Truth By His Hand

by Casey Cameron

  “I want…” The desperate desire bubbled up to the surface like a pot boiling over, spilling everything in a great hissing rush. “Would you put a blindfold on me?”

  The instant the words were out of my mouth, I wanted to drag them back in. His face fell, all the greed and longing draining away, replaced by withering disapproval. “River, we just talked about this. I don’t want you to do this for me.”

  “No, this isn’t—” I made an exasperated noise, longing for the safe blanket of his kisses I’d had just a moment ago. “I know you don’t want me to—to hurt myself for you. This isn’t about that. This is…”

  I grasped for the words to explain this unexplainable ocean of need inside me. “It’s control. It’s uncertainty. It’s—I don’t want to keep stumbling through this relationship afraid of the dark. If I want that future with you, I’m going to have to give up control once in a while. I’m going to have to accept that sometimes I can’t know exactly what’s going to happen. And I know that’s not, like…something you can solve with a blindfold or whatever, but it’s something, you know? It’s a step.”

  “It’s a step you don’t have to take for my sake. I don’t care what you—”

  “It’s not for you,” I interrupted, forceful and firm. “It’s for me. It’s…you know, I’m fucking sick of letting my shitty father dictate what I do and don’t like. Yeah, there are things I might never fully get over, but this…he’s not going to have any say in our sex life—in our relationship. This is you and me, and he doesn’t belong here. He’s already taken so much from me, and maybe this doesn’t actually matter that much in the end, but it would feel so good to just…kind of give the old bastard a big ‘fuck you’ in my head, you know?”

  Ellison’s expression softened a little, but was still deadly serious. “Can you honestly say that you’re doing this entirely for yourself and not for me?”

  “Honestly? No.” I sighed. “I mean, you’re really important to me, Ellison. I don’t tie my shoes or brush my teeth without thinking of you at least a little bit. So yeah, maybe it’s like…10 percent because I want to do something for you—because I want to give you something I’ve never given to anyone else. But the other 90 percent is me. I want to give myself the gift of not being afraid anymore, and if anyone in the world can help me do that, it’s you. I feel safe with you. I’ve never felt so safe with anyone.”

  Ellison dropped his head to my chest with a shuddering sigh. His hand on my wrist was tight enough to almost hurt, and I treasured that—a little piece of him written on my body. I wanted to carry him with me like that, pressed in as deep as my bones.

  Finally he lifted his head, and his eyes met mine again. Steady, unblinking blue. The calm before the storm.

  “Take off your clothes and get on your knees.”

  21

  Usually when Ellison said something like that, it got me instantly hard. This time, there was too much anticipation bundled up inside me, tense and knotted and heavy in my stomach. I stripped down while he went to his closet, and this time I carefully folded each garment as I removed it. I’d never bothered to do that before, and he’d never asked me to, but it seemed important somehow. Right, in a way, to have a bit of ceremony to this. I smoothed the wrinkles carefully out of each folded layer as I placed it on the stack, making it perfect for…maybe him, maybe myself. Us.

  I felt the weight of his eyes on me from across the room, the back of my neck heating under his gaze. He waited silently while I set my neat pile of civilized trappings aside and turned back to him, completely naked and completely his. I went to my knees more easily than I ever had before, a smooth slide down that ended with my palms resting on my thighs, my head down.

  This was where I was meant to be—on display for him, his eyes roving over my skin. I could almost feel his stare like a brush of his fingers, the hair prickling on my arms as I imagined him touching me, imagined each loving caress, each bruising pinch, each red-hot scrape of his fingernails. I wanted him on me, in me, surrounding me. I wanted his name written into my flesh for the world to see.

  “You’re so beautiful like this,” he murmured as he crossed the room to me. His hands skimmed across the expanse of my shoulders and over the top of my head; he flicked my earlobe sharply with one finger, then bent to kiss the other, so sweet and soft it nearly burned by contrast. “I can’t get enough of you.”

  I wanted to say something back—something sweet and romantic, maybe, or something that would stir him to uncontrollable lust—but even more than that, I wanted to be good for him. Perfect for him. I did my best to steady my breath, my heart racing with the thrill of his words.

  There was a soft rustling sound, and his pants fell to the floor in front of me, a loose pile of burgundy twill that had always seemed so neat and polished before. Acting on…I don’t know, maybe instinct, maybe intuition, or maybe just my own irrational compulsions, I reached forward and picked them up, folding them as carefully as I’d folded my own, smoothing the fabric into a neat little rectangle. Order from chaos. Something else I could give him.

  It must have been the right thing to do, because the rest of his clothes followed. It gave me an odd sense of purpose to do this—I wasn’t just a passive participant, I was playing a role. Maybe a small and unnecessary one, but it was something. When everything was neatly folded, I shuffled over to the wall, set the pile next to mine, and went back to my spot, staying on my knees with my head down the entire time.

  “Good boy,” he said, his voice a pleased rumble. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome, sir.”

  I was nearly aching with the desire to look up, to soak up the sight of his naked body, but I kept my head down, trying to treasure the ache as simply another kind of pain he was giving me. He would tell me to look at him when it suited him, and until then I would suffer for him, kneeling and obedient.

  “Do you want to see it before I put it on you?” His tone was light, like the answer didn’t matter to him at all, and that was somewhat soothing. He was going to do everything he could to make this comfortable for me. Not that I’d expected anything different, but knowing a fact and believing it were, obviously, two separate things.

  “Yes, sir,” I whispered, my heart racing.

  “Hold out your hands.”

  Ellison placed the thing in my cupped hands, and there it was: a blindfold in soft black leather, padded and contoured to fit perfectly over a person’s eyes. My breath hitched as I felt it against my fingertips, and I ran my thumbs over the surface of it, painstakingly careful. It felt almost like a living thing, fragile and terrible and unspeakably dangerous.

  I turned it over in my hands, drinking in the texture of it, tugging gently on the elastic strap, testing the softness of the padding. It was such a little thing, so small it should have been inconsequential, and yet it was unbelievably heavy—not in my hands, but deep in my chest, in the dark places lurking in the back of my head. It could crush me if I wasn’t careful.

  But that was why Ellison was here. He would keep me safe and whole. He would take care of me.

  “Thank you, sir,” I said as I held the blindfold out in open palms, offering him the instrument of my destruction.

  When the blindfold slipped over my eyes, I couldn’t stop the flare of momentary panic. My body stiffened, my breath caught. The elastic strap felt like it might crush my skull. Ellison settled the leather in place on my face, adjusting it until it sat comfortably over my eyes, nothing but a light kiss of pressure against my brow and cheekbones. He stood behind me, his hands resting gently on my shoulders, while I slowly brought my lungs back under control. I uncurled the fists I hadn’t realized I’d been making on my thighs, resting my palms against the skin again just like Ellison’s palms were on mine. The heat of him seeped into my muscles, making them loosen—not much, but enough, at least, that I could breathe again.

  “Look at you,” he said, his voice low and approving. “So good for me. Are you scared?”

 
I wished I could tell him no, that his mere presence and his hands on my skin were enough to calm me and soothe me into contented bliss. I wished I could say that all I ever needed was him, that he could solve all my problems with a kiss or a cruel word or the crack of his hand on my skin.

  But all I’d ever been able to give him was the truth.

  “A little,” I said. “It’s a lot to take, but…I trust you, sir.”

  “And I trust you.” I felt him press a kiss to the top of my head, and I pinched my eyes shut under the blindfold, so tight it made dim flickers of light flare up behind my eyelids. “I trust you to tell me if it’s too much to bear.”

  It was a reminder, of course—he was grounding me, reminding me that we were in a scene, and I could stop it at any time. But it too was a kind of truth. As much as I was trusting him to care for my heart, for all my battered, tender spots…he was doing the same with me. He was putting his faith in me. I soared on the exhilarating power he’d handed me—me, the blind man kneeling at his feet.

  “I will, sir,” I breathed, nearly lightheaded from the rush of it. “I promise.”

  We stayed like that a moment longer, just his hands on my shoulders as they rose and fell more and more steadily. His hands were two warm anchor points, linking me irrevocably to him. I could’ve stayed like this forever, just breathing in the dark with him.

  But that wasn’t what we were here for. Too soon, his hands left me, and once again I fought to keep my breath steady. I was suddenly unmoored, with nothing but the floor under my knees to remind me where and who I was. My head felt a little strange and floaty—not quite panic, and not quite the blissful nothingness of subspace, but something kind of in the middle, a little blank and a little lost. I couldn’t quite tell anymore if I was sitting straight up or listing to the side—everything was sort of tilted off its center, so I just did my best to keep my spine rigid, without too much care for which way my head was pointing.

  I’d lost track of him already, momentarily distracted by the burst of fear. I tried to focus on my ears, on the sounds in the room, but all I heard was the humming of the ceiling fan and my own breath scraping in my throat. There was a thump that may have been a footfall, and a brief squeak like an old floorboard, but not quite enough to pinpoint him, not with my blood rushing in my ears and my thoughts roaring like waves through my skull.

  Where was he?

  My breath hitched again, high in my chest, and I swallowed down a gasp. Ellison was here in the room, even if I couldn’t see him. He wouldn’t leave me. I was safe. I was treasured. I was his.

  The rattle of his closet door was equal parts startling and reassuring. He was still here. But now he was digging through his tools and toys, and there was no way to know what he had in store. I tried to pick out noises, but there was nothing I recognized. I’d never even gotten a glimpse into the closet—I had no idea how many things he had in there to use on me.

  Images flashed through my head of things I’d seen in books or at events. Terrifying, fascinating violations and beautiful agonies. Spreader bars. Chastity devices. Clamps and clips and rings of all shapes and sizes. Whips and tails that could flay the skin right off my back.

  I shuddered under the assault of my own mind. I didn’t care what he was going to do to me—I just wanted to know.

  I felt him in front of me a moment later, like I was pinging him with echolocation or something. There was just this void of sound in front of me, everything swallowed up by his gravity. He put his hand on my head, a gentle weight that made me sigh and lean into it, so totally helpless to do anything but yearn for him.

  A tiny tremor rippled through his hand as something cut the air in the distance with a muted whistle. “Do you know what that is?” he asked, cool and clinical.

  I shook my head. “No, sir.”

  “Try to guess.” His hand left my head, and I heard the whistling sound again, this time a little closer.

  “I don’t know,” I gasped helplessly, a lump of fear rising in my throat. My brain was spinning like a tire in mud, just whirling endlessly and gaining no traction. I couldn’t pull a thought together out of the boiling darkness surrounding me.

  Ellison wanted an answer. He always wanted an answer. Why couldn’t I give it to him?

  And then there was pressure against my thigh, something cool and firm and no wider than a finger, and just like that, the fear drained from me like air from a balloon. The point of pressure slid across my skin, nudging up against my fingers where they rested on my legs, and then traveling up my arm to my chest.

  “Any ideas?” He flicked the thing against my nipple, catching the ring with a sharp little click, and I sucked in a quick breath, a tiny kernel of pleasure flickering in my chest. In an instant, every part of me was aching to be touched.

  “Is it…” I gasped as he flicked the other nipple, my shoulders shuddering. “Is it a cane?”

  “Very good,” he purred. He gave each nipple another flick, and this time I moaned out loud, suddenly desperate for more touch, more sensation. It was like taking away my sight had left a deep void in me, and I yearned for something else to fill it. “Have you ever been hit with a cane before?”

  “No, sir,” I whispered, my voice shaking.

  The tip of the cane rose to my face, resting against my lower lip. I trembled and whimpered, intensely aware of that faint hint of pressure, of the wicked promises in it, and of how very vulnerable I was right now, baring my face to him in all his cruelty. He could have struck me full across the face with that thing, and I would have let him do it again.

  “Hands on your head,” he said as he lifted the cane from my skin. A full-body shudder went through me, but I complied, lacing my fingers together over the top of my head while I gasped and yearned for his touch. I shivered there for a long moment in silence, my mind racing but empty of nearly everything but the anticipation of what he was about to give me.

  The first blow came to the side of my thigh, sharp and searing. I yelped at the sudden fire of it, and my breath sped up even more as the realness of what we were doing set in. I was truly helpless here, as much so as if I were bound, and all the pain he’d promised me would soon be mine.

  Ellison struck my other thigh, another stinging stripe that made me jump and then settle down, a little lower than before, a little looser. This wasn’t quite the huge unknown I’d feared. I knew how this part went, at least. Blindfold or no blindfold, I knew what it was like when he hurt me.

  He began to lay down more stripes on my skin, flaring fire-hot and golden. I leaned back, welcoming his stinging kisses on my thighs, and he rewarded me with a flurry of them punctuated with quick flicks of the cane against the soft skin of my inner bicep. Those were so much worse, so much more, and each time my arms pulled forward, an unconscious protective gesture that always proved futile, because one breath later I would expose myself to him again.

  There was no rhythm to it, no pattern, just a random smattering of blows that heated my skin in their wake. My cock was growing hard from his attention, throbbing with every breath and every heartbeat. The welts he lay down on my skin throbbed in time, hot and steady even as he broke the rhythm of my thoughts again and again with unpredictable lances of fresh pain.

  I felt a bead of precum sliding down my head, and for a brief moment I panicked—he hadn’t put a towel down, and his carpet—

  But then the cane cracked across my thigh again, and I sagged into the sensation, relieved and broken. It wasn’t my job to worry about that—my job was only to take what he wanted to give me.

  When the pain in my thighs was just on the edge of too much, he moved me, his sure hands guiding me to all fours and then lower, until my forehead was pressed to the carpet, my arms stretched far overhead and my ass high in the air. This position was surprisingly calming, rooting me in the here and now—there was no more confusion, no more worry about which way was up. I could feel the floor under me in all my limbs, in my face and my hands and my feet, and I knew where
I was, who I was with, what I was for.

  As the cane bit into my skin again and again, I began to sob—not with pain, but with this just…totally overwhelming surge of emotion, of peace and want and togetherness and steadiness all pushed together and trying to get out at once. Ellison molded me like clay under his tender cruelty, breaking me down bit by excruciating bit, and it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever known. Every pause made me drift in the wide, terrifying darkness of my own submission, and every blow brought me right back to him again.

  Under his hand I was terrified, and free, and so very, very loved.

  I started to babble then—words of love, of fear, of desperate, greedy want. I don’t even know. They just came out of me in a tumbling waterfall, breaking with each crack of the cane and surging back again as I shuddered for him and begged for more.

  God, I wanted it all.

  “River—”

  I was so far away I hardly heard his voice, but I did hear the way it cracked, like it was so full emotion was bursting out at the seams. He sounded so torn open, so naked. Had I done that?

  The blows stopped. I nearly whined at their loss, but then he touched me, his hand searing hot on my abused skin, and I—I nearly screamed, it was just so fucking good to hurt this much for him. I was greedy, and needy, and exposed; the welts in my skin were calling out, desperate for him to touch them, to claim them as his own, and he did, rough and hot and brilliant red.

  Oh god, it hurt so fucking much.

  He wasn’t gentle; he grabbed me, slapped me, raked his fingernails across the aching lines in my skin, and the whole time, his breath was unsteady. He made these strangled little sounds as I suffered for him, like he was choking on the enormity of the whole thing, on the way I made him feel.

  It was perfect.

  And then his hand circled my cock, his other hand resting on my ass, hot as a brand, and I just dissolved into this fountain of ecstasy. I hadn’t even realized I was close, hadn’t had the spare brain cells to notice in the middle of all the other sensations, but it took less than three strokes before I was coming, sobbing out my pleasure into the carpet as my cock jerked in his hand and he caressed all the places where he’d written himself on me in pain.