Power Play

by Stein, Charlotte

  He bends over the table like he’s got no choice at all about it, those big hands sweeping over the varnished wood as he does so. Of course the movement makes me think of my own hands, and the way I liked to place them – but Benjamin is different. He doesn’t keep some kind of order, or make a pattern on the table with them.

  He strokes whatever he finds instead. He rubs it, as though just bending over isn’t enough on its own. Savouring every ounce of the experience … that’s what he wants and needs.

  And I can’t fault him for that. I want to remember everything about right now, too – for later, when I’m alone and closed in by the cool walls of my pristine apartment. I want to be able to picture the way his shirt is untucked at the back, and how he has to sort of bend his legs just a little, to make his body fit into the position I’m clearly asking for.

  He’s too big for the table, I think. He’s so big that he seems to almost swallow the wood whole, those broad shoulders nearly touching the oval edges. Hands like dinner plates, the firm arch of his perfect ass just begging me to do something bad, before I’ve even considered it.

  Though I consider it now all right.

  ‘Did I tell you to bend over with your trousers on, Benjamin?’ I ask, and I know it’s unkind of me. I mean, as good as he is he can’t be expected to mind-read my demands – and yet somehow I’m still suggesting as much. And when he just groans and shifts on the table, mouth almost parted against the wood as though he desperately wants to do something insane, like kiss it, I clarify for him. ‘Take them off.’

  ‘No nono. I can’t do that. I can’t do that – what if someone walks in?’

  Of course, I know he heard me lock the door. But that’s what makes him amazing, isn’t it? That’s what makes me weak from the waist down.

  ‘Well, I suppose you’ll just have to lie there like a whore if they do. Maybe I’ll let them have a go at your ass, if you’re really so eager for some punishment.’

  ‘Ohhhh God, don’t say that, don’t say that, Ms Harding.’

  ‘Why not? You did make a mess of this presentation on purpose, didn’t you? You’ve done all of this so I’ll do more than just briefly fondle you in the stationery cupboard, correct?’

  He grits his teeth.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So what did you expect exactly? That I’d chastise you with a nice, friendly blowjob?’

  ‘Please don’t let anyone fuck my ass,’ he says, which is startling for two reasons. One: it doesn’t sound as though he’s begging me not to at all. In fact, it almost comes out like a parody of a plea, all too breathy and kind of giddy. And two …

  ‘I didn’t say fuck, Benjamin. Read it back to me: what did I say?’

  ‘Ohhhh Geez, I don’t know. I can barely remember my own name right now. My cock’s so hard I think I could get myself off on the edge of the table.’

  ‘That’s very, very dirty, Ben. And completely not what I asked for.’

  ‘OK … uh … you said … you said something like ‘have at it’ or ‘do something to it’ or fuck, fuck.’

  He squirms harder against the varnished wood, but he’s not doing the thing he suggested he could, I know. His back has this delightful curve to it and his ass is almost entirely in the air, and it’s obvious why. He wants to keep his cock away from temptation – or in this case, the edge of the table.

  ‘I said I would let someone have a go at your ass, but that could mean just about anything really. Don’t you think?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ he pants, and then I don’t have to do what I was intending next. I don’t have to demand he lists the possibilities, because before I’ve gotten the words out he just goes right ahead and does it for me. ‘You could do that thing we talked about – you could lick me there. Or you could fuck me with your fingers or use something on me, something stiff and hard, like –’

  ‘Like a cock?’

  ‘Uhhh yeah. God, yeah. Just do whatever to me. Just do it, I don’t care.’

  ‘I will, the moment you do as you’re told,’ I say, and this time he obeys. He gets his hands beneath himself, starts unbuckling and unzipping in a manner I can only label desperate. Strips down to the smooth and completely bare curve of his perfect ass, without the smallest hint of complaint.

  Though I think he might feel differently in a second.

  ‘No underwear, Benjamin?’ I ask, despite the fact that I’ve known this all along. How could anyone fail to know it? Even when he’s soft you can see a shadow of his cock through those flimsy trousers – like he’s just waiting for someone to reach out and grab it.

  ‘Sorry. Do you want me to? In the future, I mean?’

  I think about him parading around for me in some split-fronted scrap of silk. Everything lewd and on display, though that’s exactly the way he is all the time. I’ve already got him like that, walking around the office with that big dick swinging around inside his trousers.

  So what do I want now?

  ‘No,’ I say, as I ready the thin strip of metal that’s somehow found its way into my hand. ‘I want you to behave.’

  And then I just bring it down in one quick motion, right across the smooth, honeyed expanse of his upturned ass.

  Of course, I’ve no idea if that’s how you’re supposed to do it. I don’t know if a strike like that will prove itself too much the second it’s connected with his suddenly very tender-looking flesh. But once I’ve done it, and the mark is there like those stripes on that girl’s back, I can’t feel bad.

  He doesn’t want me to feel bad, apparently. He just wants to make a sound – hard and gasping and near breathless – before following it with such sweet, sweet words.

  ‘Oh, Ms Harding,’ he says, like his voice is melting. Like I just licked the tip of his cock instead of what I actually did: gave him a mark he’ll probably have for the rest of the week. And when I do it again … oh Lord.

  He’ll definitely have that one for the rest of the week. He might even have it for the rest of the month, because the second it stripes him he makes a sound somewhere beyond a shaky moan of my name. This time he hisses in a breath over his teeth, and for a moment I’m sure I’ve gone too far. I’m sure I have.

  Until he tells me otherwise, of course.

  ‘Ohhhhh God. Oh God yeah, show me, show me.’

  ‘What do you want me to show you, Benjamin?’ I ask, but I don’t wait for an answer. I bring the metal down again, right in the middle of the words he’s trying to get out.

  ‘Sho-how me I’m bad. Show me I’m … oh Christ.’

  ‘And what did you do that was so bad?’ I ask.

  ‘I made you –’ he starts, then finishes just as I give him another stripe ‘– a really bad presentation.’

  ‘And why did you do that?’ I ask, only this time I keep going through all of it. I keep up the pace, stroking fast and hard over his now glowing skin. And when he responds, he’s different too. His voice is more than up and down now – it’s practically syrup, flowing drunkenly out of vocal cords that clearly don’t want to work.

  While his big, gorgeous body squirms around on the table. He’s almost got his fingers in his mouth, I notice, though I don’t think he’s doing it to keep his own noise to a minimum. He’s doing it for the feel, that slick feel of saliva on the sensitive webbing between each one, that feel of his slippery tongue working and working over something.

  As the metal comes down for the tenth time.

  ‘Because … because I want you … I want you …’ he murmurs, and I’m sure he’s trying to put something else on the end of it. I’m sure he is, something like I want you to hit me so hard I scream. But the thing is, as it stands … it sounds like something else altogether.

  And that thought forces me to do it harder. Be meaner. Crack the metal down on the backs of his thighs until he jerks forward and tells me no. He actually tells me no, in the exact way I’d imagined him doing in all of my worst nightmares of this going badly.

  Only with a different ending.


  ‘Ohhhh my God I think I’m gonna come,’ he tells me, and then I’m the one who’s left with a pulsing ache between their legs. I’m the one who has to control their breathing and their utter eagerness to lash someone with a little metal pointer until they actually climax all over themselves.

  I’ll be honest: I hadn’t realised that was a possibility. I mean, he looks that way. He’s writhing and squirming around in a manner I’ve never quite seen another man do, and every now and then he seems to sort of … surge forward. As though he’s thinking of that imaginary woman again, and of fucking right into her tight, wet pussy.

  But none of it really computes, until he says. And after he has, I’m just left thinking about the things he’s doing. About the pussy that isn’t there, and how it could well be my pussy he’s thinking about. He wouldn’t have to strain very hard to imagine it, in truth, because unless he’s dead inside he has to know how aroused I am.

  I’m shaking. I’m shaking and I can’t bring the pointer down on his now viciously red ass, because if I do he might come. He keeps promising me he will and every time he does I feel the same way: like it’s some piece of punctuation at the end of our sentence, and once it’s there we can’t go back.

  There’s no going back from someone doing it all over themselves because you spanked them.

  ‘You’re going to come just because I’m branding your ass?’ I say, and I’m impressed with myself, really I am. I sound so disgusted, so incredulous, but here’s the problem – he doesn’t feel any of it. He’s not in the least bit ashamed.

  ‘If you keep doing it, yeah. I will.’

  ‘So if I just tap you like this …’

  I do so, soft as a whisper. Almost like a little stroke over the practically humming marks all over his ass.

  ‘No – like before. If you do it like before,’ he says, but I have to note that he still jerks forward when I trail the tip of the pointer over the meanest mark. The one that looks almost like a lash or a burn, faint and white in the centre and then ebbing out to a beautiful dark pink.

  ‘Like this?’ I ask, and this time I give him a little sting. A little flick on the end of it, that I didn’t really know I was capable of until it happens. Until he hisses over his teeth again, and tells me, ‘No, no, don’t do it like that’ in such a frantic, desperate way that I can’t fail to know what he really means.

  He really means, yeah, do it exactly like that and you’ll make me come. It’s almost a question, I feel, and one that I hover on the edge of answering. I hover, with that pointer poised in my hand and my body humming through and through with arousal, and ohhh God, what am I waiting for? What am I holding back for?

  ‘Are you telling me what to do, Benjamin?’ I ask, and then I just crack that metal down so hard. Hard enough to send the strike all the way into him and back into me, every vibration running all over erogenous zones I didn’t even know I had. They’re in these weird places like the backs of my knees and the soft hollows beneath my arms, and when I strike him, when he grunts and gasps and writhes for me, they all wake up and take notice.

  ‘No, no – God, I swear, I just … oh God, it doesn’t feel anything like I thought it would.’

  ‘And how does it feel?’

  ‘Amazing. Amazing. My cock’s so hard, seriously – can I just … I just need to …’ he says, but he doesn’t wait for an answer. He doesn’t wait for permission. He just slides his hand under his body and though I can barely see a thing I know what he’s doing.

  I know as though we’re still connected, through the marks I’ve made all over him.

  He’s trying to hold off his orgasm. He’s trying to get a good, tight grip on himself, so that when I crack the metal down again he doesn’t go off like a rocket – I’m certain of it. But of course, I don’t act like I’m certain of it.

  ‘Get your hand away from yourself, you filthy little slut,’ I tell him. And then I crack the metal down again, just for good measure. I do it, and I do it hard, but I suppose the problem is that it’s not really a punishment at all. It can’t be a punishment when someone seems to enjoy it so much.

  ‘Oh yeah, just like that. Make it sting like that – fuck that’s good. I can’t tell if it’s pleasure or pain any more.’

  ‘Because you’re a slut?’ I ask, though I swear I only do it for want of something to say. I’m adrift again, lost on a tide of him and his craziness, and he doesn’t make it any easier the longer this goes on. In fact, he seems to get surer in it. More wanton.

  ‘Yeah, yeah. I’m such a slut – seriously, you wouldn’t believe how hard my cock is. Ohhh and it’s all slippery, too … I’ve made such a mess …’

  I’m going to make a mess soon. I’m only surprised there isn’t a puddle on the floor already.

  ‘What a dirty mouth you have,’ I tell him, but it’s me who keeps striping him with this metal. I’m the one who keeps winding him up until he’s telling me things that shouldn’t be exciting – because really, they aren’t. It’s not exciting when someone makes a mess or can’t control themselves.

  Even if it absolutely is.

  ‘Stop me,’ he says. ‘Stop me.’

  Which could mean just about anything. It could mean he wants me to cease this little production and let him stand up and be respectable and put all of his clothes back on. It could. But somehow I know it doesn’t.

  He means: Stop me from masturbating.

  And ohh Lord that’s exactly what he’s started doing. I don’t have to see it. I can hear it, because apparently he’s as slippery and messy as he claimed only a moment ago. And though I don’t think he’s going at it hard exactly – his arm isn’t moving in that familiar rhythm, and he’s not quite going crazy with it, not yet – it’s having the desired effect.

  ‘I’m so close. Just a couple more strokes and I’m going to do it,’ he warns me, in a way that suggests he knows I’ll have to do something about it. He’s my plaything. I’m his Boss.

  ‘Put your hand on the table, Benjamin,’ I tell him, but this time I don’t punctuate it with a crack from the pointer. I go one worse than that – or at least, I go one worse for me. He seems to enjoy it thoroughly, as my stomach churns and the feel of him shoots up through my body like an electric charge.

  It’s not the same to spank someone with a piece of metal as it is to spank them with your hand. Too many things get in the way – the heat of his body sizzling into my palm. The brief feel of those strange ridges I’ve made all over his skin.

  And finally him asking, all lust-shocked and frantic.

  ‘Are you touching me, Ms Harding?’ he asks, as though he’d somehow never imagined that could be a possibility. Through material, yes. With metal, yes. But never skin to skin like this, and so visceral that for a second I just want to spread my entire body over his.

  Instead I dig my nails into his firm, glorious flesh, hard, and then I watch as he slaps that one filthy hand back onto the table, just like I told him to. And though I know that should be confusing – why obey for this, and not the metal? – I understand the reason for it.

  If he does what I’ve demanded, maybe I’ll continue.

  ‘You like that, huh?’ I ask, but again I don’t wait for an answer. I just dig my nails in harder until he turns his face on the table. Presses his cheek to the wood, those gorgeous eyes of his almost closed, almost.

  But not quite. I can see him sort of looking at me through the slits those sooty eyelashes have made. And I can see a lot of other arousing things, too, like that close-to-orgasm flush that’s all over his lovely face, and right down over his throat. Like the way his mouth looks near-fucked, as though there’s some invisible person in here with us and a moment ago he had his cock stuffed down Benjamin’s throat.

  And of course all of this gets hotter and sweeter the harder I dig my nails in. He rocks his hips to feel it, near rubbing his ass against the press of my fingers. And when he catches it just right, when those burning hot ridges run beneath the scrape of my nails, he tells me
almost matter-of-factly:

  ‘I’m really going to come now – I can’t help it. I’ve been on the edge too long.’

  Though it doesn’t really happen as calmly as those words suggest. His eyes squeeze tight shut after one more long-drawn-out scratch down over the marks on his ass, and his body jerks forward hard enough to jam him up against the edge of the table.

  But it’s his hands I notice the most. One almost claws at the table as the sensation pours through him, and the other goes beneath his body, to stroke and jerk his cock through what seems to be a gloriously protracted orgasm. I’m not sure how long it goes on for to be honest, because after what seems like an hour he makes the first sound he’s made since it started – a guttural gasp that almost forces me to put a hand over my swollen mound.

  Almost, I think, almost, as he grunts again and rubs at himself frantically, body bowing under the pressure. Those sounds turning to words, as whatever this is proves too much.

  ‘Hurt me again,’ he groans. ‘Make me feel it.’

  But I don’t know what he means. Is it the pain he wants to feel, or the pleasure surrounding it? Is that how it works? If I dig my nails in again, will it force his orgasm into some kind of stark relief?

  I think of the way it had felt for me, to have someone strike me right in the middle of something so sweet – and then I just do it. I bring my hand down again, sharp and firm, and he rewards me with more words half-groaned with pleasure.

  ‘Oh, Ms Harding, you’re so good to me,’ he says, as those slick sounds between his legs get louder, ruder, and I’m forced to imagine how it all looks. Disgusting, I think, all thick and sticky all over his hand.

  And all over other places, too, apparently.

  ‘Fuck. Fuck. I’m getting it on the carpet.’

  I honestly don’t know if he says these things in all innocence to himself, or if he’s actually saying them for my insane benefit. I really don’t, at this point. Because although I know it shouldn’t arouse me, to think of him spurting so copiously that it’s making a mess all over things, I can’t seem to help it.