months before, how he would tumble me over while I stood before him. He knew the way inside. I gave so much away and probably looked needy and so naïve, while assuring him I knew what I was doing.
Moment to moment…moment to moment…
The flogger went whistling through the air, falling sharper and stinging more than I was prepared for. Once again he came to me, pulled at my nipple, and I whined at the sensation of sting followed by insistent pressure, bearing down on my lip as I rode out the crossing sensations.
“Don’t bite your lip like that, girl. You could split it.”
“So—” I caught myself in mid-apology. Since we met, he’d pointed out how often I apologized, often without realizing I’d said the words. He noticed so much, never attaching judgment to my quirks and failings. The impulse to say “sorry” again gurgled up from my throat, and I shook my head at it.
Instead I looked up to him and nodded. He returned the same, his cheek rising with a half grin. Stepping back, he reached behind himself, and his hand returned with that favorite leather flogger. The heavy black one he had used on Claire, the one Lucy called “mean.”
“I’m going to use one this now.”
His head dipped a little, so our gazes were level, and waited.
The pause wasn’t persuasion. I was free to say yes or no. I knew that much about him after the time we’d been together, not doing this, but doing the other somethings people did when they spent time together. He was waiting for me to decide again. I’d read it in Claire’s notebook, and it was true. Submission was a decision but not one. A series of them.
“Yes, Sir.”
“Turn around and face the door.”
I did, circling around the point my wrists were bound to. When he made a soft, grunted sound of approval, the hot pulse between my legs traveled deeper and higher between my hips, settling behind my navel. I clenched the rope under my fingertips, waiting.
There was no surprise about the physical side of a scene. It hurt. I’d learned before, when he spanked me, so there was no question the heavy strips of leather hurt. But this hurt came with the knowledge it was caused by that big, brutal-looking flogger he’d used on Claire, the same one he’d shown me before he turned me to face the door. Understanding it belonged to him, to Sir, reminded me of the bright line between us. That connection took me back to him, seeing and feeling more of him than of myself. It mingled hurt and need of him and want for him with the loose-limbed high that always flooded me after stress. The torrents of physical and emotional circled each other, conjuring my old, half-admitted fantasy, where I whispered for him…for Sir as the faceless man pressed his will on me.
The face of that well-known, well-used fantasy became him. Walt. And then it felt good.
Sir’s soft grunts filled the air, a half-beat before my own higher, sharper gasp answered him. It intensified with each pass of the leather strips.
Every sense was answered. The sound of our voices, one trailing the other. The scent of my perfume warming on my skin and mingling with the soapy, herbal scent of leather that filled the air each time the flogger hit my backside. It swished in the air and I opened my eyes to scattered shadows over my head and around my shoulders. The salt of Sir’s thumb was still on my bottom lip and in my mouth too. My head drooped, and I settled my cheek against the cool, glossy-painted wood.
The slap and thud on my shoulders and backside stopped, replaced with his broad hand stroking over the round of my hip, where it came to rest. He came closer, the hair on his chest ticking the heated, tingling skin he’d made.
“How are you doin’, baby?”
A contented hum buzzed through my mouth, and I tucked my head into the hollow between his neck and shoulder. “Really good. I know why Claire likes that.”
I felt his cheek curve and stretch against my temple. “That?”
“The flogger.”
“Whose?”
“Yours, Sir.”
He moved his hand to my chin and tipped my head back. “Yes, mine.” His breath skated over my lips. “Mine. Good girl.”
When he kissed me, it felt different. The first pass of his lips over mine made me wonder about the difference, if the change was a kind of mask he’d put on or if he had really changed because of what we were doing. But when he kissed me again, I stopped wondering. This was him. No persona, no shadow. It was something essential and determined, force and sureness and granite-deep strength. In part, the him I saw during the most intense parts of sex or hard work. When he swung his big body from the forest floor to a thick tree branch over his head. But this was not a glimpse.
His shoulders snugged around me, drawing me into his chest. And his mouth moved against mine, the slow slip of tongue and teeth rising with each pass of his lips over mine. He inhaled and pressed me against him, lifting me to my toes with his wide-palmed hands against my backside. I’d felt him consider having me, and felt it when he savored over me. And now he was consuming me.
“Gonna take you down,” he said finally, pulling away.
No. Not yet. More.
“But, Sir…”
He grinned again, catching the rope in his hand. “Said take you down, not turn you loose.” He tugged at my wrists and pulled me along with him, toward my bed. “How are your arms?”
“Fine, Sir.”
“Sir, Sir, Sir.” He chuckled as he led me across my bedroom. “There she goes again with the Sirs.”
“I like saying it.”
“On your knees. There.” He pointed to my bed. After I’d managed it—with his hands under my bound wrists—he took the length of rope in his hands again. “Remember the first night we went to dinner?”
“Yes. Oh—I mean yes, S—”
He raised an eyebrow. “You’re ahead for now, don’t worry about Sir. Don’t think that hard.”
The bindings tumbled from my wrists, and he took my hands in his. There were light marks from the rope, but nothing that wouldn’t fade in a few minutes’ time. My skin tingled under the pink depressions, and I ached to run my fingertips over the little bumps the rope left behind.
He crouched before me and took one of my wrists in his hand.
“Remember when I told you your head needed fucking with?”
People think it’s BDSM 101, but being tied can fuck with your head a little.
“Yes, Sir.” As I looked on, he tightened my forearm along my backside and thigh, finishing with my wrist by my knee. “You’re doing it, aren’t you? What you told me over dinner.”
He looked up at me with sharp, clear eyes as the rope hummed over my calf. “I am.”
Another pass of rope drew my foot toward my backside. Rising, he circled his arm around my waist and steadied me against his chest as he pulled the rope taut. The long curve of his pectoral muscle tempted me, so close and brushing across my lips. I pushed forward and drew one of his blunt-tipped nipples across my teeth.
“Behave.”
Leaning back, I gazed up to him. “You didn’t tell me I had to stay still too.”
“Then I’ll tell you now,” he said, cupping my chin. “Don’t. Move.”
The rope snaked over my other calf and went taut again. He’d balanced me on my knees, with no way of catching myself if I started to tip over. My pulse rose again, the sound of it joining the short breaths catching in my throat. My chin still rested in his hand, and I looked up to him again.
“I…um, this isn’t what I imagined when you were talking that night at Trattoria Stella.”
“T
ake a breath, Erin.” After I complied, he nodded. “Good. So, it’s a little bit of a surprise when things don’t look like you’d planned, huh?”
My cheeks burned and though I wanted to fight it, everything about my body’s position and his nearness, standing over me, insisted I tell him the truth.
“It’s…” I swallowed hard and screwed my eyes tight. This simple, probably very obvious trait of mine was so hard to admit. I was so open and dependent on him to keep me steady.
“It’s…?” His fingers tightened, very slightly, and my chin tipped up in a similar small increment.
I had to. And my reliance on linear and logical was no deep, dark secret. The first line of my own code, my personal gotohome.
“Yes, Sir. I don’t like it.”
“Yeah, I figured that.” He stepped closer to my body and took his hand from my chin, trailing it down my neck as I settled again, hip-to-hip against him and still steadied on my knees. Once I was stable against his body, he reached behind him and brought the suede flogger from his back pocket again, leaving it looped over my shoulder. My head twisted toward it, and I inhaled. Above me, he shifted, pulled and kneaded at my nipple again, turning it to a hard point under his fingertips. “So how’d you think I’d do it?”
“Well…I—” I said, breathing deep again. The cool lemon and wood scent of suede washed over me. “I thought I’d be on my back. And, I guess, tied to something.”
“Tied to something?” The timbre of his voice dropped again. I leaned forward, straining to hear him, as suede slid across my breast and into his open hand. “Like your bed?”
“Yeah. My bed.”
As he dribbled the falls over my exposed breast again, his other hand left my shoulder, drifting down my back until the heat of it left my skin. Before I could parse out a logical path for that unseen hand, he slapped the flogger over the hard peak of my nipple. Hissing, I flinched away, nearly collapsing against his chest before my back arched and I bent, the tension on my arms pulling me backward.
“Now if you can’t stay in one place when you’re like this—” he tensed the rope again “—what makes you think I’d need to tie you to anything to keep you still?”
The flogger snapped again. Both thighs. One. Two. Then again. He moved away, clearing my body so I was arched before him, supported only on his arm underneath me. Again, and then back to my breasts, currents of air tufting toward my chin as the flogger fell quicker. Harder.
He chuckled. “Bet I could pick you up and carry you around like this.”
“Please,” I whispered, stifling a squeak in my throat as he swung hard at my splayed thighs. “You couldn’t.”
“Don’t tell me what I can—” smack “—and can’t do, girl.”
“I’m sor—” The flogger snapped away from me, landing over his shoulder. His hand went between my legs before I could finish, shutting down my reflexive words.
“You know, I’ve heard enough of your sorrys to last me awhile. Make some other noises for me.”
When his fingers plunged inside me, I did. I gasped and shuddered over the sudden sensation of fullness. He pressed his thumb to my clitoris, dragging slow circles that matched his stroking fingers. And I cried out over it with heavy breath and almost-words that sounded like pleas. Looking past the judgment and reality of what I’d consented to do and what he was doing to me—where I usually faltered—was a sense of him. A wary but capable sentry over himself first. I was giving the need deep within me I tried so often to deny to him. For him.
The sudden crest of an orgasm surprised me, so much my eyes flew open and I gaped up at him. His fingers went still.
“Don’t.”
“I…oh God, Sir, I can’t help—”
“Yes, you can. Look at me. You can’t come until I say you can. And you won’t. Hear me?”
Under me the rope went taut again, pinching where I was bound as my body followed its pressure. As I began to collapse into the strain behind me, his hand drifted away. What was probably scant millimeters felt like miles. His hand and fingers that knew how to touch, where to stroke and flutter to make me come, so much harder than I’d ever known before, were going, and a well-deep part of me went livid at the loss of him. I’d have to struggle for him, and just seconds before I’d understood I adored him enough to do it.
I focused on the muscles in my stomach and thighs, grunting when they twisted and throbbed as I struggled to keep his hand between my legs. I gritted my teeth and found equilibrium again.
“Good girl.”
Before I could smile up to him, he stepped aside, and I tumbled to the bed in a surprised, awkward clatter of limbs and rope. A wave of embarrassment rose in my throat, but before it could bore into my mind, he turned me to my back and crouched between my legs. On instinct, I tried to draw my knees together.
“Got you,” he said softly and stroked the outside of my thigh. “Open.”
I drew in a gulp of air I’d forgotten to take, swallowed at it, and looked to him for a sense of where I’d landed. “Sir, I…”
“Yes, you can. Open up for me.”
It’s a decision.
Panic threatened. And in front of him, on my back, exposed, and tied to stay so, I had to make the decision. He would stop. I knew him, the Walt part of him, and the other side…it couldn’t negate Walt. I knew him well enough to believe in the consistency of his core identity. If I asked, I knew he’d end it all and take the rope away and soothe me and never push so far again.
But I could go further. I could take more. And I wanted to, for him.
I opened my eyes. When I found his, I let my legs fall open.
Looking down, he smiled and hummed with approval. “You wanted to show me your pussy all along, didn’t you?”
I blinked hard at the word but nodded anyway. He knew. “Yes, Sir.”
He moved forward, bracing my knees against his broad shoulders. I flinched again, but stayed still, even when he bent his head to my thigh and trailed his tongue over the tight, whip-reddened skin.
“I’ve got a question for you,” he said. I twisted at the puffs of breath that came with each word. They flitted and teased. My knees tensed again, and then his shoulders flexed. Still open. Still pinned in place by his rope and his body. “Why don’t you like it when I eat your pussy, Erin?”
“You have—I mean, I do. Sir.”
“No. Takes a lot for you to do it,” he said and curled his arms around my thighs. His hands rested easily in the juncture of my leg and hip, his thumbs met over my clitoris. “I think you get through it, but you don’t like it. And I don’t think it’s the way I do it, either.”
I knew where this was headed.
Maybe that was the allure and the threat of what we were doing. He was pressing against the most superficial, first line defenses and sensitive places. The logic in his actions made perfect, elegant sense. But where he’d decided I should go first still sent my instincts skittering. As much as I was primed for fight or flight, I also desperately wanted to move past the fear.
He brushed his thumbs, one following the other, over me, enough to guide me toward orgasm again. There wasn’t the fast determination of someone who wanted me to just come so he could get on with his own release, though. He was settled in, ready to take a long time coaxing me from the watchtower where the true, brave me was hidden.
I wagged my hips toward him. If I showed him enough, maybe he’d just finish it. Instead, he laughed softly.
“Nice try.” He leveled his shoulders toward me and lifted me toward his mouth.
“Wal—I mean, S…please,” I squealed, thrashing.
Instead, he shook his head and pushed his mouth against me, and immediately I was at war. Of course it wasn’t what he did that always made me go rigid. It felt good. So good. His mouth and tongue and lips and fingers were so right and found the places that distracted me from the horrified, indignant commentary gaining volume in my head. I didn’t want to listen to her. I knew, intellectually I understood,
that revulsion and discomfort at the notion of this man I’d come to care so much for—to trust more than I imagined I ever could—seeing me and using his mouth to bring pleasure to me alone, with no expectation of what I could, or should be doing for him was…just wrong. It was something inside of me, that damn narrator always telling me what I shouldn’t want or do or have. Not him. I was holding myself back.
I always had.
In the moment, I knew I could decide about that too. I could put myself out there, completely vulnerable, and trust his hand was open and waiting for me.
“Okay,” I said, hardly more than a skim of air across my lips. I barely heard my own voice.
His head rose and I saw him. Walt. Shiny-lipped from my arousal, smiling his half grin, and something—a new something I couldn’t name—sparking in his eyes.
“You gonna let me, girl?”
“Yes, Sir.”
There was nothing better than her, with her long legs draped over his thigh, all mussed and pink-cheeked—both sets—and dopey from good sex. That was, unless chocolate came into play.
“Mmmmmm,” Erin sighed as he slid the spoon from her lips. “Oh my God, that’s so good. How do Italians manage to turn even chocolate pudding into something that decadent?”
“I’d say a good bit of it is owing to heavy cream and some kind of liqueur, and a whole lot of butter.” Walt swirled the spoon through his take-out carrier of Nonni Isolde’s dark chocolate budino and offered Erin another bite.
“No, you should have some too. Don’t feed it all to me.”
“Isolde gave me enough for six people, sweetheart. I think I’ll get my share.”
She turned those big blue eyes up at him and shrugged. “Well, since you’ve put it that way…” Her mouth dropped open, waiting. He cocked an eyebrow at her and leaned down for a kiss instead.
But he still couldn’t resist echoing the scene they’d just finished. Holding the spoon past her reach and swaying, he said, “Now open up for me again.”
Erin’s cheeks flushed. “I don’t think I’ll be able to hear that word without wanting you, Sir.” She accepted another spoonful of pudding, humming the same low sounds she made when she’d started to let herself go and take pleasure from his mouth on her.