And then what, Kelly? Then, when your own memory begins to fail, you put him through the same heartbreak you are going through each day with your mother? Is this what you want for Miles?
Never, my heart screamed in reply as it broke. Miles who had paid every hospital bill. Who gave to me without ever stopping to measure. Who had been there for me every time I needed him. Who was there for me right now, his bottle-green eyes etched with pain.
I’d once thought he was bland and boring. How could I have been so wrong?
Everything hurt. The wisps of hair on my skin burned as the flames drew too close to them. My skin prickled uncomfortably as the heat grew unbearable. Yet, my heart ached the fiercest of all.
I couldn’t subject Miles to the grey fog that my life had become. If I kept going with the session I would harm only myself. If I stopped? Miles would be dragged into the morass with me.
The top keeps spinning.
My Watcher kept watching.
I should have noticed the bucket. I didn’t understand how I could have missed it.
It was a large blue bucket. Wide enough for my shoulders to enter and if I stood up, the sides would come up to my hips.
I should have noticed that the bucket was filled with water. But I didn’t.
I was too busy trying to stop my head from spinning as the man with the goatee suspended me upside down, my entire body encased in bindings. My body lifted off the floor as he tugged on a rope that passed through a pulley. I bent double and tried to struggle, but he just laughed at me.
The gag was gone now. The word was at the tip of my tongue, but it wouldn’t come out. Red, red, red, my subconscious screamed, but I remained silent.
I noticed the bucket only as he let go of the rope, and I was dunked, head first into the water.
Instinctively I panicked. The images flashed through my head. My swim coach with his teeth shining white as he grinned and shoved me into the deep end of the pool. My desperate struggles to swim, though I didn’t know how. My complete utter certainty that I was going to die.
I was certain I was going to die today as well. In the distance I heard that oily laugh.
Then, just when my body was starting to thrash in helpless futility and the bright bursts of white were popping in front of my closed eyes, I heard the pulley creak, and I was pulled up.
“Leave now,” my Watcher stood very straight, cradling me in his arms, still encased in the rope. My hair dripped on his chest, and I couldn’t stop shivering.
The man with the goatee sneered. “She didn’t use her safe word,” he tried to argue. “Who are you to stop the play? She has given consent.”
“I am her Watcher.” He didn’t raise his voice. But in his tone, I heard true danger. “I have the right. I watch over her and I keep her safe.”
Time passed; I didn’t know how much time. When awareness returned, I was still in the dungeon. A blanket was wrapped around my shoulders and the ropes that had held me prisoner were gone.
But the Watcher was still in front of me and in his eyes, I saw deep anger and a simmering, smouldering fire.
“Is this what you want Kelly?” His voice was so dangerous that my entire body poised to flee, like a gazelle running from a hungry cheetah. He took a step towards me.
I should have retreated. I didn’t know how to retreat. I dropped the blanket and stood straight, facing Miles.
He closed the distance between us alarmingly fast and his hand closed around my neck. “Is this what you need Kelly? To feel so close to danger that any misstep would result in you falling?”
His grip tightened and I couldn’t breathe. I curled my fingers into fists and my nails ground into my palms. “Yes,” I choked out. His grip eased, ever so slightly, so I could speak. “No. Maybe. I don’t know what I want.”
I want you, Miles. But I can’t drag you down with me.
“You want to be used Kelly?” He smiled a thin smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “You want to be treated like a piece of flesh? A toy for my pleasure?” He laughed. “I can do that. Get on your knees.”
“Miles…” I started.
“All I want from you is obedience.” His voice was a whip of slashing pain. I got on my knees.
“Is your cunt wet Kelly? Are you getting off on this?”
I kept my gaze on the floor. The answer was yes, though wild horses weren’t going to drag that confession from me.
“Spread those knees wide Kells,” he mocked. “Let me see the damp wetness between your legs, the way your thighs stick together with your juices. You love this, don’t you?”
I had no idea why I felt safe. The man with the goatee had caused real trauma. I had a feeling that I was going to be waking up screaming from the nightmare of being submerged in the water many times in the coming nights. Perhaps I was just numb, but it didn’t feel that way. I felt a prickling that I once used to know as pleasure.
“And now Kelly,” he said, his voice hard, “you are going to get punished.”
I heard myself ask him what he was going to do to me. I heard the tremor in my voice. But I wanted Miles to punish me. Demons had been spawned in this room tonight and I needed him to exorcise them for me.
“I’m going to show you what pleasure feels like,” he replied grimly. “Since you can’t seem to remember.”
Memory. Forgetting. At any moment every single one of my memories could be erased. And if you didn’t remember something, did it even happen? Did anything matter? My spine stiffened. Miles thought I was being stubborn when I didn’t use my safe word tonight? Oh, he had no idea of the weight of the burdens I carried.
“Do I have safe words?” My voice sounded very far away to my ears.
He laughed mockingly. “Ah, she remembers she has safe words.” There was a forced lightness to his voice that didn’t suit him. Miles had never been cruel to me, but he was edging close to cruelty now. I’d pushed him to the edge of his own darkness. “Crawl after me.”
He led the way to a far corner of the dungeon and flicked on a light. There was a bed there, the bedding soft and warm. A curt nod of his head and I sat myself on the edge, the sheets caressing my sore skin and I closed my eyes, waiting for his next command.
The top keeps spinning.
“Don’t you dare close your eyes.” His voice was hard. “Lie back on the bed.”
I scooted up, ignoring the ache in my entire body. My skin was still crusted with red wax and I left little crimson crumbles on the bed as I moved on the soft sheets and rested my head on the soft white pillow.
“Very good Kelly.” He smiled a small little crooked smile, but his expression was unreadable. “I want you to keep your legs open for me. If you close them, I will punish you. Understand?”
I nodded as I watched him sit on the bed and lean forward. The mattress dipped with his weight as his head lowered towards my pussy. I inhaled sharply. He was going to go down on me.
For many months now, multiple men had explored my limits at Club Phoenix, but there had never been any attempt to conceal the lack of intimacy between the participants. When they touched me, it was to position my body better for their pleasure. If I received an orgasm, it was almost incidental. My pleasure had never been of primary importance.
I had thought that that was what I wanted. But when Miles nestled between my legs and lowered his mouth onto my folds, I realized I had missed this. No man had gone down on me for so long. I felt his tongue flicker and lap up my pussy; I heard the groan of pleasure from the man whose head was buried between my legs.
I threw back my head and groaned without restraint as the tip of his tongue traced a delicate circle around my clitoris. His fingers peeled back the hood and he made contact with that red, pulsing nub of need again. This. I had definitely missed this.
Lightning flashes of pleasure radiated from my core outward, filling my entire body with longing. “Please, Miles,” I begged.
He laughed mockingly, holding my gaze. “But you don’t want this, do you, Kelly
? You don’t need intimacy, right?”
He didn’t even know why I wanted to forget. He didn’t know I hadn’t been tested for Alzheimer’s. He didn’t know what I dreaded. “Fuck you Miles,” I snapped, “you don’t know anything.” My protest was cut off as he sucked my clitoris between his teeth and I moaned in pure pleasure. “Please, more,” I clenched out.
His eyes bored into me. “I’ve been watching you, Kelly,” he said. “I know exactly what gets you off. I know exactly how hard to push. I know exactly where you need to be touched. I know what you hate and what you love and what you need, deep down inside.” Two fingers pushed into my dripping pussy. “And now you are going to face everything. No more hiding.”
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 p
resents. 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 not?
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 Watcher (A Dark Romance) Page 9
