Edith had moaned softly. Oh, she could read her mind only too well.
Pursing her lips, Selma had stood up. On cue, Ed presented her wrists, held together, palm- and brass rings-side up. Selma gave her a curt nod of approval and attached the leash.
“From here to eternity, Prew,” she trilled and tugged her gorgeous, stripped, and restrained birthday girl toward the winding stairs. On the second landing, she slipped her hand into her pocket and pushed the remote, thrilling in the concomitant whirr of the vibe and Ed’s sharp intake of breath.
She turned her head to see the glimmer of pleasure in her captive’s eyes and her lips twisted wryly as she reminded her:
“By the way, you can’t come until I tell you to.”
Finally, Selma again stood in front of the door to which she had led Edith less than an hour ago. It was a white, nondescript flush door, keycard protected and leading onto a tiny room in the southeast turret. In fact, it was exclusively keycard protected, as there was only a single access card around that could be used to open it. Selma glanced down at Yukiko’s blank, professional mien on said card and bit her lip, biting back a chuckle. She definitely owed Ms. Tanaka. How she would deal with that remained a question for another night.
Flashing the card in front of the reader, Selma shivered as the door clicked open. It was time. Showtime. At long last.
Edith was tied up for her fortieth. Figuratively speaking and literally: she lay with her legs spread-eagled, her arms flush to her sides, on a red velvet divan in a little nook of the city library of whose existence she had had not an inkling in all the forty years preceding. Between her wide-open legs the lepidoptera-shaped vibrator hummed, patiently, insistently. She was physically and mentally worn down from holding the impending orgasm at bay.
To do so, she had focused on the familiar scents of lit candles and old books around her: parchments, mothballs, half-French and French bindings—she fancied she could even smell a vellum-enclosed manuscript or two. She was off her rocker, most likely. Being continuously stimulated could do that to you. After this, she had turned her attention to the sensation of the broad leather belts that held her in place on the cushiony divan; their presence under which seemed to startle even Sel, for the space of a breath, before she summarily embraced them.
They were supple yet sturdy, and the feel of them against her skin, checking her, containing her, hemming her in, brought Edith so perilously close to the edge she had to bite her cheek, her tongue, anything to prevent herself from toppling over—from breaking the golden rule.
She never came without her wife’s permission.
It gratified them both to no end.
Even so, as she heard the faint click of the door signalling Selma’s—she sincerely, fervently hoped—return, she let out a sigh of relief.
She had no idea how long her lover had stayed away, or what she had been up to, but tears of gratitude, of sheer, vulnerable joy stood in her eyes as she turned her head and saw—
It was the librarian. The made-up librarian of her naughtiest, most pervasive fantasy: a pince-nez perched on her pretty Romanesque nose, her hair pulled back severely, her royal blue jabot blouse shimmering in the candlelight as she moved. She was pushing a cart in front of her, loaded with a selection of reading materials, a clipboard, and something—something more.
“So, Miss . . .” The picture-perfect apparition snatched up the clipboard, tapping it with her steel-tipped pen. “Edith, is it?”
Ed’s neck tingled. She cleared her throat as the librarian’s gaze swept down the length of her, lingering for the merest sliver of a moment on the way her tits swelled between two of the firmly secured belts.
The woman’s eyebrows arched. “All comfortable, I take it?”
Edith forced herself to speak.
“Yes, Miss. Thank you, Miss.”
“Good, good.” The librarian shifted and the drone of the vibe abruptly died down. “I don’t want you to be distracted, Miss Edith. Now, don’t be upset, but I’m afraid I’ve got a score to settle with you on this library’s account.” She rapped at the clipboard again, sharper this time, and a rush of exhilaration went through Ed. “According to our records, you got your first library card with us when you turned ten. Is that correct?”
Edith licked her lips. She was stupefied, her mouth dry, her sex throbbing. She braced against her bonds, as the librarian tilted her head, the toe of her shoe drumming the floor. Edith was transfixed, in every sense of the word.
“Is that correct?” There was a note of warning in the librarian’s modulated voice, a sharpening of consonants that made Ed’s exposed skin prickle with goose bumps.
“Yes,” she wheezed, trying her best not to swoon. “That is correct, Miss.”
The librarian smiled and leaned in over her, her lily-of-thevalley perfume overpowering Edith’s senses. She whimpered. The backs of her thighs slid for a hundredth of an inch against the padding underneath.
“Happy anniversary,” the entrancing creature lilted in her ear. “You’ve been a library cardholder for thirty years, pet. To show our appreciation, I’ve decided to let you fuck me, here, in the head librarian’s hideaway, surrounded by her very private bibliophilic collection. Would you like that?”
She couldn’t think. Her brain seemed to have disconnected, leaving her stranded, turned into a blob of jelly—a trembling, liquified mass of want. From the recesses of her addled mind she conjured up the phrase required, pronouncing it huskily, half stuck in her throat:
“Rilke.”
Which meant: Yes.
Yes. Now.
The librarian pecked her primly on the forehead. Then she righted herself and there were dimples in her cheeks, a stray curl of hair feathering her slender, achingly beautiful neck. Edith wanted to touch her so badly, so badly—but she couldn’t. Her heart beat against her constraints.
Kneeling, the librarian took up a wooden box from the lower left shelf of her cart, opening it with a small brass key and displaying the contents to her like a salesperson at an upmarket department store.
It was a wooden dildo, streamlined, lacquered, in the exact same brown-reddish wood—rosewood, that was it, Dalbergia nigra—as Selma’s fiddle, back home. The librarian stroked it appreciatively.
“From your wife. She’s got great taste, hasn’t she?”
“Impeccable.”
The librarian smirked and lifted it out. It was already attached to a harness—which alerted Edith to the fact that she would not be allowed the use of her hands after all.
“Let’s see how it fits, shall we?”
Ed lifted her head, straining her neck to catch a glimpse of how the quick-fingered woman pushed the deactivated butterfly down until it nestled over her slit instead and placed the hard, unyielding wood over her battered nub. She hissed through her teeth, but the librarian paid her no heed as she fastened the new straps on top of the old.
“There we go.” The librarian glanced up at her, and she was a sight for sore eyes: red lips, half-lidded gaze, her pince-nez a smidge askew. She caressed the shaft of the dildo, grinding it against Edith’s swollen clit in the process.
Ed bucked her hips, which proved entirely ineffective. She clenched her hands into fists.
The librarian kissed the tip of the wood, then kicked off her heels and bunched her heavy skirt up around her hips, revealing the lacy, rubbery edges of her stockings.
Edith groaned, bucking again, with the same poor—make that non-existent—result. She swore roundly. The librarian’s eyes flashed.
“You’re too loud, love. This is a library. Here, let me help you.”
She should have seen it coming, but she didn’t, not until she was encircled by silky thighs, the thick wool cloth falling about her, damp folds tickling her lips.
A bolt of red-hot passion shot through Ed as she felt her mistress’s hands in her hair, clutching, pulling, as her soft, muffled voice urged her on: “Eat me. Yes, fuck. Eat me like you mean it.”
She d
id mean it. She meant every sweep of her tongue, every nibble of her lips, every lick and swallow and dart as she was smothered in cunt, eager and sopping, pushing her deeper into the cushions, pushing her clear into another dimension, a spaced-out world of submissive bliss.
The thighs on either side of her head juddered, and she wanted to grip them, but more than that: she wanted to hold onto this moment, be forever suspended, forever on the cusp, her arms pinned to her sides, her painfully tight breasts popping between leather belts, her clitoris elongated into erect wood.
Tears streamed down her cheeks—happy, ecstatic, out-of-her-head tears—and any second now she would—
“Not. Yet.”
Her world slanted to the side, or rather her librarian mistress did, and for an instant Edith felt so bereft she could have cried out loud, but a cool digit touched her lips to hush her; burgundy lips mouthed, “Soon.”
The librarian straightened her pince-nez, her blouse dishevelled, her face flushed. She bent to flick one of Ed’s contracted nipples with the tip of her tongue, smiling at Edith’s gasp even as she locked her eyes onto hers.
She didn’t say anything; she didn’t have to. Her gaze was an open book, brimming with pride, pleasure, raw emotion as she shimmied into position and slowly, inexorably lowered herself onto Ed’s wooden length.
Edith could swear she felt her lover’s inner walls tightening around her, and she wanted it—wanted her: Selma, the librarian, her wife, her partner, her gentle, loving Domme—so fucking much, she just about tore herself loose.
Just about.
Because she couldn’t.
Sel shook her head once, vaguely, as if to say don’t be silly, but then the wood hit home, and she gulped and rocked her hips, every minute twitch of her cunt translated and multiplied onto Ed’s pumping need, her juices trickling onto her between the straps, her head thrown back in ardour.
Edith stared up at her helplessly, and she would erupt, explode, disintegrate, any moment now, as she watched her librarian-forthe-night effortlessly work herself toward a mounting climax, a coup d’éclat, on top of her, with her, through her.
“Selma,” she pleaded, her voice jangly and scattered, like so many bits of tinfoil caught in a thunderstorm, “for the love of—”
“Yes, do.”
The response was so breathy, so close to the peak itself, she could almost not make it out; but what she could make out was the vibrator suddenly coming alive beneath the strap-on, its plump, smooth end poking at her, thrumming, as Sel pushed down hard and came for her. Edith roared.
“Ms. Tanaka?”
“Edith! How nice to see you—happy belated birthday!”
Yukiko fell about her neck, smacking loud kisses a hair’s breadth from her cheeks, French style, and Ed inwardly cursed herself for her telltale awkward formality. They’d been Yukiko and Edith since forever and a day, but after Selma’s epic treat for her, two days ago, she felt … different about the head librarian. The tips of her ears burned.
“I—Selma asked me to return this to you, with her compliments.”
Yukiko accepted the access card in its red lanyard, hanging it around her neck with a nod and an indulgent grin at a gaggle of primary schoolers heading to the children’s books section. Her eyes slanted slyly toward Edith.
“So, how did you find the library after hours, sweetheart? Was it everything you’d hoped it would be?”
Ed’s face warmed afresh and she began to suspect exactly why Sel had insisted she should be the one returning the card today. Her torso was still garishly polka-striped underneath her shirt, and when they had packed up to go, she’d noticed that Selma didn’t take the belts along with the rest of their stuff, but simply tucked them back under the divan. Yukiko’s divan.
Exhaling a long-held breath, Edith decided to roll with it. It was what Sel would do.
“It was immensely enjoyable. Surprisingly so.”
Yukiko’s gaze fluttered down to Ed’s new leather cuffs, the brass rings jingling conspicuously.
“Would Selma ever . . .” The librarian’s voice trailed off, and she shifted her stance, her hand digging deeper into her pocket.
“You’d have to ask her yourself,” Ed said sweetly, imagining her wife’s dismay at not being spared this conversation. She would be paying for this. “Though I should warn you,” she relented, meeting Yukiko’s eyes above the rim of her reading specs, “she’s not in the habit of sharing her toys.”
TABLE FOR TWO
T.R. Verten
If he had to pick the thing guaranteed to humiliate him beyond words, it would be this. But the whole point is that John isn’t allowed to pick.
It had been her idea. ’Course it had.
John is so used to it that he can usually anticipate when it’s going to happen. Weeks can pass by without either of them mentioning it, and then the next thing he knows they’ll be out, on a date, all three of them, one of their usual spots, John might catch her smiling in Seth’s direction, the inside of his mouth going dry, because he can just sense that they’re both thinking about him. Him, and what to do with him.
He hates it.
His flaw is that he’s too eager. John knows this, knows her to be genuinely displeased when he tries to anticipate, whereas Seth—
He’ll take her side, when she’s there.
But if she isn’t?
If she isn’t Seth only pretends to be disappointed. John can tell by the way one side of his mouth lifts in a smile, the way he says oh John in the most pleased tone.
He’s not permitted all that often. It’s in his nature to get too overwhelmed, too quickly. They won’t even tell him in advance, because should he know what lies ahead, then he’ll simply try to anticipate that, too.
Which is why Seth has put the blindfold on him first thing.
And Christ, how he wants to second-guess them then. Do they want him on the bed? The floor? Where should he put his hands? Questions bubble up but he can’t find the right way to ask them. It’s already so much, too much. Straightaway.
But he can hear her through the anxiety, her voice sharp and to the point, hear her tell Seth to undress him down to his underwear, to assist him down to the floor.
“John?” It’s Seth, Seth’s hands on his shoulders, Seth a comforting presence.
His breath whistles through his nose but he manages a fierce nod.
He really does hate this. Hates how much he needs them.
There are fingers on the side of his face (his), a tug on his hair (her).
“Arms up,” Seth says, and John holds them out at once with his wrists already crossed. Anticipating, like he’s good at.
Nora laughs, not unkindly. “He’s done it again,” she says, her voice coming closer as one of them—him, John thinks, shorter fingernails, heavier hands—moves his arms until his wrists are close in to his chest, pressed against one another side by side and the other one—her, it must be then—touches his neck.
The item against his skin is cold, heavy, and, he realizes with a guilty shock, rigid. Already he’s fighting the urge to wriggle against it as he hears three distinct clicks, and then his shoulders are pulled forward and his upper body goes taut from the constriction.
Immediately he feels about ten times more at ease. This is what they want from him, then. This is all he’s meant to do.
“Sit up,” she says, a little less kindly. John wants to be good for her, he does, but he moves too fast and sways there on his knees. Then there’s a hand on his head using him for leverage as she climbs onto the bed, a shift from behind him, a squeak on the mattress, a dark, pleased noise from Seth. He must be close by—must be on his knees, too, by the way she’s sounding all of a sudden.
That they let him listen at all fills him with guilty excitement. For whatever reason this is a million times worse than when he listens from the hallway when they’re together in their room. It thrills him to think of them, that they might know—Jesus, of course they know, they know everything he think
s, wants, before it’s even become conscious thought for him—that he’s out there.
Listening.
Keeping their sounds tucked away to ruminate on. When he’s walking to work, doing chores around the house. Reminding himself how much better they are than him. How he doesn’t deserve one of them, let alone both of them. Berating himself for thinking he could ever be the same to them as they are, to him.
John sags, his sweaty wrists slipping against the metal. The weight yanks his shoulders down, a dull ache already building in the sockets. This he knows. This he can do.
“Are you finished?” Seth asks her, once they’ve checked in with John.
He’s dizzy with how excited he is from this alone. Hard, in his underpants, and it’s beginning to hurt in a not unpleasant way. He shudders when he realizes that, a full-body shiver climbing up his spine and ending with him shaking his head side to side. The metal slides cold and protective against his overheated skin.
John wants to go forward onto all fours so his body isn’t as noticeable, but he’s prevented from following through by the device fastened round his neck. Instead he squirms, the aluminum rigid, slick against his wrists from where he’s strained against it. If he keeps at it there will be marks there tomorrow. He bruises too easily for those things to pass by without incident. That thought excites him, too.
“Hardly,” she answers. She puts a hand on his shoulder, heavy, as she gets up off the bed, slightly dislodging his blindfold—an intentional move. From that opening he can now see a small corner of the room, Nora in her bra facing away from him.
Seth looks over at John as she’s putting a towel down, which reminds him that he’s knelt barelegged against the scratchy carpet, that there’s sweat built up in the creases of his knees, where his thighs press against his stomach. Once more he’s compelled to lean down, bend over, give in, surrender, but manages to bite the inside of his cheek and give Seth a tight little nod instead. It takes all his energy and courage, that nod. Seth, the handsome bastard, grins right back at him before reaching across and pulling the blindfold up over his eyebrows and up into his hairline. It’s down low enough that he can look away should it be too much.
Best Bondage Erotica of the Year, Volume 2 Page 9