Lou walked back. He had a silver-dollar–sized piece of cast bronze in his hand. Cleo knew what this was. She forgot about the butt plug and focused on the knife. Lou opened it. A small claw-like blade glinted in the low light of the living room. Cleo made eye contact with Lou, who looked back closely and watched for a reaction. Cleo looked back deep into his eyes. Lou nodded slowly, and Cleo mirrored his movement.
When Lou placed the blade on the top of Cleo’s thigh, Cleo felt the tip puncture her skin. Her heart rate tripled. She flashed on her cutting sessions when she’d been a young adult. The body memory of depression and rage hit. Tears welled in her eyes. Then she looked at Lou.
Here was a man she loved. She loved him so much it occasionally bordered on worship. Every morning when she woke and saw him, she internally pledged everlasting love to him. Every time he collared her, she repeated in her mind, My body is his. My heart is his. My life is his. I serve only him. Instantly, the direction of her thoughts switched. This scene was her gift and recommitment to this man. This was a deep act of love. This was a man who would transform her. Her cutting was for destruction. His was for love and transformation. She glowed and her heart rate slowed.
As the first bead of blood surfaced, Lou looked at Cleo’s face. Her thoughts had moved to him and he saw only love. He ran the knife three inches down her thigh. Cleo yelled out as tears ran down her cheeks. “Thank you, Sir,” she whispered as she breathed out.
Lou moved to her other thigh. This cut was quicker than the last, but was the same length and drew blood. Cleo yelled out again, but not as loud.
Lou redlined Xs on the top of each of Cleo’s breasts.
“X marks my territory and treasure. You are treasured.” Lou looked into Cleo’s tear-filled eyes. “You are my most valued possession. I will always protect you.”
Cleo’s tears fell heavy now. When Lou checked her pulse, it was rapid, her breathing shallow. He set the blade down, running his fingers over her cheeks and kissing her forehead. Her tears were followed by a small sob.
Lou knelt before her, kissed her on the X marks on her breasts. He ran his fingers over her thighs. Small amounts of blood smeared on either side of the cuts. He stood between her spread legs and draped himself on her.
Cleo’s sobs subsided. Her breathing slowed. She began to rub her head on Lou’s stomach.
Lou stepped back and kissed her on the mouth. Gently at first, then Cleo’s lips parted. Lou placed his hand on the back of her head and kissed her deeply, coaxing Cleo’s soft moan.
Lou ran his hands over her shoulders and cupped each breast, squeezing them. Cleo smiled and arched her back. Relief and gratitude filled her. Her body had served her, but more importantly it had served her Sir. Her blood bonded her more closely to him. The aches and pain gave way to her desire to be penetrated. A need to climax for a final release began to rise as her pussy swelled.
Lou ran his hands down her stomach and to her thighs. He turned on the machine.
Cleo remembered she was strapped to a giant silver dildo with an ass plug in her tight hole. The machine made shallow, slow strokes. Her pussy felt overfull with the dildo, stretched to its limits. With each stroke, the walls gave just a tiny bit more, taking it in deeper, more easily. Her fluids dripped and lubricated the dildo as it slid in and out of her hole.
Her pussy gripped the toy deep in her until she felt it rubbing through her walls against the butt plug. She arched her back, trying to take more of the toy into her. Her breath quickened as she felt the beginning tremors of an enormous and growing climax.
Lou pinched and pulled on her nipples. Guttural sounds escaped her. She began to laugh at the absurd animalistic sounds he coaxed from her. The contractions from her own laughter made her ass clench around the butt plug before a short orgasm filled her body.
Lou turned up the machine. Strokes lengthened and quickened. The dildo stretched her pussy open and tapped her cervix with each stroke, her inner muscles squeezing the toy with delight while Lou stood and stroked his visibly hard cock through his jeans.
Cleo bent her head backward in delight. Lou turned up the machine. The dildo was now rapidly fucking Cleo, hitting her deeply, the sensation on the border between painful and amazing. Her brain no longer processed any pain. She gave in to the complete pleasure enveloping her body. Tension from pain became the tension of a climax. It grew, beginning in her ass and pussy, filling her from her gut up to her chest until it shook her whole body.
She came, her pussy pulsed hard enough to cause the butt plug to shoot out. It was hanging in by the smallest bubble. Cleo shouted out, “Oh fuck!”
The look on her face was enough to tell Lou that all was very, very good. He smiled at Cleo. “Good girl,” he praised.
Cleo came hard with his praise. The plug flew out of her and hit the floor with a thud with the intense pulsing of her pussy. “Oh fuck! Oh fuck! Holy fucking shit!” was all Cleo could muster. Forty seconds into full orgasm, Cleo began to beg Lou to turn off the machine.
“Please, Sir, turn it off. It’s too much! I need to stop! Sir, please! I can’t keep this up!” Her tone told Lou she was telling the truth. He turned off the machine and lowered the dildo to its resting position. He stroked Cleo’s sweaty hair and kissed her. “You were an amazing girl.”
Cleo smiled weakly from deep in sub space. He quickly removed the dildo and unstrapped Cleo, then pulled the cashmere throw from the couch and wrapped her in it. “You okay?” he asked.
Cleo nodded as a couple of tears rolled down her cheek. Lou scooped her up in his arms and carried her to the bed, keeping his hand on Cleo’s shoulder before kissing the top of her head. They were quiet and breathed in sync. Cleo listened to Lou’s heartbeat and lay quietly on his chest.
“I am yours. My body is yours. My mind is yours. My life is yours,” Cleo repeated the final part of her contract. She meant this more deeply than she ever had. When she made her vows two years ago, she could not have imagined loving him any more than she did at that moment. Two years into their Master/slave relationship these feelings had deepened in ways she’d never anticipated. She was valued for who she was. This was more than she knew could exist in the universe when she took his collar seven hundred and thirty days ago.
“You are, my girl. I love you. I cherish your gift of submission and accept the responsibilities as your Master. I will protect you all the days of your life,” Lou said and stroked her hair as he repeated parts of his vow.
“Thank you for the amazing anniversary present,” Lou finished. Cleo kissed his chest.
“You’re welcome, Sir.”
RESTORATIVE JUSTICE
Alexa J. Day
I am forgiven.
All the weeks of regular apologies for long hours and surprise meetings and emergencies fabricated by people with no time management skills. The phone calls that got further and further apart as I lost control of my schedule. The lurching waves of terror that my girlfriend would realize she could do much better than me. After all that, I am welcome in this narrow bed again, sharing a too-soft mattress with Julia.
She kisses like she has all the time in the world, like she’s learning me all over again. Her nails skim over my collar to the skin behind my ear, and when that sets me off, the way it always does, I suck her perfectly juicy lower lip between my teeth. A playful squeak flutters out of her. Her mouth curves into a smile, and I know I’m forgiven.
We’ll lose our reservations. The old Mike, pre-forgiveness and new to this relationship, would sit up now and start smoothing his clothes. He would want to rush off to dinner someplace exclusive, eager to prove that his job granted him access to expensive places. Now I know better.
She eases me back into the overabundance of pillows, a pile of fringed and frilly things that smell summery, like her red-tinted black hair. Her forehead touches mine, and I gather up her cascade of curls, baring the back of her neck to my touch. She giggles when I stroke the skin there. Her divine body undulates atop mine. My cock stirs
obediently.
“Good to have you back,” she says.
“Good to be back.” I pull her down for another kiss, tasting her and letting her tease me.
Fuck the reservations.
She hooks her finger into the knot of my already loosened tie and slides it back and forth before I take over. She rolls off me, her weight resting briefly on my hard-on before she hops down from the bed. She unclasps her beaded earrings, and I shuck my pants, awkward like a teenager making the most of stolen time. She grins at the spectacle I’m making of myself while she rolls down the linens.
We’re about a million miles away from my place, in every respect. I thought I’d never see this tiny room again. I’d started to miss the way Jeff Bridges and John Goodman looked down at the bed from The Big Lebowski poster over her dresser. Nothing in my cavernous gray apartment clangs and hisses like her radiator. My jacket looks like it was made for her worn pink armchair and for the crowd of frilly skirts and artsy-looking blouses in her closet. I drop the horde of pillows, one by one, onto the floor near the bed.
This is when I notice the ropes.
Lying flat on the floral print sheets, one extending from each corner of the mattress, are two lengths of bright red rope. That color and the satiny sheen don’t serve a utilitarian purpose. These ropes are made for tying people up. A chill slithers into my gut.
I lift one of the ropes, pinching it. Softer than I expected. “For me?”
She nods. “If you like.”
I have been tied to the bed before. Three times. Usually when the woman of the moment starts to think I’m spending too much time at work. That was desperate stay-in-the-relationship sex. Not with rope like this. That desperation took the form of scarves or something, tied to the headboard, just high enough to make my arms ache. And then it’s being underneath them while they try to figure out what to do with me. They’re tentative. Or phony, like they’re rehearsing lines. Repeating something they saw in a movie or whatever. Inevitably, the knots slide free, and I have to be a good sport and hold onto the headboard until it’s over.
They were following pop fiction relationship advice. If you want to keep him from getting away, tie him down. Something from a magazine.
Then again, this is Julia. She spanked me with a paddle a while back for getting mouthy with the hipster bouncer at the tiny club up the street. Three strokes with a wooden paddle she keeps in here, probably in the same place as the rope. I came so hard I swear I went color-blind for a few minutes.
So this is makeup sex. Kinky makeup sex with the woman who’s forgiven me. Right?
She perches on the far corner of the bed and undoes the button that holds her emerald green top closed. “You done this before?”
“I have.” I don’t want to look apprehensive, but my default expression, the one intended to intimidate opposing counsel, isn’t right, either.
She hikes up her ruffled skirt and crawls up the bed toward me. Her lips meet mine again, and my skin tingles with heat before she pulls away. “This won’t be like that,” she whispers.
“I’m sure it won’t be,” I whisper back at her.
She chuckles and flicks my lip with her tongue.
As I sit up on her tiny bed, I’m noticing that the ropes are not affixed to the headboard as I presumed, but to the bed frame. Neat trick. One that did not come from a magazine or a movie. That shouldn’t surprise me after the spanking.
I can’t help but smirk as I unfasten my watch. I’m about to unbutton my shirt when she says, “That’s fine. Just lie down.”
“Little enthusiastic?” It’s out of my mouth before I can stop it. Old Mike has found his voice.
“I have a gag in my little bag of tricks, Michael. Do I need to get it?”
Part of me wants to know if the gag is going to be as awesome as the paddle was. But I can read a room. I press my lips together and shake my head.
“Good boy.” She opens her hand to collect my watch. “Now lie back.”
Her cool voice sends me up in goose bumps. Once I’m where she wants me, she puts my watch on the nightstand between a pair of condoms and a water bottle. She pushes my sleeves up to the elbow. My pulse echoes, muffled, in my eardrums; it’s a drum roll in the hollow created by my breath. I think I’m going to have a minute to settle myself down, but the ropes are already looped and intertwined, leaving a neat cuff that whispers into place over my wrist.
I expect her to make quick work of the knots. The lead-up to the spanking was lightning fast. But she spends a lot of time binding me. The rope seems to go on forever, one loop feeding into another. The end going firm, but not tight. The silken texture of it. Her warm fingers slip underneath and wiggle a little, and her expression, calm but intent, reassures me.
I stare at the pattern as she binds my other wrist. Her bracelets jingle as she works, stacking each coil neatly beside the last. She sits back, straddling me with her hands on her hips as I pull experimentally at the ropes. A playful tug reveals that I am bound quite securely. Wicked satisfaction lights her features.
This is not going to be like the scarves at all.
Julia mistakes the silence for anxiety. She bends to kiss my forehead. “You sure you’re okay, babe?”
I reach to pull her down for a longer kiss, but of course, the ropes make that impossible. “Mm-hmm.”
“You’re sure?”
It’s makeup sex. We’re back together again. It’s good.
I’m lucky to still be here. Lucky to not be having an argument over this. I haven’t lost an argument with anyone I’ve dated since I started law school. The training—and then the job—erodes human decency, and the animal instinct to win at all costs grows in its place like a callus. It’s protecting me from fear, shame, embarrassment, and grief, but I’d rather lose an argument to her, and the truth is that I don’t know how to do that anymore.
If being tied to this bed is the price I have to pay to stay in it, in her heart, in her life, then I will do it. I will do anything she wants.
“I’m sure.”
She kisses me. I love this, when she takes the initiative. I’m open for her, more than willing, and as my tongue meets hers, the ropes recede to the back of my mind.
Until she releases me.
She sways on top of me, her skirt swishing over me. I come very close to asking if she’s going to tie my feet down, too, but I don’t. It’s not even the threat of the gag. Something about being flat on my back, half-dressed, as she examines my restraints has put me in my place. I’m going all the way hard under her.
“How we doing? Okay?”
I nod at her. I can’t decide whether or not to smile and it must show.
“Good. Now reach for me. Try it out.”
My range of motion is larger than I expected. I can get my hands off the bed and lift up a few inches. I can hear the rope creaking against the bed frame, groaning on the metal. This is not going to slide free while she does what she wants.
She grinds herself against me, making a soft sound of approval. I’m hard enough to hurt. I shift my weight beneath her and she chuckles. “Fight it, Michael. I like when you fight.”
She rocks back and forth atop me, unbuttoning my shirt as I buck beneath her. Her nails scrape over my chest through the cotton undershirt. Now that I know I’m tied to the strongest part of the bed, I really give it hell. She asked for a little bit of a show but it feels real for a second.
“Harder. You aren’t even trying.”
The ropes creak against the bed frame. Muscle burns and aches. But in these ropes, I’m not an average lawyer with pasty skin and a middle-aged paunch, slowly losing himself in an enormous, soul-grinding machine. I feel like a giant. I feel like something that must be restrained to keep it from rampaging over a defenseless world.
I’m hers now. A plaything tied to her bed. A convenience to be used. A well-dressed fuck toy.
“That works,” she says.
She rests her palm on my cock. We would be skin to skin but for my
boxers, which she tugs down over my erection. I choke on my indrawn breath and push out a low moan, straining up to her as she inches down toward the foot of the bed.
“I don’t think so.” She shakes her head, amusement on her round face. “I just finished tying you up.”
She dismounts easily, leaving my cock jutting upward toward nothing. She reaches for the nightstand, where unseen objects clunk around in the single drawer. With a flourish, she produces a vibrator in the same artificial purple color as grape soda and about the same dimensions as the average porn star. She brandishes it with a grin in front of me. My own flesh and blood cock aches to compete with it. I twist back and forth in these ropes.
Is this it? Did she tie me up here to tease me? I want to stroke myself, to keep myself hard. I don’t know how she means to paddle me face up, but I’m hers. It doesn’t matter.
She sets the vibrator on the bed next to my waist, where I’m not going to dislodge it with my struggles. She pulls her top off over her head and tosses it at the footboard. The skirt drops next, falling to her feet in a pool of fabric. Her dark eyes meet mine as she slides silky panties down her long legs, and then she mounts me again, wearing only her bra.
She takes hold of my hair, and her fist tightens in it. She’s never taken command like this. The sight of her, the lush shapes of her breasts and hips, fires a jolt of arousal into my chest. My arms go limp in the ropes.
“Do you think about me, Michael? When I’m not with you?”
A week’s worth of blabbering almost falls out of my mouth. Then I remember the gag and nod.
“I think about you a lot. And you warned me. You warned me about the job.”
I warn everyone about the job, the same way I was warned about it. The job kills relationships, my boss said. Mike, it’s like both of you are cheating on each other with the same person, and then you can’t stop doing it because that’s all you have in common anymore. It’s inevitable.
I thought what everyone thinks: that won’t happen to me. Until the job killed my boss in the office I would inherit from him. That heart attack left him dead and me afraid of becoming a haggard, desiccated wraith, an unlovable monster who would die the same way. Alone and unlamented. The night I moved into his office, I met Julia at a bar. I stopped settling for inevitable that night.
Best Bondage Erotica of the Year, Volume 2 Page 7
