She did, too. For a year and a half. She took everything I dished out, meekly and silently challenging me to raise the ante. And never letting me forget the critical consciousness beneath her compliance. I wondered about that consciousness. I found myself thinking about her, at times when I would rather not have.
I needed a break. She was more than I'd bargained for, more than my life, which has its own complexities and eccentricities-not to speak of affinities and obligationscould readily absorb.
The auction was a good solution to the problem. It would be a challenge for her, and for me, too. They don't take just anybody; I'd have to work her hard to train her for the entrance trials. It would be an excuse to keep dreaming up new stuff-full-time, too. She'd move into my house for a few very intense months, and then she'd be gone, giving me a year to decide what I really wanted. Fine. And then at the last minute-after she'd been auctioned off but before they signed the final papers-I lost my nerve. Suppose she didn't want to come back after a year (absurdly, I'd never even considered the possibility). So I wrote a ridiculous little letter-which didn't feel so ridiculous when I was writing it.
Embarrassing to think about. Well, don't think, then. Look at her instead, her neck in the golden afternoon lightthe year's discipline outlining her gestures, like a narrow stroke of cobalt pigment. The skin over her spine's top bump is paler than her cheek. She must have worn a collar all year, her neck looks startled by its freedom.
They'd drifted into silence, leaning against a stone railing overlooking the bridge. He opened his mouth to speak, at the same time as she began to say something. They both laughed nervously.
"You go ahead," he said.
"You know," she began, "when I got here this morning, I really had no idea what to expect from you. Well, I mean there was that letter you wrote, in `Passionate Shepherd' mode.... "
He raised his eyebrows, searching for the reference. Passionate who? Oh, right, as in "Come live with me and be my.... " Terrific road map, poetry, for steering around the unsayable patches in a conversation.
"Yeah, " she nodded. "But, of course I could see right off that that wasn't really what you wanted, so then I thought you'd go straight for the hard core. Read me my rights, you know. Oh, that was sort of a joke they had in the place where they prepared me for the auction you know, if you think you have any rights, you're in the wrong place.... ..
She turned away from him. Valiant, he thought, the poetry, the sort of joke.
And yes, he had been planning to read her her rights, in that highly esteemed restaurant. It would have been just about now, too. A done deal, instead of... whatever free form nonsense they'd gotten themselves into.
"Which scenario," he asked carefully, "would you have preferred?"
"Well," she lifted her eyes to him, "either one would have given us a clear script to follow."
Fair enough, Jonathan thought. Neither of as ready to fold yet.
"You don't like just hanging out with me?"
They both smiled at the hurt tone of his voice.
"It's difficult," she answered, "with all the open questions sort of hanging in the air between us. I mean, I get the sense that you still want me, but I don't get at all what you've got in mind."
"I want you profoundly," he said quickly. "Complexly," he added. "And quite against my better judgment." He grinned. Elision through allusion. The movies as good as the Norton Anthology for a game of hide-and-seek.
But we could play this way forever.
He made a decision.
"And I do have something pretty, uh, structured in mind. But it'll take some explaining, and arranging. If you agree to it, of course."
She nodded. Almost submissively.
"But" (oh, don't go away yet!), "I've been thinking that we need this unscripted time together, before all that comes down. Kind of a vacation. Time out, you know? I think we need to talk. Catch up."
"Vacation... " she repeated. "You mean, seriously with no rules, no punishments, no, uh, hardware for a while.... "
"If you think you can handle it a little longer."
He smiled at the look she threw him.
"Yeah, " she said, "I can handle it. "
CARRIE
But I think I might have preferred being read my rights. Because time out sounds fair, even scrupulous, I guess, but dangerous, too.
Well, I do like to hang out with him. Talk, laugh, reveal trivial things about myself. Share my own meanings for words here, let me draw you a map of the territory, it'll be so much easier for you that way, when you're ready to roll your troops over the border and take over. When you've decoded all my messages, satisfied yourself that I have no private meanings, no safe words, left.
Still, he's right, this is the way to do it. Think of it as an experiment. My science education seems to have ended in third grade, but I used to love it when we'd shake iron filings over a piece of paper and watch them line up in the magnetic field, positive and negative poles. Test the strength of the attraction, the lines of force. I'll leave when I know I can, and I'll stay if I know I must. And I'll know which is true-well, as I told my seatmate on the train this morning, I'll know it when I know it.
We shook hands on that, an hour later, when we left the train. Clasping hands, for want of a more appropriate gesture, to seal our compact, our brief intimacy between Paris and Avignon, the unlikelihood of our meeting again. He was a good, sympathetic listener, quiet and surprisingly unflappable, like someone who's read the book before he's seen the movie. Call him a perfect stranger, absent a more suitable term, bidding me a formal, reluctant farewell at the frontier. And daring me to be as brave as I need to be. Get it right, he urged me with his eyes. Be certain.
"Okay," I said, goaded to boldness by the memory of the handshake this morning. "Sure."
And laughing suddenly now, at the two of us-well, were we going to stand here exchanging coded messages forever? When the next step was so idiotically simple? "A vacation sounds great, Jonathan. But it begins in your hotel room. In bed. Right now."
JONATHAN
Part of me wanted to laugh too, especially at the look on her face-or looks, since she couldn't quite make up her mind between smug and terrified. I nodded cordially, as though she'd praised the view or the weather, endeavoring not to betray my surprise. Or the more immediate discomfortforget the part of me that wanted to laugh; how long had I been ignoring those other, dangerously urgent, signals?
We sat quietly in the taxi, a little space between us, both of us equally astonished by her move. Hardly touching each other-I mean, not not touching; every so often one of our hands would creep over that little space. But hardly touching. Waiting. The hotel didn't have an elevator just as well, it wouldn't have worked very well to jam ourselves into one of those little French cages right then.
We climbed the three flights of stairs doggedly, entering the room silently. She wandered to the window, opening it out wide, and looked out into the courtyard, the geraniums in pots, deep red and pale purple. You could hear birds, and you could see two young women taking in the fragrant, billowy sheets they'd hung out to dry that morning. "Nice," she said.
I stood next to her and closed the curtains. She turned toward me and I looked down at her neck, rising from the crisp, oversized white shirt under her leather jacket. She didn't have a bra on-the shirt was loose and opaque enough so that wouldn't immediately be apparent. But, trust me, I knew. I looked at the inverted triangle of chest above her shirt's top button, the shadow at the apex where her breasts began. I almost reached to undo the button. And then ...I had a better idea.
I took off my own jacket instead, tossing it on a chair. Sweater and shirt, too. T-shirt. Her mouth twitched a little at the corners, and I kicked off my shoes, reached down, and pulled off my socks.
She put her hand on my belly, and I knew she could feel it tremble. I leaned over to kiss her, lightly, quickly, just grazing her lower lip with my teeth.
She sighed, and then she backed up a step and fo
lded her arms across her chest. Well, she'd certainly gotten into the spirit of this vacation thing. She was smiling now, full out, looking tough in her leather jacket. Her eyes were on my belt buckle. Hungry, amused, challenging. If she'd ever, during the time we'd been together, if she had ever dared look at me that way... well, it would have been unthinkable-she'd have gone off the chart, that informal and arbitrary matrix of transgressions and punishments I'd worked out as our arrangement progressed. Arrive late at my house, five strokes with the rattan cane, forget to address me by name, ten....-
Well, if I'd wanted to guarantee her (hey, and me) a monster erection, I guess I'd succeeded. Probably it was the memory of those punishments-clashing deliciously with her unaccustomed boldness today. I unhooked my belt, using those memories to keep myself focused. Tossing aside my pants, pulling off my shorts. The moment off balance as each foot pulls through its leg hole. And then... nothing to do but stand there and submit to her appraising gaze.
"Well," she murmured, "you're still a very beautiful man, Jonathan. And you're right-it's crazy how little I know about you some ways. Like, how old are you anyway?"
"Thirty-eight," I answered, trying to sound casual. Still... the word had a cold edge to it.
She nodded noncommittally "Help me with my boots, please?"
She sat on the bed and I knelt to take off the stiff, pretty new boots with their intricate, multicolor stitching. She took off her jacket but sat still. I pushed her skirt up. She had on long black stockings, a black garter belt, no panties. Slender, very white thighs. Her pubic hair was short, like the hair on her head; they'd shaved her cunt, the hair was just now growing back. The black stripes of the unadorned garter belt drew the stockings up very high, very taut. The whole effect was so ambiguously situated between whorish and conventlike-after a year, did she really remember so precisely what I liked? Or maybe it was just what Constant liked.
I undid the garters. And then I put my head down and caught the embroidered edge of a stocking in my teeth. I could feel her thigh under my lips and I slowly pulled the stocking down, my mouth sliding over her knee, her calf, her foot. I kissed her instep. And then I repeated the whole business-for the other stocking, the other leg, the other foot. She had just the slightest, heartstopping trace of a purple welt on that second thigh, not quite healed-I lingered on it. It made me want to eat her alive.
I reached for the hook of the garter belt, pulled it softly, and it fell away. The little black miniskirt was made of some stretchy fabric. It was easy to pull off, and she helped me, lifting her ass slightly. I pushed her back on the bed, very gently, so that she was still sitting up, and straddled her. And, much more slowly than I wanted to, I unbuttoned her shirt, while she kissed my neck, my shoulders.
And there she finally was, and I stopped caring about what she might want. I fell on her, grabbing her ass, tonguing her breasts, moving her up to the pillows. Forget the sensitive lover thing; at that moment all I wanted was to get as much of her into my hands as possible, before I got as much of me as possible into her. She moved against me, wrapping her arms around me, arching her back. I felt the hard points of her nipples against my chest. I moved into her, too quickly, really, to savor the familiarity, but I would, later, next time. I tried to work carefully, moving in long, slow strokes. I wanted to last forever, I was afraid I wasn't going to last at all, I guess I lasted long enough-to hear her cry out, anyway, roughly, from the dark bottom of her voice.
And afterward, after I felt her come one last time just a little internal flutter-I heard, or maybe felt, a low laugh bubbling up from her belly. I'd forgotten that laugh, but now I remembered it-her laugh that caught the ridiculous edge of sex so exactly.
I'd punished her, of course, the first time I'd heard that laugh. I'd been charmed by it, but I couldn't let her get away with such flagrant disrespect. I gave her four, I think, or maybe six. It was early on in our time together, and she was still pretty awkward in most ways, but she surprised me by how gracefully she took those strokes. Funny what you remember. And what pushes you forward. I wondered how long until I'd be disciplining her again. But for now, it was enough that she was here, under me. For now.
CARRIE
We must have fallen asleep. Because the next thing I remember was the sun coming through the curtains. It was low, and the light was pink. Sunset.
I was lying on my side. Jonathan was behind me, one arm flung across me, his hand on my breast. Long, tapering fingers, beautifully articulated bones spreading out from his wrists. My skin looked pink in the light, pale pink against the olive of the back of his hand. I could probably bend my head down to kiss his hand if I tried, I thought.
I wanted to, a little. To show him how good I was feeling. Not that I'd exactly been keeping it to myself, but still. It was all so luxurious, so warm and indolent. During the past year I'd occasionally thought of his hands, the bones in his wrists. Their images would drift, unbidden, into my thoughts, late at night, perhaps when the day's challenges had overwhelmed my defenses. I'd remember their weight on my body, their elegant curve around my breasts. And I'd remembered correctly, too, as it turned out. I'll move, I'll do something soon, I kept promising myself. But right at that moment I didn't want to do anything but lie there with the slanted light of the sunset lengthening against us on the bed. Well, perhaps I could shift backward a little, a little closer to his hip....-
His hand tightened. He was beginning to wake up. I lifted my head and licked his fingers. I inched my ass closer to him. He turned a little, and I could feel his cock-still a little moist, but not yet hard jumping a little against me.
I turned a little more so that my ass was directly against his cock, and he moved his other hand under me, reaching for my other breast. He kissed the back of my neck. I arched my back, stroking his belly, his stiffening cock, with my ass until I felt him move into its furrow. Slowly now. I moved back and forth-teeny movements really, stomach contractions, rotate an inch forward, an inch back-while he grew against me.
"Okay," he whispered, and we moved onto our knees, him on top of me.
The bed had a headboard. I grasped it. I didn't want him to have to balance on his hands. I didn't want him ever to take his hands off my breasts. He spread his fingers a little, enough to catch my nipples between them, and then tightened. And while I gasped at the pinch, while I lost a beat in thralldom to that sensation and he felt me lose that beat, he moved his cock against my asshole.
I wasn't ready for him, quite. He knew that, he'd been looking for that moment. He wanted to feel me yielding to him. He pushed slowly and I gave way, arching my back, opening to him, forgetting everything except that yielding, that always frightening letting-loose.
It hurt a little on every thrust. (It always does. I hope it always will.) I pushed back against him. He moved more deeply into me, and I teased myself a little. It hurts too much, I thought, I have to ask him to stop. Yeah, right. I felt myself opening my mouth and trying to shape some words-please, or slower or something-and all I could hear was the sound of myself coming.
He moved his hands from my breasts to the wall above the headboard, leaning heavily forward, surrendering to his own orgasm. Somehow we slid down together to the bed, my sweaty back plastered to him while I felt him shrink slowly in me.
I began to believe, for the first time that day, that I was actually here. With Jonathan in a small hotel with faded blue shutters at the windows and geraniums in the courtyard. Lavender and lemon vervaine in a vase on the dresser; the sheets of our bed still distantly smelling of sun and fresh air, underneath our darker, saltier smells. Vacation: You know you're on holiday when the smells, the colors, begin to take on this sort of painterly solidity. And when the other stuffthe rules, the plans-become vaguer, hazier. Yes, really a vacation, time out from rules and plans, from fantasies, and from reciting his letter to myself as though it were a mantra. No need for romantic endings, or for any endings at all, just yet. Only this lovely, wonderful, all-enveloping lust, in the sw
eet, simple, declarative present. It would do for now. It would do quite nicely.
JONATHAN
It was dark outside now. I didn't want to get out of bed, but finally I had to untangle myself from her to pee. Use the bidet too. Nice. Always a surprise how nice, how sensible.
"We never did have that picnic," she called from the bedroom. "I'm starving. Where's that food you bought?" I heard paper rustling.
When I came back in, I found her cross-legged on the bed, munching a piece of bread.
"Crumbs in bed," I said. Surprising myself by how compulsive I sounded-like a bad parody of myself in a more commanding persona. Still, there was a perfectly good table in the corner of the room, with two perfectly good chairs standing beside it-was it really so impossibly middle-aged to want to use it? I opened a bag of food, began setting it out. She shrugged, giggled, watching me search my pockets for my Swiss Army knife. I cut pieces of cheese, spread pate on bread, opened the bottle of wine. I set everything out on paper, found the napkins and plastic wine glasses I'd remembered to get.
"In return," I said, "you're responsible for entertainment. I want a story from your year." Surprising myself again, this time by my eagerness to hear, to know, everything. Insults, punishments, humiliations: all the ways she'd been used, forced, bound, whipped, punished-how, and (trickier business) by whom. So that I could lay claim, begin to possess the experiences she'd had this past year. Droit du seigneur. My right to demand that she spin the straw of experience into the gold of narrative, for my entertainment. For the edification and delectation of the gentleman in the audience.
Safe Word Page 2
