Forbidden Fruit

by Kojo Black

  “Some people call this play, and some people call it punishment,” she said. “I like the term ‘discipline’, or even ‘ritual’. You can think it over and decide for yourself, later. For now, let’s say it’s a way of removing your wrong ideas.”

  The first implement she used was a flogger with a great many tails of soft, thick suede. He had seen similar ones on stalls at the fetish markets, but not often in use. The impact of this one seemed at first to be far too light, but he intended to trust her. Raising objections would do nothing but put an end to the experience, and that was the last thing he wanted to do. She used it mainly on his bottom, but from time to time laid it across his shoulders, sometimes lashing him lightly there, sometimes trailing the ends of it down the length of his body. After a while, a slow, almost dreamy warmth began to spread through him, and when his prick unfurled and stiffened, he no longer felt the need to worry about it. The impact of the flogger changed, and he realized that this was because she had replaced the first one with another. He guessed it was made of leather as it stung a little more, but the growing intensity of the blows was still sensual rather than challenging.

  She paused, at some stage, and ran the palm of her hand over his buttocks, squeezing gently, rubbing and almost—but not quite—allowing her fingers to stray down the crack of his ass, and he moaned.

  “That’s good,” she said. “Good. Pleasure is good, but pain has its uses.”

  She stepped back, as far as he could tell, and there was a long, still, silent moment when he felt intense anticipation tinged with alarm. Though painful whippings had featured in his fantasies, he had never experienced more than a short-lived sting or two from a paddle, or very occasionally a cane. He wondered what she might be about to do, and whether or not it would be bearable.

  It was a paddle, rather than a cane, he realized, when she laid on the next few strokes. He couldn’t tell what type of paddle without turning his head, and he hadn’t been given permission to turn his head, so he stayed exactly where he was as smack after smack fell harshly on his buttocks. The flogging had already heated his flesh, and at first the blows she administered simply increased his excitement. After a while, though, he began to find them harder to take. He gasped, and then he let out a couple of expletives, and the beating stopped. Nothing happened, then. Nothing at all. He wondered if he should move, or speak, or remain in position. His bottom didn’t actually hurt as much as burn with a steady kind of heat. He felt slightly dizzy and his mouth had dried.

  A hand ruffled his hair. It was her hand. Then he was aware of her bending over him to whisper in his ear.

  “I could push you further,” she said. “I could make you scream. Your ass is as red as a tomato, but right now it feels good, doesn’t it?”

  He realized, after a pause that was possibly a bit too long, that she expected him to answer, and he did.

  “I don’t know how I feel. I think I like it.”

  “An ass as red as a tomato,” she repeated, and then pulled his shorts up, smoothing them over his tenderized skin. Next, she raised the piece of wood that had held him in position, and told him, in a louder voice, to stand up and look at her. Her eyes were clear and bright and there was something like affection on her face.

  “Well done,” she said, and put her arms around him, holding him close and stroking his back, stroking his hair and cupping each of his buttocks with a gentle squeeze and a tender pat or two.

  His cock was still hard, but the urge to come was somehow simply not there. He felt far too relaxed to want to touch himself, and the idea of asking her to touch him any more intimately than she was doing right now didn’t even occur.

  “Let’s go and get a drink,” she said, finally taking a step or two backwards. Lee nodded, dumbly—he didn’t think he was capable of speech just yet. He had a momentary flash of anxiety when they reached the bar, as he only had a certain amount of money on him and the drinks weren’t cheap. However, she produced a twenty, handed it to him and instructed him to order two single malts. He did as he was told—no other option was imaginable and once he had procured the drinks and handed back her change, she refastened the lead to his collar and took him, lead in one hand, plastic tumbler in the other, to the end of the bar. She sat on a stool and grinned at him with an air of ageless mischief.

  “It is quite customary for a gentleman to stand in the presence of a lady, and I think at present you will find it more comfortable anyway,” she said, and raised the glass.

  “To good times and better.”

  They didn’t leave the club together, but they did both leave shortly after finishing their drinks. It was fine with Lee, he had her name—Elinore—and her KinkSters handle, which was XElinoreX. They spent much of the following week in private online chat, and she invited him over to her place on the Sunday afternoon. They would, she said, make further explorations, and Lee didn’t try to press for any more information. Their discussions had been a mixture of teasing hints, puzzles and challenges that had excited him far more than any outright declarations of taking him as her sub or what she might expect from him would have done. For his part, he’d just done his best not to come across as an idiot and he felt that he’d acquitted himself reasonably well. Surely he must have done, to have received the invitation in the first place.

  When she opened the door she was wearing scarlet PVC: a waistcoat with nothing underneath it and a pencil skirt with a zip up the front. He saw the scarlet seams on her sheer black stockings—he’d spotted the tell-tale tiny bumps in her skirt—as she walked up the hallway ahead of him. She hadn’t given him any instructions about how to dress himself, so he was in plain but smart black trousers and a simple light gray shirt.

  He had time to notice that the flat was mostly light and airy, a white-painted, wooden-floored main room and hallway, and then she had led him into the bedroom, which was all done in blacks and dark reds—a lavish, decadent boudoir with a shelf of implements and toys next to the bed.

  “Strip,” she said. “This is your next lesson.”

  Once he had complied, she made him lie on the bed, and cuffed his hands to the top rail and his feet to the bottom one. There were no quilts or pillows in evidence, just a black silk sheet that was cool and slippery against his skin. The curtains were closed, and when she shut the door as well, the room was lit only by the lamp on the bedside table. There was no sound apart from his breathing, and hers, for several minutes. He thought he might hold the picture in his mind forever: Elinore quite still, quite close to him in the warm, gloomy room, in her scarlet PVC; a little calm, considering smile on her face.

  “Think about this,” she said. “Does the Dominant exist for the pleasure of the submissive, or is the pleasure of the Dominant the reason for the submissive’s existence? Is it both, or neither?”

  She took a black leather blindfold from a drawer, and fastened it over his eyes. Then there was another of those silent pauses that lasted for a time he couldn’t calculate the length of. It didn’t matter; he didn’t mind. The messages they had exchanged had brought him to a point where he trusted her entirely and felt no fear. He was ready for her, ready for whatever she might be going to do.

  She used her fingertips at first, nothing but her fingertips. She trailed them over every inch of his body, and every nerve ending seemed to spring to life under her touch as she explored him. Up and down and side to side, finding the spots that tickled and the spots that made him shiver and all the places where his flesh responded, she stroked and teased and caressed. After a while, she began to use her nails, scratching lightly then more fiercely, and he heard himself begin to moan and pant, felt himself harden and began to tense his buttocks and, unable to help it, thrust his pelvic area upwards. He heard her giggle, but it was a fond, encouraging giggle rather than one of derision. A long-nailed finger traced a circle round the puckered rosebud of his asshole and a line between his anus and his balls, and then he felt
a hot, moist dabbing at the head of his prick.

  Oh fucking hell, it was her tongue. She was licking his cock. She was licking the head of his cock. Lee cried out in amazement and her lips enclosed him. She began to suck, and he writhed and jerked in the cuffs, his fists clenching and unclenching, his toes curling, his breath coming in snorts and gasps. She sucked him harder, clamping his rod between her tongue and the roof of her mouth then releasing the pressure, only to slide her lips down close to the root and back up to the tip, and doing it again and again, and he wondered in a frantic flash of thought how he’d managed not to lose control already, and how on earth he was going to stop himself coming any minute. From his chivalrous soul he called out a warning, “I’m going to— I can’t— Oh god I’m going to—” and those fingertips tickled his balls and those soft strong lips, rather than pulling away, sucked harder and he gave up completely, let himself go, and the bursting, spurting, joyous ecstasy of his climax made showers of stars seem to flare against the inside of his eyelids.

  A short time later: he couldn’t tell how long, he felt the mattress yield and then the cool, slightly sticky texture of her PVC clothing against his naked skin. She touched his shoulder, then his cheek, and then she gripped his chin and kissed him. He could taste a little saltiness on her lips which must have come from him but she didn’t, as he had half expected, feed him his own spunk back from her mouth.

  They lay together quietly, and then he felt her shift away.

  “I’m going to take the blindfold off you now,” she said. “And then the cuffs.”

  Once these things were done, she got off the bed and stood, smiling down at him. Lee’s limbs felt too heavy to move, but he didn’t feel inclined to sleep. He blinked and glanced towards the window, but the curtains blocked out whatever light might remain outside. He realized he had no idea what time it was, or how long he had been in her company.

  She seemed to catch his thoughts without him speaking them aloud.

  “It’s about quarter past six,” she said with a lingering grin. “There’s a shower through the door to the right of the bed. Dress again afterwards and come through to the front room.”

  She was sitting on a long, low, pale green sofa when he made his way into the room he’d only glimpsed on arrival. It was, much as his original impression had been, light, clean, uncluttered and soothing, and he could smell something faintly spicy and tempting coming from the kitchen area at the far end.

  There was a coffee table in front of her, but instead of coffee it held an open bottle of wine and two filled glasses along with a steel pot of cutlery and a stack of napkins.

  “Come and have a drink,” she said. She had taken off her high-heeled shoes and lifted her stockinged feet onto the sofa, something Lee found somehow endearing. However, she swung them down onto the floor, making room for him, and patted the space beside her, making it clear that he was to sit rather than kneel. This was not the sort of Mistress-slave protocol he had sometimes read about, but he found he didn’t care in the least.

  “How do you feel?” The question wasn’t asked abruptly, but he jumped a little, all the same.

  “Good,” he said. It sounded inadequate, so he tried to elaborate. “Really good. Thank you. I, um, thank you. But I didn’t, you know, you didn’t get …”

  “It’s fine. That wasn’t the idea.”

  She sipped some wine, and he, almost unconsciously, imitated her. It was a warm red and he thought it tasted expensive.

  “You had started to think of yourself as undesirable, and you were wrong.”

  She put her glass down and got to her feet.

  “The food should be just about ready. No, stay where you are.”

  He stayed. He was never going to disobey her, even though he was aware that it was fairly uncommon for the Mistress to be the one cooking and dishing up the dinner.

  She returned with two steaming bowls of spaghetti and sauce, which she set down on the table before re-seating herself, and Lee saw that the mixture was a rich, orangey red. It did smell delicious and, despite his nickname he had never gained a distaste for the sauce.

  “Tomatoes,” said Elinore, as he bit his lip and looked at the floor. “Have you any idea how special they are?”

  He shook his head, and she took a fork, plunged it into the mixture, expertly twirled up a mouthful and neatly devoured it. He was unable to resist doing the same, and let out a little moan of appreciation at the first taste of the rich, salty succulence.

  “They call this Spaghetti alla Puttanesca—Whore’s Spaghetti,” she went on. “It might sound like a silly name, but it doesn’t stop it tasting good.”

  She ate some more.

  “It isn’t even that silly a name. Do you know what the old name is for a tomato?”

  Lee, just about to swallow, couldn’t answer but decided no answer was required.

  “A Love Apple. People used to consider them aphrodisiacs. Dangerous aphrodisiacs that would imperil young men and women’s immortal souls by inflaming them with carnal passions. They’re red, they’re juicy, they’re sensual.”

  She began to eat again, with lascivious enjoyment. Lee watched her tongue dart around her lips between each forkful. He ate as well, savoring the food and the wine, a sense of great wellbeing spreading through his body.

  “Later,” she said, “You can show me just how much of this is true. I believe, my young tomato, that you owe me at least one orgasm.”

  I owe you much, much more than that, Lee thought, but an orgasm would be a good place to start.

  A Dance of Ocean Magic

  Elizabeth Black

  The tang of citrus invigorated Sierra Palmer as she sliced into a blood orange. Her blood rushed through her veins, and her skin tingled with excitement. She stood in her kitchen, cutting up fruit for a salad she had dreamt of making for nearly two months. Her exhilaration colored everything in her view, giving her beach house a magical aura. She looked at her expansive living room and patio and smiled at her good fortune. Her home nestled on the northeastern Massachusetts coast amid salt marshes and ocean breezes. She had inherited it from her mother and her grandmother before her. All three women practiced ocean magic, and the location so close to the roiling Atlantic only strengthened their powers. Sierra closed her eyes and prayed to the ocean goddesses Yemaya, Lady Asherah of the Sea, Amphitrite, and Cymopoleia, wishing for the warm touch of the man of her dreams who would appear at her doorstep very soon.

  The reflection of the setting sun on the window glass gleamed pink and gold; a beautiful tableau that warmed her heart. The glow reflected off her ocean blue walls. Her cat walked across the floor, stretched, and headed to his bed for a nap. That creature didn’t have a care in the world, and Sierra envied it. The crisp smell of salt water wafted about her, and she inhaled to take in the briny scent. Waves crashed on the beach. Seagulls called in the distance amid the roaring surf, setting a mood of romance and enchantment. She felt gloriously alive, and her evening was only beginning. The French doors to her patio stood open to the unseasonably warm weather. The day felt more like a lazy spring than the end of winter. A storm brewed far out at sea—a Nor’easter but she refused to allow the threat of a squall to ruin her evening. She shivered with excitement over the thought of Tibor Dali knocking at her front door any moment now.

  She tossed blood orange slices into a casserole dish and stirred with two large wooden spoons. Exotic fruits filled her salad—sumptuous treasures like blood oranges, dragon fruit chunks, and lychees. She tossed in some maraschino cherries since Tibor mentioned how much he liked them. She mixed the fruit with coconut, sour cream, and a little honey—a recipe handed down to her by her mother, but with her own decadent twist. Her mother used pineapple chunks, grapes, mandarin oranges, and pear slices. Sierra wanted to feed Tibor unusual seasonal fruits that were neither canned nor available every month of the year. The blood oranges in particular we
re in season only in March. She had a narrow window to work with, and she wanted her salad to have that extra special allure.

  The sight of Tibor Dali made her go weak in the knees. His enigmatic nature hinted at the more famous Dali, Salvador, but they were not related. The artist was Spanish while Tibor was Hungarian. His surname meant imposing and virile, and Tibor’s demeanor reveled in both. When she first spied him thumping a cantaloupe in the produce section, his ruggedly handsome face set her heart racing. He smoldered like a fire god, his intense gaze falling upon her as if he could see her naked body beneath her sweater dress. She blushed and turned her head away, but before she could catch her breath she saw his two-toned Italian leather shoes in her line of vision.

  He pulled off a day’s stubble looking like he just rolled out of bed, and she doubted he was alone. Whoever he was, his manner screamed old world—tweed trousers, sweater vest, silk tie and linen shirt beneath a camelhair coat. A white silk scarf around his neck made him look like he belonged in another era. If she hadn’t known better, she’d have though he just walked out of an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel.

  It took two months of small talk for her to get up the nerve to ask him to join her at her home for fruit salad and a bottle of bubbly. His preferred drink was champagne, and he promised to bring a bottle as well as some of his native Hungarian dishes. She joked and asked him what he was celebrating. He replied in his delicious accent that every day he enjoyed life gave him a reason to celebrate, champagne or not. That accent teased her with promises of an exciting evening sipping Moët and slipping into an embrace so thrilling her head would spin. She couldn’t let that opportunity pass by without taking advantage of it so, two weeks ago, she’d asked him to join her in her home.

  She picked up a small blue glass vial from the windowsill over her sink. No, not that one. She didn’t want to cast a love spell with those drops. It was too powerful. She wanted Tibor to fall for her on his own, without too much help from her magic. She only wanted to use her magic to nudge him along in her direction. A practicing witch who learned her craft from her healer mother, Sierra ran her fingers over her collection of tinctures. The bottles nestled on her windowsill amid purple mussel shells, bleached sand dollars, and slipper shells she had gathered from the beach. All were useful to her own brand of ocean magic. She picked up a clear glass vial containing purple liquid, poured a teaspoon into her salad and stirred well. Her spell ensured she and Tibor would enjoy an evening of easy relaxation with a hint of lust that neither of them would ever forget.