by CD Reiss
“Hurt me,” I whispered.
He slapped the inside of my other thigh, and yes, it hurt. And yes, it was demeaning, and yes, I pulled away. I thought I might come from that alone.
“No more demands, goddess. I have ways to hurt you that aren’t as much fun.” He pulled the red scarf off the arm of the chair. “No talking. No whimpering. No crying. Not a peep out of you. Just yes and no.”
“Yes.” I couldn’t imagine, as he kneeled above me, his knees keeping mine apart, that the word no would exit my lips.
“Put your hands over your head and grab the table leg.”
I did it, stretching to reach the leg of the heavy sideboard.
“I haven’t tied you up since the surgery. You’ve noticed?”
“Yes.”
He leaned over me and wrapped the scarf around my wrists, attaching it to the sideboard as he spoke. “I was nervous. I kept dreaming the heart would leave me. Probably all the talk of rejection going to my head. But I worried that it would happen while you were tied up, and you’d be trapped until someone came.” He leaned back and checked his work by pulling me toward him until my arms were completely extended. “I know it wasn’t sensible. But it was there.” He stood and reached for something in the bag he had been about to take on the plane. His blue book. “You got away with a lot in the meantime.”
“Yes,” I said.
“Open your mouth.” I did, and he put the book in it. “Hold this for me.”
I bit down on the leather. He stepped back, and the book blocked my view of him. I heard the clink of his belt and the rustle of clothes, but I couldn’t see him. I could only see the damn book.
“The rules—and you can tell me what you object to when I take the book out of your mouth—the rules are this. I’m going to do what I want to your body. You’re going to have your safe words. If you worry about the baby for one second, you use them. And if I worry, I’m stopping the scene. It doesn’t matter if those worries make sense. And when you start showing, we’re renegotiating.”
He pulled my legs up and bent my knees until my ass was off the rug, then he took the book out of my mouth. He was naked and perfect from his scar to his huge cock. Lithe and strong. Nimble and taut.
“Yes or no, Monica.” He slapped the book on his palm.
“Yes, sir.”
“Good.” The book landed on my ass with a thwack. I chirped and held my cry. He paused then smacked me again. Paused, letting me feel the delicious sting. “Yesterday, you forgot that I own your orgasms. That means I say how and when you come.” Thwack. “Every time.” Thwack.
“Sorry.”
“You don’t sound sorry.”
“I’m not.”
“You were getting three. Now you’re getting four for lying. Count with me.”
The book landed between my legs, flat on my engorged clit, and I bit back a scream. It hurt, stung, burned in the opening notes, and the echo was pure pleasure.
“How many is that?” he asked.
“One.”
He smacked it again, and I twisted away at the same time as I wanted it again. He straightened me and spread my legs, exposing me to him.
“Count.”
“Two.”
“You okay?” he asked.
“Yes.”
Thwap. Harder than the others. I held back a scream.
“Breathe,” he demanded.
“Three!”
“Last one.”
He did it again, and it hurt bad, but it left a rush of warm, pre-orgasm quiver in its wake. How had I ever lived without that? How had I ever had an orgasm without the counterpoint of pain?
“Four,” I said through my teeth.
He put the book aside and slid his fingers in me. “You’re soaked.” He drew his wet fingers over my clit, and it burned. That burn, not his touch on me, nearly put me over the edge into orgasm. “And you’re close. What am I going to do with you?”
Begging him to fuck me might cause an indefinite delay as I was told to think about what it meant to make demands out of turn, so I said nothing. He moved his hand over me, setting my soreness on fire.
He leaned over and slid his dick into me. I gasped from the pain and the rawness, which had brought every nerve ending into high alert. I was sensitive at every range of the spectrum, and he was stretching me open, putting his whole length into me. I strained against the ties from the pain and the pleasure.
I expected him to take me like an animal. But he didn’t. He shifted slowly, making sure I felt every inch. He pushed against my clit, angling himself so he rubbed against it, slowly, slowly, in a tortuous rhythm.
“Please,” I whispered.
“You wanted something?”
“Faster.”
He didn’t go faster. If I’d had a metronome to count by, my bet would be on slower.
“Why?” he asked.
“I want to come.”
“Really?”
“Please.”
He pressed into me, breathing the words into my cheek. “You are so good. But you have to wait.”
“I can’t.”
“Do you know what happens when you rush? Things don’t go right. They’re not full. Not complete. If I let you come now, you’ll be conscious. You’ll say thank you and start thinking about music before you even close your legs.”
He pulled out slowly and pushed back in. I moved my hips into him to speed it up, but he adjusted and made it worse. I groaned.
“If I let you come now,” he continued, “you’ll be satisfied. But you deserve better than that. You deserve to have your mind erased.”
“I have a snappy comeback. But I can’t breathe.”
He moved as if we were underwater. The pressure built, and stayed, and built again, never breaking. What should have taken a second took several. My brain told me I was coming, but I didn’t. I stayed in the netherworld between knowing I was going to come and actually doing it. The ultimate mix of pain and pleasure. A tug-of-war between two matched opponents.
Chapter 80
JONATHAN
If I’d told her to add two and two, I didn’t think she could have answered. It did occur to me to ask for a little simple math, but we were treading a wire-thin path as it was. If I pulled her back too far, I’d confuse her body and ruin the orgasm. She wouldn’t be able to have a good one until her body came down fully and her over-stimulated nerves recovered, which could take hours. That was never fun. It made everyone cranky.
But I wanted to see how far I could go and how much pain this caused, because there would be a time, soon, when the bruises and contusions wouldn’t wash, and I would derive no pleasure from hurting her. It was one thing to break and push a consenting adult. It was another thing to spank and grab a pregnant woman until she was black and blue. I would have to find other ways to dominate her or we would both wind up unsatisfied and discontented. Controlling her orgasms to the point of pain was a possibility. She was suffering, and she loved it almost as much as I did.
She was giving herself to me in that microcosm of her pleasure, and especially her pain, because in the macrocosm of her love, she was giving me what I wanted most: a family, a home, roots that were mine completely. Nothing borrowed. Nothing temporary. Through all her doubts and legitimate fears, she was taking a leap of faith into the net of my happiness.
I would live for her, for the family she was about to give me, for the home she’d agreed to create. My orbit around her was going to get tighter and tighter until, for better or worse, we fused into a single sun.
A tear dropped from the corner of her left eye, and I kissed it, still shifting with a slow, grinding rhythm. I had to pull her over the edge. It was the perfect time. Another second would be too late. I gave her no permission to come but got up on my knees and thrust deep and hard. Her eyes opened wide and rolled back with the second thrust.
I had complete control over her.
What that did for me, there were no words. Just a peace. A sloughing off of li
fe and its pressures and worries. I existed only in this corner of the world, and it was mine, fully under my purview. The rush of euphoria that followed was submission in itself, to the act, to her, to the power she’d given me.
“May I come?” she whimpered.
“Yes.”
I took her. Made her mine. I saw the tide coming in her, and I encouraged it. When she was midway, I’d slow down to make it last, then I’d let go and fill her with me.
It was a good plan. But I looked down as she started to cry my name.
I didn’t know what I was looking for. Maybe I wanted to see our connection point when I came or see her cunt pulsing around me. But that’s not what I saw.
I shriveled up. Stopped moving.
My name rang in my ears as I looked at my dick, seeing something horrifying, like the death of joy, and I couldn’t hear my name anymore. Maybe she was screaming in her orgasm, or in pain, or in blame, I didn’t know, but I couldn’t form a sentence or command.
The streak of blood on my dick was unmistakable.
I only had one word in my head.
“Tangerine.”
Chapter 81
MONICA
“What?”
I was pulled so far out of my orgasm that my body went rigid and my mind was soaked in adrenaline. He might as well have screamed Stop in my ear. I yanked my hands against the ties with a motion so violent, I heard stuff clatter and clunk as it fell. He got up on his knees, and I saw the fullness of him.
His cock was streaked in red. It wasn’t supposed to be. Not unless something was broken, and we weren’t doing broken. We were doing celebration. This was wrong. Everything was wrong. I pulled again, even as he reached up to get the scarf undone.
“Monica! Stay still. Give me a second.”
But all my yanking and pulling had tightened the knot, and he growled as he tried to pick it loose and failed.
“Say it’s from hitting me,” I begged. “Please say it’s from—”
“I don’t know what it’s from. Just stay still.”
I couldn’t. I had no control over my body. I yanked and pulled, trying to slip free, but my husband knew knots like he knew ice cubes and sore bottoms. If he’d set up the knot to keep me from slipping out, I wasn’t slipping out.
“Jonathan,” I said without anything else to say. Him, I just wanted him. I wanted to say his name to gather strength. He got up, and I had a full view of his beautiful, bloodied cock. “Don’t leave me.”
“I’m not.” He walked away.
“Don’t leave me here!”
But he did. He walked away, and I didn’t know why I felt so bereft. Some need to run away, coupled with the inability to even lower my arms, made me panic. I could feel something dripping down my leg. And he wasn’t there. He was going to the fucking kitchen.
Then I heard knives clack and his footsteps coming back toward me. I calmed. Barely. He came back a bread knife and leaned over my hands.
“Stay still,” he said. “Please. I don’t want to cut you.” He put the knife to the scarf.
“What’s happening?” I asked.
“I don’t know.” His concentration stayed on my bound wrists.
“I don’t want to lose it.”
“Me neither.”
“It’s from spanking me. That’s all. You hurt me worse than I thought. Let’s not do that again, okay?”
“Sure.” He laid his hands on my wrists, pressing them apart and making the fabric between them taut. He sliced the scarf open with a snap.
I got my arms under me and started to get up, but Jonathan pushed me down. I resisted. He pushed harder.
“Hold on. Gravity,” he said.
“That doesn’t even make sense.”
“I know, I know.”
He put his arms under my shoulders and my knees and carried me to the couch. I was sore where he’d hit me. That was the reason for the blood, but he seemed worried, and I wanted to respect that. I didn’t want to be dismissive or call him silly, but his knotted brow and the taut line of his jaw made me want to stroke away his fear.
He leaned over me and caressed my cheeks. “Can you wait here while I get dressed and get you some clothes?”
“Why?”
He got up and plucked his clothes off the floor. “We’re going to the hospital.”
I got my elbows under me to sit up, and with only one arm in his shirt, he rushed to push me down.
“It’s nothing, Jonathan. I’m sure of it.” I said it to calm him, but I wasn’t sure if I believed it out of anything but necessity.
“Then humor me. Lie back.”
I did, and when he saw I’d obeyed, he trotted upstairs. I looked down at his name inside my thighs. I was drawn on like a cinderblock wall in gangland. Jonathan’s dominion over me was written in black Sharpie, his territory marked in permanent ink.
Was I losing the baby? And so what if I was? What was the big deal? I didn’t even want to have children right now. I wanted nothing to do with it. Jonathan was going to die after a tortuous wait for a second heart before the kid was in high school. What kind of selfish bitch creates a child to go through that?
All I had to do was go back to the me of a few days ago. Nothing had changed.
Except everything. Having carried that baby knowingly for two days, I’d had a cellular alchemy. The shape of my brain and my heart had shifted, grown. I wasn’t the same person. I wanted that baby. I wanted it so badly, and I didn’t even know it.
I wanted this to be nothing, an embarrassing symptom of rough sex play, but the twitch in my abdomen, the tightness told me otherwise.
Jonathan came down the stairs dressed, with a dress over his arm.
“Do you think they can save it?” I asked, my voice breaking on “save.”
“I don’t know.” He sat on the edge of the couch. “Arms up.”
I raised my arms, and he put the long, modest dress over me. He snapped out a pair of simple cotton underwear and slipped them over my ankles then drew them up my legs and over me.
“I was supposed to get rid of all that underwear,” I said.
“Sometimes you need it.” He stood beside the couch.
I heard the crunch of tires on pebbles outside. “Is it Lil?”
“Yes. I texted her.” He put his arms under me and picked me up, carrying me toward the door. “I don’t think I can drive.”
“Thank God for her.” I looped my arms around his neck, and he carried me out.
“Sir,” Lil said as she opened the back door. “Mrs. Drazen, I hope you’re all right.”
“I’m sure it’s nothing.” I didn’t know why I said that. As the minutes passed, I started to think that was some whitewash of hope on a steaming pile of tragedy.
Jonathan held me tight and somehow got me in the car without putting me down. I shifted down and put my head on his lap.
Lil looked into the back. “Sequoia?”
“Yes.”
“No!” I said, rigid. I looked up at Jonathan. “No. Anywhere but there. Please. I can’t.”
“It’s the best obstetrics unit in the world, Monica.”
“I don’t care. I can’t go back there. I can’t. Let’s go to Hollywood Methodist.”
“It’s a different ward entirely.”
“Do you know how far out of my way I go to not drive past it? And it’s on Beverly, so yeah, I’d rather be late than see it. I’d rather go to the urgent care clinic on Sunset. I’d rather see the witch doctor in Silver Lake than go anywhere near that hospital. It smells like death. It’s hell. Nine stories of fucking hell, and I won’t go.”
Jonathan looked at me for a second then back at Lil. “Drive.”
“Jonathan!” I said as Lil closed the door. I tried to get up, but he pulled me down.
“Listen to me,” he said. “I know how you feel. Believe me, I get it. But that was enough blood to scare the hell out of me, and it wasn’t enough to convince me this is completely over. If we lose this baby because we wen
t to a second-rate hospital or nowhere at all, because we were scared… well, I’d like to know how you’re going to forgive yourself. Because you’re going to have to teach me.”
I looked away from him. His gaze was going to break me. It was a wall of resolve. He was doing what he wanted to do, and I had to go along. From my angle on his lap, all I could see was the grey-blue glass of the sky, streetlights, and telephone poles zipping by. A speck of bird or plane.
He was right.
Fear was fungible, and death was forever. Overcome one to face the other. Blah blah. I didn’t want him to be right. I wanted to fall down a hole of despair or climb a pillar of hope, and reason and rationality were distractions from the choice.
Reaching for the hope, I touched his face. “I’m sure it’s fine. We’re just overreacting.”
“I hope so.”
“Didn’t Jessica miscarry? What happened?”
He turned toward the window. “We were throwing an event at the house. Some fundraiser for the artist co-op she was in. She just takes my hand and brings me into the house. Doesn’t break a beat. I’m following her, and I can see the blood inside her stockings. I picked her up and carried her to the car, but it was too late. It was a mess before we even got there. So much blood. I never saw her cry except in the front seat of my car. The pain was so bad, and you know, I asked her how long it had hurt before she told me.”
“Could they have saved it?”
“The doctor wouldn’t guarantee anything, but just said that next time we should come right away.”
I relaxed into that, watching the fancy streetlights of Santa Monica turn into the more urban, less fussy designs of the west side of LA. “I had pain yesterday, but I thought I had the flu.”
“Let’s see what happens.”
“If we lose it, do we try again?”
“I don’t know.”
That didn’t help. If he pulled back from getting what he wanted most, what he’d always wanted most, then I didn’t know who he was anymore.
“Did you try again with Jessica?” I flinched from my own question. It sounded petty and mean. Our situations couldn’t have been more different. But I wanted to know what to expect from him. Did he give up or truck on?
