Bound by Lust (10 page)

I caressed you, gentle strokes from the small of your back to the tops of your thighs, moving tenderly over the angry red stripe of the cane until I felt you relax. Then quickly, I laid the second stripe just above the first, before you could tense your muscles again. Your scream was raw, like a wounded animal, and your body tried desperately to fold in on itself, make itself smaller.

“Please,” you sobbed uncontrollably, “I can't, I can't do this.” Your eyes rolled wildly, seeking some kind of escape, but I was there, filling your vision, so that all you could see was me.

“Yes you can, Joshua.” I held your chin, stilling your movement.

“No, no more. Please,” you pleaded.

“Ssshhh…” I placed a finger across your lips. You were so strong. So beautiful. We had agreed on a safe word before your first spanking, and I was confident I'd hear it if you truly felt you couldn't take any more. I brushed my fingers through the hair that clung damply to your forehead, held your gaze with my own.

“One more.” I said, willing you to hold on.

“One more.” Your eyes blazed with pain and desperation, but you held my gaze like a drowning man would a lifeline, and I knew that you could finish.

I caressed you like I had before, long, tender strokes across your bruised flesh, and when your muscles began to relax, I laid the last stripe, just below the first.

Your scream filled all the empty space in the house, then subsided into a low, keening wail. I laid down my cane and unfastened your restraints, kissing and stroking you, guiding you down the hall and into bed. You had the glassy, unfocused look of someone who was floating, and I held you and kissed you until you came back to me. And when our kisses became deeper and more sensuous than before, I lay on my back and took you inside me, and somewhere in the darkness, you said, “I love you.”

 

And now here we are. The last of our weekends. I finish tying the square knot that completes your harness and step back to admire you. Your body so strong, your cock thick and ready with anticipation, your beautiful eyes, shining with trust, and yes, love—I can't deny that. There are things I want to do to you—with you—ways I want to hurt you that we haven't even touched upon yet, and I know that you'll go there with me, that your trust will never waver. We're a matched pair, you and I, and you need these things as much as I do. You smile at me, a gentle curve of your lips that tells me you know—what I'm thinking; what I'm feeling; that maybe next week we'll start working on the basement—and I think, right now, that I might love you.

 

 

 

 

 

T
hey had been together for six months. Mai Ling dipped her paintbrush in water and glided it across the blank white board in front of her. The water made a dark, swirling stain on the board.

Six months was long enough, she thought, to know whether someone is right. Whether there was a future. She stared at the board, watching the mark she had just made evaporate.

It wasn't that she didn't love him. She did. She dipped the brush once more, applied it to the board, and with a flick of her wrist created her design. Quickly, before it could disappear, she picked up more water on the brush and dragged it over the first mark. The one beneath was already fading as she finished the design on top.

He just wasn't right for her. He was so brash, so outspoken. She was quiet, reserved, cautious. He wasn't. He didn't fit into her life. He wanted her to be more like him, more outgoing. She wanted…she wasn't sure what she wanted. She had, at first,
loved his ability to say anything. Especially when they were in bed. She would hide her face behind her hair, her cheeks flushed with embarrassment, but his words warmed her in other places. Made her hot and needy for him, the feel of his body, so dark and muscular and different.

Her hand moved frantically over the board, filling up the space with slash marks.

She sensed his frustration. She knew he wasn't happy with her proper, ladylike ways. He wanted something more. Something she couldn't give. Something she didn't have in her. She stared at the board. It was as blank as when she had started.

She felt Gregory's hands on her shoulders before he spoke.

“What are you doing?”

She shrugged, not turning around. “Painting.”

He laughed. “There isn't anything there.”

“It's Zen,” she said. “It's about living in the moment, working out your frustrations and then starting over with a clean slate.”

He kneaded her shoulders gently. “What are you frustrated about?”

He knew. She
knew
he knew. She still couldn't say. She shrugged. “Just…things.”

Gregory knelt beside her chair. “Tell me, Mai Ling,” he said quietly.

She didn't want to look at him. The painting ritual hadn't given her the peace she needed to make a decision. “It's nothing.”

He took her hand. “You have to talk to me. You never tell me what's wrong.”

“That's our problem, isn't it?” she asked, shaking off his touch. “We don't know how to talk to each other.”

He sat back on his heels, as if surprised at her angry tone. “I've never had a problem talking to you.”

“Right. Right. It's my problem,” she said, feeling trapped, angry. “I can't talk to you. I can't be like you.”

He tried to take her hand again, but she wouldn't let him. He settled for putting his hand on her bare thigh, right below the hem of her skirt. “Mai Ling, I don't want you to be like me. I just want us to be close.”

She stared at his hand on her bare leg. The contrast between their skin tones always surprised her. His darkness against her paleness. Even in summer when she would spend so much time at the beach and she was as dark as her brother who worked in landscaping, she was still fair next to Gregory. She usually loved the difference in their skin tones, but now it seemed just one more reminder of how different they were.

“This isn't working, Gregory,” she said softly. “You know it, too.”

He held her leg tighter, his long fingers curving around her slender thigh. “I don't know that. I don't believe it. Just talk to me, Mai Ling. Talk to me.”

She opened her mouth. Closed it. There were no words. She shook her head. “I can't.”

They stayed like that, him kneeling beside her, his hand on her thigh, her staring at the blank board in front of her. She willed him to leave, to walk away, to make it easier for her. He stayed. She picked up the paintbrush and dipped it in water. Pressing it to the board, she wrote her name. As it faded, she dipped the brush in the water and wrote his name beneath hers. By the time she wrote the
y
in Gregory, her name was gone and the first letters of his name were fading.

“That's what is happening to us, isn't it? We're fading away.” He stood. Finally, he was going to leave.

She didn't know what made her do it, but she wrote on the board, “Don't go.”

She wasn't sure if he'd seen it until she felt his hand on her shoulder. “You want me to stay?”

She wrote, “Yes.” She thought for a moment, then wrote, “I need you.”

“You have to tell me what you need,” he said.

She couldn't look at him. Her face was burning. She wrote, “I can't. I don't know how.”

He didn't speak. He stroked her hair. It soothed her. Carefully, she wrote, “I don't know how to tell you what I need.” She watched the words fade, then wrote, “I'm scared.”

“Don't be scared,” he said. “Write it.”

She thought about it, the words jumbled up in her mind so that she didn't know where to start. “You're so strong,” she wrote. “But with me, you're so gentle.”

“Gentle is bad?” he asked.

She bit her lip in frustration. Even in writing she couldn't make herself clear. She tossed the paintbrush down on the desk, feeling the hot sting of tears behind her eyelids.

He reached over her, picked up the brush and put it in her hand. “Try again. I'm not going anywhere.”

She took the brush from him. She wrote, “You treat me differently. You protect me when I don't need protecting. I want you to stop treating me like I'm going to break.”

“Emotionally or physically?”

She didn't hesitate to write, “Both.”

“I feel like a big, dumb ox next to you,” he said. “You're so graceful and gentle and proper.”

She shook her head. “I'm not. You're not,” she wrote. “No, no, no.”

As each
no
faded, she wrote another. Finally, he laughed. “Okay, I get it. I'm sorry.”

She wrote, “I can't say what I need.” The words faded, each
brushstroke becoming lighter until it was gone. “But I still
need
.”

“What do you need, Mai Ling?” he asked softly, his fingers pulling gently through her hair.

“Harder,” she wrote.

He wrapped his fingers in the long strands of her dark hair and pulled. “Like that?”

“Harder,” she wrote, in thicker, darker letters.

He pulled until her head was pulled back and he was looking into her eyes. “Like that?” he asked again.

She waited for him to release his grip on her hair, then she nodded slowly.

“What else do you need?”

She held the paintbrush poised above the blank board. “I need you to,” she wrote. She couldn't finish it.

“What, Mai Ling?”

She shook her head. She couldn't write it.

“Do you want me to leave you alone?”

She shook her head hard.

“What, then? What do you need?”

She wrote the words again. “I need you to,” she wrote, hesitating once more. “To have sex with me.” It wasn't right, but it was there.

He didn't speak for a minute, and by the time he did her words were gone. “You want me to make love to you?” He sounded as confused as she felt.

She shook her head quickly. “No,” she wrote.

“But you wrote—”

She shook her head again. Carefully, deliberately, she wrote, “Not make love.”

“You wrote you need me to have sex with you,” he said. “But you don't want me to make love to you.”

She nodded slightly. “Not make love, not sex,” she wrote. “I need you.”

“Mai Ling, you're not making sense.”

She waited for the words to fade. Then quickly, before she could lose her nerve, she wrote in broad, heavy strokes, “Fuck me.”

She heard his quick intake of breath. She had never used that word until now. “Okay.”

She smiled. He sounded shaken. Rattled. The way he made her feel sometimes. It gave her an odd sense of power. “Fuck me,” she wrote again. “Hard.”

His breathing had quickened, his fingers tightening on her shoulders. “Are you sure?”

She nodded even as she wrote. “Hard. Rough.”

He caught her hair up in his hand, dragging his fingers through it so that her scalp tingled. “Hard, rough,” he repeated, his voice deepening. Collecting her hair again, he gave it a sharp tug. “Like this?”

Mai Ling gasped. “Oh yes,” she said aloud, no need to write her desire on the board. “Please.”

He pulled her up by her hair, twisting it so that she turned to face him. She was nearly a foot shorter than him, and he pulled her hair so that she had to look up at him. Neck arched, eyes wide, she stared into a face that was both familiar and unfamiliar.

“Tell me, Mai Ling,” he whispered. He studied her, his face set in solemn lines. “I want to hear the words.”

She tried to duck her head away from his unrelenting gaze, but he held her hair fast. “I can't,” she whispered, even softer than him. “I can't.”

Tears pricked her eyes, fear that failing his test meant he would give up. And that would be the end of them. Instead, he nodded.

“You will.”

Threat or promise, she wasn't sure. But it made her nipples harden and wetness pool between her legs. “Yes,” she responded, almost by accident.

He picked up her paintbrush from the desk and handed it to her. “Show me what you want.”

A shiver of anticipation dance along her spine. She could play this game. She could do anything he asked as long as she didn't have to speak.

Dipping the paintbrush in the cup of water, she held it between them, hesitating. Did she have the nerve?

“Show me what you want,” he said again, his voice hard, his hand tight in her hair.

With a trembling hand, she lowered the wet tip of the paintbrush to the crotch of his jeans and drew a line along the ridge of his erection. Then she looked up at him.

“You want my dick.”

It was a statement, not a question, but she nodded anyway.

“Good girl,” he said. “Where do you want my dick?”

Again, she hesitated. The obvious thing to do was to mark her own crotch, leaving a wet mark on the outside of her pants to match the wetness inside her panties. Instead, she dipped the paintbrush in water and held it to her mouth like a lipstick. She painted the water on her lips and then, kitten-quick, she licked the tip of the paint brush.