Every Which Way

by Annabel Joseph et al.

  She tilted her head. I’d taught her to wait, to not judge right away. I’d taught her to let it soak in first.

  “I think the colors are my favorite part. That olive green there,” she said, pointing. “And the maroon. And the blue. It’s so unexpected, and so...”

  “Dynamic?”

  “Resolute.”

  Ah, I wanted to rip her tights off then and there and fuck her. I’d definitely take her home in a little while and assuage that itch.

  “What’s your favorite part about it?” she asked, turning to me.

  “I like the shapes of the lines. The movement of them. But do you know my most favorite part?” I pointed to a darker blue line, and a drip that looked too sloppy to be intentional, a pointy, lovely drip that ruined the symmetry of the work.

  “Is that a mistake?” she asked.

  “An imperfection. It adds heart to the painting, don’t you think? When I look at it, my eyes always linger on that blue drip. Louis did many paintings like this, but none of them are the same. The same pattern, yes. The same feeling, no.”

  “Like BDSM.”

  Her and her damned analogies.

  “You know what I mean?” she persisted. “Everyone in the lifestyle does the same shit. Uses the same equipment, does the same activities, spouts the same verbiage. Watches the same porn, reads the same books.”

  “More or less.”

  “But everyone’s relationships are different. Everyone’s feelings are different. So even if it looks the same...” She turned. One of Louis’ similar paintings hung on the opposite wall. “It’s not the same.”

  Does Bryan Miller ever take you to art museums? Does he buy you high-quality tights?

  “Has he called yet?” I asked.

  She turned to take in the next painting. “No.”

  “Do you love him?”

  She walked away from me. I saw her shoulders rise and settle. “You ask me about love,” she said in a cold voice, like some kind of art-film actress. With the short skirt, the tights, the demi-heels, it was almost too much. All she needed was a cigarillo.

  “Yes, I’m asking you about love,” I said, following her. “Do you love him? Or, let me ask this—do you care about him? Does he care about you?”

  She went to a bench and collapsed on it, like her bones couldn’t hold her. I sat beside her, watched as she crossed her strong, shapely legs. I wanted to run my fingers along the ridges of her tights, like cars on a racetrack.

  “Masters don’t have to love their slaves, or even care about them,” she said after a while. “For me, it’s about serving him.”

  “Or serving whoever,” I said cruelly. “It obviously doesn’t matter to you. Or him.”

  She made a frustrated sound, a tsk or a sigh, and then she was skittering away from me on her noisy shoes. She didn’t know the museum like I did, so she didn’t realize she was fleeing deeper into the contemporary collection, toward the Abstract Expressionists. I wove around other museum patrons and caught up with her in front of a Jean Tinguely sculpture. I grabbed her hand.

  “Don’t run from me.” I didn’t know what to say after that. I needed one of her handy analogies. Running away from me is like running away from a cheetah. It’s still going to catch you, and you’ll only have made it mad.

  She struggled as I wrapped an arm around her waist. “Let me go.”

  “I don’t want to. I think you’re too good for him.” I didn’t want to send her back. Every day, I worried about her leaving. “He’s not the person you should be with.”

  She pulled away and faced me with a scowl. “How do you know who I should be with? You barely know me. You’ve been my Master for three weeks.”

  “Yes, three solid weeks, night and day. I’ve slept beside you. I’ve been inside you everywhere. I’ve made you cry and I’ve made you come.”

  “And that means absolutely nothing.”

  A museum docent peered around the corner. I took offense at Bettina’s “absolutely nothing.” I thought we had absolutely something together, more than her and her previous Master, anyway.

  “Why did you do those things for him?” I asked. “Why did you risk your life scening with strangers?”

  “Why are you speaking about it in the past tense?” she shot back. “I’m sure I’ll do it again once I go back.”

  I grabbed her face and held it hard between my fingers. “I think you did it because you hated yourself. Because he made you feel worthless.”

  “No.” She pushed my hand away. “I did it because I loved him and I wanted him to love me.”

  “It’s been three weeks,” I said quietly. “He doesn’t love you.”

  She gave a bitter laugh. “Do you think I don’t know that? No one has ever loved me. I’m not that kind of girl. I’m the girl everyone wants to hurt.” Her eyes turned flirty. “Don’t you want to hurt me, Master?”

  Yes, I wanted to hurt her. I was hard right now just looking at her, but I wanted to heal her too. I wanted to know her and understand her. She only ever gave me her body. That was her currency: take me, hurt me, loan me out, make me come. I wanted to know where all her hurt and anger came from. I wanted to know how the turbines looked as they spun in her imagination. She was odd and imperfect, and unfathomable, like the best kind of art.

  I realized that I didn’t want to hurt her as much as I wanted to collect her.

  And I had never, ever been the type to collect things before.

  Bettina

  I couldn’t breathe.

  He had me tied on my back to his bed, with my head hanging over the edge of it. His cock had found a comfortable home all the way in the back of my throat. My legs were spread wide, but the only thing inside me was a ginormous glass butt plug. I wasn’t Bettina now. I was his sex doll, his receptacle. I choked as he pounded into my throat, but he didn’t stop. Now and again he reached down and slapped my pussy, and pushed his fingers inside to show me how wet I was. He made me lick them off whenever he gave my throat a break.

  “Please,” I cried around his fingers. “No more.”

  My face was smeared with tears, and my ass ached, stretched to its limit by the unforgiving toy.

  “Open your fucking mouth.”

  I opened wide and wished for him to hurt my pussy again. I wasn’t really miserable, or suffering. No, I loved this. I’d been tied to this bed almost an hour now with the plug in my ass and the cock going in and out of my throat at his leisure. I was so hot by this point I was ready to explode. I loved the way he tied me up and did evil things when I couldn’t move an inch to evade him. I just wasn’t sure how long this was going to go on, or if I’d survive it.

  “Do you remember the safe word?” he asked, viciously pinching my nipples.

  I squirmed and squealed and nodded my head yes, but I wouldn’t have used a safe word for the world.

  My other Master never fucked me like this. He never took the time to tie me up and really torture me. My kinks were always a distraction for him, an afterthought. He’d fuck me and get off, slap me a few times, maybe put on some clamps. Mark’s favorite clamps were his fingers, because he could be much rougher than the actual implements.

  Oh, God, I couldn’t breathe. His balls were blocking my nose.

  My phone buzzed on the side table. Mark paused, touched the side of my hair and withdrew. I swallowed the spit filling my mouth. I would have given anything for a good toweling-off.

  “He finally texted you,” Mark said. He stared at the phone, pumping himself to stay hard.

  “What did he say?” I asked in a breaking voice. I didn’t know if it was breaking from the blowjob, or from anxiety.

  “He wants to know where the fuck you are.” Mark started typing back.

  I made a panicked sound. “Wait! What are you writing?”

  “None of your business.” He returned to me and put one hand on my throat. “Open your mouth.”

  His cock slid in. I arched my back but there wasn’t enough slack to pull away. I heard a
nother message arrive. Bee-de-beep. I moaned to be released, but his cock kept coming. I cried in earnest now, not slave-getting-face-fucked crying, but real, miserable crying. Almost a month for Bryan to contact me, and when he finally did, I was tied to a bed and Mark was text-happy.

  He pulled away again. I sucked in air—first things first—and then I asked, “What are you saying? Let me talk to him.”

  “No.”

  Cock in my mouth again. I gagged and yanked at the cuffs. He drew halfway out so I could breathe.

  “Not a sound,” he said. “I don’t want to hear a sound.”

  But... But... But...

  He withdrew at last, and a gag went on, a big, black, ugly ball gag that depressed my tongue. My jaw ached from being held open so long, and my shoulders were sore from hanging over the bed. I watched him text some more, helpless to say my own words, to ask Bryan my own questions. He walked around the bed and held up the phone as if to take a photo. “Turn your head to the side so I can’t see your face.”

  I refused, glaring at him.

  “You know what happens when you’re a bad slave,” he said. “Hide your face. I don’t want it in the picture.”

  I finally caved and looked away. What he was doing wasn’t fair. It wasn’t sexy. I wanted to have things out with Bryan on my own terms. I wanted to be the one to tell him how much his silence and lack of concern hurt me. I wondered who Bryan had been fucking while I was away. She must have been something, for him to forget about me completely.

  Mark put my phone back on the table. I arched to see what was on the screen, but I couldn’t see anything.

  “You’re a bad girl,” he said, undoing the cuffs and wrestling me onto my stomach. “When Master tells you to do something, you do it.”

  I kicked my legs and shook my head back and forth. It was the only way I could communicate my anger with the ball gag in my mouth.

  “You’re my slave for now. You’re cuffed to my bed. He doesn’t get to talk to you.”

  I tried to turn back over, but he was heavy. His hands were so big. He stretched my arms back out and refastened them to the bed, first one, then the other. My struggles were pointless, a flamingo wrestling a polar bear. I kicked again but accomplished nothing. He only chuckled and said, “Bad slave.”

  My legs were pulled wide, cuffed even wider open than they were before. My ass clenched around the plug as I moaned behind the gag. He’d gone for the cane, because bad slaves were punished. It was light rattan, very whippy, curved at one end for him to grip it. He stood at the foot of the bed, since I was tied sideways across it. He looked tall and strong and utterly dominant. I turned my head away from him. I didn’t want to see the cane coming.

  I got ten strokes for bad behavior, which perhaps doesn’t seem like a lot. Trust me, for the cane, it’s a lot, and he gave very hard strokes for punishment, so ten seemed like a hundred by the end of it. He paused between each stroke, making me suffer and squirm back and forth. This was mastery and sex personified. The cane would fall with a sharp thwack and my ass would clench in agony. The glass plug inside me was huge and hard, taunting me with my own vulnerability, because I knew he would take it out and fuck me there afterward, in that tight, scary place.

  “Aaah. Aaah!” I couldn’t make any words through the gag, just frantic begging noises. At least the gag allowed me to scream without really screaming. That’s what slavery was all about, playing at crisis. There was no real crisis here, just stripes of fire which were bearable, for all the agony they caused.

  He stopped halfway through and stroked my hair, wrapped his fingers in it and gave my head a little shake. “Bad slave. Even if you could use your safe word now, you’d still get five more strokes. You know why? Because you need them.”

  I turned to gaze at him through tears. Yes, I needed them. I needed him.

  “And when your caning’s done, you’re going to get your asshole torn up by Master. That’s what happens to bad slaves who need to be put in their place.”

  I cried and shook my head, not because I thought he’d actually tear my asshole up, but because it turned me on to be afraid of him. My whole body moved with the next stroke. God, it hurt so bad, and so good. I knew he liked the way I struggled, and I liked the way the pain felt worse, and scarier, when I was trying to get away. I cried through the last four strokes. The cane always took me all the way down to the very cellar of subspace. I’m helpless and hurting, and you did this to me.

  “Arch your bottom up. Time for your assfucking.”

  He wasn’t gentle taking out the plug, and he didn’t add more lube. He parted my ass cheeks and gripped my welted, caned flesh. His knees were on either side of me, straddling me for leverage. His cock eased into my hole, his girth even thicker than the harrowing plug.

  I moved my hips just to have some feeling of control over the situation, and was rewarded with a grunt and a deeper thrust. My phone beeped again, but both of us ignored it. Bad slave. I wanted to hate him, and I should have hated him, but it felt so magnificent getting fucked hard and fast in the ass when I was absolutely powerless to escape. I groaned behind the gag in time with his thrusts. Uh, uh, uh. My clit banged against the bed, an orgasm building, billowing, the kind of orgasm you only achieved after an hour or so of relentless torture.

  “Come for Master,” he commanded, fucking me harder. “Come for me now, or I’ll shove myself back down your throat until you choke.”

  He gave me a few more firm thrusts as I squeezed and squirmed and pushed my clit against the bed sheets. I came as ordered, the bad slave seeking expiation in obedience. My whole body spasmed as I yanked at the bonds. He came at the same time. I could feel it in his jerky, stuttering strokes, and the way he arched over me. Jesus, I hurt. Please, hurt me some more.

  I lay very still, waiting for what might happen next. With Mark, I never knew. After a few seconds he pulled away from me, ruffled my hair again, tugging it between his fingers. He picked up the phone and put it under my nose where I could read it. He left it there on the bed, and went to shower.

  Where the fuck are u?

  New York.

  ?? When r u coming back?

  I have a new Master now. His cock is bigger than yours.

  WTF

  Fuck you, Bryan. You want to know all the details?

  Then came the photo. You couldn’t see my face, couldn’t identify me if Bryan decided to hate-distribute it online. But there I was, spread wide, pussy out, ass plugged, breasts heaving, arms straining, the straps of the gag visible against my cheek.

  This is all you need to know, Mark had written as me. How are those details?

  I could hardly bear to read the last text. It was short and to the point.

  Fucking whore. Fuck you.

  I laid my head down and yanked at the cuffs in anger and frustration. My butt still throbbed from being caned, and my asshole still felt tender, even after being fucked and plugged and fucked and plugged almost every day. My jaw hurt, even after the fiftieth blowjob. But none of that hurt as much as him taking my Master away. He had no right to do it, even if he thought my Master was bad for me. He had no right to do any of this...even if it was necessary.

  I moaned and squirmed some more when he came out of the bathroom. Let me go.

  He took my phone and disappeared with it. I knew then that I wasn’t getting it back, not today, not tomorrow. Possibly never. Was this still a game? A scene? Was I still on loan to him?

  Did I want to be?

  He returned and took off the gag. “Give me back my phone,” I said.

  “No.”

  “It’s my phone!”

  He held up a finger. “Not another word, or you stay right where you are, and as soon as I’m hard again, you get the cock. In your throat. Again and again. For another hour.”

  I clamped my lips shut and closed my eyes. He got out his laptop and sat in a chair by the window. I heard intermittent typing. It became obvious he wasn’t releasing me from my bondage anytime soon.
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  I woke up later in a puddle of my own drool. At some point he’d uncuffed me, although my arms and legs were still spread. Bone memory. I sat up, alone and alarmed.

  “I’m here,” he said in the darkness. He was still on his laptop. He stood and put it aside. “Let me help you get up.”

  He lifted me from the bed and carried me into the bathroom. I really had to pee. “I need my phone,” I said in a soft, needling plea.

  “You’re not getting your phone back.”

  What I heard was, You’re not getting your Master back.

  “I’m a person,” I insisted. “You have to listen to me.”

  “Is our scene over, then?” He studied me closely, waiting for my answer.

  I swallowed hard. Our scene. This life. My phone. I had to pee.

  I didn’t answer him because I felt ashamed. I ducked my head.

  “Okay then,” he said. “Shut up about your phone. Take a shower while I head out to get us some dinner.”

  He crossed his arms over his chest until I mustered up the required “Yes, Master.”

  Apparently, I wasn’t ready for our three-weeks-and-counting scene to be over yet.

  Mark

  I gazed at her through the bars. She looked so pretty in there, and so naked.

  “I didn’t say you had to wait in the cage,” I said, setting down the Sushi Palace bag.

  She looked at me, adorably sulky. “Do I have to come out?”

  “Do you want to eat?”

  “Not if I have to come out.”

  She was pissed with me. I couldn’t say I blamed her. I would have wanted some say in ending a relationship too. I leaned over and shut the door, and slid the lock home. I opened the sushi platters, all organized and colorful and fresh. New York didn’t have the best sushi, but it didn’t have the worst either. I snagged a tuna roll with faux-porcelain chopsticks. “Want some? Open up.”

  I’d said those same words to her earlier so I could pound out her mouth. I loved tormenting her, but only because she loved it too.