by CD Reiss
“Were you wet when you came up here?”
“Yes.”
With his free hand, he pulled the hood of my clit away, then he stroked the sensitive, nerve-bundled skin with his wet hand. “Do you want to come in this hallway?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t. Not until I say.”
He rolled his finger across my most sensitive parts, slowly gathering pressure and pleasure. I dropped my head, breathing heavily, and when I groaned, he knew I was close and slowed down.
“Can I come?”
“Can you come what?”
“Please. Let me come please.”
“No.” He took his hand away. “This is your punishment.” He slapped my bottom once and stood. “Let’s eat something. I’m starved.”
I pushed myself off my hands. “You can’t leave me like this.”
“Yes, I can. Not all punishment is pain. And for telling Kayti, you need to be punished.”
He held his hand out to help me up. I took it and got to my feet.
“I don’t like this.” I pulled up my pants.
“You’re not supposed to.” He kissed my cheek and went downstairs, whistling.
I shouldn’t have told Kayti. It was a monumental blunder, yet he was whistling as if it didn’t matter.
As if he knew—no, not just knew. As if he accepted and embraced the fact that he’d no longer be running McNeill-Barnes. As if he’d be signing it over to me when this was done.
Why aren’t you overjoyed?
Chapter 62
PRESENT TENSE – DAY TEN
He was fully dressed, standing over me at the edge of my nondescript bed, smiling, with an erection stretching his pants. After the walnuts in the hall, lunch in the kitchen, a nap, and a languid dinner, he’d told me to put on a nightgown. I’d spent the past few hours on the couch watching a movie with my head in his lap. It had felt normal, but it wasn’t. Whenever I’d tried to close my legs, he opened them as if he was going to let me come, then he didn’t. I couldn’t have repeated a single thing from the movie. All I could think about was sex.
When the movie was over, he’d told me to go upstairs and get ready for bed, then he watched me brush my teeth and hair. He had me leave the door open a crack when I used the toilet, and made sure he could see me wash my hands. He only left long enough to get a wooden box the size of a stepstool. He placed it under the bedroom window and told me to remove my nightgown. I knew for sure he was going to release the bursting tension between my legs, but I was wrong.
On the bed, with him over me, my nakedness became the whole of my existence. I was aware of every single square inch of skin. His eyes zigzagged over me in swaths, leaving scorched lines behind. My body was crisscrossed with burning lines of his awareness. He set the space between my legs alive. The engorged, unsatisfied throb that begged for release.
For a long time, he didn’t say anything. Not with his mouth. He took something from the box under the window, closed it, and turned back to me with black straps dangling from his hands.
I closed my legs.
He opened them gracefully, with a precisely measured pace that was definite, not reactionary, like he was catching an orange rolling off the counter.
Who was this man? This competent, commanding man with no interest in what I wanted or what we’d established as an expected routine. Who was this man, this presence? And what was his agenda?
He sat on the edge of the bed and ran his hand along the inside of my thigh.
I went from solid mass to fluttering energy. “Finish me,” I groaned.
“Diana,” he said, “you’ve never finished anything in your life, and for the past five years, I’ve let you get away with it.”
His hand moved to my other thigh without pausing, and I was convinced my pussy’s gravitational force could have pulled him in up to the elbow, releasing an orgasm that would snuff out the universe, but he smoothly laid his fingers on my skin and stroked it.
I squeaked. I’d never been so close to the edge of orgasm for so long.
“I can finish. I want to finish.” I sounded as if I was begging, because I was.
“We have different definitions of finish, and yours doesn’t count. Not in this house.”
When he took his hand off me, my body jerked to get closer to it.
“What do you mean I don’t count?” I objected. “That’s—”
“No talking.” He stood and faced me. “Or I will gag you.”
He knew damn well I’d redlined that. Was it possible the redlining meant the item became optional after a certain point? Was it a test? I read the contract carefully, but did I miss it?
“But—”
I ate my words. His glance at my closed knees quieted me, and I opened them again. Not because I was afraid he’d gag me, but because I didn’t want him to want to. I wanted to do it right. To finish this thing his way, no matter how psychotically aroused I was.
“You were going to say something about not counting?” he asked.
I nodded.
“That hurt your feelings. It offended you. Is that right?”
I nodded again.
“This is a game. It’s a bedroom game. A Montauk game. We’ve been business partners for five years. Have I ever made you feel like you don’t count?”
My answer was obvious to both of us, but he waited for it, fingering the straps while I stretched naked before him. I didn’t feel threatened. If I could dig out a single instance when he didn’t treat me like an equal, I was safe to mention it.
“No.”
“If the game is too much for you, opt out.” He stood over me, exuding a stillness the room revolved around. “But you know I won’t push where you won’t go. Right?”
I could have said yes. I could have said no. I could have continued the discussion or freaked out or honestly, with the frustration of the orgasm banging at the door, I could have cried and begged. But my voice would be sharp. Even a whisper would have cut through the moment and severed desire from time.
He’d asked what I thought. I wanted the answer to be more than simple, and less than complex, because in throwing it back to me, he made me look at not just what I wanted, but what I needed.
I gave up. But not really. I wasn’t throwing in the towel and abdicating. I didn’t want to say, “Forget it, I’m out.” I wanted to say, “Forget it, I’m in.”
So all I did was spread my legs a little wider.
He bent over me, taunting me with the straps in his hand. “You want to come. I understand. You think that’s finishing.” He gently grasped my right arm. “It’s not. Not to me. To me, you’re finished when I say. For any reason. And it’s going to seem arbitrary. It’s not.”
He leaned over to get to my left wrist. His body was a hard mass hovering over me, blocking my view of anything else. Like a mothership descending over Manhattan, covering the sky. I let my arms drop and blood flowed back through them, even as it continued to heat my clit.
“P—” The first sound of supplication. The beginning of Please. But I didn’t finish. I didn’t want a useless orgasm. I wanted to do what he wanted, to see where he was going. I trusted him. I trusted whatever he had in mind. It wouldn’t be a throwaway climax, but something else entirely.
He centered his face over mine, close enough to kiss. “How old are you?”
He didn’t seem to be doing anything rough enough to warrant safe questions, but I answered.
“Twenty-eight.”
“Where do you live?”
Where did I live? He’d asked this before, and I still didn’t know the answer. “In this bed, in Montauk, in a cottage in snow.”
“Do you hate your husband?”
“I never hated him.”
“You’re about to.”
He sat up straight, his eyes between my legs more substantial than warm fingers. He put his hands on either side of my labia, thumbs pressed into the muscle and skin of my ass, fingers in my upper thighs, pressing me open. My legs pivo
ted outward to the point of discomfort.
Maybe now. Maybe now he’d release me.
Touching me more than he had to, but not where I wanted him, he placed my right arm at my right thigh and snapped one of the straps off his shoulder.
“I’m saving your orgasm for”—he shrugged—“tomorrow, earliest.”
“Tomorrow?”
He answered with a stern look and strapped my wrist to my thigh. The nylon weave dug close to my pussy, so close, yet not close enough. He crossed the bed to do my left wrist and thigh.
“I can come both times.” I didn’t know what I was even asking for. A second ago, I wanted to accept whatever he dished out. That was before “tomorrow, earliest.”
“All orgasms aren’t created equal.” His hands were efficient and businesslike even as my body craved his intimate touch.
He stood. I wiggled, and it came to me what he’d done. Wrists attached to thighs, my legs spread, the storm picking up speed outside the window. I wanted to curse him and please him in one breath.
Adam stood at the foot of the bed, arms crossed, feet slightly apart, his erection outlined in his pants.
“I can’t sleep like this,” I said. But what I wanted to say, what was flooding my mind, was the sight of his dick and his complete control over it.
He bent at the waist, grabbed my ankles, and pulled me forward until my head rested flat. “Yes, you can sleep. On your back or you can roll over. I’ll keep it warm in here in case the blanket falls off. You can sleep knowing you’re doing exactly what I’m telling you to do.”
“Why would you do this?”
“Because I can.”
I’d thought the question would cause reflection, but he relished his answer. That much was obvious.
“I thought this would be different.”
Did he smile because he’d surprised me, or because he’d tricked me with my own expectations?
“You’re a creative person,” he said. “You’ll figure out how to get yourself off. After you do, it’s your choice to do it or not.”
He put his knee on the bed, then his fist pressed the mattress. He thrust forward until his breath cooled the juice on my cunt.
I groaned when his lips found my clit. A quick peck. It was a groan of hope that he’d changed his mind. His eyes made contact with mine as he kissed it again, more slowly, then he kissed where labia and thigh met, near where the strap dug in, checking my reaction.
I thrust my hips into him, but he backed away in reverse. Face, then fist, then knee, until he was standing at the foot of the bed again. With his arms crossed and his erection straight, his attention was riveted on me.
“Can I ask you a question?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“You know what I want before I say it. I feel like you’re reading my mind.”
“I know you. You’re my wife.”
“Why didn’t you know what I wanted before? When I needed you?”
He stiffened, tightened his lips. “Like when?”
“After Lenore.”
“You mean Olive?”
“When you came to my father’s house and brought me to the couch. You were a million miles away. You were phoning it in.”
Did an ounce of his dominion over me leak? Did it fall off him? Any of it? Did I crack his armor?
“I was scared.” He stated the fact without losing his dominance. No crack appeared.
“Of what?”
“Of having no control. Of failing. Of you. Everything. And I’d given up the one thing that makes me fearless. I was trying to be what you wanted, but as we now know, I can’t be that.” He picked up the blanket. “Be good.” He threw it over me. “I’m in the next room if you need me. Otherwise, I’ll be back in the morning.”
He shut off the light and closed the door.
It hadn’t occurred to me that he’d be frightened of anything, and if he’d told me that before he told me about taking Serena’s virginity, I wouldn’t have believed it.
Maybe that was my failure.
Chapter 63
PRESENT TENSE – DAY TEN
The snowflakes were dry clusters floating down with the speed of feathers. Some landed gracefully on the windows and dissolved into tears. I drifted into sleep like one of the clusters on the hot pane, condensing and warming into a dream where my husband drew a white feather over my cleft over and over and the white light of my orgasm flicked on but stayed dim. My wrists were strapped to my thighs even in the dream, and I strained against them.
I woke to a light from outside.
The motion sensors outside the studio had gone on. There were no clocks in the bedroom, but I guessed an hour had passed. The torture between my legs had abated a little, leaving me with only raw potential. Desire had crouched back into the corner but was ready to spring.
Why would the light go on? A bird? A cat? Too much snow?
Or Serena crossing the yard to fuck my husband?
I trusted him, on the one hand. On the other, the rules of this game constantly surprised me. I’d thought controlling me for a month meant he’d constantly fuck me. I’d thought I could just shut down my mind and heart.
I’d left sharing on the list because he wouldn’t share me.
But what if that meant I was sharing him as well?
It shouldn’t matter. I’d left him. I’d sent him packing with a note on the counter. I’d assured him repeatedly that I wasn’t coming back, ever. That I didn’t love or want him.
So I should be fine with her coming over here and letting my husband kiss and touch her and—
A split second passed between the light flashing on and me realizing I wasn’t okay with this. No. Not at all.
Wait. Stop. If you’re not okay with it, you have to stay married, and all this trouble will be for nothing.
Right. I was fine with it. Totally fine. I just wanted to know. Wanted to see if she was coming across the yard. Had to know. My curiosity was a living thing that needed to be fed.
I wiggled out from under the blanket, dropped a foot to the floor, and wrenched myself to standing. It was hard to balance without my arms, and I was bent halfway, graceless, unselfconscious as I put my knee on the bench by the window and looked out.
Serena wasn’t coming to fuck my husband. She wasn’t even close to the main house.
She was in her own damned doorway, but Adam was standing in front of it, talking to her. He’d gone across the yard. She stepped out of his way, and he went into the studio. She closed the door.
A back-breaking rage filled my heart. A righteous, sour, powerless rage.
I put my forehead to the cold glass. My face twisted, muscles tightened, breath left me. I sobbed.
The motion light went out.
Didn’t you ask for this? Didn’t you want to be free of him? Why aren’t you happy?
Not like this. I wanted it to be easier at the same time that I knew the easier it was for me, the harder it was for Adam. As if pain was a zero-sum game. As if there wasn’t plenty to go around.
My face was crusted and wet. I couldn’t wipe my nose or my cheeks. I yanked at the straps, but they weren’t built for me to remove. They were designed to put me under his power.
While he screws the submissive.
Fuck him. Fuck Serena. Fuck this whole deal. I wasn’t cut out for it. I enjoyed this shit up to a point, but he was crossing a line. All the lines. He was supposed to be in the next room while I was tied up. He said he’d be here, but instead he’d run off to give her what he wouldn’t give me.
When I thought of them fucking, my body flooded with petulant and dissatisfied arousal. I couldn’t think. Couldn’t even be mad because all I wanted was release.
My eyes adjusted to the light, and I scanned the room. The bed’s footboard was a low bar across two higher posts. It would do.
I slung my leg over it, nearly falling until I got one knee on the mattress while I leveraged myself against the foot on the floor. I rested my shoulder on the post and lo
wered my wet pussy against the smooth wood of the footboard.
I sucked air through my teeth. It was good. All good. The friction built tension for a release I had control over. I jerked my hips over the surface of the wood, sliding half an inch one way, then the other, the post biting into my shoulder as I pushed against it.
I fucked the footboard like an animal, back and forth quickly with only one goal.
Finally.
The wood got warmer as the hood over my clit rubbed back and forth, sending blood between my legs, swelling it. My eyes closed and my mouth opened. I rode the bed until my back arched and I came with a long, angry grunt.
Because fuck him for giving her an orgasm and not me. And fuck him for touching her and loving her when he was still married to me. And fuck him for tying my wrists to my thighs and not being where he said he’d be. And mostly, fuck me for leaving him and expecting him not to fuck a beautiful and accessible woman.
Fuck me and my inability to love him.
Chapter 64
PAST PERFECT
My mother said I was the best daughter in the world. I spent my adolescence telling people she made me the man I grew up to be. They laughed and she made her pissed-off face. I joked about it until she was too sick for anger or anything else. She couldn’t do much more than breathe in that last month. After three months of shitty prognoses, I was still surprised when the cancer beat her.
I skipped the funeral. I couldn’t bear the line of New York’s luminaries telling me how sorry they were. How they knew how hard she’d fought and what a fine patron of the arts she was. I couldn’t bear another story illustrating her wit and intelligence or another friend I barely knew asking me if I needed anything.
I needed my mother back. I was twenty. An adult for all intents and purposes, and a child who needed her mother.
So I went to the Met instead of the funeral. I wanted my mother, so I looked at art. That was where she lived in my heart.
When I was twelve, she’d taken me bra shopping at Bloomingdale’s. I was coy and embarrassed, but her businesslike manner and loving touch made the reality of my budding sexuality bearable. With a little brown bag full of A-cups, she took me to a special exhibition at the Frick. The Fifth Avenue mansion housed great Old Master paintings from a private collection. Mom had been on the board for a while, before every body part that made her female betrayed her.
