A Bestiary of Unnatural Women (33 page)

I wonder if he could do it to me standing
up.

He can do that if he wants. This is his hour.
But he better not try to force himself into my asshole. I will tell
him to stop if he tries that. I will. I don’t care if it’s his hour
or not. I try to clench my butt again but he’s moved his hands back
up to my shoulders and I don’t know if he even noticed.

It’s twenty after one when he steps back
around the frame and stands in front of my face. He pushes the hair
away from my eyes. There is no need for that – my hair is not long,
my bangs too short to reach my eyes – but he does it as a gesture
of concern anyway: a reminder that I cannot do it myself; that my
hands are unavailable for my use; that he has made me dependent on
him for even that slight need.

He presses close and hugs me. When his arms
wrap around my back and pull me into him, my naked breasts press
against the rough fabric of his shirt; his chill belt buckle digs
into the fat below my navel. As he pulls me forward, my arms are
stretched by the ropes that restrain them but he is gentle and does
not pull them hard enough to cause pain. He rocks himself forward,
tight against me and leans his head down to press his cheek against
mine. For a long time, he holds me, caressing my back lightly with
his fingers while he moves slowly against my body, not rubbing
against my skin, but moving my skin up and down and around with his
motion.

I have not been held and hugged for such a
long time since I was a teenager. These days I don’t have any
patience for standing and being held for minutes at a time. But,
bound into his frame, I cannot pull away. And he has given me no
reason to ask him to release me. Having promised him an hour, I
have no choice but to endure his affection. I may as well relax
into his arms and enjoy his caress as best as I can. I find, to my
surprise, that I can enjoy his hug. There is something comforting
about being wrapped in my husband’s strong, gentle arms when I am
tied to this frame, stretched and helpless. Paradoxically, he makes
me feel like he is protecting me even though he was the man who
tied me here.

I wish that my arms were free so that I could
hug him back. There is something unsatisfying about receiving a hug
without being able to reciprocate. But I realize with a twinge of
dismay that, if I were free, I would not reciprocate. I would not
grab him and hold him for as long as he wanted. If I were free of
these ropes, I would be free to push him away. I would be free to
climb back upstairs and clean up the kitchen. I would be free to
start the laundry. I would be free to watch my usual Sunday
afternoon television programs.

Is that the wife that I have become? A wife
who would rather watch some minor television celebrity landscape a
stranger’s yard than give her husband, the supposed love of her
life, the long intimate hug that he wants from her?

I suppose that I have. But knowing that does
not change me. I am who I am. If this were not my husband’s hour,
if I were not tied to this wooden frame, I would give him a quick
squeeze and then push him away, impatient to get about my daily
duties. I would be helpless to do otherwise. Knowing different does
not make me different. I would be lying to myself if I said that it
did.

Even now, even as I am enjoying his hug, I am
watching the clock, seeing the minute hand drop past the nadir of
the dial and begin to climb back up toward the top; toward the
minute that I will be untied and let free to climb the stairs out
of the basement and get on with my day.

I hate that I am thinking about getting away
instead of reveling in the intimacy that my husband is pressing on
me, but that does not change my thoughts. When someone asks you not
to think about crocodiles, then you cannot stop thinking about
them. When I have a clock in front of me, I cannot stop thinking
about the time, waiting for the time to pass and the hand reach the
twelve. Would it be different if I were facing the other way? If I
could not see the clock? No. It would be worse because then I would
be wondering if the hour had already passed and wondering if my
husband, my loving husband, were abusing my trust and keeping me
prisoner for longer than we agreed. I have to see the clock to know
that I should not be fretting about the time passing. It is a
conundrum with no answer.

He has hugged me long enough to satisfy
himself. He steps back and puts his hands on either side of my
face. For the first time since he told me that he loves me a
quarter hour ago, he speaks again. He says the same thing. “I love
you.” And he says it with the same sincere tone as last time. I
believe that he still means it.

“I love you,” I reply. The statement comes
automatically because I cannot leave his love hanging in the air
between us without giving it back. But that does not make my words
false. I do love him. Deeply. Maybe more now than I did before he
tied me up. That conundrum might have an answer but I don’t think
that I’m clever enough to find it.

Because I am distracted.

He kisses me now. Brushes his lips against
mine, sucks lightly on my lower lip, and then slides his tongue
slowly along the edges of my teeth as I relax my mouth to admit
him. He kisses me for a long time, standing apart from me and
leaning forward so that the only parts of us that touch are his
hands on my cheeks and his mouth on my mouth. I part my teeth to
allow his tongue to enter deeper if he wants, but he does not push
inside. I give him the tip of my tongue and we taste each other. I
have not tasted my husband in a long time. He tastes good and I
want more. I push into his mouth, wishing that I could hold his
head, too, but my arms are held fast to the frame, held away from
his face by his velvet ropes.

We kiss and then we kiss more. I had
forgotten how much I liked being kissed and kissing back. I want to
keep kissing but he breaks free of my mouth to slide his face
downward. I hate having my neck tickled and, when his lips slide
over that tender skin, squirm as far away as the ropes allow. I
want to tell him to stop. I would but he keeps moving down and the
tickling ends before I have to speak. As his lips pass my
collarbone, I am glad that I did not object. It’s his hour. It
would be unfair for me to object to anything reasonable. We both
understand that that is the real gift that I’m giving him: that I
will not object unless he does something that I can’t tolerate. And
I can tolerate having my neck kissed for a second. Not for much
longer than that, but for that one second, okay.

I have never understood a man’s fascination
with a woman’s breasts. They’re just little sacks of skin filled
with fat and glands, no different than any other bit of skin on the
body. Except after the children were born and I was breastfeeding
them. Then they were milk dispensers. During that time, they became
special to me and stopped being special for him. I was surprised to
find that Bert lost interest in my boobs when I was nursing. The
first time that I suckled a baby, I wondered if he would want to
suck from my teat, too. Only a few weeks earlier, he had been all
over my big pregnant-woman boobs whenever I let him near me. But,
as soon as the baby was born, he seemed to stop caring about them.
Then, after the baby was weaned and they dried up, he was all over
them again. The same thing happened with the second child. When
they dried up the second time and become nothing special to me
again, Bert reacted like they were long-lost treasures, annoying me
to no end by pawing at me, night and day. I had to keep pushing him
off me.

Now, with my hands lashed far apart and high
above my head, he is free to paw and lick and suck my boobs to his
hearts content. I can’t push him away, so he goes to town on them.
Slowly and gently, but with undeniable enthusiasm, he spends minute
after minute working on first one and then the other, then the
first one again. It’s laughable, but I restrain from expressing
disdain. It’s his hour and, if he wants to spend it worshiping my
chest, then so be it.

My nipples are not cold and dead, I can feel
his ministrations and they are enjoyable enough as long as he is
gentle and loving. Despite whatever disdainful thoughts cross my
mind, my nipples ignore my brain, thicken, thrust themselves out,
and darken in response to his stimulation. Traitorous things, these
nipples, they tingle and throb of their own accord. They feel good.
I remember eager boys working on my breasts in the front seat of
their cars before walking me to my father’s front porch. I am
reminded of what it felt like to be young and I want to grab his
head and push him hard against my tits to get more. To get as much
as I can. But I cannot. His ropes hold my arms far away from my
chest. I can neither protect my tits from his attention nor make
him work them harder. All I can do is arch my back and push them
forward for him to use as he will. Which is what I am doing when he
abandons them and slides his mouth further south.

The clock is pushing toward two when his
fingers begin probing between my legs, finding the moist, plump
lips and pulling my hips close. With my legs spread far by the
ropes attached to his frame, my options are limited. I rotate my
pelvis upward because that is all that I can do to give his tongue
easier access. I’ve never liked any man chewing and sucking on my
clit – it’s too sensitive – but this is the last few minutes of his
hour and I’m prepared to give him what he wants even if it does not
feel as good as proper love making.

He takes less than I expect from my sex, a
few slow licks, long gentle caresses with his tongue that part
plump lips from one end to the other, tasting me rather than
stimulating me, and then he stands once more, holding me and
pressing the full length of his body against my spread-eagled form.
I feel his rigid prick pressing the front of his pants against my
damp crotch and wonder if he is going to honor his promise to
release me at the end of the hour. I’m almost hoping that he’ll go
into overtime, pull off his clothes, and penetrate me while I’m
tied in his frame in this vulnerable position. Almost. My arms are
aching and my legs feel weak and tired. As much as I would like him
to make love to me here and now, I want to be released into his
arms more.

He whispers softly into my ear, “Thank you.
This has been the most wonderful gift you have ever given to me,”
then he kneels and frees me. His knots are magical. A couple of
gentle tugs and a quick unwinding and I am free to bring my legs
under my body to support my weight properly again; another couple
of gentle tugs and quick unwindings and I can lower my arms and
wrap them around his body.

To my surprise, I have no interest in
watching television this afternoon. Or doing the laundry. After
spending all that time being hugged, kissed, and caressed, I want
to hug, kiss, and caress him back. As I hold him, I ask him if he
wants to go up to the bedroom and make love to me. Feeling his
erection still pressing through his pants against me, I am not
surprised that he wants to do exactly that. I smile at his
eagerness.

Later, after making love, I ask him what he
intends to do with his frame. He shrugs and says that he supposes
that he will dismantle it. I ask him to leave it up for a while.
The children won’t be back from university until Christmas and I
would not mind if he wanted to frame me again for an hour. He
enjoyed it so. Maybe as soon as next Sunday he would like to do it
again.

After all, twenty one years of marriage
deserves a better gift than an hour only once.

And maybe there’s something in this for me,
too.

When I recall standing in the frame, my limbs
stretched like Leonardo’s Vituperative Man, being ogled by my
husband, I have to accept that, maybe, when he says that he likes
looking at me, he is being honest. After all, no one was forcing
him to spend so much of his hour looking. The only possible reason
that he did it was because he wanted to. I’m not beautiful. I will
never believe that lie. But I am a woman and he is a man, so maybe
he does like to look as much as he claims. And, if he keeps
looking, maybe some day I’ll be able to look into the mirror with
his eyes instead of my own. Maybe some day I’ll see the sexy woman
that he claims to see.

And, maybe when the kids come home for
Christmas, we can find some way to hide the frame away instead of
dismantling it. It would be a pity if Bert had to make a brand new
one after they went back to university.

Because, maybe if I get tied up often enough
and hugged for long enough, I’ll start wanting to be hugged even
when I am not restrained.

Maybe.

I’ve been told that stranger things have
happened.

THE END

Afterword

These are works of fiction. Readers have
often asked if I have experienced scenes like these in real life
and I have to disappoint them by telling them that I have not.
There is a caution in this. Nothing that I have described here has
been tested in practice. The activities in these stories may not be
as safe in reality as in my fantasies. If you’re going to play,
then play safe, sane, and, above all, consensual.

I enjoy hearing how readers react to my
writing. If you wish to comment, favorably or not, I can be reached
at: [email protected].

If you wish to use my writing for commercial
purposes, please write to me rather than waiting for my lawyer to
contact you. I guarantee that you will find my terms more favorable
than my lawyer’s.

Ashley Zacharias, 2010