She was still gonna do it, she decided. Maybe she'd even filch those handcuffs and see if she could cuff him to the bed when he
wasn't looking so he couldn't try to sixty-nine her like he usually did when she sucked his cock. She'd make that smug bastard spread wide and take some pleasure, the way he'd just done to her. She'd rock his world, and he'd thank her for it.
Isn't that what vacations are for?
LIGHTS OUT
Mina Murray
Â
Â
Â
Â
Â
I don't know when we started drifting apart. All I know is that after seven years together, we had little left to say to each other. Silences extended like arid stretches of desert, with no oasis on the horizon.
Seven years. Well, eight actually. Tonight was our anniversary. Rain, hail or shine, we celebrated it. In war and peace. Not that there had been war for a long time. I couldn't remember the last time we had fought. We used to have screaming matches, followed by mind-fuckingly good sex, the kind that turns you inside out. But that was a long time ago. We didn't care enough anymore to fight or fuck so intensely. Polite conversation and semiregular maintenance sex were all we managed, and we kept them up for the same reason we celebrated our anniversary so religiously. Because to stop would mean something was
really
wrong.
We were halfway to the restaurant when the power in the neighborhood went out. Traffic lights, streetlamps and the phosphorescent blue glow from a thousand TV screens faded into
darkness. Marc pulled over into the emergency shoulder and we sat for a moment, trying to decide whether to press onward.
“I'll call Racine's,” Marc said. “Maybe it's just our grid that's out.”
It wasn't. It was the whole city. And with no word of when power would be restored, there was nothing for us to do but turn around and go home.
I was not particularly gracious about the change of plans. We'd had to book months in advance to get into Racine's, and I had bought an expensive dress especially for the occasion. I was looking forward to being admired. Maybe not by Marc, who seemed to look through me or past me most of the time, but by other men. I had been fantasizing lately about random strangers, men who passed me in the street, stood in front of me in line at the supermarket or browsed alongside me in bookstores. I had been dreaming about them, about their anonymous cocks and what they would do to me with them, and more than once I had woken up with my hand between my legs and my sex sticky-sweet, like honey. Just thinking about it was making me wet. I wasn't wearing any panties, and when I shifted in my seat, the fabric of my dress rubbed silkily over my bare sex. I let out a shaky little sigh that Marc, intent on the road, didn't seem to notice.
The cul-de-sac where we lived was eerily quiet. Our doorway was so dark that it took Marc an age to fit the key to the lock and let us into the house. He stumbled against me in the hallway and when he reached out to me for balance, his grip was so tight that I wondered if there'd be a bruise. A twinge went through me at the thought. Hmm. That was new.
Marc set out some candles in the living room and then followed me into the kitchen to light the big brass hurricane lamp on the counter. He watched silently as I poured us some champagne,
angling the flutes to control the fizzing of the bubbles. Though he hadn't said much on the drive home, he didn't seem too put out about the blackout.
I, on the other hand, was mightily annoyed. But I'd be lying if I said it was just about the interruption to our anniversary. I'd been vaguely discontented for months and it was starting to spill out of me, pore by pore. This just accelerated it. I forced a smile anyway.
“To us,” I toasted.
“To us,” Marc echoed.
We clinked glasses and I took a small sip.
“What a wreck of a night, huh?”
“Oh, it's not all bad,” Marc said. “At least the candles are romantic.”
“True.”
“And we have a fridge full of food.” He opened the door and pulled out a strawberry. “You be Kim, and I'll be Mickey.”
“Oh, Marc,” I laughed. “Reenacting
9½ Weeks
? You're such a cliché.”
I was mostly joking, but Marc recoiled as if I'd struck him. His face took on a hard look I'd never seen before.
“Really, Max, we're going to do this tonight, are we?”
“I don't know what you meanâ¦I was just making a joke.”
“No, you weren't. At least have the courage to own up to it. This has been brewing for months and I'm sick of dancing around it. Nothing's ever good enough for you, is it, Max?
I'm
not good enough for you.”
I started to reach for the customary excuses, but then thought better of it. There was no point lying; it felt good to finally get things out in the open.
“It's true. Things haven't been right for a while. You know it as well as I do.”
“When were you going to tell me, Max? When you left me for someone else?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Don't play dumb; I've seen the way you look at other men,” he hissed. “The signals you're sending can be seen from fucking space. I'm not blind.”
“You could have fooled me,” I was shouting now. “When was the last time you even looked at me, really looked at me?”
“I don't know, Maxine,
dah
ling,” he mocked. “I sure looked at you tonight, poured into that tight dress, ready to parade around for total strangers. Are you even wearing panties, you little tramp?”
“Hey,
fuck you
, Marc!”
The blood was racing through my veins. It felt good to
feel
something again, even if it was anger.
“Don't raise your voice at me, princess; it's not my fault you're such a cosmic slut.”
His face was inches away from mine now, and it was barely any effort at all to reach out and slap him, hard. Arousal bloomed between my legs at the same rate as the handprint bloomed on his cheek. Fast as anything, he grabbed my wrist, his big hand circling it like an iron band.
“You are never going to do that again.”
“Or what?” I taunted. “You'll break my wrist?”
He pulled me against his chest, and my pulse quickened to match the pace of his heartbeat thundering through the thin silk of my dress. I could feel the beginning of his erection branding my belly.
“No, you beautiful idiot.” He thrust against me and groaned. “You want to fight? Then here's the deal. You and I are going to go into that living room, and we're going to wrestle for three rounds. If you can pin me down for five straight seconds, then
you can do whatever you want to me, for fifteen minutes. But you have to earn it. If I can pin you down for a minute, then I can do whatever I want to you.”
“I know what you want to do to me,” I smirked. “Blow job, hand job, fuck.” Marc was strictly vanilla, or so I thought.
“What makes you so sure, Max? You have no
idea
what I wantâand you haven't for a long while.”
There was a bitterness in his voice I was unprepared for, and I realized that he was right. We were familiar strangers. I wondered how it was that in a marriage you could know everything and at the same time, nothing, about each other.
Round OneâMarc
Max lost the first round, as I knew she would. She was too curious to see what would happen if she lost. That I was dissatisfied, too, that both of us were desperately unhappy with the state of our relationship and our sex life, had never occurred to her before tonight. We circled each other for a while, assessing the other's readiness, before beginning in earnest. Max, ever light on her feet, feinted a few times to try and draw me out. I let her think she had won, pretending to overbalance, but then I changed my angle at the last minute and took her down with me.
I think she had forgotten how strong I am, and though she squirmed and kicked and scratchedâand even bit me once, the witchâI didn't budge. When the second hand on the mantelpiece clock completed a revolution, I released her. I found her sulking charming. She always did pout beautifully. Max generally hated losing, but I knew she was enjoying this game as much as I was. Her nipples were distended, pressing through her dress, and she had licked her lips twice, unconsciously, since I had helped her up. I'd been hard since the very start of our fight, but that feral, challenging glint in her eyes awakened a part of me I thought
would sleep forever. I knew then what I was going to do.
“Well, Max, to the victor go the spoils.” My cheery tone was pissing her off. She bristled visibly, but that was my intention. It would make it so much sweeter when she gave in.
“Now, now,” I chided, sitting on the couch, “you signed up for this. It's not my fault you didn't want it enough to win.”
Oh, she was furious now, absolutely furious. She knew it was only going to get worse for her before it got better.
“Come over here, now.”
She did as she was told, blessedly. We weren't quite at the stage where she would thank me for hauling her tits-over-ass onto my lapâbecause that's how I wanted her.
I patted my lap and she was about to sit on it when I corrected her.
“No, facedown.”
It took her a moment to understand what I meant. With supreme effort, she mastered her rebellion and took her place. Gods, she was gorgeous. She was right; I hadn't been paying her enough attention. My hand smoothed over her lovely long hair, down her spine and over her ass. I could feel her muscles quivering in response under the silk.
“Curl your hands under my leg, Max, and don't move them until I say so. I'm going to spank you, but it won't be too bad, unless you move. See, I'm not even going to lift your dress up.”
“Safeword?” she mumbled.
“Persimmon.”
I landed the first blow on her without warning and boy, did she jump.
“That was for the French intern in my office, at Christmas. I don't care if mistletoe is a tradition in this country.”
When I was sure the blood had rushed to the surface of her skin, I slapped her again.
“That was for ogling Claire's husband in his swimsuit. She noticed, you know.”
Another slapâ“This is for letting the waiter at Enrico's look down your blouse at lunch last month.”
I paused, more to collect myself than to give Max any relief. This was proving way too arousing for comfort. My cock was straining against my jeans, and it didn't help that with each spank Max rubbed against it.
“You see where I'm going with this, don't you, honey?”
She nodded.
“Tell me.”
“You're punishing me for every man I've looked at and imagined inside me.”
I knew she had chosen those words to make me jealous, and it worked, but my dick twitched all the same.
“Exactly. Just be grateful I've limited myself to the times I've caught you in the last few months. Otherwise you wouldn't be able to walk for a week.”
Thirty-five spanks later and Max was writhing all over me. I could feel the heat radiating off her ass, and I knew she must be tender, but she never moved her hands. She did whimper a lot toward the end, tried to avoid the last few blows, but I think that was just a show for my benefit, and besides, we had a safeword if she needed it.
I checked the clock and ordered her to her feet. We had about eight minutes left. It had been ages since I'd had her mouth on me, but after her crack about the predictability of my desires, there was no way I was going to ask for a blow job.
The spanking had aroused her more than I thought it would. The patch of silk that covered her mound was glistening and damp and I thought I could make out the outline of her sex lips. She knew what I was looking at, and had this adorably
embarrassed expression on her face. So I took pity on her. I blindfolded her with my tie
before
I pushed her to her knees.
Before
I tied her arms together behind her back and secured her wrists to her ankles.
Before
I stuffed the cushion between her legs and told her to ride it and make herself come.
Round TwoâMax
Marc had surprised me with how inventive he'd been. The spanking had lit up all the nerve endings in my body, and the combination of being tied up and performing for an unseen audience had pushed me right over the edge. He whipped the blindfold off me just before I came and held my chin so I had to meet his eyes as the waves crashed over me. The intimacy unnerved us both.
I was shocked when I won the second round of our little war, considering how shaky I felt. But then I wasn't exactly playing fair. I had flashed Marc a glimpse of my pussy, which I'd waxed totally bare on an impulse, and he tripped over and landed at my feet. Perfect. He was about to get up when I kicked him off balance and he fell on his back with his arms by his sides. I kneeled on his biceps immediately. I like to think I could have held him there by my own might, but the fact is my dress had ridden up over my thighs and my spread, wet sex was utterly exposed.
When the requisite five seconds were up, Marc tried to grab my hips and pull me down to him, but he couldn't while his arms were pinned. I got to my feet and moved out of his reach.
“My turn now. Take off your clothes.”
When he was naked, I set one of the heavy oak dining chairs in the center of the room and motioned for him to sit down.
He looked nervous.
I bound him to that chair with two brocaded and tasseled curtain sashes, winding one around his chest and arms, and the
other between and around his legs. Seeing Marc captive like that did things to me. Dark things.