Leather Bound (25 page)

‘You look –’ he started, and then shook his head. ‘Fuck. I wish I could go in with you.’

‘Me too,’ I said. It wasn’t just the heat I saw in his eyes. It was his presence beside me, the way he made me feel like I could do anything, as long as he was there.

Of course, his presence wasn’t coming with me. I had to do this alone.

‘I –’ I started, and then closed my mouth hard. I’d been about to say I wasn’t sure I could do this, but I was tired of listening to myself say that.

‘I’ll be there in spirit,’ he said. He leaned in and kissed the very corner of my mouth, one hand snaking over the ropes that wrapped my waist.

‘It’s time to go,’ Estrata said.

I took a deep breath – well, as deep as the ropes around my waist would let me, which was more than I expected, but not as much as I needed – and then I stepped through the door, into the cool expanse of the empty hall.

* * *

Last door on the right, Estrata had said.

I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to knock, so I stood in front of it for a long time instead, waiting to see if someone would come. No one did. I knocked and still there was no answer. Finally, I lifted the metal latch and stepped inside.

The room was circular, the walls covered with shelves higher than my head. Most of them held books, turned so their pages were out. It made for a disconcerting experience. I liked my book spines, loved to run my hand across them or even just look at them, all of the titles lined up like invitations to other worlds.

Yet this was beautiful in its simplicity. Pages all looked the same lined up like that, somehow, and yet different. I wondered how anyone could tell them apart like that. How would you ever choose the book you wanted? Or maybe that was the point. A random pull of a random book was like a new adventure every time.

I let my gaze slide from the backwards books to the far end of the room. A red tile fireplace was set into the far wall.

Near it, a lone woman sat curled in a chair. She seemed to be watching the flames, not turning as I entered. Her profile was backlit by the fire, a long nose and sharp chin. Short blonde hair was cropped close to her head, accentuating her dark brows and dark red lips. A long cigarette sat, unlit, between her lips as if waiting for someone to bring it to life. In fact, she looked much the same way, almost doll-like in her still, quiet pose. She wore a black jacket with a ruffled white shirt beneath it, a short black skirt, her long white legs crossed at the knees. A pair of black boots laced up almost to her knees.

At her feet, on a plush brown area rug, a long grey dog was stretched out, paws crossed over each other. His brown-eyed gaze rested on me, one eyebrow lifting as though he was inquiring as to my purpose there. Other than that, he was as motionless as his mistress. Not even his sides moved in breath, and his tail didn’t lift from its curl around his hindquarters.

I stopped just past the doorway, uncertain what I was doing there, unsure where to go next.

She moved with a kind of fluid grace that seemed otherworldly, plucking the cigarette from her mouth.

‘Come a little closer, won’t you?’ she said.

The woman’s voice was like silk over my skin, soft and fleeting. I wanted her to say more so that I could grab at it and hold it tight in my fists. I stepped closer, my bare feet making hardly any noise on the softwood floor. The wood was warmer than I expected, obviously heated from underneath, and for some reason that made me feel more calm.

The woman still hadn’t turned to look at me. And I wasn’t sure how much closer was closer. I stepped forward again, softly, and again. Waiting for her to tell me when I was close enough. The dog had closed his eyes, and wasn’t moving at all.

She didn’t. Even with my slow steps, which slowed even more the closer I got to her, I was at the end of the couch, nearly in touching distance, before she spoke again. And when she did, it was to beckon me even closer.

‘Here,’ she said, gesturing with her cigarette hand toward the place right in front of her. I stepped around the dog, who still didn’t move, and onto the small area rug, the deep brown pile welcoming my feet and letting me sink in.

I stood there for a long moment, listening to the fire crackle, listening to the rise and fall of my own breath. Somehow I seemed to be the only one in the room who was breathing. Or perhaps I was simply more aware of my own breath, caught as it was inside the grasp of the rope corset.

I explored her profile with my gaze. It was impossible to tell how old she was. Her skin was alabaster, clearly sun-protected, and, with her face turned away and immobile, she didn’t have a single wrinkle or laugh line or even dimple.

I waited what felt like for ever. I was pretty sure it was for ever. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. The dog didn’t seem to care or notice that I was even there. If she hadn’t already talked to me, I might have thought the same of her. I had a sudden urge to see the rest of her, to see what she wore under that buttoned-up shirt, to explore that alabaster skin beneath my hands. I imagined she was warm under her clothes, like the softwood floor had been warm, heated from the inside by some unknown and unseen force.

I looked away, toward the circular walls covered in books, their pages beckoning me in much the same way she did. With a silent, white draw of promise.

She moved, turning her face fully towards me for the first time, and my breath caught hard in the cavity of my chest. I tried to quiet it, sure she would hear me, sure I would offend her somehow, sure that she would take my being caught off-guard as a comment that I didn’t mean.

It wasn’t that she was beautiful, although she was. High cheekbones that seemed carved out of her alabaster skin, the pout of her red-lipped mouth, the tiny stone that sparkled in the flicker of the flames.

It was her eyes. They were so light that they were almost silvered, and I wondered if they had any colour at all when she was outside or if it was just the fire that lent them their shadowed gleam. They were speckled with dark-brown flares along the edges. It made her look both beautiful and haunting.

It also made me realise that she couldn’t see me.

‘You can breathe again,’ she said, her silken voice made even more delicious by the laughter that coated her words. ‘If I didn’t like dramatic reactions, I wouldn’t have set you up like that.’

I relaxed, letting out the breath I’d barely realised I was holding.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. I felt the need to gush about how beautiful she was, but I closed my mouth. Would I have done that if she hadn’t turned out to be blind? No. I probably would have just kept quiet and thought about how beautiful she was. So that’s what I did.

She said a gentle word that I didn’t understand. It wasn’t until the dog stretched, yawned, then pulled himself up and sauntered toward the fireplace, nails clicking, that I realised the word wasn’t for me at all.

‘You’re Davian’s girl,’ she said.

I started, not sure what to say.

‘Never mind, don’t answer that. I can smell him on you.’ Then, ‘Spread your legs,’ she said.

I did, wondering why she asked for something that she couldn’t see. Would she know if I spread my legs, how far, could she tell by the sound? There were so many things I wanted to ask her, so many things I wanted to know, but I felt nervous and shy, not wanting to offend or sound stupid. Also, there was a purpose in my being here, which had nothing to do with that. Even if I still wasn’t sure what my purpose was, I didn’t want to botch everything by being overly curious about the wrong things.

She lifted her head, exposing the hollow of her throat, and opened her mouth slightly. It was the gesture of a woman perfectly poised, a woman who knew what she was doing, even if I had no idea.

‘You’re wet,’ she said.

She hadn’t touched me, but what she said was true. As I’d stood there, imagining her body, feeling naked and exposed and uncertain, my body had been reacting.

Still I had no idea how she knew.

‘I can smell that on you too,’ she said, as though I’d asked. The phrase echoed something Lily had said, what felt like for ever ago, in another world. I had a sudden image of Leather Bound, of Lily, of Kyle who’d asked me to marry him. Had that just been a few weeks ago? Had that really been me? It seemed so far away.

I started to step backwards, suddenly feeling overwhelmed by it all, sure that somewhere along the line I’d made a mistake. Why was I chasing this book so earnestly? Why did I trust Davian so implicitly? In truth, I barely knew him.

My foot lifted from the rug, found its place a step back.

The woman reached out with one hand, her movement as sure as if she could actually see me, her fingers falling perfectly against the wet hollow between my thighs. I couldn’t help it; as soon as she touched me, her fingers much cooler than I expected and somehow so very right, so like living granite that they were both powerful and soft, I groaned low in my throat. It was a shuddered, animalistic sound, more like a dog’s noise than one of my own, and I found myself fighting it, trying to stay quiet.

‘I quite like Davian,’ she said, as if she was talking to herself. ‘You, however. Well, it remains to be seen.’

She toyed with me, just the very tips of her fingers, pushing me open a little, then receding. Somehow I knew to be still, not to move, as if by staying silent and quiet she might not be able to sense me, might not be able to press all of my buttons. I didn’t want to beg. I didn’t want to weep. And I certainly didn’t want her to do the things she was doing now, stretching me softly with her fingertips, leaning in as she canted her head, smelling me.

‘Lovely,’ she said.

Gripping the rope corset with her free hand, she slid a couple of fingers all the way inside me, spooning them together and then spreading them once she was in me. My legs shook, my head snapping back as I tried to open my body to make room for her sudden intrusion. That transition happened so fast; suddenly I was wet and open and wanted more from her, aching to have more inside me.

I didn’t know what it was, but if I thought my libido was wild before, Davian’s presence had certainly made it more so. Everything turned me on. Everything made me wet. It was as though my body had fine-tuned itself to a state of constant arousal.

She twisted her fingers, a soft scraping that heightened the pleasure. She was sure and true in her actions, a confidence that wasn’t lost in my libido as she tugged and twisted along the inner edges of my body. Without stopping the motion of her fingers, she bent over and touched the very tip of her tongue to my clit. Her movements were swift and strong, almost too much, but my body gave in fast, unwilling to miss out on the pleasure that came along with the sensation. I was surprised at how quickly it moved from not-quite-ready to oh-my-fuck-yes-please.

In seconds, I was the one pushing against her mouth, bucking over her fingers. She caught my clit with her teeth, giving it a couple of sharp nips that nearly brought me to orgasm.

I knew we were on a time crunch, on our way to somewhere, but I didn’t want to rush it. It didn’t matter; she wasn’t waiting around for me. Reaching up with the hand that wasn’t already inside me, she tugged on my nipple while she finger- and mouth-fucked me. The triad was too much, too fast. My whole was sliding into nothing but a single red spot of pleasure.

The ropes were stiff about me, pulling tight as I writhed. No matter what I did, I was going to come. I couldn’t hold it back. My body arched into her fingertips at my nipple, pulling a sharp barking cry from me.

When she dug her fingernail into one nipple, I came with a hard buck that caught the edges of her teeth. Her fingers danced inside me a little more, her mouth a firm suckle over my clit, and I came again before the first was finished, a joyful little aftershock that nearly made me giggle.

She let go of my nipple and my clit and aimed her face up at me, her smile wide, showing her perfect teeth for the first time. I panted, broken, as small ripples of pleasure went slip-sliding through me, my nipples twanging in painful pangs of desire.

‘Very good,’ she said. ‘So very good.’

I grinned too, panting. Exhausted, but happy. It was over. I was done. I’d passed the test.

‘I think we’re ready to go,’ she said. And told me her name: Cherise.

* * *

Crap. I’d forgotten there was more. We hadn’t even left the house yet.

Moving deftly, Cherise opened a black box that sat at one side of the couch and pulled out a leather contraption. It didn’t take me long to realise it was a wide, flat handle like the ones that guide dogs wore.

She snapped it to the back of my rope corset. No, not a corset. I realised it was a harness.

‘Just stay low, stay quiet and listen,’ she said. ‘You can walk upright for now. But during the party I’ll expect you to be down on all fours.’

‘What?’ It was, oddly, a barky sound. As if I’d already made some kind of surreal transition from human to dog.

‘And while we’re there, you won’t speak. Or stand. The only way this is going to work is if you are almost unnoticeable as human.’

‘What if I have to, I don’t know, pee or something?’

‘If, at any point, you need to break the arrangement, you just need to lick my hand.’

‘What?’ I said again, feeling stupid. My tongue and brain swollen things in my mouth.

She put her fingers on either side of my chin, tilting my head towards her as though she was looking right at me. As though she could see every ripple of trepidation and arousal that coursed through me. ‘Do you understand?’

Her fingers weren’t uncomfortable, but they were strong. The same strength they’d had when I felt them moving inside me. I spoke through her grip.

‘Yes,’ I said.

She nodded, as if there was no other response she’d expected.

‘Davian said you were smart,’ she said. Her fingers left my face, but she didn’t let go of the leash with her other hand. Her smile was somewhere between sweet and wicked. I had a feeling that whatever I was agreeing to was not what I thought I was agreeing to. I was almost getting used to that topsy-turvy feeling.