Playing the Pauses

by Michelle Hazen

  The payoff is incredible, but the risk is terrifying because the first time, you don’t know if it’ll be right. If the pain will be too much. Safewords are a theory, after all. Ropes are a reality.

  At the first touch I flinch, even though it’s as gentle as an embrace. Smooth leather traces the swell of my breasts, the flutter of my belly, crossing the ropes and then the ticklish spot at the hinge of my hip.

  It’s a rhythm when it begins. The dull percussion of taps punctuated by the slide of the thin shaft of the riding crop, wrapped in crisscrossed leather for an addictive texture.

  I want more than this foreplay. I want the hard slam of his cock and the slap of a blow across my ass. The ropes abrade my wrists as I wriggle.

  With a firm crack, the crop comes down atop one breast. Even in my blindness, I can imagine the bright red outline it draws on my pale skin. I inhale so quickly I choke a little.

  Everything pauses: me, Danny, time.

  And then I arch up for more.

  “Spread your legs.”

  I obey, a moan wringing its way out of my throat. Pain licks up my inner thighs, leather smoothing, kissing, and slapping in a pattern I can’t predict or settle into. I shudder, caught between my automatic urge to flinch away and my need for more.

  “Wider.”

  I whimper and stretch myself open to him, bound hands fisting at my sides.

  His satisfaction rumbles out in a long exhale. The shaft of the whip touches me, rubbing one long stroke up between my legs; a sigh of texture against my swollen clit. The whip is slick with my response now and it’s a jolt of pure sex when it snaps down across my belly.

  My nipples ache and I push them up in the air, hoping. This strike is brutal, the shaft of the riding crop coming down so it crosses both breasts at once, the loop at the end stinging my arm where it’s held to my side. I strain toward him, arousal torching through my body. His breath is as ragged as mine when he begins to tease my breasts.

  In Danny’s hands, the whip is not simple pain and release. It is every sensation, every texture and promise and caress I have ever experienced or imagined the world to hold. Dull and sharp, sweet and then cruel. Slow, slow, slow and then a flurry driving all the thoughts out of my head until I can’t taste the air panting over my needy lips or sense the sweat slicking my flushed skin.

  When the loop of the crop moves down between my legs, I cry out and my knees jerk together. Not from pain, but from the overwhelming, indecipherable something that’s rocking my whole body. It’s too intense for me to do anything but writhe and moan, lost in this haze he’s draping around us, one flick of the whip at a time.

  He pauses, and his silence coaxes my legs apart again. I’m drenched and trembling and still he doesn’t touch me. My thighs stretch wide until they ache, and the whip kisses the top of my sex. Gently, firmly. I don’t know how he’s taking the sting out but leaving the dull impact that pulses against my clit with every bounce of the leather. Orgasm shudders at the edges of me but every blow is just a hint too light to trigger it.

  “Danny, please.”

  The rhythm of the whip never falters, driving me slowly, rhythmically mad as one fingertip grazes my entrance. I cry out, clenching my teeth against a groan as he enters me with his smallest finger.

  I think I’m cursing or maybe I’m just panting as his knees come to rest between mine. He leaves me and then pushes the next finger in, taking it away before he’ll give me the next. My nails dig into my palms as I wait for him to enter me with two fingers at once and finally give me enough friction to shatter, but he doesn’t. Instead he toys with me until every one of his fingers are wet. And then his hand leaves me and I hear his zipper.

  He doesn’t touch me, and I’m left wracked with the images of what he might be doing with his slick fingers. Danny groans, and I want so much to be the one fisting his cock right now.

  He moves to the side and rolls me over to my stomach. “On your knees,” he growls. I scramble up to a crouch, the ropes scraping my skin as I blow hair out of my face, my cheek against the bed and my bottom high in the air.

  The riding crop whistles through the air and stripes across my ass. Spots dance before my eyes and the first wave of orgasm clenches down deep inside.

  “Do you want my cock?” His voice is so low with arousal that I hardly recognize it.

  “Yes,” I gasp. I grit my teeth as he keeps spanking me, and I realize he’s not going to stop. I can’t control this, or hold anything back, and even if I wanted to, Danny wouldn’t let me.

  It’s such an immense, desperate relief that all my muscles relax in a dizzying rush. Danny’s hand catches the back of my neck, holding my face into the bed as he coaxes me with the whip. Soft and promising, and then firm. Flicking light then harsh once, twice, and...Oh God. I gasp and tense up as my orgasm crashes down into me. His hands are wide and warm, soothing across my bottom and down my thighs while his thumb traces wetly around my entrance.

  I shiver and come even harder, barely registering the brush of a kiss across the base of my spine.

  His hands wrap around my wrists, hard as cuffs. The safety of them brings tears to my eyes, and then his fingers tighten and he thrusts into me. I widen my knees to take more of him, but Danny’s wild, using his grip on my wrists to jerk me back toward him, fucking me long and hard and so deep that I have to scream with the force of it. His hips pound against my sore bottom, the head of his cock rubs ceaselessly over the most sensitive place inside me, and I am lost.

  Because this time isn’t any kind of act, and it isn’t just sex. This is all of him and all of me, and when I handed him that whip I gave away my last defense. My body shudders with pleasure but it is flaying me being this close to him when the tour ends tomorrow.

  I cannot pull away. I will not.

  Danny growls into a shout, swelling within me in the second before he explodes, his hands steel hard but so careful to protect the bones of my wrists.

  And I love him.

  God save us both, I’m in love with him and it doesn’t fix one fucking thing.

  Chapter 23: Happy Birthday

  Today sucks. I’ve caught myself tearing up six damned times, and it’s almost as infuriating as it is humiliating. Especially since I’m fairly sure Clancy saw me swipe at my eyes at least once.

  Tours end. Boo fucking hoo.

  But everywhere I go tonight, the music haunts me, and every fading note seems like the last one I’ll ever hear from The Red Letters. I can’t believe it’s already the final performance, and I don’t know how I never noticed the coincidence of the dates.

  Maybe my birthday is a sign, a reminder that however much I’m not ready, life moves on anyway. Because it does. It has. And I’m still jogging to keep up.

  I knew I never should have admitted to him how much I love whips. It was my last holdout, because as long as he didn’t know all my secrets, I could pretend he didn’t know me. That he was just a fling and all I needed in my life was my job.

  Not that the truth matters because even if I try to have both, I know half my time will never be enough to keep either my relationship or my career going. I may be young, but it’s been a long time since I’ve been naïve.

  Locking my purse inside the production office, I head for the entrance to the GA floor. It’s the end of the show and there’s only one place I can spend it: woven into a crowd of sweating, screaming fans like me who are all drunk on crazy beautiful music, their hands grasping the air because they can never quite touch the band themselves.

  But in a mosh pit, no one is lonely.

  Clancy grabs me just before I slip through the door. “Hey, Kate, could you help me with something?” He hurries me back up the hallway without waiting for an answer.

  “Now, Clancy? The last song is about to start...” I wince, realizing my voice is wavering into whiny territory. “Sorry. What do you need?”

  He stops me at the edge of the lights, but I’m distracted by Danny standing at center stage, leaning in
to the microphone. Thousands of people go silent, all as surprised as I am at the sight. Damn, the last night fever is running strong if Danny is making speeches.

  “We have a special guest for you tonight. Someone who rightfully should have been on stage with us at every show because without her, none of this would have been possible.” He extends an arm toward us and beckons, but I don’t catch on until Clancy gives me a push forward. Danny turns back to the microphone. “Please give a warm welcome to the most brilliant, beautiful and thoroughly ass-kicking woman I have ever met: our tour manager, Kate Madsen.”

  My heart squeezes and then screams into a sprint as I step into the lights and realize everyone can see me. I try to remember what I’m wearing.

  Clancy hisses, “Pull it together, girl!”

  I stretch a smile onto my face and stride across the stage, making a show of laughing as Jax crooks a finger at me, taunting and teasing with words I am far too freaked out to decipher. Jera bursts into a drumroll that rockets my pulse even faster until I’m dizzy, my head whirling by the time I finally make it to Danny’s side.

  He steps behind me, his hands rubbing down my arms as he leans over my shoulder so the microphone can catch his voice. “As it happens, the last show we get to share with you is landing on Kate’s special day. Please give us a hand in wishing her a happy birthday, and a huge thank you for putting up with all our bullshit.”

  Hoots and cheers break out, and Jax pulls his own microphone off its stand. “Come on, is that all you got? If it weren’t for her, I’d probably still be lost on that endless taxi ride in Brussels, thoroughly clueless and really damned hungry, not to mention wondering how to pay off all the strippers.”

  Laughter ripples. Somebody whoops, and the noise snowballs until the roar hits me straight in the chest, making me blink with the sheer force of it. Danny steps away and flicks his hair back. Just like that, the crowd drops silent.

  The first few chords of “Happy Birthday” echo through the room, his unaccompanied bass breathtakingly poignant. He lets each note drop slowly into the hush, every year of my life echoing in the vibration: love and pain and exhilaration and disappointment. Lonely bunks and the arms of a hundred crowds I’ve belonged to, that have come to see the shows I put on.

  Tears shimmer at the edges of my vision, and I can’t take my eyes off Danny. He smiles quietly, his face totally open as if we’re alone in front of the vast windows of his Portland apartment.

  On the last verse, Jax joins Danny’s bass with a breathy Marilyn Monroe voice. “Happy Birth...day...Ms. Tour Manager...”

  I burst out laughing and Jax drops to his knees in front of me, hamming it up as the crowd whistles for him.

  “Happy Birth...day...to...you.”

  Tears openly streak my face as I laugh and cry all at once. Jera grins knowingly from behind her drums when I glance back at her. Danny wraps his arms around me, and Jax hugs both of us, his squeeze just a little too tight like he’s worried he might get left out. Before I can free an arm to hug him back, he’s gone.

  “And now,” Jax says, his grin rebounding, “we’d like to dedicate our last song to the woman who has brought us to this stage to rob you of your money and your Friday night.” He has to pause when the crowd’s laughter swamps his voice, and I glance over with alarm to see Danny retrieving a stool from the edge of the stage. Jax tosses a wink at the crowd. “This one’s for Kate, because we didn’t even know how much we needed her until she appeared one day in an ugly airport lounge and made our band work about a thousand times better. This song is ‘Holding My Breath.’”

  My brain grinds to a halt as I remember the last-minute change to the set list. There’s no way they’re dedicating this song to me. Is there?

  Danny sets the stool next to me and my eyes pop at this new problem. I can’t sit through this whole thing with thousands of people watching my every reaction. I back away, jokingly trying to wave them off while sweat slicks the palms of my hands. The crowd hoots as Jax winds them up into a chant of my name, every beat like a landslide of sound in the huge auditorium.

  “Aww, come on, Kate, it’s a nice crowd,” Jera calls. “You guys are nice, right? Lie,” she whispers into the microphone. “Quick, lie before she runs away.”

  Danny catches my hand, but it’s his quiet smile that holds me motionless in front of an audience of thousands. He ducks his head toward the stool, and I can’t bring myself to refuse him. I take one step, and the tide of noise nearly knocks me back. This stage is magic. Everything you do up here, they scream for.

  Danny helps me onto my stool and I’m pretty sure the words passing through my ears are Jax flirting: whether it’s with me or the crowd, I’m not certain. All I register is when he plays the first chord that confirms yes, they’re playing me this song.

  The stadium goes silent and Danny’s teeth flash in an easy grin as his fingers stroll down the first few notes of the confident bassline.

  On the official album, “Holding My Breath” seems like a love song, but performed live it’s a whole different animal. The band members always sing it to each other in turns, quick with a laugh or a smack from the drumsticks as they croon the lyrics about a life unbalanced, a spot unfilled, a breath forever held until the right person comes along. Live, you understand they don’t always mean a lover. They mean each other. They mean the audience. They mean this moment is the one they’ve been holding their breath for.

  And no one listening can ever doubt it was worth the wait.

  Jax sings the first verse to Jera, and Danny spins my stool toward the back of the stage so she can sing the second verse to me. Jax drops to one knee in front of me for the first chorus: his sexy smirk and honest blue eyes swelling my heart and breaking every one in the audience. When he rises, he takes my hand and turns me forward again before he bows to brush a kiss over my knuckles that has me laughing and rolling my eyes all at once. The man can never resist stealing the show.

  Tonight, Danny takes the final verse, his deep voice dropping it an octave lower. Everyone quiets to hear him until the entire building is holding its breath.

  My stomach clenches like I’m on a roller coaster, pausing at the pinnacle of a long fall, and he pushes into the refrain.

  “All that time I was holding it in...holding out...I was just holding my breath for you.”

  When he finishes, the air quivers, the electricity between us so big I’m certain every person for miles feels it, too. Jax pulls Jera up from behind her drums and the audience explodes, every clap of strangers’ hands coming together echoed inside my chest. Jera clasps my left hand, her slim fingers calloused and confident as Jax shoulders Danny out of the way, taking my right. Together, The Red Letters make their line at the front of the stage. I bow along with the band and the crowd is insane as I look out from the stage for the first time instead of up at one.

  More than ever before, I understand why musicians bleed for lyrics that sometimes get ignored, why they wring out their youth for a career that rarely lasts longer than a single decade. Why they’ll survive on beer and crackers and twenty minutes of sleep until their hair starts to fall out.

  I understand that there are things worth hurting for. Not just once, but over and over again.

  Jax and Danny scuffle for a moment, trading laughing punches before they swap places. Danny’s hand finds mine and he thrusts them both into the air, leading me into another bow. I’m so crazy proud of him, of his band and his talent and how far they’ve come. I’m so glad he’s part of my life. That I’m part of his. That whatever comes next, we were meant to find our way to this moment, together.

  When we come up, I tug him into me, my fingers threading into his hair as I pull his mouth down to mine, his bass guitar grinding into my hips with a hard thrill. He’s hot with the lights, energy pouring out of both of us that meshes perfectly. In the center of the stage, I drink him in, loving his lips and laughing along with him when we have to steal a breath, my hand cupping his cheek because I can’t stand
to remember a time when I couldn’t touch him.

  He did this for me, turned yet another anniversary of my birth into something special, like I was something special. He invited me into his band, and for Danny, that’s as raw as it gets.

  With our last kiss, I strip myself just as bare. The sex and the laughter falls away and I know he sees—that everyone sees—that there’s never been anything deeper beneath my skin than he is right now.

  Chapter 24: My So-Called Home

  We’ve been breathing the stale oxygen of airports and planes for twenty hours now, and with every passing minute, my muscles wind tighter around my bones.

  Danny and I haven’t talked much. I make sure he gets food he won’t hate, and every now and again, he reaches for my hand, his strong fingers gentle as they stroke over mine. A lot of the time he rests with eyes closed and headphones on. Not asleep, not moving, and presumably not annoying the shit out of himself with every babbling thought that goes through his head.

  Unlike some people I could name.

  “I want to order that freaky gnome head you staple to your tree,” Jax says. “Can you imagine people’s faces if they came over for a party and walked in to that?” He laughs, shoving a strand of hair back toward his stubby ponytail. His long strides shake the accordion walkway that leads from our plane up into the airport, and I trail along in his wake.

  Jera snorts, her hair even more sleep-thrashed than his. “Okay, even if you did know how to order things out of the SkyMall catalogue instead of doing it off Amazon, you don’t own a tree. You live in an overpriced cereal box of a condo.”

  “Better than being surrounded by lead paint chips and a shag-carpet gag-a-thon.”

  “Hey! We’re remodeling.” Jera smacks their lead singer, wrinkling her tiny nose. “But if I come across any stray paint chips, I know whose scrambled eggs they’re going in.”