by Ruby Laska
But Ricardo, despite working—or at least claiming to work—in the art world, had the gift of language. The ability to ignite her passion with a word, to bring her over the edge with a phrase.
He sat down on the couch next to the love seat, his knees not quite touching hers. He picked up his wine and sipped again. Chelsea put a self-conscious hand to her face, tracing the path of his hand.
“I’m sure you know that sometimes sex means almost nothing,” Ricardo continued, gazing intently into her eyes. “A man and woman fuck—they join their bodies in heat and desire. When they are done, they are satisfied. The act is like the scratching of an itch, the slaking of a thirst. Would you agree?”
“I…yes…Sir,” Chelsea whispered.
“You have had many lovers,” Ricardo said, even though she had never told him so. Somehow he just knew. “As have I. But often, even when your body has had its pleasure, your mind, it is still restless. Your heart is full of longing. Maybe you feel a little sadness, a little anger, and you don’t know why.”
That was it, exactly. After a night with Caleb or Benedict—or the men who had come before, enough of them that their memories were hazy, the details of their encounters blurred—Chelsea felt nothing so much as the urge to flee.
“Some people aren’t meant to feel more,” she said, surprising herself with the note of bitterness in her voice. “Some people are…broken.”
“You think you are broken?” At least she’d provoked a reaction from Ricardo. He leaned forward, his black eyebrows lowered. “You think God has turned away from you? That the sadness in your life has robbed you of your vitality?”
“I just…it’s just that I have been on my own for a very long time. I didn’t—I didn’t have a childhood, really.” Chelsea bit her lip, wondering if she’d already said too much.
The night that Ricardo had taken her to a party high above the glittering city, she’d been caught by paparazzi as they left; the flash of the bulbs had taken her straight back to the horrors of her stepfather’s abuse. Ray Huber had photographed her in sexually explicit poses from the age of seven until she finally ran away at fourteen, and while he had never touched her, the abuse had left its indelible mark on her psyche.
She had fought her way to a life, aided by the kindness of her fairy godfathers, educated by the streets and, later, the libraries and galleries of the city. She supported herself, she had dreams and plans for her gallery. But she had accepted that she would never have marriage, a family, the kind of everyday love that others took for granted.
She had contented herself with the bitter, broken shards for years. Until Ricardo had taken her past everything she thought she knew, turning her experiences and expectations upside down.
“Ah, I see. But Chelsea, when we are together, you feel alive, no?”
“I do.” She forced herself to hold his gaze though every fiber of her being wanted to look away, to hide. Fear made her want to retreat; hope—and the pure strength of Ricardo’s convictions—made her push herself harder. Further.
“I never doubted what is between us. I left you because I want to protect you. I would do anything to keep you safe, Chelsea. Do you believe me?”
“I…think so.”
“But I cannot do it by staying away from you, as I had intended. The events of this evening make that clear. Now I have no choice but to come back into your life. To be close enough to you always that others will not be able to force themselves into your world, much less harm you. But you must still agree. I cannot care for you properly, I cannot keep you safe, unless you want me there.”
He took her hand, gently, threading her fingers through his.
“This is much more serious than the safe word I gave you for use during our time together. This is as important as the blood that runs in your veins, the air that you breathe. If you allow me, we will be bonded. Indelibly. I am not saying that I will force myself on you. You can always cast me out. But we will mark each other in ways that cannot be undone.”
The things he was saying were beginning to go beyond the limits of Chelsea’s comprehension: she didn’t know if he was proposing protecting her, gangster style, or shadowing her as she went about her life or watching and controlling her every move. But her trust in him—stupidly, perhaps—didn’t waver.
“I need…” She needed something, obviously. She could call the police, she could move away. Or she could put her trust in this near stranger, a man with more secrets than anyone she had ever known. A man who clearly moved in dangerous circles. But, perhaps, the only man who could really know her. “I need your help,” she finally admitted. “I need you.”
He squeezed her hand more tightly, then pressed it to his mouth, his lips grazing her knuckles. “Then it is decided. You are mine now, Chelsea—mine to protect. I will not take my obligation lightly.”
Then he pulled her toward him. Chelsea went to her knees on the rug in front of him, her wrists captured in his strong, large hands.
“And you are also mine to use.”
There was the faintest trace of a question in his eyes; he was seeking her acquiescence of a need they both knew to burn within her. She bent her head, closing her eyes, supplicating before him. “Yes, Sir, I am. Yours.”
“All right, then.” He bent and kissed her forehead, very gently. “Then we will not discuss it any further tonight. Now, please go to the bedroom and get the wooden box that you will find on a shelf in the closet. Bring it to me without opening it.”
Chelsea felt her heart pound with anticipation, and when she stood, she had to steady herself so that her legs wouldn’t tremble. She walked through the candlelit room, following the light emanating from the end of the hallway. She had spent one previous night in the bedroom at the end of the hall, but she had woken alone, Ricardo having left in the night.
This time when she walked through the bedroom door, the room was somehow transformed. The linen spread on the bed, the deeply textured sand-colored walls, the handmade Navaho rug on the tiled floor were the same. The bathroom, with its rough-hewn stone and pewter fixtures, was the same as when she’d showered there. But the room seemed heavy with possibility as if it had secrets of its own, secrets that it would impart to her only over time.
The door to the walk-in closet stood open, lit by discreet recessed fixtures. Several fine cotton shirts and tailored jackets hung from wooden hangers, and a pair of leather shoes waited on a shelf.
There, in the center of the closet, was the box. A foot and a half square, it was simply constructed of dark wood that shone from polishing, with a brass handle on the lid. It was surprisingly light, and as Chelsea carried it to the living room she wondered what was inside. Perhaps the red silk scarves that Ricardo had used to bind her. Or the fringed suede flogger with which he had teased her pussy…or the specially made candles whose wax he had dripped over her breasts.
She knelt in front of him, presenting the box. He nodded approvingly and took it from her.
“Thank you, Chelsea. Now, please, if you would make yourself comfortable on the bed, I will join you in a moment. But first, take the lid off the box and look at what is inside.”
Breathlessly, she lifted the fitted lid, setting it aside on the couch. Inside, she glimpsed shimmering sea blue silk. Straps and bits of lace identified underwear of some sort; curiously, it rested on a pile of clothespins, the old-fashioned wooden kind, strung on a coiled length of clothesline.
She looked up at him sharply. The clothesline wasn’t strong enough to restrain her; where were the ropes he’d used before? And as for the clothespins, what did he intend to do with them?
“I will gather a few more things. Make yourself ready. Remove your clothes, please, while you are waiting for me, and put on these.” He reached into the box and handed her the silk garments, the fabric slipping almost liquidly over his fingers.
Thus dismissed, Chelsea got to her feet a second time and was about to leave the room when Ricardo stopped her with a hand on her thigh, his fin
gers closing around the denim of her jeans.
“There is one more thing. I would like you to go on your hands and knees.”
Chelsea blinked, then looked incredulously at the hallway. Like the rest of the house, it was tiled in old, worn Saltillo tiles, the thick pottery creating a hard surface that would be punishing to her knees, not to mention humiliating.
But…her body had responded to his shocking suggestion. Heat and blood rushed from her core, tingling along her nerve endings. Slowly, tentatively, she lowered herself to the ground until she was on all fours, the underwear grasped in one hand, looking over her shoulder at him.
He nodded. “Right. Good. Now, off you go.”
And so she crawled.
It wasn’t a long distance; the house was compact and snug. The rug was soft and plush under her hands, but the tile was not. She could feel her face grow hot with mortification as she made her way down the hallway, her knees aching when they came in contact with the hard surface, one hand clutching the underwear carefully so that it didn’t touch the floor. She rounded the corner into the bedroom and, finally out of his sight, collapsed into a child’s pose, her forehead on the Navajo rug, her arms outstretched, her body tucked up small.
And yet she knew she wouldn’t stop now. Whatever Ricardo asked of her next, she was ready for. The safe word he had given her—magnolia—flitted at the edges of her mind, and she knew she could call upon it if he pushed her too far.
But so far, everything he had ordered her to do only made her more desperate for him.
She pulled her shirt over her head and, remembering his predilection for order, folded it before laying it on an old caned missionary chair that sat next to the bed. Her jeans followed, then the plain black bra and panties. They were her best, but next to the silk pieces, they seemed unbearably dull and dowdy.
She looked at the garments he’d given her more carefully. A lace-trimmed thong with only the tiniest triangle of silk to cover her pussy, and a balconette bra whose cups dipped coquettishly low. She took a breath and slipped them on.
The thong cut tantalizingly into her ass and teased her pussy, and the bra cups barely covered her nipples. She tugged the straps this way and that experimentally but no matter what she did, the rosy edges of her areolae were still exposed, the stitching of the silk teasing maddeningly at her tender flesh.
She was trying to figure out how to arrange herself on the bed, turning her legs from one side to the other and shuddering at the sensations caused by the silk sliding between her legs, when Ricardo came into the room. He stood leaning in the doorway, the wooden box resting on one hand, and watched her.
She stilled, her legs awkwardly akimbo, and plucked at the bra, pointlessly. She wondered if she could get away with slipping under the covers.
“Sit at the edge of the bed, please.”
She did as she was instructed, feeling as exposed as she did at the doctor’s office, waiting on the uncomfortable paper-lined bed in a scanty disposable gown. She’d always hated visiting the doctor, the sense of exposure; it was too close to the memories of her stepfather setting up tableaus in his photographic “studio,” really just a dank, dark room added on to the back of the bungalow, with cheap buckled paneling and stained carpet.
But she didn’t feel anything like that now. As Ricardo watched her, it was as though his hunger for her was a palpable thing, as though his desire could actually change the atmosphere inside the room. He wanted her, as evidenced by the bulge of his erection that he made no move to disguise.
“Something I’ve noticed about you,” he said conversationally, finally coming to join her. He set the wooden box next to her on the bed and pulled over a wicker chair so that he was sitting in front of her, straddling her thighs with his own. “Like all women, you have areas of great sensitivity. But you, Chelsea, are a little more sensitive than most. Here, for instance—” He grazed the exposed top rim of her nipple, and she convulsed, a shudder wracking her body. “Yes, just as I thought. And here.” He dipped a hand down and traced a fingertip behind her knee, so lightly that his touch seemed almost ephemeral, but it caused a response from her nonetheless, a rocking of her hips, a grinding of her cunt against the bedspread, forcing the thong’s strap more deeply into her cleft. She felt her dampness leak from her onto the bed, but there was nothing she could do to restrain herself. Which he knew…so very well.
“Yes, you are exceptional in many ways,” Ricardo went on, seeming almost amused. “And so we must try exceptional things to keep your attention. Mustn’t we, my filthy, desperate, needy little putita?”
Chelsea wasn’t sure if he expected a response, but she ducked her chin, her eyelashes fluttering with the excitement that never failed to imbue her when he called her crude names in both Spanish and English. She’d worked hard to protect her control of her own body, but in his hands she was more than ready to be his putita, his little whore.
Ricardo took her hand and placed it gently on his hard cock, the fabric of his trousers failing to disguise its girth. She grabbed greedily, squeezing, and her lips parted involuntarily as she remembered how it had felt to take him into her mouth…and down her throat, as he fucked her hard and then—
He pushed her hand away. “We have a little project first.” He reached into the wooden box and withdrew one of the simple clothespins. It was no more than two unfinished raw bits of wood connected by a wooden spring, with a hole drilled for the cord that ran through it.
“We never used these in the workshop of my father,” Ricardo said. “A fine garment deserves a structured hanger, the proper support to keep its shape. But I have found that they have other uses.”
She caught her breath as he turned the humble object over in his palm. Then he leaned toward her and lifted the hair from one shoulder, and clipped the pin to the sensitive skin below her collarbone.
It shocked more than it hurt; the pressure of the pin wasn’t so great as to injure her skin. It was a novel feeling, but not particularly erotic, and she looked at Ricardo with a question in her eyes.
He reached for the second pin that dangled a few inches down the clothesline.
This one went an inch below the first. They swayed with the motion of his hand, sticking out from her skin, almost ludicrous looking.
“Comfortable?” Ricardo asked with a wicked arch of his brow.
“Yes.”
“You won’t be, soon, don’t worry.”
He continued to place the wooden pins in a line that continued down past her nipple, between her breasts, taking his time and whistling occasional tuneless notes. The skin under the first pin was pink and rapidly turning numb.
It took ten minutes, maybe more; Chelsea was aware that time had taken its own measure in this room, as though it had been charmed by a spell. She concentrated on the sensations of the wood pinching her skin, but also on his fingers brushing against her, his breath warming her when he bent close. Finally, when the line of pins had snaked down over her stomach and along the crease of her thigh, the last one only centimeters away from the smooth, waxed outer lips of her labia, he sat back and regarded his handiwork. Seemingly satisfied, he nodded and took one last pin from the box, a loose one that wasn’t strung from the cord.
He picked up her hand, turning it over and exposing the sensitive skin of her wrist. He pinched the pin into place, the little ridge of flesh thin and an angry white.
“You see, it can’t really harm you or do any lasting damage. If I pull it off, there is a brief discomfort.” He did so, and the pin made a faint snapping sound as the twin legs snapped together. She rubbed at her wrist, where a faint red mark showed where the pin had been.
Ricardo took her hand again and reattached the pin exactly where it had been before. “But you remember what I told you, don’t you? The pain and pleasure centers in the brain are very close together. I am not a scientist, but I believe that for a woman, they are especially so…for a woman such as yourself, guided by your passions—a pure sensualist—these are
as must be very close together indeed.”
While he was speaking, he gently thrummed the clip with his thumb, sending it swaying back and forth. The tug on her skin changed with the movement of the pin, causing the interplay of discomfort to rise and fall, like the notes of a concerto. And yes…buried in the discomfort were the faint strains of pleasure, building within the nerve endings along her arm.
“And you see, if your body is stimulated in this way, then other sensations can become so much more intense.” While he continued to manipulate the pin, he used his other hand—just the fingertips—to trace tiny, feather-light circles in the crook of her arm above her wrist. The feeling was astonishing, unfamiliar, sharp and irresistible. Pleasure built not just along her arm, up the nerves to her shoulder, but also up and down her spine, out along all of her limbs to her extremities. It was as though he had found a way to stimulate all of her at once, through the narrow, focused touch.
Chelsea ground harder against the bed, letting her knees fall wider to give better access to her pussy. Abruptly, Ricardo stopped what he was doing, yanking the clothespin free and dropping it to the ground, and then placing both his hands on her thighs, forcibly stilling her.
He bent his lips to her ear. “You did not ask permission to pleasure yourself,” he murmured softly. Then he took the end of her earlobe between his lips and gently tugged it, and Chelsea tried not to lean into the touch, to beg for more.
Suddenly pain shot through the tender lobe. He’d bitten her—hard. She cried out and clamped a hand to her ear, certain that her fingers would come away bloody. He had sat back in his chair and was watching her.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I told you I would leave no lasting damage. That was a promise, and I think you have known me long enough to know that I am a man of my word.”
