Jake & Mimi (24 page)

I lift my glass from the nightstand and take a long, steadying sip of vodka, feeling its cold, sweet bite in my throat. Elise
hears the rattle of the ice and wets her lips again. I pick up the smallest silver case, place it on the bed in front of me,
and lift the cover.

Mimi leans forward, and it is now her lips that part as she watches me lift, from the soft felt bed of the case, and turn
slowly in the hot light, one of two inch-long metal clamps. The jaws of the clamp are coated with hard, black plastic, and
they separate when I press with my thumb on the lever at the other end. If I release the lever, the jaws will close. How far
they will close is determined by the small metal screw that has been inserted in a hole bored into the middle of one arm.
Turn the screw to the right, the clamps are forced apart. To the left, they tighten.

I lift from the nightstand the red rose I took from the vase in the kitchen. I hold it by its rough green stem and start it
up Elise’s belly. She moans softly. I trace it to the slope of a breast, and then up, and then press the head of the rose
over her nipple. “God, yes,” she gasps, trembling at this long-awaited first touch. I twirl the rose slowly, letting its impossibly
soft petals kiss and caress her. In seconds her pink nipple swells and hardens.

“Oh God,” she says, trembling with gratitude.

I lean in, twirling the rose with one hand, watching the open petals transport her, while pressing down with the thumb and
forefinger of my other hand on the lever that separates the black plastic jaws. I twirl the rose faster, watching her breathing
accelerate, her lips whispering, “Yes, yes, yes,” as her nipple hardens further. She starts to rock gently against the ties,
her breathing coming faster as I twirl the rose faster, her hips thrusting, thrusting again, and once more. I lift the rose
away, steady the black jaws on either side of her swollen nipple, and release the lever.

They close like a vise.

Her body jerks in shock. Her mouth forms a perfect circle, but for two, three seconds she doesn’t make a sound. And then a
piercing cry. And now:

“No. Jake. Oh, Jake, what —”

“Shhh.”

The clamp is at its gentlest setting. It pinches no tighter than if I held her nipple firmly between my fingers. I let it
go and watch it stay in place, trembling and then still, standing straight up like a clothespin on a line.

“Oh, that’s tight, Jake. Jake. Please.”

I put my finger to her lips. This time she doesn’t take it into her mouth. I reach into the silver case and lift out the second
clamp. I lower the red rose over her free nipple and start to twirl. “No,” she says, biting her lip this time, shaking her
head, trying to fight the soft touch of the petals. But there is no resisting them, and in seconds they’ve done their gentle
work, swelling her pink nipple to the size of the first one. I lift the rose away, release the lever of the new clamp, and
watch its jaws grab and tighten. She gasps.

“Please. You don’t —”

“Shhh.”

I put my hand to her damp forehead and lean in close.

“With every word,” I say, “I’ll tighten them.”

“Jake,” she whispers, panicked now.

I take the small metal screw of the first clamp between thumb and forefinger and give it a quarter turn, watching the hard
black plastic bite into her pink nipple. She cries out.

“With every word,” I repeat.

“No.”

I turn the other clamp the same amount. She gasps in pain, and then is quiet. Out of the corner of my eye I see Mimi reach
down and lift from the floor the ruined black dress I cut off Elise an hour ago. She holds it in her lap and buries her hands
in it. Her eyes stay on Elise.

The clamps are tight but not punishing, and after a few seconds she begins to adjust to them, to the pain they administer.
Her nails ease out of her palms, her breathing steadies. Yes, it hurts, but this much she can stand. Partner to the pain,
though, is fear, and I can see it in her face now, in her mouth and throat.

I wait ten more seconds and then press my palm, hard, into the soaked black silk of her panties.

She gasps. In spite of everything, she gasps — a deep, shocked, primal gasp of pleasure. I press again, my palm tight against
her flat pelvic bone. She drops her head back and a small moan escapes her. I press again, and again she moans, the clamps
forgotten, their ache no match for the shocks of pleasure my palm sends all through her. I press again and hold it for five
seconds. And again, this time for ten. She sighs in deep rapture and thrusts her hips. I release and she waits, lips apart,
her whole body seeming to open up, to soften. I take my hand from her panties, rest each index finger carefully on top of
a nipple clamp, pause, and then pull the clamps gently down toward her belly.

She cries out, betrayed. I bend them farther, her bunched, compressed nipples bending with the clamps. She cries out louder.
I pull them down another half inch, a full inch, an inch and a half, the clamps parallel with her belly now, small, fast cries
of pain coming from her. I hold the clamps still. Her body arches, her every muscle tensing to head off the pain. I look quickly
to Mimi. One hand grips the bottom of her chair, the other holds the torn black dress to her mouth. I hold the clamps still
another five seconds.

I let them go, and watch the pain rocket through her.

She cries out as if scalded, her body jerking so violently that it takes my breath away, the waves of pain, true pain now,
rocking her as the clamps snap up, then bob back and forth. Another sharp cry, another, and then her cries dissolve into pained
gasps that soften, soften, and finally subside as the clamps, sticking straight up again, tremble and settle still.

I reach down and press again on her black panties.

This time I use my fingers, locating, through the wet silk, the soft, swollen gateways to her center. She spasms beneath me,
not quite free of the pain, but gasping even so at my touch, and again as my fingers find, and now separate, her silken, receptive
folds. “Oh,” she gasps, the heart of her still inflamed in spite of the cruel wait, in spite of the pain, inflamed from my
earlier passes and burning now as I tend to it at last, massaging through the silk, each tiny shift of my fingers setting
off deep waves of pleasure. Her hips lock and thrust. Softly I work her, then harder, then harder still, then softly again,
watching her face slam from side to side, her gasps building toward a rhythm.

I take my hand away and reach again for the clamps.

Her whole body braces. I bend the clamps toward her belly again and she cries out, her neck coming off the covers, her back
arching. She tries to bargain for clemency with her breaths, careful not to form words, speaking in short, pleading cries
that cut off when I stop the clamps, bent almost to her belly now, and burst out again when I release them.

She jerks once, twice, her breathing shallow and fast until the clamps are still once again. I reach down to her panties,
and within seconds I’ve taken her back across the line, my fingers finding a tender, swollen strip so sensitive that the slightest
flicker sends her head back. Her thighs spasm every few seconds, not from pain now but from surges of pleasure. A long sigh
from her, and four short breaths, and another long sigh, and four more short breaths. I take my hand away.

She braces again, but less urgently this time, and though she pleads with soft cries when I bend the clamps, and jerks when
I release them, the pain doesn’t rock her like before. It is familiar now, without terror, and before the clamps have even
stopped trembling, I see her hips begin to move — small, rhythmic thrusts as she waits for, and imagines, the next warm burst
of pleasure. I give it to her.

It is like pressing into a sponge. I probe deeper this time, ever deeper, her hips rising the little they can to meet me as
I push the silk inside her. I find a spot that makes her sob with pleasure and I work it, granting her thirty, forty, fifty
seconds of heaven, her cries intense, rising. Yes, she is starting to climb, and as she does, I can tell that she feels, deep
inside, the first stirrings of a finish. Mimi Lessing can tell, too. She can’t keep still. She lowers the torn dress to her
lap, brings it to her chest, lowers it again. Her knees are pressed tight together. I take my hand off the black panties again.

Elise is calm now, bracing without fear, certain she can bear the clamps. Eager for them, even, because of the pleasure that
waits on the other side. Pleasure like none she’s known ever — deep, escalating pleasure that’s taken her further and further
and so must, very soon, take her the rest of the way. She draws a breath, lets it out, curls her fingers into her palms, and
waits.

I reach past the clamps to the nightstand and pick up the thick red candle.

In its light I see that Mimi’s forehead is damp. Her neck, too. She holds the torn black dress in her lap, and she watches
me as I take the candle away, not realizing where it is headed. I bring it to my chest and then hold it out over the bare
belly of Elise. Mimi looks down at her, then back at the candle, and Mimi’s hands start to knead the black dress in her lap.

The broad shoulders of the candle have melted away, leaving a wide mouth that holds a pool of liquid wax. A pool as still
as a lake at dawn, but heated almost to boiling by the flame rising out of it. The only sounds in the room now are Elise’s
breathing and, from the stereo, the gentle notes of two acoustic guitars dueling playfully. I rest the fingers of one hand
lightly on her wet black panties, as if to delve into them again. She squirms in excitement, daring to think that I’m through
with the clamps, that it will be pleasure from here on in. She eases her head back onto the covers.

I tilt the red candle and spill a drop of burning wax onto her belly.

Her piercing cry splits the room. She seizes so hard that I’m sure the silk ties will break. They shake, strain, but hold.
The hot wax hardens in seconds, but her spasm has set the clamps in motion again, and so it is twenty, thirty more seconds
of pain for her. I take the wet cloth from the nightstand and wipe the wax from her, leaving her belly clean, pure, with just
a faint pink circle to mark her pain.

“Please,” she says, gaining her breath. “I can’t ta —”

She cries out as I turn the small metal screw of one clamp, compressing her pink nipple. She shakes her head back and forth,
frantic now, but keeps silent. Above her, at the head of the bed, her fingers dig into her bound hands, the pink beneath her
nails visible now through the clear, flawless polish.

I look at Mimi. She sits in darkness again, but I see that she has begun to rock. Slowly, with her legs tight together and
Elise’s dress clutched again to her chest. She doesn’t look down at the floor, as she did last week, but keeps her beautiful
eyes fixed on the red candle. And I move that candle slowly down the body of Elise. Past her panties. To her thigh. I tilt
it again.

The hot wax draws another cry from her, and another hard spasm, and the clamps start to shake again. I wait until they calm,
until her pain subsides and with it her gasping cries. I wipe the spot of wax from her thigh and hold the candle steady just
above her. Ten, fifteen seconds I wait. And then I see it: the tremble in her hips. Not even the fresh pain of the wax has
dimmed the fever, and now that she has endured it she waits, desperate, for her reward. Aren’t those the rules? Pain, yes,
but then pleasure? She waits, trembling, for my fingers to return to her burning center; to search out, deep inside her, another
swollen, aching, magic spot.

I wait a few more seconds, and then I move the candle up and drip hot wax onto the delicate slope of her breast.

She almost comes off the bed. This time I don’t wipe the wax away or wait for the clamps to settle. I take the candle to her
bound ankle and tilt it again. And then to the smooth, freckled skin of her shoulder. The soft well of her elbow. Each drop
hits her like the point of a whip, and so close together that her pain is continuous now, fierce spikes of it from the wax
and always, beneath it, the constant, grinding bite of the clamps. Her cries are continuous now, too, filling the room as
I splash one trim calf, then the other, and then climbing a full octave as I pour the last of the burning wax in a slow, punishing,
six-inch line from just below her breasts down to, and into, her tender belly button.

I straighten the candle, place it on the nightstand and sit back, shaking. I look at Mimi and see that she is shaking, too.
Rocking slowly and shaking and staring at the floor, unable to look at Elise.

I can look at her. I watch closely as the pain controls her for a full minute, until the clamps are finally still and her
hard spasms give way to a steady trembling, as if she were shivering from cold. I take the cloth and clean her, wiping away
the small circles of wax. She moans softly, in gratitude, but as I clean away the final mark on her, the line of hot wax down
her belly, she starts to shake her head, and I see that her lips are whispering, soundlessly, two words, over and over.

“No more. No more.”

I reach to the nightstand and I pick up another silver case.

Mimi looks at it, and then at me, and I can see in her eyes the war going on inside her. I wait for her to shake her head
or turn away, but she simply looks back at the silver case, entranced.

I place the case on the covers, between Elise’s open legs. I’m careful to lift the lid with a loud
click
, but she continues to whisper silently to herself. I close the lid quickly and take the sprig of mint from the nightstand.
I crush it between my fingers, releasing its aroma, and hold it just under her nose. She lets out a soft cry, a cry of wonder,
as the pungent mint fills her senses, triggering in her some memory, some innocent kitchen memory that frees her for just
a second from the bed and the binds and the clamps. I rub the mint over her lips and then take it away, and Elise returns
to the moment, revived, testing the ties gingerly again, first with her wrists, then with her ankles, breathing softly to
keep the clamps from moving. Yes, she is with me again. And when I open the silver case, she hears it and listens, alert.