Make Me: Twelve Tales of Dark Desire

by Aleatha Romig

  And I felt punished. I had the orgasms, but they weren’t fun, and they certainly didn’t feel sexy. They felt like work. Maybe that’s the lesson he was trying to teach me. That I had a job to do, and that job was pleasing him, not doing what I liked. I looked up at Jeremy again and said, “I’m sorry.”

  Again I was ignored. Without words, he cuffed my free hand back to the bed. He sat beside me to do it but didn’t once look down at my face. He took the clips off me, none too gently. I moaned and writhed against the cuffs. The pain of having clamps taken off was almost more excruciating than having them put on. It lingered longer, anyway.

  “As we discussed,” he said to Kyle as he handed him the clamps, “put them on her every hour and don’t take them off her until she comes. Three times.”

  Every hour? Jesus.

  “Let her go to the bathroom and eat lunch around noon, but the rest of the time, she lies right there with her hands tied. Otherwise God knows what she’ll do to herself.”

  Kyle smirked down at me, jingling the evil metal devices in his palm. God, I hated his guts. Then Jeremy finally looked at me, but only to frown.

  “As I said, if you have such a desire to jerk yourself off, be my guest. At four o’clock, you’ll be untied and your punishment will be over.”

  I looked at the clock. It wasn’t even eight in the morning.

  “Have a good day, Nell,” he said, leaving without a backward glance.

  *

  I was a submissive. I had been for years, but this all-day-punishment thing was totally novel to me. I’d been humiliated, clamped, made to masturbate on hundreds of occasions, but never for eight hours in a row. Eight hours times three plus the three he’d already forced on me was twenty-seven orgasms, not to mention some sore, tender tits. Every time Kyle came in the room, I glared daggers at him, but he only looked back indifferently and produced the biting clips.

  Still the tit man, he took his time toying with my nipples, getting them nice and hard before he applied the clamps. The first time he came in to do it, I said, “Don’t you want me to look you in the eyes?”

  In hindsight, I wish I hadn’t said it, because it brought that night back. The night we spent together, when he was an amazingly hot guy and I was still Little Nell, with my own simple life.

  Kyle didn’t react to my question. He clamped the first tit. I gritted my teeth to hold in the whine. He sighed, moving on to the other tit. “Nell, I was just doing my job. If you’re still angry about that, you’re stupid.”

  I pursed my lips in annoyance and looked away. I wasn’t still angry. Was I?

  “Anyway, you enjoyed that night,” he added. “So what the hell do you care?”

  “I don’t care.” We looked at each other. It felt like a mournful moment to me. How did he feel about what he’d done? He looked a little guilty.

  “Nell—” He started to speak, then stopped.

  “What?” I finally asked.

  “Just start fucking masturbating,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest.

  “You’re going to stand there and watch me?”

  “Boss’s orders. He doesn’t trust you to do what you’re supposed to when you’re on your own.”

  I sighed and closed my eyes all three times in a row, and every time after that. I didn’t want to see him watching me, and honestly, I don’t think he wanted to watch. Now if Jeremy had been here, I thought to myself spitefully. With each passing hour I grew more and more despondent. I thought I could handle this sadistic little punishment, but at some point, I started to hurt. Not hurt in my clamped nipples or hurt in my chafed clit, but hurt in my soul. I was tired of being tied up, tired of masturbating, tired of my nipples throbbing while I reached between my legs. Most of all, I was tired of feeling like shit.

  “You did this to yourself,” Kyle reminded me. Horrible fucking man, gorgeous or not.

  At four o’clock I managed three last orgasms. I felt too bleak by that time to even feel glad. “Do me a favor,” Kyle said as he untied me. “Don’t jack yourself off anymore unless he tells you to. I don’t feel like doing this again.”

  “Fuck you,” I replied. With a snicker, he left the room.

  I rubbed my wrists and ankles and limped to the bathroom, where I soaked in the tub for an hour. I didn’t want to think about how I’d spent my day. And what had I learned? I suppose I learned that Jeremy was not fucking around when he gave me rules to obey. Perhaps I learned too that he was not the romantic hero I’d imagined. He was just my dom.

  No, he was my employer. Fine. I get it now.

  Now I wanted to move on, move past it. I wanted to shut my mind off. I sat at the table in the silence, then turned on the TV just to hear some noise. There was nothing to watch, only Thai channels, a few international channels, but nothing I really wanted to see. I didn’t want to look out the window and freak myself out again, and I definitely felt too restless to sit and read. It had been two days, and already I was about to lose my mind.

  Finally I grabbed my coat and headed down to the lobby. I didn’t know if I was allowed to wander around on my own, but Jeremy wasn’t there to ask. I thought about the contract rules, but it hadn’t said anything about my private time, only that I had to be available to him. But he was at work. He would be working until seven or eight o’clock.

  I walked through the lobby, waiting subconsciously for someone to stop me, to leap out and say, Did Jeremy tell you that you could go?

  But no one paid attention or stopped me, so I nodded to the doorman and walked outside. It was crowded on the sidewalk, the local Bangkok citizens going about their business, pushing past me impatiently, but I didn’t care. I felt like I’d been sprung from prison, and I just wanted to walk. I wanted to enjoy the feeling of being free. I just wished I blended in more. My bright red hair stood out like a siren among the sea of blue-black hair. I noticed heads starting to turn as I continued along.

  I should have worn a hat.

  I ducked my head and kept walking, taking in the sights, but the only sights were really more people and tall buildings. The city streets were crowded with honking cars and frenetic activity. After twenty minutes or so I turned back, having barely made my way down a few blocks. I was worried about losing my bearings and not being able to get back to the hotel.

  Even worse, people were starting to follow me, to grab me and speak to me in broken English. I heard “Jer-my Gray, Jer-my Gray, girl-friend, Jer-my Gray!”

  I didn’t answer. I didn’t like the way they were pulling at me, brandishing cell phones and cameras, flashes in my eyes. Soon they surrounded me, and even when I tried to walk, I couldn’t move forward through the crowd without touching someone, without having to push someone out of my way.

  “Excuse me.” My voice sounded panicky and shrill. “Excuse me. I’m trying to go…go over there.”

  I pointed to the hotel. It seemed miles away, and I was sure I’d never get there. I’d never get out of this crowd.

  “Jer-my. Jer-my. Where your boy-friend?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know.”

  A policeman or security guard of some sort began to disperse the crowd with shouts and rude gesticulations. I’d never been so relieved to see anyone in my life. I ducked through the crowds to meet him. He took my elbow and attempted to shelter me from the pursuing paparazzi. He led me toward his squad car, but I pointed at the hotel.

  “I have to go there. I’m staying there.” All I wanted was to run up to the eighty-fifth floor and stay there forever.

  He pushed through the crowds, blowing his whistle. It shrilled next to my ear and set my teeth on edge. He smelled bad, and his hands were hurting my forearm as he dragged me along behind him. It felt like an hour before we finally reached the hotel. The policeman accompanied me into the lobby, where Jeremy waited just inside the door, his face a pale, set mask.

  He nodded to the officer and thanked him in Thai before pulling me into the elevator and mashing the button with enough force to break it
. I stood beside him, not knowing what to say. I was still shaking. My stomach was still in knots from the experience outside, and now I had to face him and his ire. Jeremy, please forgive me. Please just look at me without that frown. “Did you have a nice walk?” he finally asked just before we reached our floor.

  I leaned against the wall of the elevator and burst into tears. It was enough. His anger, his tone. It was enough for me. I just wanted to go to bed, go to sleep, go home, go back to Eden, to Buona Italia, go anywhere but here.

  “Okay.” He sighed and turned to me and took me in his arms. I clutched at him, falling apart completely. “Okay,” he whispered. “You’re okay now. I know. It’s scary, those crowds. You’ve had a hard day.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” I sobbed over and over. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry…”

  “Shhh, shh, enough.” He led me out of the elevator at the eighty-fifth floor, and down the hall to our room. Inside, he held me a long time by the door. He squeezed me tighter and tighter until the cold, shivery shaking started to go away.

  “Why are they like that?” I finally whispered into the side of his neck. “What do they want?”

  “Me,” he said in a tight voice. “They want me. If they can’t have me, they go after you, or anyone else connected to me. You can’t just go walking around, not here. I’m sorry. I should have told you. I didn’t think you’d want to go out today.” He released me and brushed away the last of my tears. “If you want to go out and sightsee around Bangkok, I have to make arrangements with Kyle for a security detail. And I will, if that’s what you want.”

  “No, I don’t want to go back out there. Not ever again.”

  “You don’t now, but you might another time,” he said, tipping my face up and caressing my cheek. “I know this feeling is scary. It will go away. You’ll get used to it.”

  “I’ll never get used to it,” I said, shaking my head.

  “You will. You’ll find ways to avoid the worst of it, find ways to minimize it. You’ll learn how to hide.”

  How to hide. Like you do, behind your fake girlfriend.

  A knock came from the door, and Jeremy let Kyle in.

  “Oh, she’s here.” He looked relieved.

  “Yes, she’s here,” Jeremy snapped, releasing me to stalk over to the kitchen and grab a beer out of the refrigerator.

  Kyle glared at me. “If you wanted to go out, you should have said.”

  “I told her that already,” said Jeremy. I could see that Kyle was the one in the hot seat now.

  The personal assistant/sex-toy procurer shall not allow said sex toy to wander about the city alone after torturing her with tit clamps and forced orgasms all day.

  “Everything’s fine now, Kyle. I’ll see you in the morning,” Jeremy said. After Kyle left with one last frown in my direction, Jeremy looked at me as if assessing my mental soundness. He didn’t look impressed with what he saw.

  “You know, sunlight helps jet lag. Maybe tomorrow you can come with me to the set. It’s closed. You’ll be safe from the fans and paparazzi there, and you can get some fresh air and light. Reset your clock.”

  “Yes, Jeremy,” I said. “That sounds fine.”

  “You look tired. Are you hungry?”

  “I ate just before I went out. I’m not hungry, no.”

  “Go to bed, then,” he said. “Get some sleep. Tomorrow’s another day.”

  My throat felt tight. Dismissed. I wanted him to hold me some more, but he was right, I was tired. I headed to my room and tried not to think about how wonderful it felt to be held so tightly in his arms, and the fact that I was going to my big, empty bed alone.

  The restraints were still there on the headboard and footboard. I tucked them away and brushed my teeth, put on my old, ratty Betty Boop pajamas and climbed into bed. I didn’t want to cry again, but I did. I couldn’t help it. I felt so lost and sad. I hunched into a ball and let the tears come.

  Then he was there, sliding into the bed behind me, pulling me close. He didn’t shush me this time, just held me as I sobbed and shook, my back pressed to his chest. He buried his face in my hair and clasped me hard.

  “It’s all right.” He nuzzled against my ear as I shuddered and cried. He kissed my neck and snaked his hand up under my loose T-shirt, caressing me, avoiding my tender nipples as if he knew they ached too much for play. Soon I felt his hard cock nudge against my hip. While I sobbed, he pulled my pajama bottoms down and ran his hand down between my thighs. I heard the rattle of cellophane, then felt the thick head of his cock pushing into my slit. I thought it strange that he would want to fuck me now, when I was weeping and disintegrating.

  But as soon as he began to move in me, I felt the strange appropriateness of it. It calmed me. It soothed me. It grounded me. He took me in long, measured strokes, his hands on my shoulders and neck, then down between my legs, stroking, caressing, pressing, and pinching my clit. My bereft, tortured sobs quickly commuted into soft moans of pleasure. He filled me so perfectly, he moved in me so deftly and skillfully, like no lover I’d ever had.

  “Better, Nell?” he whispered in my ear as he fucked me.

  Yes yes yes, better. Everything’s better again.

  And I would have been perfectly happy not coming. I would have not come just to prove how sorry I was, just to let him know that from then on, every one of my orgasms would be his. But he urged me to come, stroking my clit the way I had stroked it that morning when I was forced to masturbate myself. I remembered how he’d watched me, studied my fingers as they moved across my slit. It occurred to me that this man was more complex than I realized. I cried even harder to think that he’d done that, watched me in order to learn how to pleasure me later. Punishment…and care. My quaking, sparkling orgasm came in hectic waves of color, waves the color of ice blue eyes.

  “Yes,” he said as I shook and gasped in his arms. “Good girl.”

  I thought it was all too much. Too much warmth, too much confusion, too much pain, too much pleasure, too much joy.

  Too much fear of living life with him, too much devastation if he were to send me away.

  Too much of his cock, and never enough.

  Too many feelings that I couldn’t come to terms with.

  Too many tears and too much pain. Too much risk.

  Too many floors up, and way too far to fall.

  Chapter Ten

  Mine

  ‡

  Jesus Christ. She undid me.

  I would just hold her until she fell asleep, and then I’d leave. I might lick her velvet skin, just a little, to soothe her…her shoulders and the luscious little hollow at her nape.

  I buried my hand in her lovely, silky, soft red curls and squeezed lightly. I bit her neck, but I didn’t mark her.

  I wanted to, though.

  Mine.

  “Go to sleep now. No more crying.”

  “Yes, Jeremy,” she whispered.

  My cock was still inside her. I pulled out to peel off the condom, but I didn’t pull away. I didn’t want to think about what that meant, that I couldn’t let her go.

  I mean, sure, I liked her. That much was obvious. When Kyle called me, telling me she’d gone missing, my mind had flown at once to the worst possible scenarios. She’s left you. She’s lost. Someone’s got her. Unreasonable fears, the worst one being that she had simply decided to bail. You’re too much for her, too sick, too rough, too coarse, too perverse.

  I knew I had been harsh on her, but I had to be. Law was law, and she had to be taught that rules mattered to me. Plus, to be honest, I got off on punishing her. I was a pervert. There was nothing I could do about it.

  Anyway, she was a pervert too.

  Deep down inside, I believed she was every bit as perverted as me, although she was holding back like any submissive would. There were so many things I still had to do to her, so many ways I still wanted to use her, and I knew she’d enjoy every one. When I thought she had left, I’d had a moment of real panic. No, not a
lready. Not so soon.

  But she hadn’t left. A cursory look in her room showed me her luggage was still there, and anyway, where could she have gone? She didn’t have enough money yet to leave on her own. She would have had to ask me to get a ticket for her, at least until she got her first paycheck. And if she’d asked me, I would have—I really would have—but only after I’d done everything in my power to convince her to stay.

  But no, she hadn’t left. Instead she’d foolishly braved the streets of Bangkok alone, as if no one would notice her. Her picture was plastered all over the daily tabloids, standing beside me with that lovely, tired smile and that ridiculous red hair that made it impossible to look away.

  Yes, I’d bought a copy of one of the papers, the nicest, full-color one, left it in my trailer on the set to look at during breaks. I needed to get some erotic pictures of her for my private use. It wasn’t in the contract, but I bet I could talk her into it if I turned on the charm.

  But not now. For now I had to let her sleep the day off, sleep everything away, so we could start fresh again. I wasn’t happy about her wandering off, but I figured she’d been punished enough for that lapse in judgment. When she’d walked into the hotel lobby beside the policeman, my breath had left my chest in a rush.

  Mine, I’d wanted to say as soon as I laid eyes on her. Thanks, Officer. She’s mine.

  She was mine. She’d agreed to be. Maybe I’d just sleep beside her all night. Why not? That way if I woke up horny, I could just use her. I could just slip deep inside.

  That way, I could sleep all night with her in my arms, and remember that she hadn’t left after all.

  *

  I stood beside Jess, stifling a yawn. Above us, grips were rigging the lights, and the stunt crew was resetting the ladder Jess and I would climb, so it would fall down again just the right way. Rig, reset, repeat. I was so fucking bored.