by Cara McKenna
“I imagine you’d find it tedious, in time,” Rob said. “When you just wanted a quick shag and an early night, but your partner needed some elaborate scene to play out.”
She shrugged. “I couldn’t tell you. But I’d like to think if I was with some guy long-term who was into what you are, for example . . . if I had the power to blow his mind, just by taking the time to tie him down? That sounds kind of amazing. You know. As long as he reciprocated.” She smiled, biting her lip. “And you showed me last night you know how to reciprocate.”
He wriggled his wrists free of their bindings, ignoring the surge of arousal the friction triggered. As the rope fell away, he took Merry’s face in his hands. He studied her mouth, then kissed her full lips once, softly. “You may be the kindest person I’ve ever met.”
“That’s very nice of you to say. But I might be taking advantage of your fetish for my own selfish enjoyment.”
He smiled. “I’ll try to find that insulting.”
She wrapped an arm around his ribs, nestling her body against his. “I’m kidding, obviously. But I do think it’s cool, the way you are. And if you ever find yourself in San Francisco, I’ll happily track down some rope fetishists’ meet-up to bring you to.”
A fine enough thought, but an impossibility as well. Merry would be gone in a day or two, off to Inverness and then back home, all those thousands of miles away, to the alternate universe called California.
Even if she did invite Rob to visit, she wouldn’t get the man she’d met here.
The Rob she’d met didn’t exist outside this house, these hills. His alcoholism was twice as magnetic as his fetish, and physical distance from people and cities and bars and any other vestige of civilization was the sole method he’d found to stay sober. He might visit this wondrous pixie-world where other rope fetishists welcomed him into their shameless, lusty ranks, but only at the cost of his life.
Rob wasn’t the kind of drunk who’d made an arse of himself at weddings. He was the kind who’d kept a bottle in his desk and glove box to mitigate the shakes, and who’d for years lost the ability to simply fall asleep, so routinely had he blacked out. He’d drunk himself into the first stages of cirrhosis by thirty-three, become some sleepwalking wretch covered in angry purple bruises. His liver would probably never fully recover from the abuse he’d put it through. He’d had his license suspended for repeated drink-driving offenses, and with hindsight he realized it was a blessing—and a miracle that he’d never hurt anyone.
Rob didn’t need a treatment plan, or a support group, or Jesus. He needed exile. Solitary confinement. A world in which he could pursue his fetish as a lifestyle was beyond luxury, beyond even wishful thinking—it was fantastic fiction, without even a hair’s breadth of possibility tethering it to reality.
Reality.
The hand Merry rested on his middle grew antsy, drawing him from the melancholy. And yes, into reality. A reality that defied all odds, starring a woman he wanted and who wanted him back. Kinks and all.
She stroked his chest, the contact warm and pleasant. His wiring was what it was, but it had never kept him from experiencing pleasure at a woman’s touch. At times it was adequate to arouse him, get him hard enough to initiate sex . . . but he doubted he’d ever had an orgasm that hadn’t been spurred by those forbidden thoughts, by imagining the burn and pressure of rope against his bare skin.
You don’t have to imagine it anymore. You can have it, with a woman who’s eager to offer it. He’d be a fool to let this chance pass.
He stroked her hair, so smooth and soft and dark, so the opposite of that thing he craved, but all the more exotic for it. He laid a kiss on the crown of her head to feel that silkiness on his lips. “I’m sorry for how I handled things last night.”
She pulled back to meet his eyes. “I’m sorry I swallowed a bunch of loch water and saddled you with a queasy houseguest.”
“I’m not sorry about that.” Not sorry at all. Had she not, he might never have felt what he did now, this rush of gratitude and affection and pure, quenching relief to have told someone these things about himself, to let a woman see what these desires did to him. Their connection might only last this one afternoon. It might never come again, but at least he’d go to his grave having held it in his hands.
She ran a palm over his chest and neck, stroked his hair and jaw. Her fingers dawdled at his beard, something curious in the contact, as though perhaps she was seeking an understanding of his own fixation, of the raspy tease he desired.
“Do you want to keep going?” she asked softly.
“Keep going?”
“Keep, you know—messing around.”
All she had to do was gather the rope that had slipped between them and Rob’s cock was stirring. He took a deep breath—deep enough to find what lay beneath the fear and bring it to the surface, to tell this amazing woman what she wanted to hear. The truth.
“Yes,” he said. “I want that.”
Chapter Nine
“Take your clothes off.”
Merry’s words lit the room as surely as the match she struck to ignite the oil lamp. Drunk on excitement, Rob fumbled to peel off his shirt, open his fly, and get his jeans kicked away. He left his shorts on and lay down.
Merry sat at his side, wearing a wicked smile. “Give me your hands.”
His mind went blank as his blood surged southward. When he offered his wrists, Merry wrapped them, drawing the rope between and around in a figure eight. Full sensation all around on each side, none of the vulnerable, soft skin neglected. Every errant fiber teased, prickling with so much promise.
There was the texture of it at the surface, but beneath that, so much more. It excited him in ways no stroking hand ever could—under his skin, in his cock, but most of all, between his ears. It changed him. Made him into a different man, the way a costume might possess its actor.
“I’m me,” she murmured. “And you’re you.”
He nodded, too foggy and overheated to speak. When she let his hands go he rested them at his belly, savoring the rasp of the hemp there as Merry wound the second rope around her own palm.
“You’ve been very kind,” she said, “letting me stay after I showed up saying I was sick. But really I was never sick. I just lied to get into your home.”
He shivered under the slow, bristly laps she made along his side.
“And after I had your trust, you woke up to discover I’ve tied you to your bed.”
Her words roused him, real and potent as a hand stroking his pounding sex. “Yes.”
This time she ran her wrapped hand along the edge of his veiled erection, hemp burrs catching on cotton. He moaned. The sound came from deep inside, from as deep as where his desires hid, and he let her hear it.
“I tried to seduce you after you invited me in,” Merry whispered. “But you were a gentleman, and turned me down. So I had to have you by force.”
“Christ. Keep talking.”
“I told you I was having trouble sleeping, and you made me some special tea with something in it that would knock me out. Except I switched our cups, so you were the one who got drugged. Now you’ve come to and found I’ve tied you up. Your wrists are bound, and they’re strapped tight to the bed, so you can’t move them from where they are.”
“Yes.” He imagined the extra sensation of more rope digging into his sides, anchoring him in place.
Reading his mind once more, Merry unwound the rope from her hand. She lay it over his wrists and fed one end beneath his back, tying it so his arms really were secured to his belly, if not to the bed itself. She moved, pushing his legs wide and kneeling between them, stroking his thighs with mirrored caresses. The softness of her palms multiplied the dry scrape of his vice.
This was so strange, to be imagining these things with his eyes open. With a partner. A story
teller.
Strange and wondrous, so perfect he worried for a moment it might be a dream. Except Merry’s voice was too real, the way it rang brightly through the shadows of his bedroom.
“You shouldn’t have rejected me.” Her thumbs traced the inner hems of his shorts, tickling the hairs and sensitive skin. “This could have been for both of us, but you ruined it. So now I’ll have to take what I want, if you’re not going to offer it freely.”
She was magical. She was articulating the things he’d only imagined being told, things he’d feel silly even typing out for a stranger to read in some chat exchange, were he sober. But she could just say them. What would he say, in the safety of his own head?
“I let you in my home,” he muttered, his shyness chased immediately by a fiery rush of excitement.
“But I didn’t come here needing a bed, or a hot meal,” she said. “There’s something else I need from you.”
Her hand settled against his cock, just a whisper of body heat to start. Rob moaned, arms shaking. Pressure came, then friction—the slow drag of her palm along the underside of his erection.
“The second I saw you, I had to feel you. Just like this.” She clasped him with a soft squeeze, seeming to measure his girth. “You must want this, too, if what I’m doing has you this hard.”
“I . . .” He fought against the high of arousal, wanting to keep the exchange going. “I was just trying to be kind. I didn’t want you to feel taken advantage of. You were hurt.”
“You should have just given me what I wanted,” she scolded. “Now you’re the helpless one.” Her fingers spread and dipped, cupping through the cotton. Her touch wasn’t shy. She weighed and measured, then let her fingertips stroke low and deep in that sensitive cleft between his balls and arse. He felt objectified and restrained, punished . . . every last sensation he coveted. She clasped his cock again, rougher than before. “You want this, too,” she said again. “I’ve got proof, right here.”
Rob twisted his wrists in their binding, then froze. It was so good, so hot, but he was far too close, too soon. This was nothing like what he could do by himself, and the wonder of it sprang from something so much more thrilling than the authority of another person’s hand.
It was Merry—her presence, her eyes on him, her indulgence. It was feeling at her mercy, not merely at the mercy of his desires. A single point of restraint, yet it had him hotter than an image of the most elaborate, gorgeous, body-binding knot configuration he might masturbate over.
He hauled himself back from the brink, stilling his arms, concentrating only on her touch. Her strokes felt wonderful, but unless he focused on the rope, he wouldn’t lose himself. He might welcome the contact without ending it all. Maybe . . .
Maybe, in some other world where he fell in love with a woman like Merry, he could learn to balance all these urges. To incorporate the rope, but to master his mind and retreat into the fucking when he got too close, then let the friction register when his arousal waned. Learn to harness and direct this force inside him, like fire. A cycle of stoking and dampening, whatever rhythm kept him hard, but staying self-possessed enough to please a woman on nights when he needed to be the dominant one. Then perhaps he could earn a reward—a taste of the scenarios that made him light-headed with desire.
When he felt himself softening, lulled by her pleasant strokes but not spurred, he twisted at his bindings. His cock stiffened instantly. Merry’s mouth fell open, eyes hungry. He loved that look. That glimmer of pleasure at seeing him for what he was, a slave to such manipulations.
She began to ease down the band of his shorts.
“Don’t.”
She stopped. “No?”
He shook his head. “Not completely. I like how it feels.”
Recognition curled her lips. She fisted the cotton, binding his cock tight to his belly, that sinful containment.
“Yes.” He’d fantasized about this, too. About being tied and made to lose control this way—inside his clothes. He let the thought run wild, imagining she was torturing him with the contact, threatening to force his release, prove him helpless, witness his undoing. He let the rope chafe and his arousal flashed hot, cock surging against her touch.
In some fantasies, if he cried out, if he moaned, if he begged, he’d be punished. Treated roughly, slapped, turned over and spanked—the method didn’t matter, so long as it degraded him. The scenario was changeable. Only the feeling of being used was constant.
“Pretend I’m not allowed to come,” he whispered. “Except you want me to. Against my will. To . . . to humiliate me.”
Merry didn’t say a word, not for close to a minute. She merely stroked him with a slow, light touch. He worried perhaps he’d asked too much, but then her sweet voice lit the space between them.
“I need to see it,” she said, and this time she eased the waistband down until his cock sprang free into the dry, warm air. She let the elastic go, and it rode up to press at the base of his erection. “I knew you’d be big. I watched you bathing in the river. I knew before I even came to your door.”
A shiver coursed up his spine at the thought of being targeted, perhaps stalked. He shut his eyes.
Her smooth palm grazed his swollen flesh, along the underside and over the head before she clasped him in a cool fist.
Rob shuddered. He allowed himself the faintest twist against his rope, enough to multiply the pleasure without launching himself bodily over the edge.
“You could have gotten off so easy,” Merry said, “if you’d just given me what I wanted. We could have just fucked and left it at that.”
Yes, he thought, reveling in her crassness.
“But you denied me, so now you’ll pay the price.” She tugged his underwear back in place, and that binding alone had him gasping.
“You’re close, aren’t you?”
He twisted his wrists and stuttered, “Yes,” excitement surging.
“Don’t you dare.” Her touch grew rough—a firm stroke of her palm that forced his erection to one side, intensifying the way his shorts bound him.
“Oh.”
“Don’t.” She gripped him, each pull countered by excruciating pleasure as she dragged the cotton taut against his crown on the down stroke.
His hands trembled, coupled with a staccato moan.
“Don’t you dare come, not like this. I’ll punish you. I’ll leave you tied up, lying in your own mess.”
That about did him in. Never had he felt this hot, or hard, or crazed. “Stop.” He met her dark eyes, letting her see it was the last thing he wanted.
“Stop?” She squeezed his pounding flesh in a rude fist. “You can’t mean that. Your cock doesn’t want me to stop. I bet your cock wants me to keep going,” she taunted, speeding the friction.
He gasped, clamping his eyes shut, arms shaking. “Please.”
“I bet your cock wants me to keep going until you can’t take anymore. Until you lose control and come all over yourself. Doesn’t it?”
All he could do was groan.
Suddenly her grip was gone. The loop tethering his wrists to his belly was tugged free, and smooth fingers grasped his forearm. She drew his hands lower so the rope binding his wrists was against his erection, then dictated—guiding his arms up and down, up and down, hemp savaging cotton. She moved to his side, the forced caresses faltering but never ceasing.
“Oh.”
“Don’t you dare,” she warned, but the friction and pressure had Rob panting. His release was building—a tight, furious heat gathering deep in his belly, his balls, the root of his cock. At the edges of the rough strokes and blinding pleasure, a softer sensation teased his throat—faint kisses, cool on his fevered skin. He was her victim, her captive, her pet, her toy. Everything he dreamed of being, her the lover he’d fantasized about. No less powerful than a dei
ty, to make him feel all this. He imagined his release was a sacred offering, and that giving it might even destroy him—a sacrifice he’d eagerly embody.
“Oh God.” Her hands barely had to coax his own now—they were along for the ride as Rob surrendered, rubbing himself home, rope savaging his wrists and belly. A flash of fire, a chafing twist, again and again and again, until he succumbed.
The world blazed white-hot, blinding, made of nothing but relief and pounding pleasure. He felt come basting his aching flesh, and registered his twitching arm and shoulder muscles, his groans.
Merry kissed his neck, then released his wrists to spoil him with one last treat. She fondled him, making him feel the result of all this humiliation—his softening cock, bathed in the cooling spoils of his degradation. Then, she let him go.
She touched his face, pushing back his sweat-damp hair. No judgment. Only pure fondness and awe.
His heart was hammering from the force of his release, then from a rush of fear as the spell of the sex dissolved. As he grasped what he’d let Merry see, and do. What he’d let himself enjoy with another human being. The words he’d spoken. He might just as easily have peeled away his skin and invited her to handle his naked heart.
The rope was gone, but something else bound him now. Shame. Regret. Familiar companions. Rob knew their whispering voices well.
He felt stripped and vulnerable, but not in the ways that thrilled him. He wanted to run, as he had the night before. Instead he left the bed merely to rummage for flannel bottoms and a tee, dressing and sitting cross-legged atop the covers.
Merry doesn’t regret what just happened. And for him to close up now, reject the miracle she’d manifested for him, here on this bed . . .
“I can smell the fire,” she said. “I love that smell. Like winter’s officially on its way.”
Words abandoned him. The rain was hammering now, drumming the stovepipe with a dull, metallic tattoo. He let it fill the silence.
