by Kira Barker
I should have left the hospital at eight in the morning at the latest so I could catch a few hours of sleep before coming over, but as so often had happened over the last couple of months, reality gave me the middle finger. It was three in the afternoon when I finally staggered out of the ER, and it cost me a lot not to just call and cancel, including the plans for later that evening when Kara had roped the three of us into joining her for drinks. Apparently she had a new guy she was fucking whose friends bored the hell out of her, and some unwritten rules of friendship dictated that we had to act as backup small-talkers until she was ready to drag him off. Under different circumstances I would have looked forward to that as much as letting Simon do his thing, but just the idea of having to act somewhat civil and not fall asleep mid-sentence gave me hives.
It was a testament to just how horny I was, exhaustion notwithstanding, that I showed up at the guys’ doorstep at all.
I was surprised to bump into Jack as soon as I opened the door, but judging from his running gear, he was about to engage in a different kind of physical activity than I was looking forward to. He flashed me his usual grin as he straightened from lacing his running shoes, and if his hug was a little more intimate than usual, it wasn’t by much.
“You look like shit warmed over, do you know that?”
“You say the nicest things. Sometimes I really wonder how you manage to get laid at all,” I shot back, silently agreeing with him. I’d had less than twenty-five hours of sleep this week, and it was starting to show.
His grin dipped into somewhat darker registers, but that was likely my imagination.
“If you’re really concerned about that, I don’t have to go for a run right now. I mean, you’re a doctor—if you’re concerned about my physical well-being, I should heed your advice.”
“Get lost,” I huffed, but couldn’t keep the shit-eating grin from my face.
Jack snorted and did just that, but not without stopping inside the open door.
“He’s kind of in a weird mood. Far be it from me to get between you and your choice of recreational activities, but I thought I should warn you. I’ve only been home for like fifteen minutes, and he bit my head off twice. You’re always welcome to crash on the couch, you know that.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
“Oh, you wound me,” he sing-songed, then ducked out of the door when I made a grab for him. “Have fun! Or not. Whatever floats your boat.”
And with that he was gone, leaving me shaking my head and not knowing what to make of his warning. Simon could get moody at times, but I doubted that he would let that affect what happened in the playroom. He’d been quite adamant before when he’d stressed that ego had about as much place in BDSM as any kind of intoxicants had—none.
I found him lounging on the couch, feet up on the coffee table, laptop across his thighs. He didn’t look up when I entered, although he must have heard our exchange at the door or at least been aware that I’d finally made it here. Not quite sure what to do with myself, I dropped the duffel bag containing my change of clothes and what I hoped may pass Kara’s inspection later on the floor. Somehow I was starting to see a pattern here.
“You’re late,” Simon informed me about half a minute later, sounding distracted but also kind of pissed off.
“No shit, Sherlock,” I grumbled, maybe a little angry myself because of the reason for my tardiness. “And wouldn’t you have guessed it, it’s not even because I overslept, but I haven’t even hit the sack yet. Two of the interns called in sick and I got saddled with an extra eight hours of clinic duty.” Which was bothersome in and of itself, because I could think of better ways to spend my time than get whined at by hypochondriacs with stellar self-diagnostic skills, with the odd coughing kid thrown in for extra fun.
Simon’s eyes lifted from his screen to find mine, and as much as I tried, I couldn’t read the look on his face. It was oddly bland, and I didn't know whether that was a good sign or not.
“You could have called.”
“I sent you a text as soon as I left the hospital.”
Truth be told, I could have sent that text hours earlier, but I’d clung to the hope that I could take off sooner than expected.
He kept staring at me, which made me kind of uncomfortable, but I was too tired for playing games right now.
“Look, I’m sorry. Yes, you’re right, I should have called earlier. But I’m here now, and we’ve still got”—I checked my watch—“roughly two hours before Kara wants to drag us into the Friday early-evening madness. Do you really want to waste that with moping around?”
A muscle in his jaw jumped as he gnashed his teeth, or so I imagined, but blandness had seeped into his voice as he replied.
“As you wish. What do you have in mind?”
It would have been so much easier if he’d continued to be angry or started to pout—a first, but when he was like this, nothing was beyond him—and I felt like I was slowly maneuvering myself onto too-thin ice here.
“I don’t know,” I hedged, getting absolutely no reaction from him. “I’ll leave the planning up to you?”
He held my gaze just long enough to make me wonder if I’d just thoroughly fucked myself, then looked away as he closed his laptop and got to his feet.
“You have five minutes. Do I have to repeat my instructions?”
I quickly shook my head.
“Me, naked, kneeling upstairs.”
He nodded, then walked by me without saying another word, disappeared into his room, and shut the door behind him. I shook my head, too tired for more than a hint of annoyance to come up inside of me, then undressed and beat it to the bathroom. I was quick to finish my business, but barely made it upstairs into the attic before Simon arrived. He was wearing the same clothes as last time, which still had the same effect on me. Tired I might be, but not too tired to admire just how delectable he looked in those leather pants and tight T-shirt.
Unlike last time, he didn’t make me wait but instead came to a halt facing me, his arms crossed over his chest.
“Before we begin, we have to decide on how to go from here.”
That sounded ominous enough that it made me uneasy, but I quenched those feelings quickly, trying to remain calm.
“I guess this mostly depends on you. How much did you like our last session?” he asked.
I wondered if that was a loaded question, but decided that this was definitely one of those brutally honesty situations.
“I don’t know. Honestly, ‘like’ is not what I’d qualify it as. I mean, it was awesome, and it completely blew me away, but there were times…”
I trailed off, letting that hang between us. Simon’s mouth quirked into a brief smile of remembrance, and that smile was way too nice for what I knew must be lurking in his mind.
“Maybe I should have clarified. Our last session was very biased. Heavy on the physical side, light on the mental aspects. As I’ve told you before, I dig the physical stuff, and I get enough of a mental kick from this level that it satisfies me. The question is—does it satisfy you?”
“Wasn’t that part of the problem?” I offered, not getting what he was leading up to.
Simon shrugged.
“Frankly, if you say that this is what you want, I’ll drop the point of protocol altogether. You come over, you get your fix, you leave. There’s no sense to me frustrating both of us with tedious lessons if I’m just annoying you with them. And before you start frowning at me as if I’d just offended you, there’s nothing wrong with being a masochist without having stronger submissive tendencies. Frankly, my life is a lot easier and simpler if the only thing I have to worry about is your physical well-being. So, again, did what we did satisfy you to the point where you say yes, let’s do this again?”
“As opposed to what?”
I was surprised at the amount of doubt that laced my voice. Simon picked right up on it.
“As opposed to shifting things more into mental territory. Do you just want me to s
imply fuck you, or also screw with your mind? I’ve told you before, submission comes wearing many faces. This is not about you being meek. I personally love to give you incentive enough to submit to me, but the question is—do you want to do it just on a physical level, or also mentally? Do you want to feel like on some level you belong to me? Do you want to please me? That comes with consequences if you screw up, and while I have no intention of intruding into your life outside of the playroom, sooner or later something might seep over that boundary. It’s up to you whether that just sounds silly, or tantalizingly fascinating to you.”
I licked my lips, a bit at a loss for how to respond. It did sound silly, but I also couldn’t deny that the concept had a strong pull to it.
“When do you need my answer?”
“Right fucking now would be nice,” he shot back, smirking.
I swallowed, also to gain a little more time, but mostly because thinking about that did terrible things to my mind. Part of me loathed that we had to have this conversation when it was hard enough to think, but then in my current state of mind it was easier to just go with what felt right rather than to overthink everything.
“If I agree to that, what would that make me, your collared slave? Because I’m not sure I’m exactly comfortable with that. And I doubt that I can call you ‘Master’ with a straight face.”
My reply clearly annoyed him, and for a moment I thought that right there I had my answer.
“I don’t give a shit about semantics. I told you before that I don’t give a shit about protocol, either. This is about how you feel about me, about yourself, about us. It’s about what you want me to do to you, and what you expect of me.”
I thought about that, and when he realized that I was still biding my time, Simon sighed.
“Look, let’s reduce that to the bare bones of it. I’m not going to expect you to be my meek little plaything. I’m not going to mentally mold you into a person you don’t want to be. I love playing with you, and between the two times we’ve had sex, I felt like we matched pretty well, but there’s potential for more. Maybe that’s wishful thinking on my side—that’s why I’m asking you now. With some women I’m more than happy to keep it physical only, but with you I feel like we both could get so much more out of this if you let me get a little further under your skin. And it’s not like you’re cementing your fate with your reply right now. We will keep discussing this every step of the way, of course. I’m always open to negotiations.”
Listening to him explain, I couldn’t help but feel a little flattered. He made what we had sound like so much more. Realizing that I felt like what was developing between us was still pretty much just sex made me feel a little guilty, like I should confess that to him. But wasn’t that exactly what we were talking about right now? That meant that on some level I already agreed with him, and if I was honest with myself, getting even more out of this than having that special itch scratched sounded too tantalizingly good to simply dismiss it.
“What exactly would happen if I did say that I’m interested in stepping up the game?”
The way his eyes lit up told me that he knew that he had me. Strangely enough, that didn’t come with the expected knee-jerk reaction of me wanting to take a step back immediately.
“Baby steps. We’ll see. Just think about it. Shall we begin?”
I nodded, a little miffed that he left it at that, but then realized that this would become a true uphill battle if I couldn’t just let him take over and set the pace. Then again, if last session was any indication, Simon wouldn’t leave me twiddling my thumbs for long if he could just throw me into the deep end of the pool instead.
“I’ve been thinking about how to tackle our little problem, if you remember,” he went on, his previously relaxed pose becoming more authoritative. “That we’re a little pressed for time and you’re sleep deprived enough to fall asleep if I leave you like this for five minutes doesn’t make my job any easier. With a less bratty sub, I would rely on her cooperation, but I’m afraid if I do that, you’re going to leave with your ass too bruised up to sit for a week. This is why I’ve decided that we’ll switch things up from last time. From now on, you will address me properly with ‘Sir,’ and I won’t hear a single thing from you unless you are prompted. Any objections?”
It was then that I realized that my mouth was open, ready to snark back, but I quickly closed it. My body was running on autopilot, and there was no way of guessing into just how much trouble I could talk myself unwittingly if I didn’t consciously shut up.
Simon’s gaze kept boring into mine until I inclined my head, yet before I could look up again, he was crouching down in front of me, one hand catching my chin and holding it firmly, forcing our eyes to meet.
“I’m not trying to be a tyrannical asshole, although I easily could. This is my playroom, my rules. I don’t owe you an explanation. Upholding a base level of protocol can help you ease yourself into the right mindset. In a way, a lot of what we do is conditioning. I don’t expect you to be meek, just not to fight me every single step of the way. Be a good little slut, and you’ll get your reward.”
He didn’t add any threats, but then he didn’t need to. Last time had taught me that he didn’t need to explicitly punish me to send tears into my eyes, and as much as I’d loved that part of the scene, I got that bad behavior would not be rewarded with leniency again. Now it was simply a matter of whether I wanted to play along or not.
He must have seen agreement on my face because he let go then and went over to his supplies, once more fetching rope and putting it down onto the bench. He really must have liked that combination. I didn’t know whether that should have disappointed me—doing something new would have been fun, and there was so much we hadn’t explored yet—but then I doubted that he’d just go for a repeat performance.
“Come over here.”
Scrambling to my feet, I joined him, trying not to look too mutinous. Simon gave me a single, amused glance that told me that he knew that I was burning to give him a good tongue lashing, but I could see where he was coming from. And being ordered around like this also made me soaking wet, something I really hadn’t expected.
“Sit down on the bench.”
I followed suit, and he returned to the cupboard to get two sets of padded leather cuffs. While he buckled them around my ankles and wrists, I had a really hard time keeping silent, and judging from the way his eyes kept flitting to my face, his lips twitching, I guessed that he was highly amused by my likely not-well-hidden struggle.
Taking a deep breath, I let it out slowly, trying in vain to quiet myself.
“Sometimes I wonder how you make it through any long operation. At least I presume you’re shutting up then, otherwise one of the nurses would have stabbed you long ago.”
I didn’t try to keep anger and challenge out of my gaze as I glared at him, but Simon completely ignored me.
“Lie down, ass right on the lower edge of the bench, as far down as you can manage before falling off.”
I shimmied around until I was in position, keeping my knees tucked up to keep my balance. Weirdly enough, that made me feel exposed, as if having my ass almost in the air made me any more naked than standing around without clothes on. Simon connected my wrist cuffs to each other, then stretched my arms out behind my head as far as they would go and used a short length of rope to connect them to the head end of the bench. Lying with my torso prone like that made me glad that I’d shaved the last time I’d stumbled into my bathroom at home, or else my arm pits would have been glaringly stubbly right in front of my face.
Once he had my hands secured, Simon picked up one of the long coils of rope and unwound it, then set to tying it around my thigh, below my knee. He did the same to my other leg, then used the loose rope ends to connect my spread thighs to the bench also, with long enough leads that the strain on my hips wasn’t too bad. The last two ropes went through the snap hooks on the ankle cuffs and were then connected to the same attachment
point the wrist cuffs were tied to. Just for fun I tried kicking out, but while I could move the heels of my feet around, I wasn’t exactly in a position that left me much room to move. With my legs raised over my body, that also put extra pressure onto my torso—not the best sensation in the world, but manageable.
And because he was such a caring bastard, Simon fetched a couple more coils of rope that he put under my neck and head, creating a surprisingly comfortable cushion that forced me to stare straight through the V of my tied legs. I tried to ignore what the position turned the lower half of my torso into, but then I doubted that a reed thin, perfectly toned body would have remained looking good like that. As usual, Simon didn’t seem to give a shit. That playful smile that I saw ghosting around his lips likely came from seeing me helpless in front of him, and, well, quite exposed and available on the lower end. Just considering that made me forget all about being self-conscious.
His thoughts seemed to run along the same lines as mine as he stopped at the foot end of the bench, nicely framed by the view of my thighs, and used the back of his hand to casually stroke over my pussy. I didn’t exactly jump at the contact, but need immediately spiked inside of me, my body screaming for more when he withdrew his fingers.
Looking up, he caught my gaze, and now he definitely looked like he was up to something.
“You know what always strikes me as peculiar?”
I wondered if this was a case of me being expected to reply, but he went on talking before I could.
“So many women make such a fuss about their personal hygiene, even if they pretend that they don’t. They shave their legs,” he went on, using his right hand to run up the back of my thigh, then up my thankfully smooth calf.
