His fingers twisted in me and found my g-spot with ease. I arched my hips up and he smacked my inner thighs in response. “What did I say about moving?” he growled.
I had once thought this man was bland. Polite. I had thought that if I asked him to spank me, he would blanch in horror.
As I felt the stinging ache in my legs; it was brought home to me forcibly how wrong I’d been, but more than that, as I felt my core clench in response, I realized whatever perfect balance of light and dark Miles St. Clair had found, I wanted it. It aroused me almost beyond my capability to bear.
“Please can I come?” I begged as the coils of pleasure wound tighter and tighter, just waiting to explode. “Please?”
“No.” He stopped suddenly. His fingers pulled out of my pussy; his mouth lifted off my clitoris. There was fire in his eyes as he looked at me.
“Your session earlier today went on for thirty four minutes.” His voice was steely. “Thirty four minutes of insanity and all I could do was wait for you to remember your safe word. For thirty four minutes I had to sit and watch you moan in pain, reminding myself each and every second that you had the right to make your own choices and find your own path.”
He lifted himself off the bed and walked over to the narrow side table that held an assortment of sex toys. “Not anymore, Kelly,” he shot at me from the darkness. “No more choices. For the next thirty four minutes you obey.” I saw him reach for a Hitachi vibrator and a set of nipple clamps and I shivered.
My first scene, so long ago at Club Phoenix, I had felt the stress of my life almost physically be lifted from me. I was feeling that same sense of freeing release right now and it made my life feel just a little less hazy. A little bit of the girl who had been Kelly Mitchell returned and I dared a tiny grin at Miles. “Bring it on, Smiley Miley,” I murmured.
He definitely heard me. I saw it in the stiffening of his shoulders and in the sudden tension of his body. But his eyes didn’t soften.
He stripped off his clothes efficiently and rolled on a condom. He squeezed a generous amount of lube onto his fingers, turning me around and lubing my asshole. “Move,” he said and lay down on the bed, pulling me over his body and pushing his dick into my yielding ass. I lay there, my back resting on his chest, my legs spread wide and held open, filled with his hardness.
Miles was in me. Until that instant I hadn’t really realized how badly I wanted this. How much I needed to feel connected to him in this most intimate way.
But this was my punishment and he was determined that I was going to experience every single minute of it. “Put the clamps on,” he ordered, nudging a set of nipple clamps towards me. “You can set the pace of your punishment. Thirty four minutes with the vibrator and you cannot come.”
“Sir,” I begged, “I can’t resist the vibrator for thirty four minutes.” I couldn’t do the time; it was a physical impossibility. Not after he’d already stoked the embers of my lust with his talented tongue.
“Pull it off if it gets too much,” he said in response. His tone was still hard. “You can take a few seconds to regain control.” He looked at his watch. “But when you stop, the timer stops too. You’ll do the full thirty four minutes.”
I shivered. At that moment, I’d have almost preferred to be beaten. I’d have even taken more of that damn candle. But I didn’t protest. I pinched my nipples so they were erect nubs straining away from my body and I put the clamps on, feeling the familiar ache as a tightening between my legs.
“Ready?” he asked, looking at the face of his watch. “Go.”
I turned the vibrator on and pressed it against my folds. I didn’t cheat. I didn’t hold it away from my body. The fact that I was here, in this room, with clamps on my nipples and Miles flexing his cock in my ass was because I accepted his decision to punish me. Anything less than full compliance would have seemed like cheating.
In three minutes I was at the edge. “What happens if I come?” I asked him as I tried to steady my breathing.
“We repeat this every day until you can do the full thirty four minutes,” he replied.
Ah. I had every incentive to hold back my orgasm.
Once my body had somewhat recovered, I pressed the vibrator back against my pussy. This time, I reached the edge a lot faster and almost lost myself in an orgasm, snatching the vibrator back at the last minute. I shivered as I fought to hold my climax back, entirely sure that if Miles were to move in me, even a little bit, I wouldn’t be able to restrain myself.
He played fair. His touch soothed me and strange though it was, I felt comforted by his cock in my ass, connected to him in an intimate way. He was the rock I clung to as my body threatened to fall apart. He was my Watcher. He would protect me.
Again and again I went to the edge. Again and again I forced myself to stop. My body was covered with a sheen of sweat; my awareness had tunneled inward. When the alarm finally chimed, I just lay against him, limp, with tremors of need still racking my body.
“What do you want, Kelly?” His voice was even. “Do you want a string of forgettable encounters, or do you want something worth remembering?”
He had, with one sentence, sliced open my soul with a swift scalpel stroke of his knife. He’d exposed the dichotomy that drove me. I was terrified of forgetting and I was terrified of being forgotten. Yet I ached for the oblivion.
I didn’t answer him. There were no words. Even now, though I sought comfort in his body, I knew I had no right to expose him to my life. He was better off without me. I knew I had no right to make that decision for him, yet I wanted to make it anyway. It was better that his love and caring didn’t touch me.
“I’m going to fuck you now Kelly,” Miles said evenly. “It’s been torture lying under you as your entire body writhes against me. But the same rules apply — you cannot come. This is punishment, not pleasure.”
I nodded. It was punishment and while I didn’t like it, I could accept it.
He took his pleasure, but, mindful of the way I quivered and trembled, he wasn’t cruel about it. He didn’t draw it out. He pounded into me hard and fast and when he came, he came with a grunt.
Chapter 11
“If only the narrative was quite that neat,” Miles had said.
It would have been the more convenient narrative if I’d chosen to walk away after the scene that had gone so wrong. But yet, here I was once more at Club Phoenix and my Watcher surveyed me without speaking.
The top starts spinning.
I felt the lust rising from the men that walked towards me as a physical thing that suffocated me. I felt a prickle of something that might have been fear, or perhaps it was desire. I couldn’t tell the difference, not anymore.
In front of me lay two paths.
I could turn right. My mother waited in her nursing home, fighting the infection that gripped her body. I could spend all my time in Akron at her bedside, even though to her I was a perfect stranger.
I could design a winning winter collection for Nina Germain and leave on a high note. I could work at Zac Posen, learning what I needed to know from a larger fashion house until the moment I was ready to strike out on my own.
Most of all I could pick Miles. We could date. Our relationship would last; I could sense it. We were connected by our pasts and now our presents. Our future waited to be written, but it would be good. I recognized the love that shone in Miles’ eyes when he looked at me.
But I was shadowed by a dark cloud. I couldn’t put Miles through what I’d been through in the last few years, watching in helpless anguish as every memory of me was slowly erased from my mother’s brain.
I could turn left. To the underground dungeon with its brick walls and its steel cages. I could pick the men in leather masks that would whip me and hurt me, debase me and humiliate me. I could drown in the depths in the Watcher’s green eyes when he looked at me.
Do you know that scene in Inception, the one where the top spins so that Cobb can tell whether he’s in a dream or no
t?
Do you remember the last scene, when the top starts spinning, and the film ends? And you are left with no idea about whether Cobb made it out or not?
Do you still feel that maddening sense of incompleteness, that compulsion to know, that hope against hope that Cobb found his happy ending?
“Do you submit?” His voice was achingly steady as he spoke the ritual words that would determine my path forward.
I opened my mouth to answer.
And while that’s where the story was originally going to end, I couldn’t help myself. I had to ask, which path was Kelly going to choose?
Does Kelly choose the club?
Or does she choose Miles?
You pick, dear reader. You tell me. Because I sure as hell don’t know.
Epilogue: The top keeps spinning…
It’s a long way to the bottom and I’m still falling.
Miles is done being my Watcher. In a scene that echoed his own experience with Daria, he stood up one day and told me he couldn’t do it anymore. That if I wanted to keep going I should do it without him.
Perhaps I too should have walked out that day. But I didn’t.
The top keeps spinning.
It’s been many months since that quiet fall evening when I leaned against Miles and held on to a sense that anything was possible. It feels like an eternity.
In that time, I’ve been slapped and punched. Needles have been poked into my skin. I’ve been jolted with shocks of electric current. Fists have thrust into my cunt and my ass and I have cried many tears of pain.
Yet I am the architect of my own destiny. I hold the lever that can stop all of this. But I need a place to stand first and that doesn’t exist, because I’m falling.
I’m known in the club as the girl who will do anything, no matter how extreme. I’m not a full member; my qualifying period is technically still ongoing. I have another Watcher now. Someone always watches me.
Yet I’m still allowed to come to the club. That surprises me when I can clear the numbness in my head long enough to think. I would have thought that they would have shielded themselves from my destruction.
Nina fired me three months ago. I should look for another job I guess, but I can’t seem to get out of my pajamas. It has been months since I picked up my sketchbook. Months since I cared about anything except Friday nights when the darkness descends like a blanket and provides me oblivion.
There’s money in my bank account. My rent keeps getting paid. That’s Miles’s doing, of course. Without his help I’d be sleeping in the streets. The car shows up as well every Friday afternoon to drive me to Allentown. But Miles himself is nowhere to be seen. I haven’t heard from him since the day he told me he couldn’t be my Watcher anymore.
His office is a short subway ride away from me, but I can’t seem to brush the cobwebs away long enough to get dressed and go thank him. All my energy is reserved for the weekend, for the tortures that the men and women at Club Phoenix put me through. In any case, I’m not even sure if Miles will agree to see me.
My mother died. I did pull myself together long enough to sit by her hospital bed and watch her slip away. Even at the end she didn’t remember me. I thought I’d see Miles at the funeral but I didn’t. And though I’ve lost the power to feel hurt, his absence caused a twinge in my chest where my heart used to live.
My mother forgot me. Miles has abandoned me. I’ve been fired from my job. Nothing makes sense anymore and I don’t care. The chains hold me erect; the whips remind me I can still feel pain. Sometimes.
I forget things. I’m not sure if it’s a result of my apathy or if it’s the flaw in my genes. If I were healthy, if I didn’t have a potentially ticking time bomb inside my body, would I have picked a different path? It’s hard to know for sure. I think I let Miles go because I didn’t want to drag him down with me. He deserves better. He’s learned to balance his darkness and his light. He does not need to be overwhelmed by my eternal night.
Phoenix is both my anchor and my noose. I can’t escape. I don’t think I want to.
Rafael waits for me as I pull up at the entrance. I don’t notice how grand the castle is any more, but today I see all the lights blazing forth from every window, like a beacon in the dark, summoning lost, wandering souls to safety and shelter.
“Go downstairs,” he instructs me tersely. It’s unusual for him to give me instructions. Mostly he avoids me. I think I make him uncomfortable. I deal with Anna primarily.
I nod my compliance and walk once more down that narrow corridor. An extreme sense of déjà vu grips me. I’ve walked down this path many times before. But everything feels unreal.
There are two men in the room, and my heart starts to beat faster in my chest as I realize who they are. Adam, my first partner at Club Phoenix is standing in the light, but it isn’t him that I’m reacting to. It is the man that stands in the shadows at the edge of darkness. It is the glint in his green eyes as he looks at me.
“I was wrong to walk away,” he says. I know there’s a camera on the ceiling and every move is being watched. Adam is standing not two paces away, but my eyes are only on my Watcher. “I was wrong to leave. I’m here for you Kelly and I’m never going to leave again. If you fall, we fall together.” He extends one arm out and I take it and I cling on for dear life. He is so warm. So full of life. Can I do this to him? Can I take him with me into the darkness?
“What does this mean?” My voice is soft, but I need to know why Miles is here. Is he going to be my Watcher again? Is he going to touch me? Is there still a chance for us, or is it too late?
He doesn’t answer my question. He just asks me a question in return. “What do you want, Kelly?”
I should say something. I can’t speak. All the reasons I couldn’t blindly jump into a future with Miles are still there. They haven’t gone away. All that is left for me is oblivion.
My only real choice is whether I drag him down with me. And now that he’s back, that choice is being taken away from me.
A thought strikes me. Is this even about me? Or is this just that Miles needs to watch? Am I just a live sex show, more interesting than the numbing porn that he has spoken of? When he left the first time, I thought he couldn’t watch anymore. Yet here he is. Perhaps this isn’t about my addiction. Perhaps this is about his own.
My head spins. I am so confused. I wish I had a crystal ball to see into the future. I wish I could know something for certain. Anything. Any little thing.
“I need clarity from you.” I know I don’t have a right to ask, not after any and all of the choices I’ve made. But in this room, no one is untouched by the darkness. We have all made choices we aren’t proud of.
He looks at me and I can see that he’s struggling to find words that would fit this moment. That, I can understand. I’ve had to force the words out of my mouth. I just want to stay silent and drink him in, and revel in the fact that he’s here.
“I choose you,” he says finally. It is as if he’s contemplated a fancier speech but discarded it. “You want me to play? I’ll play. You want me to watch? I can do that too.”
At what cost? I want to scream at him. At what cost to both of us?
Adam clears his throat and we both start. Miles uncurls my fingers from his and takes a half-step back. His eyes stay locked onto me.
“Do you submit?” Miles speaks the ritual words of the Watcher, the ones that will indicate my willingness to continue with the session.
The question lingers in the air between us.
Life can surprise me sometimes. Roads curve in on themselves and sometimes the end is just the beginning. Everything can come full circle.
The top starts spinning.
All the while, I’ve sworn that I can’t drag him down with me. But by opting to take the same path I’m taking, he’s going to be dragged down nonetheless. Unless I break free. Unless I seize on that lifeline and start climbing.
For the first time in a really long time, I feel a glimmer of hop
e.
I make contact with those green eyes that hold the key to my salvation. I open my mouth to answer.
Epilogue: The top stops spinning…
An alcoholic can stop drinking. You can throw away the pack of smokes and swear never to light up again. It won’t be easy, but the dividing line between good and bad is clearer if the addiction in question is drugs or alcohol or cigarettes.
But sex? How do you cure yourself of sexual addiction? Do you swear to give up sex forever? I can’t do that.
I grapple constantly with the edge. Every day I try for balance. Some days I succeed better than others.
But I’m not alone. Miles is there, with his green eyes, his beautiful brown hair and his ready smile. When I walk into a room, his face lights up and it reminds me that I’m fighting for something worthwhile.
When my mother lost her memories of me, I felt erased. Club Phoenix was as much a cry for help as it was an exploration of desire and darkness. And my Watcher heard my cry and he was there to catch me as I fell. And he was there to pick me up and set me down so I can try again.
Strangely, the more he shows me of his own darkness, the more I’m drawn to the light. It is as if we balance each other out. We are connected the two of us, by a lifeline.
Once, I thought that I was the one who was falling and Miles was my lifeline, but life is more complicated than that. Roads curve in on themselves. Things are interconnected in strange and inexplicable ways.
One of those endless mornings Miles had found himself in a back alley, unable to remember how he’d ended up there, something had happened. I had been the fresh-faced, starry-eyed girl who’d just moved to New York, dreaming of starting her own fashion business. My mother had asked him to watch out for me and we’d had lunch that afternoon for the first time. I hadn’t realized that under the crisp business suit he’d worn, his body had been covered in bruises.
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