Bare Assed (5 page)

The belt is able to speak in ways that even the both of you, wordsmiths by trade, cannot always do. The belt is not a “toy” for “foreplay” but a separate part of your sex life, one that may appear at any moment. Its presence lurks while you casually sip your drinks at the bar, hidden but powerful; your fingers are itching to stroke it, if only so they can be slapped away. You never know if he will bring it out, how he will use it, how much of the belt and himself he will give you.

You try not to be greedy, but you hope it'll be a
moment like this: You're sore from having his cock inside you, from him holding you down, from his hand crushing your neck. Sore in a good way, so you almost don't even miss the belt—almost. You never have much time, can never stay overnight, have to steal hours out of other people's schedules to accommodate this affair, so you learn to take what you can get. You're wondering when he will have to leave, when this spell of lust will fade back into real life, when he reaches for the belt from the floor. “Turn over,” he tells you, and you roll onto your stomach, your pale backside before him.

Your face is turned away from him, sunken into the softness of the pillow, freshly washed hair now tousled and messy. The tip of the belt rests against your newly shaved lips as you hear the words, “Spread your legs.” You do, because you always do, because this is what your relationship is about: he orders, you obey, and you both like it like that. Your hands instinctively curl around the pillow, long nails digging into the cotton and feathers as you wait. The belt strikes the air and you shiver, feeling a breeze that may be a phantom one or may be very, very real. The next sound you hear coincides with a strike of the belt on your cheeks, both of them, a slice that takes a moment to process before you say the words almost automatically: “Thank you.”

There's never a “You're welcome,” or rather, not a verbal one. It's implied by the next stinging strike, by the fact that you're deemed worthy at all. He doesn't talk then, is almost solemn as you wait for it to be over with
equal parts dread and glee.

But those kinds of smacks aren't what make you come. No, that's saved for when he makes you cry. You turn over and open your eyes for a moment to look at him, hovering over you. You marvel that you can feel so close when he's not touching you with his body at all. The belt is capable of magic. You start to shiver once you realize what's going to happen, that the belt is not just teasing your lips with a kiss, though you pucker up when it approaches.

Then the belt moves on to its real work, kissing your other set of lips harder, the equivalent of a shove-you-against-the-wall, bruising kiss. This kiss is merely an introduction, a warm-up. You know what's coming and even though you want it, you press your legs together involuntarily until he barks at you to put them back. You shut your eyes because you know you can't watch this. Your hands are twisted above your head, clinging to each other for some kinky version of safety. You focus on keeping your legs open, all of you exposed. When the belt strikes there, right there, you don't quite scream; it's more of a strangled, garbled cry. Your hand automatically goes to cover the sting, to cradle yourself. You finally get a “Good girl.”

You try to turn over, to curl into a ball, but you're not allowed, or rather, your desire to prove yourself wins out over your desire to stop what's coming. You didn't travel for hours just to shy away from the pain. But you almost forget that when the next blow strikes. You
wonder how the tender skin between your legs can stand that force, and then you stop wondering when the belt moves upward, to your breasts, your pebbled nipples no match for the blows. You arch your back and thrust upward, even though inside, you want to cower. You reluctantly remember telling him you wanted bruises there, marks you could proudly reveal with a hint of cleavage, a well-timed reveal as you lean over on the train. You still want the marks but breathe deep through your nose, twist your fingers more tightly around each other, to get through them. You bite your lip as the sweet pain of the belt heats your chest and wanders downward. You almost get used to the rhythm, your nipples stubbornly rising after each blow.

Then it's back down, back to the place that no longer feels like your cunt, not the way it's being set afire again and again. These lashes aren't as swift as the ones against your breasts, but they are sure, steady. He's not twice your size for no reason, and each slap strikes precisely where he wants it to. The tears finally appear in the form of sobs, traveling fast through your body, a current of energy you use to sustain yourself through the last few lashes. You'd think the pain would be a little more subdued, the pussy's diminishing law of returns, but no. You feel every ounce of force he uses for each stroke, every bite of the leather into your inner thighs, against your wetness. You have a vision of the belt wrapped around your throat, the buckle cold against your skin as you stare deep into his eyes, but that was another
time, another place. The next blow has you thrashing so much he has to hold you down.

Is it the belt that makes you come? The leather, the thrash, the pain, the jolt? Is it the force behind it? Is it the noises he makes as he does it, the hitches of breath that are nothing like your shuddering sobs but are music to your ears nonetheless—is that what makes you finally go over the edge? Is it him holding you down, him promising you pain that may or may not come?

Maybe it's all of it, all the forces combining to make the orgasm nothing like what you were expecting, the kind where your body bonds with the belt, giving back some of its life force, only to have it beaten back into you. Though you know that logically, rationally, it's impossible, you hope the belt has absorbed some of your tears, has taken them and held on to them for next time, has put the pain that you mostly wanted, but kind of didn't, somewhere for safekeeping, somewhere he can hold next to his skin any time he desires.

Oh, it's not like you really have time to think all that or think anything, not then. The belt is reminding you, lash by lash, that you must stay open, stay ready, stay through the moments when you don't know how you will get through it, stay through the times you don't have a chance to take a bracing breath or perform any other magic tricks to turn the pain into something else. By now even the light touches, the strokes of the belt's rough edge against your fleshy inner thigh, the dance of the musky leather against your cheek, are enough
to make you shudder, like when he raises his hand to smack you but stops right before his fingers reach the finish line. The effect is the same.

You breathe through your nose, a more refined type of breath, one granted you by the momentary lapse before the belt is between your legs again, crashing hard, calling forth wetness you didn't know you still had. Pain, pleasure, obedience, pride, love, hate, fear ride each other along the waves of your body until you hardly know who you are anymore. You've moved beyond some simple goal of taking it into somewhere else, somewhere you're afraid to look at too closely lest it prove to be just a mirage.

And then, almost too fast, it's over. The belt lies limp on the bed and you're allowed to press your legs together again, to admire the bruises on your chest that you will wind up keeping close like a secret. You wipe the tears from your cheeks, embarrassed but secretly pleased. What happens after that hardly even matters, because that is what will remain, not the belt or the pain or the marks, but the beauty of being transformed by each of them into someone new, blossoming like the bruises on and under your skin; traveling with him somewhere far away, somewhere magical no one else will ever visit, where each strike of the belt serves to bind you together in this sensual cocoon, sealing you in with its heat long after the physical marks drift away.

You hope it'll be something like that, but with him, you never know what you're going to get, and you wouldn't have it any other way.

Justine Elyot

 

 

 

I
never know how long he will make me wait.

Never less than five minutes, usually between ten and twenty, and on one unfondly recalled occasion, I was standing hands-on-head listening to the steady tick of the grandfather clock behind me for over an hour.

This, he says, is Reflection Time. I am to spend it thinking through any of the week's tribulations or missed opportunities, and considering how I will account for them. That is the theory, although in practice these tense minutes lend themselves to speculation. How many? How long? What will he use? Will I be able to sit at the family dinner afterward?

Later I will find myself in reflective mode once more, but this time I will be facing a corner, holding my hands clasped in the small of my back, above my bare and throbbing bottom. This is Recovery Time and usually lasts half an hour, long enough for tears to dry and sins
to be absolved before we move into the final stage of the process: Forgiveness and Reconnection.

You will gather from all of this that Sinclair and I are lovers of ritual. What holds us together is something more than our mutual kink, our undeniable attraction and all the usual romantic folderol. It is our need for this Sunday to be like every other Sunday, in essence, even if certain elements are allowed to vary. It is my need for correction and his for control. When we were younger, my Sundays were spent in church, while he captained the school cricket team. As adults, we have exchanged these rituals for their deviant counterpart. He dominates, as he did his ten bowlers and batsmen; I submit, as I did to the God I worshipped. But this time there is nothing unpredictable, nothing unknowable, nothing to fear. It is all so much more satisfying.

Tick…
Perhaps the strap
…tock…
I hope not the cane
…tick…
But then again
…tock…
I like the cane
… tick …
I must be insane
…tock.

The door opens.

I know the drill. I remove my hands from my head and lower my eyes, letting my vision drift over the familiar pattern of the Persian runner, through the doorway and across the highly polished oak floorboards. My feet follow their gaze until they are stopped by the obstacle of his desk.

I love his desk. It is so antique it even has an inkwell. When I am bending over it, I can see my face in the mirror shine, though I tend to screw my eyes shut
rather than watch my contorted expressions. Rarely, he requires me to keep them open—for instance, on the day that he invited his Dominatrix friend to watch and take notes. I had to look her in the eye through twenty-four strokes of the tawse, an almost impossible task, though I am proud to say I managed it to their satisfaction.

He walks, always in a slow, stately fashion, from the door to the desk. He stands on the other side of it, looking down at me with his more-in-sorrow-than-anger face for a moment.

“Well, Beth, here we are again,” he says. “I wonder if the day will come when I do not have to waste my Sunday morning taking you to task over imperfections of behavior.” We both know it will not. “No answer to that, hmm? Well, it does seem a very distant prospect to me, as well. Now then.”

He seats himself and pulls over a large book, a leather-bound ledger. Large as it is, after two years it is already half filled with page after page of copperplate script, remembrances of crimes past and their associated sentences. He opens it, flipping the leaves to where the ribbon bookmark lies across a blank expanse.

Not blank for long though, for soon a fountain pen is slanted between his elegant fingers, dipped in the inkwell and put to the page. As he writes, he talks, his murmur following the looping progress of the pen.

“Sunday, June eighteenth,” he says, then he holds the pen in suspended animation and looks at me. “What should I write, do you think? Any ideas?”

I never reply to this at first. Although the rules of our contract are perfectly clear, and he is unfailingly consistent in his enforcement of them, my mind blanks as soon as I enter the study and does not refill again until much later. Somewhere behind my shivering anticipation and survival techniques, I am aware that I smoked a cigarette, or left the television on standby, but it is all too distant for immediate retrieval.

“I…can't think, Sir,” I admit.

“Come on, Beth—you were the one that used to confess to priests. Did your memory fail you then, too?”

“No. But five Hail Marys…” I trail off, reddening.

“Quite a different proposition to six strokes of the cane. Yes, I do see that.”

He sees the flicker in my eyes and chuckles slightly, his sadistic reflex flexing.

“Very well. I shall tally the scores.” His pen begins to document the evidence of my transgressions, committing my guilt to permanent record. “On Monday, you left the house without charging your mobile phone, so you were unobtainable for the space of three hours. On Wednesday, you ate only three of your five daily portions of fruit and vegetables. Yesterday, you did not go swimming…”

He looks sharply up at me. I had no idea he knew this, and I have made an incoherent exclamation. “I…” I cannot lie though. “Oh,” I say anticlimactically. “I just
went to the shops instead. I didn't think…you would mind.”

“I don't,” he says. “I don't mind if you go shopping. I do mind if a friend of yours calls me from the pool to ask me why you haven't met her there as arranged and I can't account for it, though. You know our rules. One of them relates to honesty. And if you genuinely thought I wouldn't mind, why, then, did you not tell me at the time?”

Tough question.
Because I wanted to be found out,
flits through my head, but the rules of the game will not allow this kind of honesty.
We do it because it's hot,
is not the dynamic that arouses us at all.
We do it because it's hot but we pretend that we don't,
is much closer, though still only partly articulating the subtlety and complexity of our compact.