by Joey W. Hill
“I don’t understand. What…Did I do something wrong?”
Sam cupped her face, brushed his lips over hers. “You reminded me of something. A soft voice whispering in my ear what she wanted for Christmas.”
“But--”
“What I was about to do wasn’t even close to what you wanted, Constance, and we both know it.” His fingers slid down the side of her neck, her shoulders. Touched the side of her breast. “Don’t settle for being Jayna. You did that in school. You should have outgrown it, but from the tight fit of that sweet pussy of yours, I’d say you just gave up on finding it.”
“I thought you went into business, not psychology.”
“Don’t.” He caught her hands. “I’m sorry, Constance. I wasn’t trying to make you feel bad. Those phone calls make me unlivable. Sometimes it just seems like everything in the whole world goes wrong and we can’t do a damn thing about it. Why should my son be spending fifty percent of his life with some asshole who just wants to get into my ex-wife’s pants? Why did you have to sleep with every insensitive jerk in high school just to figure out you were never going to find love that way? Why do we fuck up our lives in ways we can’t possibly anticipate?
“Ah, hell.” He wrapped his arms around her, brought her to his warmth and strength, cloaked her with the hug, his fingers wrapped around her bare back and waist, holding her with undemanding intimacy.
“I didn’t…I didn’t agree to this because…”
“I know, ssshh…I know. I’m an idiot, Constance. Forgive me.”
He held her for awhile that way, his hands just stroking her back, and after the aching in her throat went away, she wanted it to go on forever, that glide of fingers up and down her bare spine, the closeness of him, his clean smell, the brush of his breath against her temple.
“I’m sorry you had to go through that, Constance. I’m sorry I wasn’t a better friend.”
Her brow furrowed. “It wasn’t your doing, Sam. We barely knew each other.”
He shook his head. “I had ten times more fun in our tutoring sessions than I did on one single date with Tracy.” At her arch look, he chuckled. “Okay, not counting the sex. Hey, I was seventeen. Give me a break.”
“Sam, it was fifteen years ago.”
“That would make it a year ago in Mind-Life.”
“Oh, God. I can’t believe you remembered that.”
“You do,” he pointed out. “What you said about music earlier? You were always saying things like that. You said that for every decade of time that passed in our adult lives, our minds and hearts would only be one ‘Mind Life’ year away from the memories of our adolescent lives, because the things that happened then are so strong inside us.” He reached out, touched her face. It was a reverent, appreciative touch that startled her, made her suddenly not so aware that she was nearly naked.
“So, Constance Jayne Bradwell, that means you were tutoring me in math all of eighteen months ago. And that is also why,” he tipped her chin up, “you’re still hurt and embarrassed by the mistakes that lonely teenager who called herself Jayna made, even though you’re now a beautiful, accomplished woman who’s made an impact in her community and a home for herself, and feels pretty good about life all but these two lousy days of the year. “
“You always called me Constance, even then.”
“Because you always were Constance to me. Now finish that cocoa, and then we’ll go sit in front of the Christmas tree, just like you said.”
“You didn’t mention me being naked was part of the plan.”
“Well, the best plans allow for a little flexibility.” He flashed her a grin. “I’m going to go back to sitting in this chair and watching your beautiful ass.”
“It’s nothing special,” she said, embarrassed.
“You weren’t staring at it half the night.”
Constance chuckled. “So it wasn’t my pickup line, but my ass that got you here tonight?”
She turned from the counter, holding the hot chocolate, and found his heated gaze focused on the movement of her bare breasts. He lifted his attention to her face, and there was no more humor in his eyes, but something far more potent. “If you were mine,” he observed softly, “I’d make you walk around the house like this all the time.”
“Well, I guess for tonight, I am yours, aren’t I?”
She’d meant to be light and facetious with it, but it came out quiet, direct. Inviting. His eyes flamed hotter at her words.
“Yes, you are. Come here, sweetheart.”
She obeyed, and leaned forward to set the mugs down on the table.
“No, hold them. I like having your hands occupied.” His hand slid up her belly, his thumb sweeping over the top of her mound. “I’d shave your pussy myself, keep you smooth so I could see it, though you have some pretty hair there now, like goose down.”
Constance trembled under his touch, as much from the feel of it against her skin as from watching his fingers, their tanned color moving over her. “I can smell you.” His hazel eyes lifted to hers. “It makes me want to eat you out all over again.”
“I’ve never known a man who liked doing that,” she said. “It was…incredible.”
“Most men don’t know what they’re missing. Look here.” His finger brushed her thigh, came away with moisture. “Am I making you hot for me, little girl?”
“You know you are.”
“Then let’s go in the living room,” he rose, “and see what gifts we have for a good girl.”
She’d never been with anyone with Sam Coble’s sexual confidence. Her body responded to his physical dominance like she was spoils of war and he was the conquering general. Her heart was opening to his gentle touch, his smile. Her soul was terrified of being so out of control. All three parts wanted this Christmas Eve never to end.
If she’d been in her clothes, she would have sat down on the couch, settled a hip comfortably so she was facing her guest, her elbow along the head rest, forming a comfortable position for conversation, but in her current state of undress and the current mood, something else seemed more appropriate.
When Sam sat down, she folded her legs beneath her and sat down on the carpet between his knees. She put the mugs on the table, and then put her back against the brace of his calf and thigh so she could look up at his face, bathed in the soft light thrown from the Christmas tree. She liked things that moved, so her tree had a variety of little electronic ornaments that made soft clicks and slides, whirs as angels turned in joyous celebration. A tiny train ran the gamut around and around to the base of the tree, and then back up again.
She found him studying her with an unreadable expression. “What?”
He lifted a shoulder. “Tracy and I were combatants, in a way. It sounds strange, but she never would have sat this way.”
She flushed. “I like feeling protected and safe, and you like making a woman feel that way,” she said simply. “The way you acted in the kitchen, taking control, I can tell you like it.”
“And what about you? Tell me the truth, Constance. It won’t change my desire for you either way.”
“I like it,” she admitted. “I mean, I’m not saying I’d like a man ordering me about, but for this…this way, I like it.”
“I like it, too.” He touched her hair, curled a lock back behind her ear, offered a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “I’m fairly alpha when it comes to sex. A chauvinist pig down to the bone. I like to overpower a woman until she’s screaming with pleasure, begging me to fuck her. I like her to obey me in the bedroom, accept and submit to me for our mutual pleasure. Do you understand what I’m talking about?” He wound the lock around his fingers, taking a firmer grip on her hair, tilting back her head so their eyes met. He leaned forward, bringing his energy closer to hers. “Tell me if you like what you’re hearing, Constance.”
She’d respond if she could breathe. She did know what he was talking about, though no man had ever cared about her enough to want to overwhelm her, be h
er master in the bedroom. It took a level of caring and possession no one had ever been willing to offer her, even if it was just for a night.
“Yes. I like it,” she whispered.
“I thought so, the minute I took you over in the bathroom. I could sense it in you. I think that helped me make the move I did.“ He leaned down further, resting his hand along the side of her throat, and reached with his other hand. She parted her thighs and he passed his finger over her clit, testing her wetness, making them both aware of how aroused she was. His expression reflected how her actions were affecting him. She could feel the heat building around him, drawing her into it.
“I’ve been a remiss Santa,” he straightened, turned his attention to the mostly empty skirt beneath her tree. “A pretty little thing like you deserves more gifts.” He rose, swinging his leg over her head, making her giggle.
“It’s not this pitiful. I’ve got gifts the children gave me, I just prefer putting them out on Christmas morning.”
“Well, we have one more gift to wrap. You.” He had zeroed in on the canister on her fireplace, whose half open top revealed tools and materials for decorating the tree and the room. Extra tinsel, ribbon, scissors. Multi-colored satin nylon cords for hanging Christmas cards over her valances.
Sam removed a spool of gold cord and one of deep pine green. He measured out a length of each over twenty feet, withdrew a pocket knife from his jeans and made a clean cut with the sharp blade.
“This isn’t where you tell me your Boston Strangler fantasy, is it?” she asked, eyeing him.
“No.” His sensual lips curved, reminding her how they felt on her. “In one of my brief hiatuses from my relationship with Tracy, before we were married, I dated a girl who was a fan of Shibari. Are you familiar with it?”
“No…no.” But her heart was beating faster, as she watched him shake out the cords.
“Come stand out here, in the middle of the floor.”
His voice was low. It wasn’t a request. Constance swallowed, rose and moved around the table.
After she came to a halt where he motioned to her to stand, silence drew out in the room, and she became exponentially more aroused as he simply sat there on the hearth, studying her. She was aware of how he watched her breasts as she moved toward him, the track of his gaze now over her hips, her thighs, damp with her arousal, the soft furred mound of her pussy. She was aware not just because she watched him with her eyes, but she felt his attention press upon her flesh like a physical touch stroking her in all those same places.
“Shibari uses sensual pressure on the skin and the psychological impact of being restrained to arouse,” he said at last. “As well as some very clever knots and arrangements. Even suspension. I could suspend you from the ceiling like a Christmas angel, and stroke every part of you at my pleasure. Feed you when you’re hungry, let you suck water from my fingertips.”
He stood up and came to her, his broad shoulders and greater height taking up all her senses as he approached. His hands slid up her rib cage, spanning it with the spread of his fingers, as if he was learning her shape and size. Then he took up the green cord, doubled it, and passed it around to the back of her body. He moved behind her and she felt him pass the ends through the loop of the double end and tighten it on her rib cage, just under her breasts. The slack dangled down her back, the rope end brushing her buttocks, the back of her knee, her ankle.
“This,” he put his fingers beneath the point at her back where he had passed the ends through the looped end, “is the first cinch. Each one will increase the sense of constriction and restraint and can be adjusted for more or less of the same. It’s called a lark’s head, since it looks somewhat like a bird’s head and you,” his fingers whispered down her back, caressed her buttocks exposed by the thong, “are as delicate as one.”
His body pressed up against hers as he passed the rope forward and back, creating another cinch. She felt a perceptible tightening, and her breathing rate went up, but the trouble didn’t lie with the constriction, but her response to it. “The first series I’m doing is shinju,” he said. “A breast restraint. Shinju means pearls, and that’s how your breasts are treated. Jewels placed in a setting, displayed to their best advantage to a man’s eyes. My eyes.”
He brought the rope around, and now the cord ran in two parallel lengths above and below her breasts. He moved back behind her again. His unexpected touches made her dizzy, his movements, the spinning and twirls of the sparkling angels on the tree, the shine of the Christmas lights in her eyes. Her whole body quivered with a strong emotional as well as physical reaction to what he was doing.
Now he was in front of her again. He brought the two pieces of the green cord over her shoulders and passed them under the lines above and below her breasts. He turned a loop in the rope beneath them, his fingertips brushing her curves, and then threaded it back up, making a knot that drew together the two parallel lines, constricting her breasts, causing them to swell and distend before his appreciative gaze.
“Oh…” Her breath left her in a shudder, and he took the ends back over her shoulder, securing them to the lark’s head in back, lifting her breasts higher at the same time, increasing the sensitivity caused by the constriction, creating the sense that she was wearing a silken harness on her upper body.
“Clasp your hands together behind your back, palms facing, sweetheart.”
She did, overcome by her arousal as he wrapped more cord around the wrists, clothing them in a coil, working the last of the two strands between her clasped fingers, then tying them off.
“After a few minutes of this, I could put my lips to your nipples, and they’d be so sensitive, you’d scream at the sensation. It’s wonderful, isn’t it?” He put his hands on her shoulders, dropped a kiss into her collarbone, then slid his hands around, cupping her.
She did cry out, though he did no more than caress her, lightly pinch the pink tips.
“Hang on, sweetheart, there’s more.” He bent, picked up the other rope, and attached it to the back of the harness she wore now, at the point below her shoulder blades. “You can wear the shinju under your clothes, as a reminder of your lover’s claim on you.”
“How about as a reminder of my claim on him, by him knowing I’m wearing this?” She looked up at him, her nose brushing his jaw since he stood right behind her.
“You’re learning, baby.”
He pressed her back against him and she arched her neck, giving him better access to sink his teeth into her. His hand, still holding the loose end of the rope, came around to caress her nipple again, and Constance whimpered, brushing her ass against the hard length of him. He groaned and managed to draw back, putting some distance between them.
“I’m not through decorating you, sweetheart. You’re just going to have to wait.”
Her body was turning into liquid heat, needing him inside her. He created another double wrap at her waist and now came in front of her, going to one knee so she could gaze down at the broad shoulders, the dark strands of hair that fell over his forehead. The movement of those large, capable hands as they worked the cinches. He tied two knots, one right after the other, then slid his hands between her legs, reaching under her to the back, his fingers probing her anus. She gasped, caught his shoulder for balance. He slid his fingers forward again, away from her, used whatever he had been doing to determine where to tie the next knot.
“Spread your legs a bit for me.”
She opened trembling thighs and he passed the length of knots between her legs, moved around back to take up the slack.
“Sam, I want you.”
“I know, sweetheart. I want you, too. But I want you wild for me. I want you to soak your bindings. Feel this, sweetheart.”
Abruptly the line of knots tightened against her flesh and pressed perfectly against her clit. His fingers opened her ass cheeks, made an adjustment, and the other set of knots settled against her anus. He tightened the cinches again and she made a small whimpering n
oise of need. When he tied the rope ends into the fulcrum of the shoulder harness and modified it so that every movement of her upper or lower body tightened the ropes in the opposite region, she had to fight the urge to simply roll her body with the sensations. She felt completely bound and yet she still had a wide range of mobility, with every movement telegraphing a sensual message to her body.
“You look gorgeous,’ he said. “And look at this.” His hand slipped between her legs, where the two lengths of rope between the lowest knot at her clit and the first knot at her rectum allowed his fingers access to slip between them inside her pussy, which clenched around his fingers in fervent welcome.
“Sam, I’m…my knees.”
Constance swayed, her breath coming short, and Sam caught her at the waist. “Easy, sweetheart. It’s a bit overwhelming, isn’t it?”
He caught her just as they buckled, and lifted her over his shoulder, so her ass was under his hand, her head hanging down. He retrieved a straight-backed chair from the kitchen and brought it into the living room, then slid her back over his shoulder and put her gently into the chair in one easy movement that made her heart lodge in her throat. With her hands bound, increasing her sense of helplessness, and the bending of her knees and body rubbing the bindings against her, she felt almost…
“It’s…it’s magic.”
“You’re magic.” He thrust his fingers into her gently, mimicking the motion of a cock, and she gasped, bucking against him.
“Try holding still, sweetheart,” he suggested. “It makes it much more potent.”
“Command me,” she whispered, her green eyes flickering up to his startled ones, eyes that went from surprise to flame in the next blink.
“Be still,” he told her, his voice rough. “I want you wet and panting for it, but don’t you move a muscle unless I give you permission.”
If it was possible, the quivering in her body doubled. He withdrew from her slowly, brought his fingers to his lips, tasting her as she watched him, wanting to beg him to fill her, wanting to wait and see what he did next. He went to her tree, removed several items. His jeans hugged his ass and she wanted to grip it under her fingers, feel his buttocks clench and release as he thrust into her. Just the thought made her want to squirm her clit and anus against the cleverly placed knots, but she was frozen by his command, and by the certainty that the slightest movement might send her into orgasm.
