Shaking my head, I deleted my half-finished message.
> RIVER: I very much doubt you’re sorry.
> RIVER: It’s a good way to be distracted, though. Apart from the way I’m now hard in the middle of a coffee shop.
> ELLISON: Does it make you uncomfortable?
Here we go again. I sighed, pinching the bridge of my nose. Why couldn’t he just sext like a normal person? And more than that, why couldn’t I stop liking it?
> RIVER: A little, yes. Why are you so obsessed with making me uncomfortable?
Maybe that was a little confrontational (like an unruly brat who needs to be broken, I remembered Mariah saying), but without his eyes drilling into me, it was a little easier to keep my mind from instantly turning to jelly when he spoke to me.
> ELLISON: I like the way you yield when I push you outside your comfort zone. I like the look on your face when you decide my attention is worth the humiliation.
My cheeks burned; I rubbed them briskly, as if that could dispel the flush I felt spreading over my face, equal parts embarrassment and lust.
> RIVER: I’m not sure “would degrade self for attention” is a ringing endorsement of my mental health.
> ELLISON: Would you? Degrade yourself for me?
God, I wished my body would stop giving me confusing messages. My cock was sure on board with this whole idea, but the rest of me was backing slowly away.
> RIVER: I don’t know if I’m into that.
> ELLISON: Does the idea frighten you?
> RIVER: Yeah, a little. I guess I worry that if I’m doing degrading things, you’ll think less of me.
> RIVER: It’s a little pathetic, isn’t it? Not exactly attractive.
The next reply was a long time coming, giving me ample opportunity to analyze and second-guess everything I’d said. The more I read it over, the more I was convinced I sounded too needy, too desperate for reassurance. Though on the plus side, the self-doubt helped take care of that pesky erection problem.
> ELLISON: What if I told you that the more humiliation you accept at my hands, the more you degrade yourself for me, the more pleasing I’ll find you?
> ELLISON: The more you satisfy my desires, the more I will reward you.
Oh, fuck—there went my cock again. His words brought back memories of sitting across from him in that secluded booth, and the look on his face as I’d gasped under his slightest touch. The noises of approval he’d made as I exposed myself to him and fucked myself with my fingers. The way his body tensed all over when he came.
> RIVER: Then…I suppose I would ask you how you’d like me to satisfy your desires.
> ELLISON: Good boy.
I pushed my long-forgotten laptop away and buried my face in my hands, fighting back a whimper. The words still made me feel all squirmy and weird inside, but every time he said them, I grew a little more accustomed to it, a little more warm and pleased and…proud.
> ELLISON: I want you to tell me one of your filthy fantasies. Something you think about when you touch yourself. Something you want me to do to you.
God, what didn’t I want him to do to me? I spent entirely too many of my waking hours with scenes of submissive debauchery painted in my head, and these fantasies usually involved his voice, his hands, his eyes. His cock spearing me open. The crack of his hand on my skin.
> RIVER: There is one thing I’ve been thinking about a lot…
> RIVER: We’re going out somewhere—maybe that restaurant we went to before. And we sit there like we did before, but this time I got myself ready beforehand, and I’ve got a plug in me.
> ELLISON: Mmm, go on.
I scrubbed my hand across my brow; I was actually starting to sweat, I was so worked up over this. I wiped my hand on my jeans and glanced around the shop again, sure that someone was going to figure out what sort of irredeemable depravity was happening over here. Everyone was just drinking their coffee, though—totally oblivious to my deepening color and the hammering of my heart.
> RIVER: We leave the restaurant, and you take me into an alley. You push my pants down, take out the plug, and replace it with your cock.
> ELLISON: Very nice. Keep talking; you’re going to make me come soon. You can imagine it splashing hot over your face when I do.
This was hands-down the filthiest text conversation I’d ever had. But why stop now?
> RIVER: You use me until you’re done, shoving my face against the wall. Maybe you’ve got my hands pinned behind my back.
> RIVER: You won’t let me come yet, though. You just put the plug back in so I can stay ready for you.
> RIVER: And then we go somewhere else and have a drink, and I have no idea what else you have in store for me. I have no idea how many more times you’re going to bend me over and fuck me before you finally let me come.
I realized my breath was coming faster, and I fought to control it; I was inches away from forever being known as the Coffee Shop Pervert. My pulse thundered in my temples and behind my eyes as I waited for Ellison’s next reply. Did he like the story? Was he going to demand I tell him more?
> ELLISON: Send me a picture of your face from above. Mouth open, tongue out.
Jesus Fucking Christ.
There was no way in hell I was going to do that in the middle of the coffee shop, so I threw my laptop into my bag and used it to cover my massive erection as I hurried off to the bathroom.
A flash of inspiration hit me as I was holding the camera over my head, and I dropped to my knees. Getting the right angle was tricky business—I had to stretch my arm far over my head so my face and my knees were visible, but the end result would be worth it. He would want to see me kneeling for him.
When I looked at the result of my efforts, I groaned. I looked ridiculous. Sure, it was delivering what he’d demanded—my mouth open, my tongue out, the angle the same one he’d be seeing if he were about to make me suck his cock—but it wasn’t exactly attractive. I snapped a couple more, but it was hopeless. There’s just no way to look dignified or seductive when you’ve got your mouth hanging open and your tongue out.
Maybe I could send him something else. A shirtless selfie, or a dick pic—I liked to think my dick was pretty photogenic. But no, he’d asked specifically for this.
I thought of him on the other end of the conversation, his pants pushed down on his hips and his hand stroking his cock, waiting for me to obey his order. My heart fluttered as I pictured his face, eyes closed in unashamed pleasure. Would my name be on his lips when he came?
The more you degrade yourself for me, the more pleasing I’ll find you.
I sucked in a deep breath and sent the photo, wincing when I saw it pop into the conversation. Too late to go back now.
My legs were quivering when I stood up, and I splashed some water on my face to try to steady myself. It was the strangest feeling, my body all wobbly and warm like I’d just finished a really exhausting workout. My cock was still mostly hard, but the urgency of it had faded—it was more of a pleasant ache now, something I could savor for a while until I got home and could really luxuriate in bringing myself off as hard as I wanted.
I shoved a couple strands of my hair back into place and smoothed out my clothes, hoping I didn’t look too much like someone who’d just run off to have a wank in the bathroom. I was pretty sure I succeeded, but my journey back out to my table still had a bit of a “walk of shame” air to it. As I got my stuff arranged on the table just the way I liked it, my phone buzzed at me.
Oh…wow.
The photo Ellison had sent me was as filthy as it was stunning. His torso took up most of the frame, his shirt unbuttoned and hanging wide open. Near the bottom I saw his cock, flushed dark but spent, the head shiny-wet and resting against his lower belly. Glimmering beads and ribbons of moisture were spattered across his chest and belly, painting him in light. One hand rested on his chest, fingers bare millimeters away from his nipple, like he’d been tugging at it as he came. And at the top of the frame I
saw the very bottom of his face, just his chin and his lips, curled in wicked satisfaction.
> ELLISON: Good boy.
I swallowed hard and locked the phone, flipping it face-down on the table until I was better equipped to respond to that.
“Judging by the color of your face, that was one hell of a text.” My head snapped up; Mariah stood next to my table with her hand on her hip, her face set in a broad grin. Her outfit was shockingly restrained today—just jeans she’d drawn all over in permanent marker, and a crop top with a collage of eyeballs printed across the front.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I cleared my throat, and she rolled her eyes as she sat down. A little coffee sloshed out of her cup as she set it on the table; I mopped it up quickly with the spare napkin I always made sure to grab when I knew I’d be meeting up with her. “It was business related. Very dull.”
“Mm-hmm. I know exactly what kind of ‘business’ you’ve been getting up to lately, mister.” She proceeded to dump four packets of sugar into her coffee while I looked on in horror. “So, Ellison?”
“Maybe. How about we talk about comic stuff like we planned to, instead of my sordid sex life?”
She let out a labored sigh. “Fine, god. You’re no fun at all.”
“I’m lots of fun. Just not for you.”
“Just not in the middle of a crowded coffee shop, I get it.” She drained about half of her coffee, then set the cup down and rubbed her palms together briskly. “All right, how are things going with Boundless Fate?”
“Not…badly. I haven’t seen any forum outrage over the last few pages, at least. But my plot outline for the next few chapters is a mess, and I’m considering scrapping most of it and going in another direction entirely.”
“If you’re doing all that work anyway, I’m going to have to make my obligatory suggestion: why not close the door on this project and start up a new one? I know Boundless Fate is your baby, but you’ve learned so much since you started it. With a fresh start, you could write something that makes you and your readers happy, and you wouldn’t have to keep adjusting your vision to please the masses.”
“Artistic integrity is great and all, but I have rent to pay,” I said with a sigh. “Only a fraction of my readership would follow me to a new comic, so I’d want to launch with a couple dozen pages done so I could start building an audience right away. That’s going to take at least a couple months to pull together, so I’ve got to deal with the immediate problems in the story anyway.”
“So is that what you’re going to do?”
“I mean, I’ve definitely considered it, but I don’t think Boundless Fate is beyond saving. I’ve got some ideas I want to run by you.”
Mariah leaned forward in her chair and slapped her palms on the table. “Lay it on me, creative genius!”
“I think it might be time to phase Marius out of the story.”
“Oh no,” she said, hand to her chest. “Poor broken boy, I love him so.”
“That’s the problem—I think he might be too broken. I went kind of overboard on his tragic backstory, and people keep going on about the consent issues between him and Vendix. I’m just wondering if, with all his trauma, he can realistically consent to any of the things Vendix does to him.”
Mariah flopped back in her chair with a groan of disgust. “Oh my god, River. Nobody’s complaining about consent issues because of his tragic backstory.”
“I know, but it’s a factor—”
“No buts.” She jabbed her finger toward my face with an authoritative scowl. “The reason people are complaining about consent issues is because of the external master/slave relationship—because in the demon society you’ve set up, Vendix could literally kill Marius at any moment with no consequences whatsoever, and they both know that.”
“But he wouldn’t.” Maybe I was being overly defensive, but this had been a sore spot for months. Marius and Vendix had always been my favorite characters in the story but post after post kept popping up on my message board about their relationship. I’d tried to engage with them at first, tried to explain my point of view, but the more I talked, the more it seemed like I was talking myself into a hole. It got so bad for a while that I wasn’t even checking the message board myself—Mariah did it for me, and I usually regretted asking her to. “Vendix has never coerced Marius, not once in their entire relationship. They genuinely fell in love in spite of their power imbalance—everything Marius has done was of his own free will. I even added that scene with Vendix granting mercy to the swamp witch to show that he wouldn’t kill a slave for defying him. I don’t know how I can make it any more clear.”
“Stockholm syndrome doesn’t give a crap about that swamp witch, River.”
I rolled my eyes and managed to say, “It’s not—” before she went on, her finger still hovering in front of my face.
“Any time you put someone in a situation where saying no could put them in danger—even if it’s a small risk, even if we the audience know it would never happen—every yes they give is suspect. There’s no way to know that it’s truly free will.”
“Well, what am I supposed to do?” I said, throwing my hands in the air. “I’ve got almost 200 pages of their relationship already published, so there’s no way to change how they got together.”
“The only way to address the consent thing is to end their master/slave relationship for good. Marius has to be a free man, with his own rights and powers, and Vendix has to explicitly acknowledge that. Until you do that, any time they have what you consider a consensual power exchange, the readers will wonder if that’s really what it is for Marius.”
“Yeah, but…I mean…”
“But what?”
I gave her a sheepish look. “Then it isn’t as hot.”
Mariah folded her arms over her chest, smirking. “Tough titties, River. You know what you have to do.”
I covered my face with my hands, groaning into them. “Yeah, okay. I’ll—I guess I’ll look at my outline and see what I can fit in before this arc finishes.”
“Good boy,” she said, patting my arm affectionately. My shoulders stiffened before I could stop them, and I shot her a glare over the tops of my fingers, my ears burning. She clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle a shriek of laughter. “Oh my god, I forgot that’s, like, one of Ellison’s ‘things,’” she said, cackling quietly into her hand. “He’s really been putting you through your paces, hasn’t he?”
“I really wish you wouldn’t use that precise term.”
“That’s a yes.” She propped her elbows on the table and rested her chin in her hands. “How are things going with him? Still going all googly-eyed over the guy?”
I weighed my options. It was too late to fake a vocal cord injury, and I didn’t happen to have any smoke bombs on me to make a quick escape, so I didn’t have much choice but to talk about it. “I have no idea how it’s going. I can’t tell if I’m getting too hung up on him. Sometimes he actually talks to me, and sometimes he gives me these one-word answers and long silences, and it’s just…ugh. I don’t even know if he’s into me at all.”
“I’m assuming that was him who made you do the tomato impression earlier?” I nodded, and Mariah reached across the table to give me a vaguely condescending pat on the shoulder. “Oh, poor River. How you managed to live to age 34 and still be this naive boggles my mind almost daily.”
10
Ellison took me out to a fancy cocktail bar for our next date, which wouldn’t have been my first choice, but the ambiance was nice. I just felt really uncomfortable spending 12 dollars for cocktails with adorably hipster names I was mildly embarrassed to say out loud. Sure, he probably would have paid the tab if I’d let him, but the bill had passed the threshold of what I was willing to allow for the sake of one of his weird dominance games.
Besides, what was he going to do—punish me for being defiant? Oh no, whatever would I do?
Apart from the tab, though, everything else about the d
ate left the power directly in his hands. He chose the location, the time, the drinks, even the clothes I wore—which, wow, I never thought I’d be into that, but here we were. I’d spent an hour the night before going through my closet, snapping photos of different options to show him, hard as a rock the whole time. It didn’t help matters any when he’d asked me which option I’d most want torn off my body.
The answer, of course, was, “None of them, but if that’s something you’re into, I’ll go shopping next week.” I could add a line item to my budget for “thrift store shirts to be torn to shreds.”
We didn’t have a secluded booth like we had the first time we got together, so Ellison’s displays of dominance were a little more subtle, but no less arousing. He communicated his control over me with light touches, with quiet orders whispered close to my ear, and with his relentless stare as he demanded that I tell him every detail of what I was feeling and why.
Just like before, I opened to him and spilled all my secrets, because the alternative—not pleasing him—was unbearable.
I ended up inviting him to my apartment almost entirely because it was closer than his house, and after a solid two hours of public teasing and torture, I felt like my balls might literally explode if I didn’t get some part of him in some part of me ASAP. The trip back there was just long enough to let me start second-guessing everything, though, so by the time we got to my door, I was dwelling solidly in this unsettling halfway-place between arousal and self-conscious terror.
Knowing Ellison, it would probably turn out he was into that.
“Well, here it is,” I said as I flipped the light switch and stepped aside so he could come in. “Shoes go there. Uh…I’d give you the tour, but it’s just this room, so you can pretty much see the whole thing.”
“It’s nice.” He removed his shoes and set them next to mine on the rack; maybe he was naturally neat, or maybe he was taking his cues from me, but he made sure they were perfectly straight before he straightened up. “It suits you.”
Truth By His Hand Page 14
