Darkest Love

by Melody Tweedy

  “Do I make you feel humiliated?”

  Annie felt a lump rising up in her throat, but she was careful to swallow it. “That’s how some men make me feel and I want to just embrace it. Explore it,” she said quietly. “It will make the orgasms really good. And…”

  “And?”

  “I might tap into something deeper. The reason why I do it. The reason why…”

  “Why what?”

  “The reason why I’m attracted to jerks like you.”

  Rain laughed, but then she saw a flash of pain in his eyes. Annie knew this stuff was confusing him. She opened her mouth, but seeing the rueful curl of his lip and the way the excitement—the sexual hunger and abandon—faded from his face, she clamped it shut again. She didn’t want that to happen just yet.

  “Okay.”

  Chapter 8

  “This is going to be your homage.”

  Rain’s voice boomed. He was sitting on the couch. Annie felt a quiver in her loins already as she knelt before him. His shins were hard and scar-patterned and surrounded by bulging calves. She kept her eyes on those shins as she shifted on the floor. Her own knees were not so battle-hardened and the bumps on the earthen floor hurt.

  She was not used to kneeling. The last time she had done it was when she collapsed with Lily, crying over Rain’s indifference. The time before that was to give Rain head.

  Ouch. She almost let the sound out but stopped herself. She would have to get used to this, though every bump in her knee was crying for a rest.

  “Repeat everything I say.”

  Annie blinked. They had not agreed to that. Rain was clearly making the rules up as he went along. She watched his shins shift as he adjusted his buttocks on his seat. The tone in his voice was so hard that she gulped.

  “This will be my homage.”

  She allowed herself a peek up at Rain’s face. He towered above her, head so high that his chin disappeared into his neck. But God, he was still handsome. Those shoulders and arms Annie loved spread out like a man-muscle mountain range and his eyes darted like cruel birds, swooping and piercing. He observed Annie on her knees.

  “Eyes down,” he ordered.

  Annie lowered her eyes and stared at her own fingers gripping her thighs. Her knuckles were white. She couldn’t wait for him to let her start. They had agreed she had to wait. She had to wait for the blasted words.

  “You may begin.”

  “I may begin.” Hand shaking, Annie gripped the sponge at her side and drenched it in the bucket of fragrant water she had prepared. With Rain’s blessing each step of the way, of course.

  “Now you may prepare my foot bath.”

  “Now you may set it down.”

  “You may not look me in the eye.”

  “You must walk with your head lowered.”

  Annie could already feel her clitoris pulsing and wet space around it quivering in anticipation as she drenched her sponge in the soapy water. She followed the sponge with her pumice stone. Each shuffle of her knees on the dirt floor sent a wave of sensations through her body. She could scarcely focus on anything else. There was so much. So much emotion, so much sensation. It was not just her horniness—the slick between her legs and the hot ache that circled her bead—though that was distracting indeed.

  Bits of pressure almost made her gasp, they were so delicious, and at one point when she shuffled back to avoid head-butting Rain’s knee, she moaned unwittingly. Her thighs were wet as hell and her clit pulsed with blood, relishing the quick applications of pressure from her inner thighs. A tropical storm circled the bead, wet and hot, and lush sensations ran in streaks, like devastated city streets, down her legs and up her spine.

  Biggest casualty: Me.

  Me and my dignity, really.

  Annie squeezed the sponge, feeling the other distractions: Humiliation. Fear. The peach scent of her bath bomb, the ache of her knees. The sweat down her face. The crick beginning to develop in her neck.

  Eyes down;Rain had ordered it. She wanted to look up above his shins, into his face as she prepared the bath and worked the sponge. Rain hovered like a cruel god, not even moving aside when she showed discomfort. It was she who had to shuffle away. And her excited slit? All that longing concentrated between her legs? That was proof she was a twisted individual.

  It was as she had suspected; she was a sucker for punishment.

  “You may begin your homage.”

  Annie squeezed a final sudsy waterfall from the sponge and shuffled back, lifting Rain’s foot so it rested in her lap. For the next ten minutes that foot was her world. She cleaned the ankle, soles and veined front segment above the toes. She got to know each curve and cord and sinew, each hair and patch of dryness.

  She began with a great soapy swish that sent so much water into her lap he barked. “Less mess!”

  His sharp kick almost got her in the face. Annie continued, wiping the foot with smaller strokes, enjoying the shape of Rain’s toes—so square, with such wide, low-sunken toenails. The tops of his toes were so bulbous–so different from her own.

  Annie focused on these small details. Her body relaxed and her back and arms flooding with heat as her body prepared for the sex she knew, deep inside, was coming. Something about concentrating all her attention on this task, something about being ordered and limited aroused her. It melted her body in preparation for Rain’s dick.

  But she barely allowed herself to think about that. She sponged on. Toes. Ankles. Sole. Heel. The foot was her world.

  “Start the other one,” he said as she was flicking the sponge between each toe, watching the occasional sud fly up and admiring the oily glow of the bubbles lodged in Rain’s tufts of toe hair. He removed his foot from her lap, scraping her arm with a long nail. She had told him to be brutal.

  The other foot was in her lap. Annie repeated the process. She pumiced each heel. She lay flat to reach his heels and felt her thighs dripping. She was fully prepared for sex though her neck was begging for a lie-down.

  When Rain’s heels were smooth, she dropped the pumice stone in the bucket and slid the sponge over each foot once more, removing any residue of dirt and dry skin. She was ready.

  “Towel me. Then I’ll get your leash.”

  When his feet were dry, Rain rose and strode to the other side of room. Annie knelt shivering, watching his legs moving from her child-height position on the floor. The feet followed each other—fresh, fragrant and soft. She had heard him grunt, barely audibly, as he rose from the chair.

  He was out of sight. She didn’t dare look behind her.

  The next thing she felt was the collar around her neck. Steel studs pecked Annie’s neck, shocking her with their coldness. Rain secured the collar with a click and clicked the leash into place. Annie could hear him breathing.

  He tugged. It was so hard Annie gasped–she only just managed to eke the sound out before the tight leather collar choked her, sending her breath back down and making her eyes bulge in their sockets. She felt her heart hammering. For the first time since her homage began, she was not aware of the pulsing around her clit.

  “Just a quick walk today. We’ll start slow.”

  Another pull of the leash sent Annie’s head down. The clasp section of the collar twisted to the back of her neck. Every pull of Rain’s hand put pressure on the delicate cords at the front of her neck. She submitted, scampering forward on her hands and knees, hissing with pain as her palms and knee knobbles pressed against the hard floor. One of her feet was slightly asleep–the numbness was creeping up her leg.

  “My foot is numb.”

  “Off with your kaftan,” Rain ordered, allowing her to stop. Annie fumbled for her button. There was just one–a single button at the top from which the folds of her garment billowed. Easy access. With a twist of Annie’s fingers, the bead was through the buttonhole.

  Head still down, she watched Rain’s feet. They had a foot-soak glow. She had spoiled them rotten, really.

  A sharp pain pierced her ar
mpits as he tugged the kaftan from behind.

  “Arms up.”

  Annie obeyed, rising up onto her knees like a whinnying horse, happy for the break this gave her palms. She glanced at them. The skin was white and patchy where the blood flow had been blocked.

  “You will continue to crawl alongside me, slave.”

  Naked now, Annie followed him to the cupboard. She examined his calves, noting scars and unruly hairs, then turned her eyes to the walls of the hut. There were blemishes there she had never noticed before. Child-height was truly a different way to live. She remembered reading about Stanley Kubrick’s camera work in The Shining. People had praised his innovation when he directed scenes from a child’s point of view.

  She could see why. Annie had entered that same Kubrick space: the realm where adult faces glower above you. Sunflower heads sit level with your own and tiny hands rest on tricycle handlebars. Her favorite scene in The Shining had been the one where the child cycles through the halls of the haunted hotel.

  Tonight is my night of innovation. She had never seen the world this way before, or felt feelings like this. Every scamper forward brought her breasts into view for a microsecond. They swayed at the bottom of her view. A breeze entered through the window, cooling the space between her buttocks and tickling her slick diamond-shaped woman-parts, which were completely exposed. She shivered from the sensation: evaporative cooling of the vagina. I am a slave. Utterly under his command. The undersides of the studs on the collar still pierced her—a cold little pin-prick each—as she turned her head this way and that.

  Rain stopped at the kitchen bench. She paused behind the now-familiar calves, examining them again. They had a new look of poise and consideration. It was a moment of transition: Rain was planning something up there. Strange how the calves show his mood. Annie could read their shape as clearly as if she was looking at his face. At this level, when there’s so little to work with, you gain new skills.

  “I will feed you,” he announced. “Eyes up.”

  His fingers were covered with strawberry jam. Annie had not heard him scrape it out of the tin. She reared up, climbing the cabinet with her hands. A new wave of emotion moved through her as the fantasy came to life: bin before her eyes, hand poised above her, scrambling up the wall. She was a creature. A dog.

  “Good girl. Lick.”

  Rain stuck his fingers in her mouth, too far. Annie’s eyes teared up as she slurped the jam. She was aware of his sage eyes assessing her; she could see them in her peripheral vision. Annie choked and slurped, feeling the first bursts of sweetness hit her taste buds. Her tongue found the jam through the bigger jam of Rain’s fingers. She tried to speak: thank you.

  “Don’t speak. Moan.”

  So Annie moaned. Maybe it was the humiliation, maybe it was the choking, perhaps it was the easy way Rain slipped into the role—Annie couldn’t say exactly—but she started to cry. A single tear slipped down her cheek. Then another. And another. She could hear the drip, drip, drip of the water filter and smell a whiff of garbage rising from the bin. The waste rotted extra-fast in the hot Sivu sun, ruining the fresh atmosphere in her hut.

  Disgusting. She was feeling way too much.

  “The garbage needs to be emptied. It’s vile. You’re vile.”

  “It is. I am. I’ll do that when we finish.”

  Rain led her to the bed too quickly, forcing her to scamper fast. He watched the tears streaming from her face, his mouth firm and his eyes calm. When they reached the sleeping nook he removed her leash, then the collar. He hooked his hands around her waist, squeezing, and guided her to her feet.

  “On the bed,” Rain ordered.

  While she was spread out on the bed, neck stretching and knees and palms rejoicing–relieved after the crawl–Rain slipped away. Annie heard his footsteps retreating and surprised herself by sobbing into the pillow. Her head throbbed, as if the fluid around her brain was expanding and squeezing the grey matter down. Her vision stared up, and the bed linen in front of her eyes moistened with tears.

  But she also felt fresh. Like some kind of tension had been kneaded out of her. It was a bit like the relief of reaching the other side of a hill, seeing sights you never imagined, feeling overwhelmed by the climb and confused by the new scenery, but happy that the hard part was over. And her body felt loose. Annie wailed again, feeling a knot untangle in the muscles of her back. She gasped at how pleasurable it felt, as if some very, very old tension was being released. Who knew how long it had been there?

  After a few minutes Rain returned. Over his footsteps Annie heard the hiss and splat of moisturizer being squeezed out of its package.

  “Good job, slave. Time to rest.”

  Rain straddled her, rubbing the moisturizer into her back in cool circles, kneading those muscles that were already soft. She cried. Her head hurt, as if it was being squeezed, then relaxed as each set of tears streamed out. Pressure, release, pressure, release.

  It occurred to her that sex too had a rhythm. Not just the thrust but many rhythms. Sexual pleasure came in waves for Annie. There was no pleasure without the tension, and perhaps no joy without a touch of cruelty. She needed to explore her darker feelings in order to feel subsequent bliss.

  “You’re so amazing.” Rain’s voice was tender behind her. His hands still massaged her back, working the tissue all up and down the spine, treating her to perfect little pinches. Annie kept breathing. She felt as if her skull itself was breathing—first constricted, then numb, then pleasurably light as tears flowed out of her eyes.

  Her clitoris was tingling too. “Please start, Rain.” With that, she received the final joy of the day: the thrill of his penis sliding in.

  “Oh, God.”

  Her pussy was tight and juicy as a young plum, ready to receive her complicated lover. As Rain slid in, activating the nerve-rich places deep inside her, he piled his weight on her back too. Annie moistened more at the feeling of the hundred kilos of man suddenly covering her. She screamed into the cotton pillow cover. He started to thrust, pounding her g-spot with every motion and sending ripples up her body. It felt like electricity.

  “Oh, baby.” Rain hardly ever called her that. Annie bit the pillow, relishing the new tenderness in his voice. She squeezed her thighs over his erection as the first orgasm rushed in. Her head felt like it was melting–this was a new, overwhelming level of pleasure.

  Rain was going to take her to new places. He was a marathon trainer.

  By the time he was finished, she was in a Zen state of satisfaction. Images of Annie’s childhood, of hikes and grandfather’s laps and lapping waves and early humiliations and sexual explorations passed through her mind. Soon she fell into a deep sleep. When she woke up she felt like a hundred horrors had been re-lived, only to be released. They floated away like hot-air balloons, never to bother her again.

  * * * *

  “Feeling any better?”

  Rain’s kisses were coming fast. Annie felt like crying again. She nodded instead, opening her mouth to receive his silky lips. Stubble covered his chin and climbed all the way up to his ears: a frame for the happy, lazy eyes that sparkled in the candlelight. “Yes,” she tried to say between kisses, but a puff of noiseless breath issued from her lips instead, making him smile. He kissed her on the nose.

  “I’m glad.”

  Annie melted into his arms, enjoying the warmth and inhaling the sexy-man-in-bed sheets smell that was all him. He squeezed her tight. His smell was so erotic, so human, so familiar now she sighed, letting her head drop onto the hand that reached up to stroke her hair.

  They cuddled. Annie’s body was so relaxed now she could well have been asleep. But her mind…her mind raced. Not in an anxious way; it was a grand and comfortable race, with a majestic arc, like a first-class coach ride or a tidal wave racing towards the shore.

  I will never understand men. She smiled, letting the corners of her mouth sneak up. Her cheek brushed Rain’s biceps.

  “I feel like we really s
hared something.”

  All she could do was nod. He had never been this tender after sex in all the time she’d known him.

  It took a bit of kink—homages, leashes, collars—to make him change his tune. Annie was getting massages, caresses and a big bear hug from the hottest arms she had ever seen. Were these really the same arms that had pulled the leash? The same hands that locked around her throat?

  And the eyes! The last time Rain’s eyes sparkled like this was when she had gagged, mid-way through a choke, just before she lost consciousness.

  “You know what I liked about that?”

  “What?” Annie croaked.

  “I learned some stuff about myself too.”

  Annie peered at the arm that was holding her. She didn’t really know how to respond. “Like what?”

  Rain shifted. “It’s hard to describe. I felt…that you were honest. There was something honest in what you did. And it allowed me to see what I hate about you and sort of…move past it. It was like my negative feelings about you dissolved.”

  Annie laughed at the casual way he said it: what I hate about you. “Can you explain more?”

  “You won’t take this the wrong way?”

  “Promise.”

  Rain released her, shifting away to gather his thoughts. “That whole way that women simper to you. The way they’re kind of…”

  “Submissive to men?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You realized it’s because we’re conditioned to be that way?”

  Rain scratched his head. “Well, combine it with neediness and screechiness at all the wrong moments and it’s not a good combination. Like a nightmare rollercoaster ride. And the foul-smelling spray-tan doesn’t help.”

  “Ha.”

  “I’m also not a fan of the customary Adele soundtrack.”

  “You are a pig, Rain.”

  He leaned over grinning, hand resting against his temple, bicep doing lovely things as it supported the weight of his neck and head. “That was raw. I liked it. I felt like it was the first time you’ve ever been honest with me.” He paused. “I hate all that artifice, all the BS. Though Annie…” He gave her another squeeze. “I know it’s not your fault. It’s the environment. It can’t be fun to live as a woman in this horseshit world.”