Thrill Seeker

by Kristina Lloyd

  ‘You like this, huh?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Tell me what else you like.’ He followed his request with another slap.

  I shrugged, feeling shy before the anonymous mask. ‘Cock,’ I murmured.

  ‘Louder.’

  ‘Cock!’ I barked.

  ‘That’s better. What else?’ With a milder touch, as if he were trying to chase the answer from me, he gave my face a quick succession of taps, my cheek making silly popping noises beneath his fingers.

  ‘Cock and fucking,’ I said.

  He struck me hard, leaving a sting on my cheek. I gasped, anger jabbing inside me.

  ‘Stop being coy,’ he said. ‘Stop acting as if you’re an ordinary fuck. You think I’d be interested if you wanted nothing more sophisticated than cock? And fucking? I can get that anywhere.’ He landed another cruel, reprimanding slap on my cheek. ‘I didn’t bring you here for a fuck. Arranging this has cost me time and effort. Now show some appreciation for that. Show some gratitude.’

  I winced, struggling for the right words. This had been so much easier to express when he was a man on the other side of the computer screen. But communication wasn’t the point here. The point was to humiliate me, to bring my defences down until I was weak and horny.

  I waited for him to slap me again, wanting the excuse of being forced to speak, but he held off. ‘Well?’ he urged. ‘Tell me what you get off on.’

  I drew a deep breath, my eyes cast low to dodge the blank gaze of the mask. ‘Being used,’ I said. ‘I like feeling sluttish, nasty. I like being forced to do things I shouldn’t really do.’

  I stopped but he pinched my chin, forcing me to face him. ‘Keep going,’ he said.

  I breathed deeply again, trying to summon up courage. I stared into the eye holes of the mask, trying to find the man behind it and create a connection. ‘I like being made to take it,’ I said with a hint of defiance. ‘To take cock. And shame and pain and whatever he wants to inflict. I like feeling powerless. Overwhelmed. Stripped of control and responsibility. I like being afraid because I don’t know how far he’ll go. I get off on the thrill of that. On fear because it feels as if my life is in his hands. I like …’ I scoured my brain for something to encapsulate my desire. ‘I like to feel subsumed in a man.’

  Subsumed. I’d been searching for that word for too long. I resisted the urge to supply further clarification, to tell him being subsumed wasn’t a smallness because I could only be subsumed when he was vast and powerful. Kind of like giving it up to God.

  ‘Whore,’ said Den, demonstrating a flagrant lack of interest in my attempts at articulation. He brought a hand swooping across to swipe at my breast, making my flesh jiggle and snapping my attention back to my body. I yelped and he repeated the action with his other hand on my other breast.

  The dreadful blankness of the mask enhanced the sense he was an emotionless torturer, no facial expression to betray his feelings. His aloofness compared to my reactive state heightened his power and my subjugation. The imbalance excited me, as did the ever-present fear that I didn’t know who he was and, for whatever reason, he intended to keep me in the dark about that.

  He kept slapping my breasts, right and left, his right hand providing the sharper hit while I squealed and flinched. My flesh bounced, ligaments pulling, skin tingling with the heat of his stings. I was breathless with shock and arousal, my nipples now lurid, pink tips advertising his effect on me.

  He stepped closer still and dug his hand between my thighs, bunching my skirt into my naked crotch. ‘Where do you feel it?’ he asked. ‘Here, like a cheap whore?’ He jammed his hand higher, his gesture aggressive and crude. ‘Or here, like a clever whore?’ He withdrew his touch and tapped my temple. He sounded so posh when he said ‘whore’.

  He paused to let me reply. High above us, the emptiness of the domed ceiling quivered with the coo of pigeons.

  ‘Both,’ I whispered. My body’s reaction challenged my answer. The thudding in my cunt filled my tissues as swiftly as if I were being pumped up, the sensation so fierce it threatened to overwhelm my mental faculties. A woolly question flitted across my brain. How can I be psychologically affected when I’m turning into an animal?

  ‘Thought so.’ His voice was soft with something bordering on compassion. Lightly, he stroked my jaw, his touch kind. His tenderness made me nervous. I felt sure it was a trick.

  ‘Have you ever been fucked in the arse?’ he asked.

  I cleared my throat. ‘I’m thirty-two years old. Of course I have.’

  The fingers continued, tracing a line down my neck to the dip between my collarbones. ‘Do you like it?’

  I shrugged. ‘Yes, sometimes. But I’ve got to be seriously in the mood.’

  ‘No worries,’ he said. ‘I can get you seriously in the mood.’

  I swallowed and looked aside. His fingers drifted downwards, tracing swirls over the upper swell of my breasts. ‘Good nipples.’ He toyed lightly with the stiffened nubs. Pleasure shivered under his touch and my breath grew shallow.

  I inhaled slowly, trying to steady myself. ‘Take your mask off,’ I said.

  He laughed, scoffing at the idea. ‘Maybe later. Once we’ve taken off yours.’

  I shook my head. ‘There’s no mask. This is me.’

  ‘There’s always a mask,’ he replied coolly, still playing with my nipples. ‘Many masks. Concealing, projecting, transforming.’

  He dropped his hand to lift my skirt, baring me. Without pre-amble, as if he were testing for wetness rather than intending to stimulate me, he pressed a finger into my swollen crease. He sawed to and fro, making me groan.

  ‘You’re soaked,’ he said. ‘No mask there.’

  I ached for him to continue, to shove his harsh, cruel fingers inside me, but he stopped and grabbed my upper arm. He jerked me away from the column. The chain rattled behind me like a stupid tail.

  ‘This way.’ He shoved me towards the balcony, fingers stabbing my flesh. ‘I’m going to annihilate the clever whore.’

  I stumbled, scared but too randy to care overmuch. Briefly, he released me, stepping aside to pocket the key that lay on the crimson velvet edge. When he returned, he clasped the back of my neck. ‘Bend over.’

  ‘No!’ He pushed me forward, tipping me towards the balcony edge. My fear exploded like a bright, white light. The patchy, concrete floor of the decimated stalls below lurched at me.

  ‘Bend. Fucking. Over.’

  My knees crumpled. The gilt-edged boxes reeled and the stage slid sideways. I fell to the ground as if worshipping at an altar.

  ‘Up!’ he snapped. He hooked his fingers into the waistband at the back of my skirt, trying to lift me. I let him move me out of sheer dread, my feet scrabbling for purchase, my hands battling against the cuffs. My body was as heavy and cumbersome as a sack of wet sand. With some difficulty, Den manoeuvred me until I was leaning over the balcony, screaming into the drop below. I felt vertiginous, the concrete floor presenting me with the horror of its hard, merciless expanse.

  ‘I’m going to fall,’ I cried.

  ‘No you’re not.’ The mask made his voice boom weirdly. ‘Keep still.’

  He pushed my skirt up over my arse, shoving it under my bound wrists.

  ‘No, please!’ I was motionless, petrified except for the tremors racking my body and the pulse booming in my cunt. I heard him unzip and rubber up. He pressed a hand to the small of my back, pinning me to the edge. Again and again, I cried out, begging him to stop but knowing I didn’t mean it, not quite, not yet. The head of his cock butted between my thighs. I feared his penetration might shunt me over the edge and send me tumbling toward my death. I’d asked for this, hadn’t I? I’d just told him I got off on feeling my life was in his hands. He waggled his end at my entrance.

  ‘Please,’ I begged.

  With a solid, swift lunge, he entered me, grabbing my hips as he did so. He filled me inside, his vast girth prising me apart, immense and terrifying. Keeping a fi
rm hold on me, he began fucking with fast, furious strokes, every thrust making the concrete pit leap closer. His cock, the point where we were most connected, felt as if it were both my safety anchor and my potential destroyer.

  His hands gripped harder as he picked up speed, his groans of pleasure punctuating my desperate howls, our cries trailing across the dusty space. Despite or because of my panic, my body responded to him, my pulpy walls sucking on his cock, my blood pressure rising to flood my face with heat. Adrenaline exacerbated my lust. He clawed a fistful of curls, making my neck angle backwards as he pounded into me. His cock banged deep, his body brushing against my trapped fingers.

  ‘Not so clever now, are we?’ he gasped.

  He was right. I was reduced to the barest part of me, mindless with terror and near-ecstasy.

  He clasped my hips again. ‘I’m going to fuck it all out of you,’ he said. ‘Fuck your thoughts to dust. Erase you.’

  He had my life in his hands as I’d wanted, and it broke me. I stopped fighting. I gave up. I let him have me, placing everything I had and I was with him. He wouldn’t let me fall, I was sure of it. He had taken me over and I would trust him absolutely. I had no choice. At that moment, I was nothing without him holding me on the edge, ensuring I was safe. And with him, fucking me so dangerously, I was nothing too. Nothing but high-octane bliss.

  I had surrendered, I had submitted to this hidden man. I was etherised, zoning out in a place beyond my body. I filled the theatre, lost to myself. My awareness of him fucking me became nebulous, remote. A memory of Baxter floated into my mind, a recollection more emotional than visual. I’d experienced this with him, had touched this place of pure self-abandonment. I was back. It had happened.

  Den’s distorted groans twisted like smoke, winding tracks through my scattered consciousness. At my core, I was awash with heat, his slamming cock holding me below the surface, keeping me in oblivion.

  ‘Fuck you,’ he said. ‘Till you’re gone. Till you’re mine. Free for me to use.’

  The words echoed dully behind the mask. I had enough presence to register he was close to coming. His noises intensified and he clutched my hips with punishing hands.

  ‘Ah God.’ His words sounded as if they were being dragged through rubber. ‘Yes. Ah!’

  He came with a deep, dark groan, his body shuddering, his hands biting as he emptied himself.

  Then silence, just his breath and mine, shaking like the coos of those distant pigeons.

  For a while we didn’t move. I was still out there. I couldn’t come back to myself. He withdrew, cast his condom to the floor and helped me off the balcony edge, zipping himself up before pulling me to him.

  ‘You OK?’

  I couldn’t speak. Could barely walk. The deadness of the mask was worse than ever, a shield on his self, conflicting with the big reveal of his orgasm. He guided me towards the steps and unbuckled my cuffs. We sat close in the aisle between the rows of tatty velvet seats. He clasped my head to his chest, stroking my hair.

  I began to tremble.

  ‘There, there,’ he said, his tone almost gentle.

  Feeling feeble, I wrapped an arm across his torso, nuzzling into his clothes. I wanted to disappear into him, to melt into his body, safe and held. I remembered when I’d first got my cat, Aurora, aka Rory, and the time I’d accidentally stood on a paw. She’d yelped and jumped away. Seconds later she was back, butting at my ankle for comfort, trusting me despite the fact I’d just hurt her. It was like that with him.

  ‘Sshh,’ he said. ‘It’s all OK now. Everything’s fine.’

  A sob swelled in my chest but wouldn’t rise. It pulsed there, a caged thing snagging on my breath.

  ‘Let it all go,’ he said. ‘I’m here. Just let it all go.’

  After a time, the damn broke and I wept without restraint. He hushed me, rocking back and forth, murmuring it was all OK. And it was, it was fine. I didn’t cry from pain or anguish. I just needed to release something to break the intensity of where I’d been. I craved this, being flung out and pulled back. Craved it more than I craved coming. Baxter had shown me how it could be and until Den, I hadn’t fully remembered the profound sense of completion I found in being both broken and mended by someone.

  Maybe my previous knowledge of this state caught Den unawares. He thought I needed more aftercare than I did. He was a good, responsible dom who would go through the motions of comforting me for as long as it took. And yes, I did want to stay in his arms for longer, but I wanted something else too. I couldn’t run the risk of him slowly releasing me, easing us apart to dry my tears.

  So I spun out the clingy phase of the process, lulling him into a false sense of security while my mind grew sharper and nastier. I reached around, making out I was idly rubbing his back, relaxed and lazy. He accepted the touch. My hand edged higher towards the straps of that loathsome mask.

  ‘You OK?’ he asked.

  I sniffed and hooked a leg across his lap, embracing him.

  ‘Don’t go,’ I pleaded.

  ‘I won’t,’ he said. ‘I’m here for you.’

  ‘Hold me.’

  He hugged me, squeezing hard. ‘I’m holding you,’ he said, his words clipped and empty as if he’d trotted them out before. ‘I’ll hold you till you come back down to earth.’

  But I was already there, rooted, focused.

  My hand darted up to the back of his head. His shorn hair rasped beneath my fingers. I found the poppers on the mask straps. Tugged. He jumped but it was too late. The studs popped apart. He swung around, crying out. His hand flew to his face. A pigeon flapped high in the rooftop. The mask clattered to the steps at our feet, inert and hollow, straps trailing limply.

  Nine

  Don’t let him get to you, Nats. Don’t fall in love. Sure, he’s just fucked you like an animal but that’s not reason enough. And in addition to that? It’s just a face. What does that even mean? Some good genes. He got lucky, or you did. No biggie.

  Oh, but what an intoxicating face, broad and strong, sloping and slanting. Stubble peppered his jaw and a pair of beetle-black brows pulled in a frown over eyes that were narrow and small-lidded. Blue eyes. A startling mint-blue. His nose was neat and wide, sweeping gently towards pronounced cheekbones, and his skin was lightly pitted with the scars of teenage acne. He looked thuggish and mean, his mouth fixed in an angry line, his fury a sharp contrast to the deadness of that menacing mask.

  ‘What the fuck do you think you’re playing at?’ He touched his cheek again as if to double-check he was maskless.

  I tucked my breasts in my bra and shrugged my shirt back on. ‘I want to know who I’m fucking,’ I replied, fastening my buttons.

  ‘I’ll let you know when I’m ready.’ He stood abruptly, glowering down at me, hands thrust in his pockets. I wondered at his racial heritage. He had that rugged, Mediterranean darkness with a suggestion of Asia in the slender elegance of his eyes. Such unusual coloured eyes.

  I shook my head. ‘No, not fair.’

  ‘Who’s calling the shots here, me or you?’

  I stood, not wanting to be lower than him. ‘At base level, neither of us,’ I spat. ‘I think we already said this. We meet as equals and we agree to play a game of being unequal.’

  He sighed and sat on the step again, knees wide apart. He ran a hand over his head. ‘Correct me if I’m wrong, we agreed to that game, no? Where we make out we’re unequal.’

  ‘You never mentioned a mask.’

  ‘I didn’t mention a lot of things I intend doing.’ His body language was flinty although his movements were contained, shoulders twitching as if he were trying to stop himself from lashing out. ‘But that’s what you get off on, isn’t it? Fear. Uncertainty. Being in someone else’s power and dancing on the edge of danger.’

  ‘Well, yes but … but this other person, he doesn’t have absolute power.’

  ‘I don’t have that,’ he said, ‘or we wouldn’t be having this discussion.’

  ‘A discuss
ion you’re trying to close down!’

  He locked his fingers together and tugged. ‘So. Do you want out?’

  I was astounded. ‘What?’

  ‘Easy question,’ he said. ‘Do you want out?’

  ‘That is seriously unfair,’ I said. ‘It’s tantamount to blackmail. I want to talk and you threaten to bail. Way to shut me up, no?’

  ‘OK, what do you want?’ He swiped invisible dust from his knees. ‘Tell me, I’m all ears.’

  I sat next to him on the step again, becoming fearful I might regret trusting him, might regret discovering the concept of ‘edgeplay’ and thinking I could run with that. At length, I said, ‘I want a safeword.’

  ‘The safeword is “safeword”,’ he replied.

  ‘And it’s a pretty useless one if I don’t even know it.’

  ‘It’s obvious,’ he said. ‘It’s practically universal.’ He leaned back against the shallow step, propping himself on his elbows. ‘Anyway, you know it now. And since we’re on the subject, tap three times, foot or hand, if you’re unable to speak because I’m shoving my cock in your throat, trying to fuck those vocal chords into submission.’

  I breathed hard and slow. ‘Sometimes,’ I said, ‘it’s hard to know whether you’re playing the nasty dom or being genuinely contemptuous.’

  ‘I am playing. The nasty. Dom.’ He spoke with exaggerated clarity, patronising me.

  I pulled a false, tight smile. ‘Funny that. You transition in and out of role so easily.’

  ‘And presumably that’s why you’re here.’ He sat forward and rubbed the heel of his hand into his frown, pensive and frustrated. ‘You like it because it’s unsafe,’ he said, turning to me. ‘And you’re hoping it is safe. Safe like a ride at the funfair. But the truth is, you don’t really know. And you don’t want to know either. But you can’t have it both ways.’

  I looked away without replying, fearing he was right. My thoughts returned to our emails when the distinction between roleplaying and regular life had been clearer. I remembered his analogy of sexual fantasy as a hotel room where the usual rules don’t apply. He’d described hotel rooms as liminal. What had he said? ‘Liminal spaces bring out the beast in me,’ that was it.