Bound by Lust

by Shanna Germain

  That was where our arrangement ended. When I was going to tell you to leave. Services rendered, payment received.

  “Stroke your cock for me, Joshua.” I said instead, even though I hadn’t intended to.

  You wrapped your fist around your cock, and I couldn’t look away. I loved watching the play of emotions across your face; the way the muscle in your jaw tensed; the way your eyes never, ever left mine. I loved the juxtaposition of your strength and vulnerability, and the way your lips parted around the word please.

  I kissed you.

  I leaned over and breathed in the heady smell of your sweat and arousal and cologne and I kissed you; swept my tongue into the heat of your mouth and slipped my hand beneath yours on your cock. You came for me, and I swallowed the sound with my mouth.

  Four: Draw the rope between the legs, and upward to pass through the loop at the top of the small of the back.

  I’ve been quick and efficient while knotting the front of the harness, but I take my time now, drawing the long length of rope through this loop on your back. The rope transmits sensation, and so even the slight vibration of rope passing over rope echoes in your swelling cock. You moan softly, and I press my lips against the skin between your shoulder blades, where I imagine, if you were an angel, you’d have wings.

  “Have you ever been bound, Joshua?”

  Three weekends and as many spankings later, you’d painted your way through the master bath, guest room and bath, and were preparing to paint my office. You were naked from the waist up, and I was sitting at my desk, watching the play of muscle beneath your gold-hued skin, admiring your forearms and biceps, your shoulders and chest, the wide, beautiful expanse of your back.

  “Yes, Ma’am.” You’d smiled at me, a perfect slash of white across your handsome young face. “My girlfriend in college used to tie me to the bed when we had sex.”

  We hadn’t had sex yet. I’d watched you come in the aftermath of each spanking, either by my hand or your own, and I’d come too, later though, after you’d gone home. The hesitation was mine; I think even then I’d worried about the shy adoration in your eyes. You were so young, nearly fourteen years junior to my thirty-nine, and young enough still to dream dreams of forever and ever when I didn’t believe anymore.

  Still though, you were under my skin whether I admitted it or not, and any reservations I had were inexorably overshadowed by desire.

  “Belts and scarves tied to the bed frame?” You nodded. “How would you like to try something different?”

  Japanese rope bondage, I’d explained as you stripped off your jeans and boxers, had a much greater aesthetic appeal and could be used either to immobilize or simply to decorate.

  “For example,” I’d said, fashioning a simple diamond-weave body harness from your neck to your groin, “I could use this harness as a base for more elaborate bondage, but it’s also comfortable enough to be worn for an extended period of time.”

  You had a slightly glazed look in your eyes and a fair-sized erection by the time I’d finished, and I tweaked your nipple to get your attention.

  “Huh?” You returned to me.

  “Put your jeans back on, Joshua; you’ve got a room to paint.”

  “But—” A pained look crossed your face, but a stern look and a raised eyebrow stopped your words before they could escape.

  “Yes Ma’am,” you said. It was a bit sulky, but I let it pass and settled back into my desk chair to work. Well…to work, and to watch you.

  And when you’d finished the room to my satisfaction, a task made difficult, I know, by the slight but constant shifting and pulling of the harness against your skin, you weren’t the only one in a heightened state of arousal.

  I took your hand and led you to my bedroom, pressed you down into the softness of my bed. I stripped off your jeans, caressing your cock and balls briefly before producing four additional lengths of rope. I tied each length into a simple restraint, securing first your wrists and then your ankles to the bed so that you lay spread-eagled before me.

  Already your eyes were half-closed, your hips restless against the bed. I ran my nails experimentally along the sensitive skin of your inner thigh, hard enough to mark without breaking skin. Your sharp intake of breath was followed by a moan, a tensing of muscle beneath skin. I marked your other thigh with similar lines, watched as you tried to strain closer to my touch. I circled the base of your cock with one hand, cupping your sac gently with the other. I stroked you like that, teasing you, until I could feel drops of moisture beading at the tip of your cock and a sheen of perspiration covered your chest.

  I tightened my grip on your cock then, squeezing your shaft while I twisted your balls, pulling them down so that a hoarse cry was torn from your lips. Your body arched off the mattress, all of your muscles corded tightly, your head tipped back, eyes shut against the pain. But even so, even then, your cock never flagged, seemed instead to grow harder in my hand.

  This was what I loved. Watching how beautifully you suffered. For me. We had barely delved beneath the surface, you and I, and yet I knew already that your capacity for suffering was great; greater even, than you knew. I wanted to hurt you in ways that I knew would bring you to a point you didn’t think you could tolerate, and then to hurt you enough to push you blindingly, brilliantly beyond. I wanted to take you into a space of pure sensation, and when it was over, I wanted to hold you on the other side, kiss your forehead, and whisper that everything would be alright.

  But we weren’t there yet, and I didn’t know if we’d ever get there. All I knew with certainty at that moment was that I wanted you more than I’d wanted anything in a very long time. And so I removed my clothes and lay on the bed beside you, bracing my weight on my elbow and sliding my thigh over yours. My breasts pressed against your chest and harness, my sex pressed against your hip, I kissed you; pinched and teased the rock hard pebbles that were your nipples; ground my arousal into your skin.

  “I want you inside me, Joshua,” I whispered against your lips.

  “Yes Ma’am, yes please.” You shivered beneath me.

  I retrieved a foil packet from the bedside table, tore it open with teeth and one hand. I stroked your erection, then rolled on the tight sheath, and then straddled your hips, letting the head of your cock tease my opening without quite pressing inside.

  “Please…,” you said, and I lowered myself onto you, taking you slowly, deeply inside.

  I took hold of your harness, gripping the rope tightly where it came together in a V just above the knot in the center of your sternum, using it to brace myself as I rode you, clenching my muscles around you, milking your cock, slowly, then with greater urgency until we were both falling over the edge and I collapsed against your chest.

  When I’d recovered, I’d unfastened your wrists and ankles, and we’d lain together until the room was dark, your head resting against my heart.

  “Thank you Ma’am.…”

  “Juliet,” I said. “For now, just call me Juliet.”

  Five: Split the lines, drawing each beneath an arm and around to the front of the body. Bring the rope underneath the first knot and in between the two lines, pulling it through and cinching snug, but not tight, then back underneath, the lines just pulled through, locking the harness in place and holding the tension.

  Another weekend to finish the upstairs hallway, and then you were on to the main floor: living room, kitchen, dining room, and powder room. A month of weekends remained until you’d be finished. Until our arrangement would end. That’s what I’d told myself; what I told you.

  You’d whispered to me in the dark, when our hearts had slowed and the air had cooled our heated skin, whispered that you could be my boy, that you could stay with me. Hadn’t I wanted to finish my basement? You could do that, you’d said. And what about the exterior of the house? Hadn’t I wanted to repaint it? You could do that too.

  But I saw your dreams. Where you’d add a picket fence and paint it white, and then want a dog, and ma
ybe a swing set. I was never going to be that person. It didn’t matter that you told me otherwise; said that wasn’t what you wanted. Someday, I knew, you might change your mind. Better to leave things the way they were.

  Still though, you had half of the house left to paint. And so every Friday night for the next three weeks, you arrived at my house just after 6:00, and a ritual of sorts was born. You stripped off your clothes and stood quietly while I drew the rope around your neck and tied your harness. Then your jeans went back on, and you’d paint for an hour or two, we’d have dinner, and then I’d take you upstairs to my bedroom. You didn’t go home those nights anymore—it didn’t make sense to go home when you’d be back again first thing in the morning anyway. Saturday you’d paint and I’d watch, or you’d paint and I’d work, depending on my mood.

  Saturday night we’d play, and I say play because really, it wasn’t just about spanking you anymore. I had a sizable collection of toys, and I introduced you to the nuances of each in turn: floggers, paddles, and crops; nipple clamps; anal plugs (you were especially fond of those); and my personal favorite, a rattan cane. Each Saturday night we went a little further, a little deeper. And you opened to each experience completely, with more honesty and humility than I’ve seen in far more experienced boys. I found you indescribably beautiful.

  We didn’t get to the cane until the third Saturday night. You were bent over my desk, secured at wrist and ankle. You were making happy sounds, endorphins humming through you, your ass already rosy and hot from my flogger. I began by simply tapping you with the cane—a gentle introduction that produced only a mild sting—but definitely a new sensation after the heavier thud of the flogger.

  “Joshua, I’m going to give you three strokes with this cane, okay?”

  “Mm-hmm.” You sounded dreamy and far away.

  “I need you to pay attention, Joshua, because this is going to feel very different than anything we’ve tried so far.”

  It was an understatement, to be sure; a hard strike with a cane felt like a knife edge of fire and lightning that blotted out every other thought and sensation, and as the initial blaze faded, an aftershock—still sharp and localized, but with a bit of dull achiness—began to sink in, as though the stripe ran clear to the bone and beyond. I knew this because I didn’t believe in using anything I hadn’t tried myself, and in my experience, there was nothing that compared to a cane.

  “Are you ready?”

  “Yes, Ma’am,” you said, without any hesitancy at all.

  I laid the first stripe across the center of your ass and you screamed, trying instinctively to rear up and away from the pain. You nearly lifted the desk off the ground, but I was right there, stroking your neck, whispering in your ear, telling you how proud I was of you, kissing your cheek and tasting the tears that fell there.

  “It’s okay, baby,” I soothed. “Only two more to go.”

  “No, I can’t, it’s too much….”

  “Yes you can baby. You’re doing so well. You can do this. For me.” I stood up.

  “Okay, okay, okay…” It was a chant; your eyes squeezed shut, your muscles so tense they could have snapped.

  I caressed you, gentle strokes from the small of your back to the tops of your thighs, moving tenderly over the angry red stripe of the cane until I felt you relax. Then quickly, I laid the second stripe just above the first, before you could tense your muscles again. Your scream was raw, like a wounded animal, and your body tried desperately to fold in on itself, make itself smaller.

  “Please,” you sobbed uncontrollably, “I can’t, I can’t do this.” Your eyes rolled wildly, seeking some kind of escape, but I was there, filling your vision, so that all you could see was me.

  “Yes you can, Joshua.” I held your chin, stilling your movement.

  “No, no more. Please,” you pleaded.

  “Ssshhh…” I placed a finger across your lips. You were so strong. So beautiful. We had agreed on a safe word before your first spanking, and I was confident I’d hear it if you truly felt you couldn’t take any more. I brushed my fingers through the hair that clung damply to your forehead, held your gaze with my own.

  “One more.” I said, willing you to hold on.

  “One more.” Your eyes blazed with pain and desperation, but you held my gaze like a drowning man would a lifeline, and I knew that you could finish.

  I caressed you like I had before, long, tender strokes across your bruised flesh, and when your muscles began to relax, I laid the last stripe, just below the first.

  Your scream filled all the empty space in the house, then subsided into a low, keening wail. I laid down my cane and unfastened your restraints, kissing and stroking you, guiding you down the hall and into bed. You had the glassy, unfocused look of someone who was floating, and I held you and kissed you until you came back to me. And when our kisses became deeper and more sensuous than before, I lay on my back and took you inside me, and somewhere in the darkness, you said, “I love you.”

  Six: Draw the rope around the back of the body, cross the lines and draw them back to the front, underneath the next knot and in between the lines again, drawing the rope through, cinching and pulling tight. Do this with each knot in turn, creating a diamond pattern along the torso. When the last knot is completed, tie off a square knot at the back of the harness.

  And now here we are. The last of our weekends. I finish tying the square knot that completes your harness and step back to admire you. Your body so strong, your cock thick and ready with anticipation, your beautiful eyes, shining with trust, and yes, love—I can’t deny that. There are things I want to do to you—with you—ways I want to hurt you that we haven’t even touched upon yet, and I know that you’ll go there with me, that your trust will never waver. We’re a matched pair, you and I, and you need these things as much as I do. You smile at me, a gentle curve of your lips that tells me you know—what I’m thinking; what I’m feeling; that maybe next week we’ll start working on the basement—and I think, right now, that I might love you.

  BRUSHSTROKES

  Kristina Wright

  They had been together for six months. Mai Ling dipped her paintbrush in water and glided it across the blank white board in front of her. The water made a dark, swirling stain on the board.

  Six months was long enough, she thought, to know whether someone is right. Whether there was a future. She stared at the board, watching the mark she had just made evaporate.

  It wasn’t that she didn’t love him. She did. She dipped the brush once more, applied it to the board, and with a flick of her wrist created her design. Quickly, before it could disappear, she picked up more water on the brush and dragged it over the first mark. The one beneath was already fading as she finished the design on top.

  He just wasn’t right for her. He was so brash, so outspoken. She was quiet, reserved, cautious. He wasn’t. He didn’t fit into her life. He wanted her to be more like him, more outgoing. She wanted…she wasn’t sure what she wanted. She had, at first, loved his ability to say anything. Especially when they were in bed. She would hide her face behind her hair, her cheeks flushed with embarrassment, but his words warmed her in other places. Made her hot and needy for him, the feel of his body, so dark and muscular and different.

  Her hand moved frantically over the board, filling up the space with slash marks.

  She sensed his frustration. She knew he wasn’t happy with her proper, ladylike ways. He wanted something more. Something she couldn’t give. Something she didn’t have in her. She stared at the board. It was as blank as when she had started.

  She felt Gregory’s hands on her shoulders before he spoke.

  “What are you doing?”

  She shrugged, not turning around. “Painting.”

  He laughed. “There isn’t anything there.”

  “It’s Zen,” she said. “It’s about living in the moment, working out your frustrations and then starting over with a clean slate.”

  He kneaded her shoulder
s gently. “What are you frustrated about?”

  He knew. She knew he knew. She still couldn’t say. She shrugged. “Just…things.”

  Gregory knelt beside her chair. “Tell me, Mai Ling,” he said quietly.

  She didn’t want to look at him. The painting ritual hadn’t given her the peace she needed to make a decision. “It’s nothing.”

  He took her hand. “You have to talk to me. You never tell me what’s wrong.”

  “That’s our problem, isn’t it?” she asked, shaking off his touch. “We don’t know how to talk to each other.”

  He sat back on his heels, as if surprised at her angry tone. “I’ve never had a problem talking to you.”

  “Right. Right. It’s my problem,” she said, feeling trapped, angry. “I can’t talk to you. I can’t be like you.”

  He tried to take her hand again, but she wouldn’t let him. He settled for putting his hand on her bare thigh, right below the hem of her skirt. “Mai Ling, I don’t want you to be like me. I just want us to be close.”

  She stared at his hand on her bare leg. The contrast between their skin tones always surprised her. His darkness against her paleness. Even in summer when she would spend so much time at the beach and she was as dark as her brother who worked in landscaping, she was still fair next to Gregory. She usually loved the difference in their skin tones, but now it seemed just one more reminder of how different they were.

  “This isn’t working, Gregory,” she said softly. “You know it, too.”

  He held her leg tighter, his long fingers curving around her slender thigh. “I don’t know that. I don’t believe it. Just talk to me, Mai Ling. Talk to me.”

  She opened her mouth. Closed it. There were no words. She shook her head. “I can’t.”

  They stayed like that, him kneeling beside her, his hand on her thigh, her staring at the blank board in front of her. She willed him to leave, to walk away, to make it easier for her. He stayed. She picked up the paintbrush and dipped it in water. Pressing it to the board, she wrote her name. As it faded, she dipped the brush in the water and wrote his name beneath hers. By the time she wrote the y in Gregory, her name was gone and the first letters of his name were fading.