Carried Away

by Whitney Williams

  I didn’t know what that meant until he pulled me tightly to him and stood higher, lifting my feet off the ground. He waltzed me merrily around the suite to unheard but beautiful music, which he hummed along to (Debussy, I think). I held his shoulder with my free hand, but his arm behind my back supported my full weight. I looked up into his eyes, delirious in my fantasy, while my hips and legs swung freely as he twirled me around the room.

  I could have danced all night. Of course, he was doing all the work. My only contribution was to lean back my head, close my eyes and part my lips, ready for his kiss when the silent orchestra stopped. It didn’t come until he backed me into a dresser and pinned me to it so he could withdraw his hand from my back. Before I could get my arms around his neck, his hands held my face. They slid down my neck and shoulders, pushing my arms aside, but I tried at least to hold him around the waist. One of his hands came up the back of my neck, which, with my hair caught behind me, let him pull my head back, craning my neck as far as it would go. He had lifted me so that the dresser hit my back below my shoulder blades, so he pulled my shoulders and back over along with my head. I almost lost the circlet.

  My face was too far back for him to kiss me, so he started with my neck and worked slowly, thoroughly down from there. The bustiers’ cups were snug and supportive when I put it on, but pulling my shoulders back like that left them behind. He eased one of my breasts free with only the suction of his lips. The other, he left desperately jealous as he rigorously tested the first’s softness from every angle. I might have been moaning, sighing, begging for more. I don’t know.

  He must not have heard me over the music that played only in his head because we were dancing again, swaying gently to the tune he hummed. He lifted my arm as if to spin me. I kicked my feet, expecting to need to use them, but they never touched the ground while he bent me over the back of a chair. My circlet bounced off the cushion and fell to the ground, while his fingers tickled down my spine, playing a silent crescendo down the harp across my back, all the way up to the uselessly high-pitched strings, where he took one of the ribbon’s running ends and slid it free from its bow. His fingers plucked an arpeggio up one side of the V, freeing the ribbon from the hooks that held it, as I suspected was their design. The dress’s wide collar/sleeve was not otherwise attached in the back, and it fell loose from around my arm.

  I raised that same arm behind me to try to unbutton his pants, but he must have wanted to do that himself. He fully enclosed my arm in his hand near my shoulder, then slid out my arm, easily pulling down and inverting my long, light glove, which, conveniently, couldn’t come off without untying the leather shortie glove I wore over it. While he pulled tight the tube in which he had trapped my hand, he swept his other arm past my head, gathering my hair. He tied the two together leaving little slack. I like the way I feel when he does that sort of thing to me. One hand worked my petticoat toggles while the other played another flourish down the laces of my bustier.

  He worked his fingers slowly back up the bustier, teasing me, to free its laces. That must have been when he took off his own clothes. When he finished the laces, his other hand rejoined, both of them pushing aside the bustier and sliding under my chest to caress my breasts. I pushed myself up with my free hand, but he was leaned over me so I couldn’t stand. Moving his hands down past my hips, he pushed my dress down far enough for him to bring the shaft of his erect penis up to my vulva, sawing a melody back and forth across my labia like a violin’s bow. I gasped and cried out in my exquisite surprise.

  His hands moved freely around my torso while he teased me, still blithely humming his little waltz. I couldn’t spread my legs with my dress still around them. I couldn’t move my tied arm and could barely turn my head. My free hand pushed against the chair’s seat to move me closer to him, the only thing I could do and the only thing I wanted. He was inside me, moving like a conductor’s baton, as the music became increasingly energetic and staccato. Cinderella never had it so good!

  A perfect cadence measured the end of a movement, but the next started without delay. His arms around me—one up my chest, one down my abdomen—pulled me upright out of my dress. As I came up, I strained my neck to try to kiss him, but those efforts were short lived. Colliding us with a wall, he plowed hard into me.

  Some scientists dispute the nature, location, and purpose of the G-spot. Literature on the topic reads with classically dry understatement: “reliable reports and anecdotal testimonials of the existence of a highly sensitive area in the distal anterior vaginal wall raise the question of whether enough investigative modalities have been implemented in the search of the G-spot.” I still remember exactly how it felt: pressed against the wall, writhing and spasming, slung through the air and plowed into another wall, stockings dragging down my legs, his hands clutching at my breasts and pubis. I confidently concur that empirical evidence collected to date (as reported here and elsewhere) strongly indicates implementation of a broad range of investigative modalities for further, more vigorous, study of the phenomenon.

  As soon as my knee touched the bed, he flipped me onto my back and crashed into me. With my head forced back and aside, I watched him hold my gloved hand against the unreasonably thick blanket. I swung my legs about wildly, waving the stockings and bustier that dangled from them, squirming, screaming, convulsing, but my vision remained locked on our hands, where he held me gently and firmly. That view jolted up and down as he progressively caromed out of me again and again.

  Deaf even to my own cries, I felt his chest sliding jerkily across my cheek. I watched him slowly pronate my wrist. I saw his gentle lips lightly touch my gloved hand.

  Even today, it’s hard for me to suppress a shudder when a dashing gentleman kisses my hand.

  I was spent, ravaged, covered with an airy-thin plating of bliss so fragile I didn’t dare move. Henry cleaned himself up, then picked a sexy sheer dress for me to wear under a niqab and abaya, the black cloak and veil. I didn’t want to go, but I didn’t want him to leave me there by myself either. I waited until he was ready to leave then dressed hurriedly and followed him.

  He took us to a mansion out in the desert. It was sort of a mix between mansion and office building. ‘Palace,’ I think, would be a better word for it. It was certainly big enough. On a table in the round atrium was an architectural model of the city. It looked pretty accurate to what I saw from the air, except there were more buildings. One of them stood about two feet high, towering over the rest of the model. It looked awfully pointy, like a rocket waiting to blast off. I remember thinking how funny it looked alongside the rest of the model buildings. I still can’t believe they actually built it.

  There were a few women in hijab on the other side of the atrium, by the doors to a parlor. Henry walked me over to them and left me there. I had been checked like a coat. He didn’t even bother taking a claim tag.

  One of them spoke English and welcomed me. She politely made small talk while the other women chatted in Arabic. More guests arrived. One was accompanied by a woman from Germany who also didn’t speak Arabic. That made me feel a bit less awkward. She spoke English, of course, and I felt ignorant. It seemed like everyone I met spoke at least two languages.

  When the guests had all arrived, we went in the parlor and closed the doors. Women began to take off their veils and cloaks. I was afraid I might be too immodestly dressed to take off my cloak until I saw what some of the other women wore. Everyone’s breasts and genitals were covered, which was kind of surprising considering how little else was. I particularly liked their trousers, baggy silk, sometimes sheer, sometimes slit all the way up the outseam with ornate, jeweled cuffs and waistbands. The hostess had an impressive collection of jewelry, silks and accessories that she offered to share with the group. We all started chattering and playing dress-up. That was a language I spoke perfectly well.

  I learned a lot from that gaggle of girls. They wore their clothing like ornamentation. Where it covered, it did so only to tease, dra
wing attention to the tender flesh underneath and only lightly guarding it. Their headscarves and transparent veils reminded me of the niqab, but they were also its opposite: pure sex and tantalization. For them, sexual beauty was about what was hidden, not what was shown, like a drawing in negative space. At first I was struck by the seeming hypocrisy of such exaggerated public modesty: penguins in the streets, hussies in the sheets.

  As I watched the way they dressed, the things they thought were sexy and fun, I realized they saw the modesty not as a burden but as a challenge. Who is the more artful: the woman who seduces a man with her entire body or the woman who does it using only her eyes? The costume party was a kind of truce among them. They lifted their tacit pact of fairness for one night so they could brag to each other about how kind and charitable they were to handicap their beauty for the benefit of lesser women. They gave me quite a lot to think about.

  An appointed time came around, and we all promenaded out of the parlor, through the halls of the palace, into a room that I would call a small ballroom. It was lavishly decorated with rugs and tapestries. It almost looked like the guests were sitting on the floor. Some of them were, but there were also a variety of low lounges and more than twice as many large cushions as everyone could have possibly used. The colors and patterns were loud and mismatched, but it worked. The room had a sort of eclectic feel to it.

  A small band struck up at one end of the room playing instruments I didn’t recognize, and a few of the women (there are some in every crowd) immediately started dancing as we walked in. The rest of us circulated until we found our respective hosts.

  Henry was seated at one end of a lounge, basically an armless couch, so I pulled a cushion up next to him on the floor and sat down, leaning into his lap. I felt very decorative. It was fun, listening to the music and watching the dances. Waiters occasionally came around offering food and drink.

  Everyone ate with their fingers from common plates. Henry leaned over and warned me only to use my right hand. It seemed an odd piece of etiquette, but as I watched, I saw that everyone was doing it that way. The flavors were all new to me and some of them were intense. I tried to capture the moment in my memory because it felt like a movie or fairy tale. That became a theme for me in those first weeks, discovering that places and things I thought were fictitious truly existed.

  A waiter came around with a large hookah. I had been a pretty straight-laced kid and got picked on a bit for leaving whenever someone brought out a bong. I had to chuckle. Even the drug use in my new life was ridiculously posh and decadent: a waiter with an ornately-sculpted, glass and silver hookah. Henry smoked from it, so I picked up one of the hoses and tried it too.

  That’s the last thing I remember clearly.

  I was probably opium, and I don’t plan on trying it again. I vaguely remember thinking I enjoyed the high, but I would much rather remember having enjoyed the rest of the evening. For days afterward, I found scraps of scattered memories in my mind. There was a lot more dancing. Some women had cymbals or bells, and I wish I could remember the sound of their movements. I think, at some point, I was wearing a pair of the baggy, silk trousers I liked. I might have tried to learn one of the dances.

  I might have done some other things too, but in my tattered memory, I cannot distinguish between reality and fantasy. Henry only smiled mischievously when I asked him what happened. I’m pretty sure I didn’t imagine all of it. I remember very specifically the sensation of awkward puppet fights between my rectum and vagina, and I don’t think I could have dreamed that up. I also remember a man’s beard. Henry was clean-shaven.

  I try so hard to fill in the blanks that I’m sure I’ve colored in some images of things that never were. Maybe that’s the point, to leave a mystery that could have been anything or nothing.

  Henry had to work the next day. After what he had told me, not to go off the reservation, I decided to stay in the suite. I pulled on a soft, long-sleeved knit dress and worked the little coffee maker in the sitting room. Then I went to out on the balcony so I could watch what was going on in the atrium. From where I sat, I could see a couple of long, slanted conveyor belts with people trying, often failing, to ski down them, and that right there is hours of entertainment.

  It was cold out in their little winter wonderland, so it wasn’t long before I switched to hot chocolate and brought out a chair, a blanket and a big shawl. I could see the appeal of the ski resort theme. I still thought it was insane. It just made me want to visit a real one. A cozy little fire might have been nice, but I couldn’t bring myself to turn on the fireplace and let it struggle vainly against the hotel’s enormous air conditioners.

  Shortly after I heard the blowers kick on and the mid-afternoon snow started, the door from the suite out to the balcony opened. I expected to see Henry. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see yet another strange woman, impossibly sexy and amazingly talented. I did not expect to see one of the men from the party the night before. He wore the same simple white turban and long, ornately-trimmed robe, and he carried himself with an air of formality. At the party, I found his bearing intriguing, but handsome is as handsome does.

  As he approached me uninvited, I no longer cared that he seemed to be Grand Poobah of something or other. I read the rumples of his robe as being 100% cotton, and the trim looked hand-stitched. He didn’t just look old, with his weathered face and long, graying beard. He dressed old, and that meant he probably thought old, which can be dangerous. I stood and backed away.

  “Nice weather, we’re having.” At least he had the decency to attempt small talk while he cornered me across the balcony and started groping.

  “You could have at least bought me dinner first,” I sassed him. Then I ducked under his arm and backed into the suite. Sometimes when I’m angry I don’t think very hard before talking. I tried to follow up with a playful and innocent smile.

  “I could buy you much more than dinner if you desired it,” he volleyed and followed me inside. I kept backing away. He kept approaching, but he seemed to be in no hurry.

  I figured Henry might need something from him, so I tried to make nice. “Oh, you’re too kind,” I said, “but I’m waiting for Henry to return. I can’t speak for my evening until he arrives.”

  “He’ll be a while,” countered the man. “We’ll have all the time we need.” His intentions were clear. He had cornered me again and started to reach out.

  “Excuse me, won’t you?” I ducked him again, faking the way I had gone before and rolling to his other side. I came up running. When I pulled open the door to the suite, I found men standing on either side of it, wearing the telltale earpieces of security or bodyguards. One of them grabbed my wrist as I passed and threw me back through the door, into the Poobah’s ready hands. He turned me and bent me face-down onto the table, twisting an arm behind my back and holding me there. I squirmed a little and whimpered a sheepish, “Please, no.”

  There was only one problem. I like sex. I liked the feeling of his hips pushing me into the table, the weight of his hand on my back, the unsated desire in his eyes when he looked at me. I liked the way he caught my other wrist and pulled it behind me, holding the two together with one strong hand. But I was spoken for. I wished I could remember the night before. If he had penetrated me with Henry there, surely I could allow him to do it again. I could just keep whimpering and struggle ineffectually. I would be blameless if he raped me. Even if Henry found out, he would never know I allowed it.

  But I would know. I had made my choice, and I am a woman of my word.

  “NO!” I said. “I cannot allow this without my master’s permission!” It was curious that I still identified him as my master, despite having been released from my willing indenture. What else would I call him? What relation was he to me? Lover? Boyfriend? Traveling companion? None of those provided the air of finality I wanted to convey.

  He thought that was funny too. “I own you, harlot.” He laughed. “My word is law!”

  Really?
‘Law’ would not have been my first guess. Apparently you get to pick your own word. For him, I would have gone with ‘jackass’ but for the fact that he had called me a harlot. Perhaps something more erudite, maybe ‘interloper,’ would fit better.

  I had never worn handcuffs before, and as I felt them click into place around my wrists, I decided I didn’t care for them. They just seemed so impersonal, like he couldn’t even be bothered to tie a proper knot. Again, anger spoke before I did.

  “MY WORD IS ‘NO’!!!” That probably wasn’t the most effective response, but at least I felt I had stated my position clearly.

  He laughed again while he pushed my skirt up my back, exchanging the hand that held me down. His knees forced my legs apart, and I felt his robe’s detailing start to slide up behind me, pressed against my flesh. The conversation was going nowhere. It was clear we would need to settle things the old-fashioned way.

  Unfortunately, I had wasted too much time on pleasantries and didn’t have a lot of options left. Frustration gets the better of me sometimes too, and sometimes I say things that aren’t particularly polite. I’m not sure whether I said it out loud or not, but what I thought to myself was, “Well, shit.”

  Actually, that was a pretty good idea, all things considered, so that’s what I did.

  Fortunately, he wasn’t into it. He backed off far enough in revulsion that I could connect a solid mule kick to his groin. He wasn’t into that either and shouted what I presumed to be an obscenity. Why do they always go for my hands? My feet are much more dangerous.

  I went up onto the table instead of backing into him, then I leapt aside, skirting the room’s periphery until I got to the stupid fireplace and its fake ceramic logs. The controls were obvious and simple enough that I worked them with my cuffed hands, immediately producing a roaring fire, nice and cozy for our enchanting evening together.

  Maybe it’s my temper. Maybe it’s my looks. I’d been in some fights, and I’d never lost. I don’t have size or strength or secret fighting techniques. What I have is the will to do what the other guy won’t. I fight dirty. I never learned any other way.