Dark Secret Love: A Story of Submission (Black Lace)

by Alison Tyler

  I knew what that meant. I was always quiet. Practically silent. Connor had been trying to get me to open up, to feel comfortable enough to let loose. The most I’d managed so far was a husky moan. I’d never been a screamer. I internalized everything. Tears might streak my cheeks, but I would not cry out. I could not. Connor had plans to change that.

  While I waited for him, I paced the apartment, clad in an outfit we’d bought together: a short black-and-white plaid skirt, silky black T-shirt, fishnet stockings, knee-high Docs. I walked into Lois’s room, where I’d set out all the toys Connor had given me. Then I paced again. He’d used his belt on me, but never a paddle. I stroked the flat side, tentatively touched the wooden handle. It was in my thoughts to try the thing on myself, to see what the pain would feel like, when I heard Connor knock.

  Feeling guilty for no reason, I hurried to the front door and let him in. He had flowers with him. And a crop.

  Jesus.

  He looked me over, head to toe, then nodded his approval. The flowers were left to die a slow death on the cracked blue Formica kitchen counter. There wasn’t even time for filling a wine bottle with water. Connor grabbed my wrist and led me back to Lois’s room, a girly boudoir with pink walls and a brass bed. She had angels on her dresser and her nightstand, and they looked odd as background to the various sex toys. Gargoyles would have made more sense.

  Connor sat on the edge of the bed and looked at me. I knew what to do. I understood his expressions by now, could practically read his thoughts, but the crop kept me from coming forward. The way it leaned against the dresser made me want to run and hide. Not because I didn’t want to feel the sting, but because I did—and that scared me to death. I’d confessed all of my secrets to Connor over our months together. I’d told him every little fucked-up fantasy I’d ever had. I couldn’t hide from my truth, but I had a difficult time facing the reality head-on. Be careful what you wish for.

  “Get the paddle,” he said. My legs threatened to give out as I walked to the nightstand and gripped the new toy. “Over my legs, girl. Now.”

  I bent myself into the proper position, felt his warm hand lifting my tiny skirt, felt him watching me. He pressed the paddle against my panty-clad ass, letting me feel the weight before he landed the first blow. I sucked in my breath, but remained silent. The sting was different from the belt, but not worse. He began spanking me more rapidly, pausing only to pull my black satin bikinis down my thighs, leaving them on me, but baring my ass. The pain intensified immediately, and tears wet my eyes, but I still didn’t cry out. I wasn’t trying to test him. This wasn’t a game. I didn’t know how to do what he wanted. Not without sounding phony. Not without being fake.

  “What did you think about today?” he asked, taking a break to pull my panties off completely and then herd me to the full-length mirror on the back of Lois’s door, to show me my scarlet rear cheeks. He held my skirt up for me, so I could see, and he grinned at his handiwork, clearly pleased.

  “This,” I said. I’d gotten a temp job in an office on Wilshire, and my day had been busy, but every time I’d had a breather, I’d thought of Connor and his bag of toys.

  “And this?” he queried, cupping my bare pussy with his hand and giving me a stern look, no sign of a smile now.

  I wanted to melt into nothing. Disappear into a silver mist. Over one midnight confession, I’d asked him if he’d spank me … and then, unable to actually voice the request, I had simply put his hand over the front of my panties. “Spank me here …?”

  For some inexplicable reason, I was always waiting for the moment when I’d go too far. When he’d give me the disgusted look that Byron had shot me after my drunken night of spilling secrets. I didn’t realize that Connor’s own fantasies were darker than my own, went farther than I’d dare to dream.

  He’d laughed, not mean, not cruel, but still, he’d laughed at me. As if it went without saying that he’d do what I asked. “Sam,” he said softly, “I have no problem punishing your pussy.”

  Ah, fuck me—

  He carried me back to the bed, spread me out, and tied me to Lois’s bed frame like the bondage pro he was. He cut my skirt off, cut my T-shirt away, undid my boots and pulled them off, then ran his fingertips over the shaved skin of my pussy. I had only my thigh-high fishnets on now. Nothing to protect me.

  “You know you’re a bad girl,” he said, “don’t you?”

  I nodded, then immediately whispered, “Yes, Connor.”

  “And you know tonight I’m going to make you scream.”

  Tears started running down my cheeks, but I managed to say, “Yes, Connor.”

  He reached for the violet suede flogger and then he looked at me fiercely and said, “And you know you need this.”

  I did. I knew it. I’d known it for years.

  “Tell me why.”

  I pleaded with my eyes. I couldn’t. I didn’t know.

  “Try.”

  “Because—” was all I could say. “Because.”

  The flogger was light, a gentle caress at first. And then the weapon began to sting, the many tails landing faster on my tender skin. I closed my eyes and clenched my fists. But it wasn’t until Connor dropped that soft, sweet toy, replacing it with the very lip of his leather belt, again and again on my pussy, putting power behind the blows, that I started to give him what he wanted. I could hear the wetness as the leather connected, and I could feel the lake of juices under my ass, and I started to cry for real.

  “Open your eyes,” Connor insisted.

  My eyelids fluttered, and he doubled the belt and landed a blow on my upper thighs that made me gasp.

  “Don’t test me, girl,” he said, not a faux threat. “You obey when I give a command.”

  He did what he said. He punished me between my legs until I came, crying out so loudly, repeating his name over and over like a mantra, knowing that it didn’t matter if he was leaving. Tonight, I was his.

  I mentioned that snapshot I have of Connor: black jeans, no shirt, after a night of no sleep. I took the picture myself. I think we spent nearly forty-eight hours in bed, but that photo is from a two-AM run for coffee, the two of us sex-drenched and half naked as he headed to the closest drive-through. I had his shirt on. That’s why his chest was bare. His shirt and my boots, and nothing else. He has that picture of me.

  At some point during the weekend, he introduced me to the crop, and the weapon was as mean and frightening as I’d thought it would be. Later still, he grabbed clothespins from the bathroom where Lois used them to fasten her stockings to the twine strung across the shower. Connor had completely different uses for them. Oh, Christ, did he. I was humble and quiet when we were out of bed, as loud as he wanted me to be when we were on that queen-sized mattress. He’d broken that inhibition of mine, demolished my reservations to nothing.

  On Sunday night, his last night in town, Connor took me up to the Sunset Strip Tattoo parlor and explained to the man behind the counter exactly what he wanted. As if he were the proprietor, Connor led me to the back room and lowered my jeans, and I dropped my chin to my chest, mortified, not only because Connor was baring my ass to strangers but because I sported bruises from when his silver buckle had caught my skin, magenta stripes from his belt, those fine thin welts from his crop. On a fair space of skin on my right hip (had Connor intentionally left that patch alone?), the tattoo artist transferred the cherries that Connor had chosen for me. Connor held my hands in his, and I looked into his eyes and stayed totally still. This was not my first tattoo, but it was the first one given to me.

  “I can tell she’s a naughty girl,” the man said casually, as we got ready to leave. “But keep that bandage on for at least two hours, and then rub lotion in.”

  We fucked one last time on Lois’s bed that night. We fucked until dawn, when Connor took off the bandage and touched me so softly, so tenderly, that it made me shake more powerfully than anything else we’d done. I’d taken pain for him. I’d been marked for him. I’d done everythin
g I set out to do.

  I’m pathetic at goodbyes. Connor packed up his Chevy as the first golden light hit Hollywood. I remember the scent of the morning dew on the concrete sidewalk, the chill in the air as he gave me one final kiss … and his leather belt.

  As I watched him drive away, tears streaked my face.

  Should I have gone?

  I don’t know.

  We didn’t have love. We had lust. And lust is enough for midnight fuck sessions and X-rated fairy-tale fantasies, but it wasn’t enough for me to move to Georgia. I slid his belt through the loops of my jeans and headed back into the triplex.

  Suddenly, I was living in a world of strangers.

  Chapter Eight:

  She’s Come Undone

  You want me to have mourned him, don’t you? You want me to say that I slaved long hours to save up enough money so I could go meet him, that we set up house in Georgia. It would be a dream come true, right? Connor bartending to pay the bills while I set up a typewriter on the kitchen table and pounded out porn.

  But it wasn’t like that. Yes, I sported a spanking-new cherry tattoo on my hip. Yes, I had Connor’s belt, and I wore it whenever I had on jeans, stroking the old silver buckle absentmindedly the way he had. And yes, it took a few weeks for the bruises he left me to totally fade away.

  Unfortunately, that doesn’t make what we had love. And in any case, I didn’t have a second to mourn. I was working as many temp jobs as I could land, shuttling all over the city wearing the few dresses I’d scavenged from the dry cleaners, trying my best to look professional. Trying to pretend I had my shit together. Weeks had passed and I still hadn’t been able to get into my house and collect my stuff.

  My new roommates were extremely supportive, going so far as offering to beat Byron up for me to make him return my belongings. Lois roomed with a grad student and a director, two completely different types of guys, in an old triplex in the Hollywood Hills. Nathan, the director, had dark hair, dark eyes, and a look that was insolent and sexy, in-your-face and sly. Garrett, the student, was six-foot four, barrel-chested, with choirboy good looks, and he’d recently had his heart destroyed by the heels of his college sweetheart. He seemed to be in a constant daze.

  The house was surrounded by vibrant bougainvillea vines and had an old-world charm, a remnant of forties Hollywood. The interior was something else, seventies green shag carpet in the living room, cracked linoleum on the kitchen floor, stained Formica counters. Nathan and Garrett were the type of guys who stole stacks of cocktail napkins to keep by the commode rather than the pristine rolls of Charmin I was accustomed to.

  I’d never had roommates like this, and I was fascinated. Odd that total strangers put me up, willingly let me sleep on their thrift-store sofa, drink their coffee, stake out their phone for interview appointments. I made their place cleaner, definitely, and more livable. I replaced the Spider-Man napkins with real toilet paper. I washed the dishes in the sink. I was suited to taking care of people. Besides, I wanted them to like me.

  Although they were all friendly, Nathan intimidated the hell out of me. He had ties on the four corners of his mattress and a hidden hook behind his bed to hang handcuffs, which he proudly showed me on my second day in the apartment. His bookshelf boasted my favorite filthy titles: The Story of O, Justine, The Pearl, 100 Days of Sodom. He would come in after dates and collapse next to me on the sofa, making it feel natural to be in his arms as he told me about his X-rated adventures.

  “I ate her soul,” he said one night.

  “You what?”

  He explained that his date hadn’t wanted to do something he’d requested—he left whatever that thing was to my vibrant imagination. (Anal sex? Some power game? Outdoor fucking?) And he pushed until her boundaries were broken, and then left, satisfied, while she cried. He dated extremely pretty girls, starlets he met at casting calls or out at clubs. He fucked them once and moved on. But he liked to talk to me, to stroke my dark hair away from my face and tell me his secrets. “We’re exactly alike,” he whispered one night to me, while I shook my head. “Don’t deny it,” he said, “we’re two of a kind.” I didn’t know what he meant, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to find out. But still, I liked him. I appreciated his twisted sense of humor, and I liked how confident he was.

  The third roommate, Garrett, didn’t pay me much attention. He seemed bemused to find me on the sofa when he came in to watch the news. He was wary of me, but friendly in a standoffish way.

  This was my new life, and I did my best to be cheerful about it. I no longer had a real home, or a real room, or any real friends (mine were scattered around the country). I put my head down and worked toward getting a job. At night I wrote stories on Lois’s old typewriter, deciding that if I didn’t have to worry about Bryon’s critiques, I might actually be able to create something worthwhile. I was plotting something—my new life. The life I’d always wanted.

  Following an interview at a salon one morning, I was nearly crushed by a dog that escaped from its leash. The owner apologized profusely as he pulled the beast off me. “Really, I’m sorry,” he said, and then smiled, “but if it’s any consolation, he only knocks over the pretty girls.”

  The man invited me to dinner that night at a gourmet hotspot on Robertson to make up for the behavior of his out-of-control mutt. I hadn’t been on a date-date in years. Connor and I didn’t date. I was intrigued. Jack was older than me—no big surprise there, huh?—and he looked refined, like a businessman. I was excited to go out, but I met him at the restaurant, wanting to have an escape plan.

  Dinner was surreal.

  Jack ordered us shots and beers, strange drinks for such a fancy environment. I got drunk as my date described in minute detail what he wanted to do to me. He described the most extreme bondage, punishment, discipline. He wanted to strip me naked and make me crawl across the floor to him, to bow at his feet, to call him Sir. He wanted me to kiss the tips of his shoes, to kiss the tip of his crop, to take the pain he had in store for me.

  “You need it,” he said, “Don’t tell me I’m wrong.”

  Once again, someone had found me. Snap your fingers. Strike the match. I wanted the things he described, but even drunk, I knew better than to go home with a total stranger, to let him tie me to his bed. He promised things that were constantly in my head. He said, “I know you want this. I know what you deserve.”

  I looked at my plate, then up at him.

  “How? How do you know?”

  And he laughed, like Connor had laughed. “It’s clear. You wear your desires on your sleeve. The longing. Almost desperate.”

  His hands were on me even at the table, touching me, stroking me. He cradled my face in his grip and he said, “You need it to hurt.” The words were simple. Matter-of-fact. As if he’d said that my eyes were brown. Or that my skin was pale. You need it to hurt.

  Fuck me. Why did he know? How could he tell? I took another drink, felt as if I were actually transparent, made of glass. Could everyone in the fancy restaurant see what Jack saw?

  He shrugged, reading my mind so easily. “I don’t know why, baby doll. I can’t tell you the reasons. I can only tell you what you need.” He touched my face again. “That’s not totally true. I can tell you what I need as well.” And he continued to talk, about the clamps he would use on my nipples and on my pussy lips, about the whips he had, about the canes. I don’t think I ate more than two bites, and when he paid, he took me outside while we waited for his car. He held me in his arms against his strong chest. He kissed my hair and let his hand run down my back to cradle my ass. He felt the tremor work through me, but he seemed to know I wasn’t going with him. When his car came, a dark blue Jag, I couldn’t get in. I wanted it all. Every frame. Every image. But he scared me.

  Jack didn’t mind. He gave me his number. He told me to call. “I know you’ll call,” he said. And then he kissed me and drove away.

  I didn’t ask for my car. I was too drunk to even consider driving. I went back into the
restaurant and called “home.” Garrett answered, a surprise since he was usually out catering—he worked as a chef to pay the bills. “Cancelled,” he said. “What’s up?”

  I’d lived in a desert for years, and now my fantasies were raining down on me. If I’d gotten Nate, I could have explained easily, said what was going on, begged for a ride. Instead, I got Garrett, and I confessed. Crazy desires. I had only meant to explain that I was too drunk to drive, but the words spilled from my mouth, until I was telling him everything. Every single thing Jack had said, and everything I knew in my heart that I wanted.

  “Shhh, Samantha,” Garrett whispered. “Don’t do this. Not on the phone. Let me come get you.”

  I sat down on the curb and waited, and he pulled up twenty minutes later and helped me in. He looked shell-shocked. “You need help,” he said.

  “No,” I shook my head. “I need someone to spank me. With a belt. With a paddle. I need to be punished.”

  “Really,” he tried again. “That’s not healthy. You have to get help—”

  I was crying, trying to tell him that I didn’t care. I didn’t want to be fixed. I wanted what Jack had offered. But not from Jack. Not yet, anyway. Garrett drove us around the city instead of taking me home. He found us a hotel on Sunset. He had never raised a hand to a woman before, never been rough in any way. And at first, he continued to try to convince me that I didn’t want what I wanted. But I saw a look in his eyes that let me know not to let up.

  There was a huge tub in the room and there were mirrors on the wall, and I made him punish me bent over the lip of the deep tub, made him fuck me simply by explaining that I needed it. I deserved it.

  I corrupted him. Evil thing that I am.

  But I truly believe that Garrett had the same fantasies I did. He’d just pushed them down. Covered them up. He’d been with the same girl since high school, and all they’d ever experienced together was simple, pretty sex. Now I was giving him the opportunity to open the dark door in his head and let loose his inner demons.