Truth By His Hand

by Casey Cameron

  “But birthday threesomes,” she sang. She patted the back of his hand. “We’ll talk about it later, Mr. Heteroflexible.”

  Ravi looked to the side, his cheeks darkening even more.

  “So…” I swallowed, my throat tight with embarrassment. “You really don’t think he was disappointed in me for not…pushing through, I guess?”

  “Oh, River.” Mariah pinched my cheek, and I batted her hand away. “You’re just precious, you know that?”

  “Are you avoiding the question?”

  “No good Dom is going to be disappointed because a sub needs to stop a scene,” Ravi assured me.

  Mariah nodded. “And even if they are, they’ll know to keep their damn mouth shut because there’s always next time.”

  “That’s life,” Deirdre added with a shrug. “Not everything works out perfectly the first time. If it does, you’re probably delusional.”

  The doorbell rang, and Mariah jumped up. “That’ll be Tea and Sarah—hope everyone’s got the hardcore BDSM out of their system.”

  “Never gonna happen,” Deirdre said with a chuckle.

  Tea walked in with a petite woman on their arm who looked incredibly nervous but smiled pleasantly as introductions were made. She took a seat and scooted her chair a little closer to Tea like she was trying to look like an extension of them so she’d fade into the background.

  Mariah plopped down next to me again. She tapped me on the shoulder almost painfully hard and leaned in to whisper in my ear. “Oh my god, she’s adorable!”

  “She’s also got very good hearing,” Tea said as Sarah blushed beet-red. Mariah grinned back, unperturbed and Tea turned to me to deftly change the subject. “You got your hair cut, River. It looks nice.”

  “Thanks for noticing,” I said, nudging Mariah with my shoulder. It wasn’t enough of a distraction for me, though, and I had to check. Yep, it was still there. All good.

  Tea cocked their head at me. “You’re doing that thing again. Why do you keep cutting your hair like that if it bugs you so much?”

  “I, um…” I glanced over at Ravi and Deirdre, my throat going tight like it always did when one of my weird quirks went on display.

  “Yeah, I’d noticed that too,” Ravi said. Well, so much for my fantasy that I’d managed to be subtle about it. “What’s that about?”

  I sighed. “I started doing it a few years ago. It started out as…I don’t know, kind of trying to prove something to myself, I guess. I thought if I just went for it, I could white-knuckle my way past my compulsive need to keep checking it.” Check. Still there. Good. “Obviously it didn’t work. But I got used to the cut and I like the way it looks on me, and I’m nothing if not a creature of habit, so…here we are.”

  “It really suits you,” Sarah piped up, her voice kind of soft and hesitant, like she was dipping her toes into a pool to test the water. “And—and I love your hair too, Mariah.”

  “Oh, I like her,” Mariah said to Tea. “Why don’t you tell us how you two met?”

  As Tea told us about the triathlon practice they’d met Sarah at, my mind kind of drifted along, wandering paths I’d been trudging a lot lately. I felt a little like a bad friend, but it was really hard to focus when the ache in my ass kept bringing my thoughts back around to Ellison and all the things he loved doing to me. All the ways he was teaching me to know myself.

  But that was just what he did, wasn’t it? He wasn’t just an educator, he was a researcher. He analyzed the world around him—the people around him—and dissected them to satisfy his own curiosity. The fact that those people learned something in the process was probably just a happy coincidence.

  What was his takeaway from what we’d done the other night? What did that say about me, about the twists of my mind and my unhealthy thought patterns? Every time I showed him a little piece of myself, I was more and more convinced he was going to finally notice the big picture and decide he hated it.

  The brush strokes of my brain were all abstract expressionism, scattered and cacophonous, and the whole thing clashed terribly with the bold De Stijl lines and color fields of his analytical mind.

  Plus, whenever I was stressed out I jumped straight into pretentious metaphors. At least those years of art school hadn’t gone to waste.

  I shifted again in my chair, trying to get comfortable. The lingering throb made me imagine the skin there, all dark purple and blue, splotchy bruises and red half-moons where the end of the strap had snapped against my tender skin. Ellison called my bruises “pretty” when I sent him the photos he’d demanded, and I didn’t really see it—bruises were gross, nothing but bloody fluid where it didn’t belong. But I liked the sight of the strap marks, arched like bite marks but without the brutality, like the curves of fingernail marks in a palm.

  They reminded me of how good it felt to be utterly at his mercy. Utterly his.

  I couldn’t believe how much I was coming to crave his pain. Back when I’d gotten my tattoos, I’d had to numb myself up with lidocaine gel beforehand, and even then the artist kept having to stop our sessions because I’d gone pale and shaky. Pain had never been a friend to me, but here I was longing for more.

  But only the pain Ellison could give me.

  His words came back to me, his worries about molding me into his perfect submissive. Was this truly a desire that had always been lurking below the surface, or had he planted it there? Maybe I was more malleable than I’d thought, but only for other people.

  That would be fitting: self-esteem issues so deep-rooted I didn’t even consider myself worth changing for. Classic River.

  What the hell kind of future could there be for someone like Ellison and someone as broken as me?

  “River, are you okay?” Tea’s voice drifted to me in my fugue, and I tried to shake some of the fog out of my head. “You look a little sick.”

  “I’m fine,” I said with a weak laugh. “I’m just exhausted. I’ve been having way too many feelings lately.”

  A quiet chuckle went around the table. “Been there,” Deirdre said.

  “Same,” Tea agreed.

  “Ugh, so much,” Mariah added with a shake of her head. “Feelings can suck it.”

  “Did you know Ellison wrote books?” I blurted out, louder than I’d meant to. Yeah, that didn’t sound like I’d been obsessing at all.

  “Oh yeah,” Ravi said, “we’ve got a few copies down at the Center. They’re good stuff. I recommend them to people a lot.”

  Of course he did. Of course Ellison was perfect.

  “So you’ve read them, then?”

  “Yeah, definitely,” Ravi said, and Deirdre nodded in agreement.

  “Not me,” Mariah said emphatically. “I was always afraid I’d find myself in one of them.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. “I thought you would sort of get off on that.”

  “If he wrote erotica, maybe,” she huffed. “These are all clinical, though. I don’t want to be in a boring book.”

  Tea snickered. “That’s definitely one of the most ‘Mariah’ statements I’ve ever heard.”

  “If he hasn’t asked if he can write about you, he’s definitely not going to write about you,” Deirdre said. “That isn’t Ellison at all.”

  “Maybe not as a case study,” I said, scratching at my forearm with a frown. “But we could all be anonymous data points.”

  “Technically speaking we’re all anonymous data points anyway,” Tea said with a shrug. “Every encounter you have with another person, no matter how small or inconsequential, shapes your experience of the world.”

  “Hey,” Mariah said sharply. “That’s way too philosophical for brunch. Finish your mimosa.”

  Tea took a prim sip from their glass.

  “Anyway,” Mariah said, “what’s the big deal? I literally painted my ex’s hairy butthole on a garbage can lid and sold it for 900 dollars last year. We all draw inspiration from life—as long as you’re not sharing shameful secrets or calling someone out in a way other
people would recognize, everything you experience is fair game for art. Or even science.” She wrinkled up her nose to show exactly how she felt about the S-word.

  “You’ve—” Sarah cleared her throat nervously. “You’ve even written before about how you’ve put so much of yourself into Boundless Fate. That’s one of the things I love so much about it.”

  I stared at her with wide eyes, and she drew her shoulders in, staring resolutely at her lap.

  “Um…I’m kind of a fan. It’s an honor to meet you.”

  I stammered kind of uselessly for a second, and Tea saved me. “She’s even got me reading it again. I like what you’ve been doing with it lately. I mean, I still don’t like the kink stuff,” they said with a shrug, “but I love the characters. I think Eschala and Fiona are my favorites, but Sarah loves Marius and Vendix.”

  Sarah’s eyes were bright with excitement. “Is Marius really going to challenge the Sapphire Champion for his freedom? Will he and Vendix stay together, or is he going to start traveling the timestream again? I love them so much—I’d be crushed if they got separated.”

  I’d never heard anyone gush about my story quite like this before—at least not in person—and I kind of had to hold myself back from just spilling everything. “Well, I can’t give you too many spoilers, but I will say they’re definitely not breaking up. Whatever else happens, they’re paired for life.”

  Tea gave me a stern look. “What’s the point of being friends with the creator if you can’t get secret plot spoilers?”

  “You’ll just have to get your enjoyment out of his bubbly personality,” Mariah said, patting my back. “Oh, wait…” I gave her a glare, and she giggled and blew me a kiss. “Well, if you’ve toned down the problematic BDSM so much that even Tea will read it, I bet your forum drama has died down a lot. You haven’t even asked me to check it for you lately.”

  “It’s been a lot better,” I agreed. “Nothing is entirely fixed yet, but all but the loudest complainers seem to be giving me the benefit of the doubt while I finish this story arc. It’s almost like people are finally accepting that this is entertainment, not education.”

  From there the conversation flowed on to workshops at the Center for Alternative Sexuality, much to my relief—I was feeling all squirmy and self-conscious from how much of the conversation had revolved around me so far. Still, I was vaguely frustrated that I’d gotten derailed and hadn’t had a chance to clarify that it wasn’t even the “anonymous data point” thing that bothered me.

  Well, okay, it bothered me kind of a lot, but the bigger concern was the simple fact he hadn’t told me. He hadn’t considered me important enough to share a part of his life with me. There was a chance, of course that it was the other way around: he didn’t consider this fact important enough to share with me. But let’s face it—that didn’t seem very likely.

  Would I ever be a priority to him in more than just the kinky sex sense?

  It was obvious that he cared about my enjoyment, after all. He applied the considerable power of his brain to learning all my secrets, to finding all my buttons and pushing every single one. That wasn’t nothing. Relationships had been built on less.

  But I wanted to push his buttons, too—assuming he even had any under that perfectly-maintained exterior.

  Someone was going to accuse me of looking sick again if I kept wallowing in my own self-pity, so I had another swallow of my mimosa and dragged my focus to Ravi, who was explaining some of the Center’s goals to Sarah.

  “Honestly, about 70 percent of what we do isn’t spreading new ideas—it’s undoing the damage that’s already been done by things like uncommunicative parents, sex-shaming peers, abstinence-only education, and poor representation of alternative sexualities in media. This generation may be light years beyond the last, but there’s still so much work to do when depictions of things like gay relationships or BDSM are still considered too ‘adult’ to dwell anywhere but the dark corners of the internet.” He gave a vague wave in my direction, and I took another drink to ward off any other requests for my input.

  “I would love to volunteer sometime,” Sarah said, leaning forward eagerly. “Is that something people can do?”

  “Sweetheart, we will take absolutely anything we can get!” Deirdre said, laughing. “Time, money, books, artwork—it’s all welcome. Which reminds me, Mariah, your vulva mural is going over so well. We’re even giving some of them names.”

  “Mine’s named Clamentine,” Mariah said brightly, flicking a felted-wool dread over her shoulder.

  Deirdre leaned in conspiratorially. “You’ll never believe this, but the other day I actually heard a 12-year-old girl say the word ‘vulva’ instead of ‘down there.’”

  A gasp went around the table, and we raised our glasses in a toast to Mariah.

  “That’s what the Center is all about.” Ravi smiled. “Changing the world one person at a time—every mind changed is a tiny victory. And hey—all we need is seven billion tiny victories and we’re done. Easy, right?”

  “If anyone can do it, we can,” Tea agreed with a nod.

  The rest of the brunch was filled with an air of cheerful confidence, and I basked quietly in it, hoping I might be able to soak some of it up and apply it to my own life.

  17

  It was almost a week later that Ellison made me wear the plug.

  Couples—whether they’re the kind who use vibrating butt plugs or not—tend to settle into routines. My relationships had always done it pretty early, which wasn’t surprising given my plethora of control issues. Predictability was always a plus, and most of my partners recognized that.

  Ellison was, of course, the kind of partner who immediately picked up on stuff like that, so we had our routine, too. Usually it would consist of me showing up at his house, where he would proceed to tease and torment me for a few minutes—sometimes pushing me against the wall and rubbing my cock, sometimes grabbing me by the hair and just holding me still while he listened to me gasp, sometimes just telling me everything he was going to do to me in explicit detail. Then he’d drive us to some perfectly normal place, like a restaurant or a theatre, and he would work me up into a sex-fueled frenzy before taking me home and fulfilling every promise he’d made to debauch me.

  So far, the money plan he’d suggested seemed to be working. I wasn’t thrilled about it, exactly, but it had faded to a minor background irritation that I could mostly ignore. It kind of helped that I was starting to really enjoy all the ways he could make me embarrassed and uncomfortable in public. The compromise was worth it to see the look on his face when I squirmed for him.

  When I showed up at the door and he immediately led me into the bedroom without a word or a single touch, I was a little shocked how disappointed I felt. Not that I didn’t love the idea of him just having to have his way with me the instant he saw me, but I was honestly starting to enjoy the buildup of our usual routine. Which was another of those things I’d never imagined I would be into—extended foreplay had always kind of slotted into the same category as orgasm delay and denial. Why bother, when you could be coming instead?

  But when we got to the bedroom, I realized that wasn’t his plan at all. The familiar black plug sat on his bed, the remote lying next to it, filled with sinister promises. I sucked in a breath at the sight of it.

  “I take it you know what this is for,” he said, voice bright with amusement.

  “Yeah, I think I do.”

  “How does that make you feel?”

  “Kind of terrified, kind of excited.” I scrubbed a hand across the back of my head, and then brushed it over the top. I was comfortable enough with Ellison at this point that I didn’t bother to hide that particular quirk, but I still hadn’t told him that I didn’t need him to keep accounting for it at all times. Although given his general tendency toward constant analysis of every goddamn thing, he’d probably figured it out by now. “I’m still not sure it’s something I can handle. The whole ‘trapped by an object’ thing,
I guess.”

  “Are you refusing to wear it, then?” His voice was plain and matter-of-fact; he spoke like it was of no more consequence than asking the time of day. “You always have that choice.”

  Every time he reminded me of that, it nagged at me. I knew it was just that he was being a good Dom, checking in and making sure I knew he cared about consent and comfort and blah blah blah. But it was still a reminder of my own fragility, of the ways we both knew I wasn’t able or willing to satisfy his desires.

  I shook my head. “No, I want to. I want to know.” I looked into his eyes, so bright and blue I feared they might blind me. “I want to put myself in your hands.”

  “You always know just what to say,” he said, sliding his hand down my spine. I leaned into the touch, glad for the heat of him, for the reminder that no matter how terrified I was, he was just a person. And he cared about me.

  Ellison stroked my back for a moment longer, then withdrew his hand and fixed me with a piercing gaze. “Do you want to put it in yourself, or do you want me to do it? Keep in mind this is the last decision you will be making tonight.”

  My breath caught in my chest under the wave of arousal that flooded me. “Wow, that…okay.” I swallowed, took a deep breath to steady myself, and considered it a moment. “If I do it, will you be watching me?” My voice sounded embarrassingly timid.

  “Yes.”

  “Then…I think I want you to do it.”

  Ellison picked up the plug and turned it in his hands. “Why is that?”

  “Because the idea of putting in a butt plug in front of someone is embarrassing—and I know you get off on that, but you haven’t gotten me nearly horny enough to stop caring.” Ooh, maybe I shouldn’t have said that. It may have only ensured he would keep me here to torment me for a while before we went out. “If it’s going to be in front of you either way, then…I’d rather give the control to you.”

  He stepped in close to kiss me, slow and deep. I let my lips part for him easily; he so rarely kissed me like this without me begging him that I treasured every one. “I love hearing you say that. The way you give yourself over to me.”