Breaking Through

by A. M. Hartnett

  Her mind a muddle, she couldn’t tell whether he expected an answer this time, and so she just said, ‘Got it’ and dragged the rope towards her.

  The atmosphere around her moved, and out of the corner of her eye she saw him kneel. She caught a smudge of purple and his grip tightened, and she conjured up the memory of that sweet kiss on the cheek a moment ago.

  ‘Can I ask you something, before you start?’ she gasped.

  His grip eased just slightly. ‘Sure.’

  ‘Is that how you like … whoever … talking to you before they do it to you?’

  ‘I’m not usually allowed to talk for very long before I’m told to just shut the fuck up and bend over.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, trying to work out whether this tidbit said more about how he was dominated or about the effect his cockiness had on whoever had him at their mercy.

  Not that it mattered much now that the paddle came down on her right cheek. She gripped the rope in her hands and winced as the first crack rang out and vanished. She had less time than it took to draw a breath to process how dissimilar – and less painful – the blow was compared to when he had used his hand. Felt against flesh was no match for flesh against flesh, and as he gave her one smack after another, she wondered how it was possible that she was actually disappointed.

  After about ten hard whacks, Simon stopped and pushed her head down. ‘We’re not quite there yet. You’re pink, almost as pink as the rest of you, but we’ve got a ways to go before you’re painted red. Still got that rope?’

  ‘Yup,’ she said quietly, and shivered as he applied a bit of pressure to the plug. It could go no deeper, but just a little push was a keen reminder of what she had let him do to her.

  Another series of thumps on the ass resounded, ten more on the left cheek before he stopped and came around to her front.

  He held out his hand and she placed the rope across his palm. Something must have shown on her face, perhaps a little of her disillusionment, because as he closed his hand around it he laughed.

  ‘You look crushed.’

  ‘I was expecting it to, I don’t know …’

  ‘Turn you into a nymphomaniac?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  He left the paddle on the table and unfurled the rope. Then he looked around, cursed and took it to the kitchen. He returned with the rope in three pieces.

  ‘Isn’t your ass hot?’

  ‘Yes, and prickly, but … it’s like the pain is there, and then it’s gone.’

  He squatted down to her level and drew out the cords in front of him. ‘Do you want me to give it to you harder?’

  ‘I kind of want my money back.’

  He shook his head and laughed, then bent closer to her and whispered, ‘Do you want to try my paddle?’

  Miranda nodded. His paddle didn’t seem as scary as it once did.

  ‘We’ll try mine, but first put your hands out.’

  He wrapped her wrists and left the tails of the rope hanging down, then used them as a lead while he guided her away from the table. Onto her back she went with her legs up, admiring those broad shoulders rolling and those skilled fingers tying a second cord around her ankles. The third cord joined the two in a tight line that made a V out of her body that she suspected would leave her abs more sore than her ass in the morning.

  ‘All right, my love, let’s see about giving you some of the rougher stuff you crave.’

  Off he went again, only this time his return was much more significant and thrilling. She was able to see him coming out of the shadows of the hallway, enormous and menacing in his long stride with that black paddle in hand. He wasn’t completely soft any longer. Though not at full mast, his cock was beginning to fill and strained away from his balls slightly.

  The paddle wasn’t the only thing he had. He’d also brought the camcorder.

  ‘Please don’t film this,’ she begged. ‘I might chicken out and I don’t want it memorialised.’

  ‘This isn’t for recording.’ He stopped next to the coffee table and planted his hand on his hip. ‘You know this thing has a projector built in?’

  He set the paddle on top of its sister and fiddled with the camcorder on the coffee table until the sordid scenes within splashed across the blank wall in front of her that was intended for her painting.

  Oh, she’d seen this before. She’d watched it on her own phone, in her own bed, while he used her vibrator to mimic the depth and speed with which she sucked him on-screen.

  The three-and-a-half-inch screen on her phone was nothing compared to the panorama before her. There was no audio, only the picture. Simon had held the camera that night, and Miranda’s doppelgänger held onto his wrists while he fucked her.

  Simon reclaimed the paddle and knelt in front of her. As big as the picture was, he only partially obscured it.

  ‘Take a good look,’ he said, and ran the cool surface of the paddle from her bound ankles down to her pussy. ‘You can’t see it, but her ass is pretty red, too. She loved the spanking she got, didn’t she?’

  Another question that didn’t need an answer. The scuttle began on-screen and the couple moved into their positions, the woman on top, lifting her heavy breasts as she grinned down upon the camera and her man.

  Miranda gasped, then let it out with a whimper. He’d hit her no harder than he’d done with the fuzzy paddle, but his delivered a much more ample sting.

  Pausing for a moment, Simon studied her face, then followed her gaze as it moved beyond him to where that woman who looked just like her stared back at her wantonly.

  ‘Look at how well she works those hips,’ he said, and touched the paddle to her lower back just above her ass. ‘Nice. Very nice.’

  With the leather paddle, Miranda could only take ten smacks in succession before shrieking for him to stop. Once again he admired his work, and ran his hand down the backs of her thighs.

  He rubbed the sore, stinging spot, but brought no relief. ‘Think you can take a few more?’

  The heat had begun to spread, but the ache had only begun. A few, yes, but no more. She nodded and, turning her attention to the scene beyond Simon, managed to smile.

  ‘Look,’ she said, and giggled as he followed her gaze. The camera had been turned on Simon as he got his ride. ‘Look at his face while she’s fucking him.’

  Ten more. Not the rhythm as before, one after another, but ten evenly spaced slaps that jarred her from head to toe. He’d strike, then pause to let the sting and the heat set in, and then came the next.

  Ten more, the last of which was hard enough to make her yelp, and the paddle landed next to her head.

  Its purpose clearly served, the cord that joined her hands and feet loosened and was discarded, as was the one around her ankles. He left her wrists bound, though, as he went back to the crop.

  ‘Open your legs like before,’ he demanded, and as soon as she obliged the maddening patter upon her clit resumed.

  The picture behind him faded from her consciousness as he drummed her as rapidly as if he had never stopped. In seconds he had played her right back to where he had left off, consumed by the beat upon her swollen flesh and beneath the skin.

  ‘Time’s up,’ he growled. ‘Did you figure it out yet?’

  She twisted her fingers together as he kept on drumming, too overcome by sensation to hold onto a thought for more than a millisecond.

  What in the hell was he talking about? Did it even matter?

  ‘It was a bit of a trick question,’ he went on. ‘I mean, you were pretty much my fucktoy as soon as you decided to take your shopping trip, but I’d say the exact moment would have been when you picked this marvel out. I don’t know what you were thinking I’d do with it, but using it to make you come like this probably wasn’t it.’

  She lifted her head and looked down her body, to where the crop moved so fast on her clit that black blurred with the pink of her sex.

  Simon slipped the other hand lower and fucked the plug in and out of her ass. ‘How’
s this feel?’

  Miranda tried to make words, but it was just no use. One look past him showed her former self in a similar predicament …

  ‘This might be a first for me,’ he said as she dropped her head back onto the carpet in surrender. ‘I’ve never made anyone actually come like this …’

  That pounding pleasure ripened and burst, driving her up onto her shoulders with a sob. The tapping ceased at last, as did the penetration, and she rode her orgasm on his fingers.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ she gasped as soon as he retreated, and lifted her head in time to see him snap a condom over his dick. He was on top of her in the next second and drove into her in one clean thrust.

  Having filled her, Simon loomed up over her like a mountain.

  ‘Wrap your legs around me,’ he demanded.

  She locked him in and pressed her bound hands to his chest to keep that manic visage in her sights as he began to pump her.

  It was as though his fortitude had been spent. Now there was only this hard rutting, body pounding against hers so that every plunge was a hot reminder of what he had done with that paddle, and of the presence of that plug.

  No matter what he had said about making her his fucktoy, no matter when it might have happened, this was the moment she reclaimed him. Watching his face as he chased his release, Miranda saw that egotism break down, one thrust at a time.

  She bucked to meet him with what little energy she had left, working him into the same frenzy he’d unleashed in her. Red-faced and demonic, Simon drove deep one last time.

  When he lost the fight against his weakening muscles and crashed down on her, Miranda looked over his shoulder at the couple on the screen. The other Miranda was wrecked, grinning stupidly as she lifted her head and surveyed the sticky fluid that had been left in streaks across her belly. Behind the camera, Simon must have said something; she flopped back and covered her face as she laughed.

  ‘I didn’t think you had it in you,’ he said, his mouth wet and warm against the crook of her neck. ‘I really, really didn’t think you had it in you. I was hoping you didn’t.’

  He pushed up onto his elbows – it seemed as though this was as far as he could go – and Miranda wiped the damp strands of hair from his brow. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because you’d prove me wrong, because if you let me do something like tie you up and paddle you, talk to you like I did, I’d have to face that I really was a bad influence to make a girl as good as you turn into this.’

  She pulled him into a kiss, then smiled against his mouth as he rested his brow against hers.

  ‘I like you bad,’ she whispered, ‘and I like how bad you make me. I like surprising you, since you’re so convinced I’m good.’

  ‘You are good,’ he countered, and kissed her again, ‘but you’re an even better bad girl.’

  Chapter Ten

  There was something off about Miranda that night, but he intuited that it wasn’t something she wanted to talk about. She needed something from him tonight, something physical but not sexual, and though he was unnerved by her quiet he gave her what she needed with his cosy embrace.

  On the lumpy sofa in the dark, he squeezed her closer and rested his chin on the top of her head. ‘I don’t get this show. Why don’t they just throw out the tin cans?’

  Her body vibrated against his with her giggle. ‘They can’t. That’s the problem. They’re hoarders.’

  ‘But they’re just tin cans. And the guy with the VCRs. Who has a VCR these days? This guy has six.’

  ‘You know, for a guy with a crippling addiction you’re a goddamn insensitive prick.’

  No matter how many times she sliced him with that tongue of hers, it never failed to make him laugh. He did it now, resting his head back and letting it come out while she shushed him because she couldn’t hear the television.

  ‘Do you want to turn it off?’ she asked him.

  ‘Only if we can clean the kitchen instead … I was kidding.’

  Still, in spite of his protest, Miranda lifted the remote and pressed a button. RECORD popped up on the screen, and she passed the remote to him. ‘I can watch it later. Here, you pick. Nothing with zombies and nothing with a guy who flies around in a blue telephone booth.’

  ‘If you want to get technical, it’s a police box, and he doesn’t fly so much as he travels through time and space.’ He peered at the remote and found the GUIDE button in the flickering light of the television. After a couple of cycles it returned to the reality show.

  ‘This is why I don’t have cable,’ he announced, and set the remote on the arm next to him.

  ‘Entertain me, then,’ she murmured. ‘Tell me more about those pictures you showed me of you by the campfire.’

  ‘You mean, tell you about when I was a kid.’

  ‘Mmm, I liked how happy you sounded when you talked about it.’

  ‘Jesus, that was thirty years ago. I don’t know if I can come up with anything,’ he said, but it came back to him. ‘You ever go camping when you were a kid?’

  ‘A few times.’

  ‘I went every summer. My family would take trips, ski trips and beach trips mostly, but I had the most fun when I went with Jacques to his grandfather’s place in New Brunswick. We were like monsters for a month straight, only wore shoes when Jacques’s mom made us go with her to the store. They had a big house – he lives there now – but we’d stay with his grandfather in this old farmhouse surrounded by trees and marshes. We were a couple of city kids who never got to do anything like climb trees or catch frogs, so this was like waking up in an amusement park every morning. You can’t pretend to be Navy SEALs on a manicured lawn and on prissy decorative trees.

  ‘We’d be up at seven and out the door at eight. I’d burn like a fucker and Jacques would get eaten alive by bugs, and if we could still keep our eyes open Jacques’s grandfather would drive us in his old pickup down to the big house and we’d sit around the fire pit with s’mores or hot dogs or just toast with butter.’

  ‘Oh, yum, we used to toast homemade bread on the barbecue when we had a balcony,’ she said, her voice breaking Simon free from the memory he’d let out.

  ‘I miss it,’ he admitted, and tucked his arms tighter around her. ‘If you’re up for it, we can take a weekend and drive up.’

  She didn’t say anything for a minute, and he worried he’d jumped too far ahead too soon.

  ‘Could we take Eddie with us?’

  There it was, that slight shake of her voice that confirmed what he first suspected when he listened to her message on his way out of town. Something had happened to put her on edge. Something to do with the sister he’d never met, mention of whom made Miranda’s mouth tighten. She didn’t want to leave the kid alone with her sister unless absolutely necessary.

  He wanted to ask again what had happened, but he’d already done so when he’d picked her up and again during their café time, and she’d just told him that nothing was wrong. She didn’t want to talk about it, so he wouldn’t push it.

  ‘He’d probably like it,’ Simon told her. ‘Not like he can climb trees or anything, but he’d probably have a ball chasing fireflies.’

  ‘I’ve never seen fireflies,’ she said, and her whole body swelled as she took a deep breath and let it out. The prospect of the excursion seemed to relieve some of her tension. She felt more pliant now and not a tense ball in his arms.

  After a few moments more he felt the feather-light pressure of fingers dancing across his thigh. ‘Should we just turn it off?’

  ‘Not yet,’ she murmured, making her way to the stiff hump of his fly. Aside from her twisting wrist as she unbuttoned and unzipped his shorts, neither of them moved from their cinch. Once his cock was out, Miranda simply passed her hand over her tongue, and cuddled deeper into the crook of his arm as she wrapped her hand around him.

  Simon would have preferred to take her to bed, to taste every inch of soft skin and twist his fingers into her hair, but when she looked up and gave him that naught
y smile he resigned himself to wait.

  ‘I used to do this at the old apartment,’ she whispered, her grin spreading. ‘Back when Des moved back in with us, she’d keep my Mom occupied with a game of cards at the table while I’d hunker down with my boyfriend in front of the television under a blanket. I know it’s just you and me, but this still feels kind of naughty.’

  ‘And a little nostalgic,’ he muttered as warmth started to pool in his abdomen. ‘I can’t remember the last time I had an honest-to-God handjob.’

  ‘Liar,’ she teased, working the skin as he got harder. ‘You remember, don’t you?’

  He chuckled. ‘You got me. You don’t want to hear about it, do you?’

  ‘Of course I do. You should know by now what a big perv I am.’

  Simon closed his eyes and tilted his head back. He remembered, but the gentle yet insistent magic her hand was casting made it easy to forget his entire sexual history. He purred as she closed her fist around the head, squelching precome in her palm, and took a moment to enjoy the wet friction.

  ‘Montreal. Grey Cup. Calgary versus Winnipeg. I never even got her name. She was a cute thing sitting next to me. I tried to get her number and she shot me down, but she asked me to hold her coat and then jerked me off under it. Hell of a game.’

  He moaned out the last sentence. Having wrenched his secret out of him, Miranda shifted up onto her knees and bent over him. The wet heat of her mouth stole away that memory, and the vibration of her moan cascading down his cock chased away whatever thought he had in the aftermath.

  As the drum of his pulse became more and more prominent between his ears, Simon shook his head against the back of the sofa. He didn’t want to come in her mouth. He wanted to be balls deep in that silky glove of a pussy, with her sharp teeth nipping at his shoulder, anchoring him as he tried to keep his orgasm at bay until she’d had hers.