Slow Surrender (14 page)

The place may have been small, but it was opulent in an Old World way, velvet and mirrors and marble. I made my way through slowly, trying to act as if I weren’t about to come all over the rug, to the back where the elevators were. By the time I reached the third floor, the vibrator had stopped again.

The hallway was thickly carpeted and completely silent.

I knocked on the door of room 324.

He opened it and the sight of him nearly took my breath away. He was barefoot, in blue jeans and a white dress shirt, untucked, half buttoned, the sleeves undone. Sounds crazy, I know, but every other time I’d seen him, he’d been in a suit jacket and tie, and seeing him like this—so casual—it made him seem more real, more flesh and blood and less a figment of my imagination. He looked edible.

Before I could rush in and hug him or something equally foolish, he stepped back, saying, “Karina, I’d like you to meet a friend of mine, Reginald Martindale. He’s a curator at the Tate Britain. I thought you might join us in a discussion of art.”

I
took a few steps into the room, and an older gentleman in a full suit and tie stood up from a table and shook my hand. “Pleased to make your acquaintance,” he said. He sounded like a butler from a BBC TV show.

“Likewise,” I said, then turned to the man who loved surprising me. “Am I interrupting anything?”

“Please have a seat and join us while we finish the wine,” he said, directing me to a chair at the table with a light, surreptitious caress along my back. Now that I was inside, I could see the room was a suite, with a sitting room and a bedroom. “I think you and Mr. Martindale have some interests in common.”

The table was set for two, but most of what I saw was the remnants of fruit and cheese. I wondered if the wine had come in a gift basket. At the center of the table was a swooping glass sculpture, classy and expensive-looking.

“Isn’t the Tate about to open a major exhibition of the pre-Raphaelites?” I asked as I sat down. I knew perfectly well they were, but it seemed very British to me to open the conversation with a question.

“Oh yes, a hundred and fifty works, a major undertaking,” Martindale said. That set him off talking about how tricky it had been to assemble them all, and somehow we got from there to the relationship between the pre-Raphaelite painters and the pre-Raphaelite poets, which I didn’t know that much about. I was pleased to hear Martindale describe the pre-Raphaelites as “art punks,” though, which was one of the points I made in my thesis. They were shocking and in-your-face in the oh-so-genteel Victorian age.

James poured the last drop of the wine into Martindale’s glass and said, “Let us not forget what a complicated time period that was to express any form of sexuality.” When he said the word
sexuality
, his foot slid against my ankle. He didn’t activate the vibrator, but I could feel it pressing against me as surely as if his hand had been there.

Martindale sniffed. “People today think the Victorians didn’t have sex. In fact, they produced more words of pornography per literate adult than any other culture with printed publications. The difference is that they had many more reasons to hide it.”

“My point exactly,” James said. “It was the expression, not the action, that was complicated. One could do a lot as long as it was not known about, not talked about. Art, on the other hand, is about making ideas visible.”

“People look at some of these paintings now and see a pretty picture. But I agree with you wholeheartedly, Karina. The audience of the day might have been shocked. Scandalized.”

“What do you think of
King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid
?” I asked him.

“Oh, it’s practically pornographic, isn’t it?”

“Is it, Reg?” James finished his own wine, tipping back his head and showing his long, smooth neck.

“Well, you can debate it,” Martindale said, “but I think putting her in the garments he has, Burne-Jones didn’t clothe her to appease Victorian sensibilities. He puts her in some form of underclothes. If he had done her nude, it would have merely been seen as a commentary on the Renaissance nudes. Instead, he had her in something the Victorians would have viewed as half-clothed. Not quite stockings and garters, but suggestive just the same.”

“Especially since everyone else in the painting is completely covered,” I said. “She’s supposed to be exalted by the king at that moment, and yet you see two spectators whispering to each other as if it’s scandalous for them to be looking down on it.”

“You grasp it exactly. Were they depicted alone, as in the Leighton version, one might be able to interpret it differently,” Martindale said.

“I only saw it once,” my mystery man said, “so I don’t remember it with such clarity.”

“Well, come back and visit again sometime soon,” Martindale said as he got to his feet. We both stood as well, and he shook my hand. “Miss Casper, I do look forward to reading your dissertation when you finish it. Please take my card and e-mail me.” He took a business card out of a case and handed it to me.

“I’ll do that.” I was flattered that he was interested enough to actually give me his card. Were the Tate museums only in England? I wondered. Not that I thought there was much chance to get a job there, but Martindale could be a good person to know. I wondered if James had arranged for us to meet on purpose.

The two men sort of clapped one another on the upper arms, and then out he went.

James pressed his back against the door with a sigh. “I thought he’d never leave.”

“Weren’t you the one who invited him?” I asked, standing next to my chair and wondering how to ask if part of that meeting had been for my benefit.

“Yes, and I wanted you to have a chance to talk with him, but God, from the moment I saw you at the door, I wanted nothing more than to be alone with you.” He looked at me, tilting his head downward as if glancing over the tops of nonexistent glasses. “You ought to be more impatient than I am, shouldn’t you?”

I pressed my knees together. “Well, I am…rather…aroused.”

“Rather,” he echoed quietly, and stepped close, running his finger along the scoop neck of my T-shirt. His accent was more pronounced than usual. I wondered if Martindale had affected him or if he was putting on airs for fun. “I find glass to be such an exquisite material.”

“Gorgeous, smooth, and unforgiving?” I said. I could have been describing him, perhaps, thinking about what Stefan had said.

He raised an eyebrow, as if daring me to go on, to say more. But I kept still. With him standing this close, I could feel the heat of his body, and my heart rate soared. He was taller than I remembered. Had we ever stood face-to-face like this? Once. That night at the bar when we met.

One of his hands rested on my hip, while the other slid under my chin, tilting my face upward.

“Would you mind terribly if I kissed you?” he asked.

That almost made me laugh. After all he’d done to me so far, the idea that he would ask me for permission to
kiss
me seemed comical. “Be my guest.”

He made contact gently, lips parted and soft, exploring mine and my response. My breath caught as he nibbled at my mouth, his tongue darting out to moisten the way a little and daring mine to do the same. The hand under my chin slid into my hair then, encouraging me to bend back and open my mouth to a fuller exploration. His tongue was teasing and coaxed mine into playing. My whole body seemed to melt against him, and he pulled me closer, his tongue now plundering and claiming my mouth for his own.

I’d never been kissed like that. It left me breathless and even wetter than before.

“What time is your safe call?” he asked.

“Hmm, what?”

“Call your roommate and tell her you’ll check in at eight-thirty,” he said as he nuzzled my hair. “Because you’re about to let a strange man tie you up.”

The words sent a thrill running through me and made my voice shake. “O-okay. I’ll just text her, all right?”

“All right. Join me in the bedroom, naked, when you’re done with that, and bring the other thing Mandinka gave you,” he said, and went through the double doors into the bedroom. I heard music begin to play softly. Violins.

My hands were shaking so much I could barely text. It was from excitement, not fear, but the result was the same. My breathing was fast and I trembled a bit.

I took off my clothes and left them draped over the chair where I’d been sitting. He’d said naked, so I needed to take the vibrator and the black underwear off, too. They were soaked. I left them on the table, picked up the small shopping bag, and tiptoed to the bedroom door.

He was standing there with a coil of black rope in his hand. He was still wearing the white Oxford shirt, jeans, and no socks. His hair had grown a bit since the night we met, and I wanted to run my fingers through it. The blackout curtains were shut and the reading lights on either side of the king-sized bed lit the room softly.

He beckoned me to come closer. “Have you ever been tied up before?”

“Only in a game of cowboys and Indians,” I said. “Never for sex.”

“Tell me if anything goes numb,” he said, pulling me close to him again and running his lips against my hair. “Or if anything hurts. I want to know. Sometimes it might be intentional.”

“Okay.”

“You know you’re not supposed to say that.”

“Agh! You’re right. I’m sorry.”

“Bend over and place your hands flat on the bed. I’ll give you one swat on each cheek for each lapse.”

“Yes,
yes
,” I forced myself to say. I bent over with my hands on the bed.

I heard the rustle of the bag behind me. I couldn’t see what he was doing back there, but the next thing I felt was the rounded tip of the glass dildo, touching the spot where I was wettest. He moved it back and forth. “You’re very slick,” he said as he coated the glass with my juices. “This should go in easy.”

It did. He slid it in and then I felt his thigh press against my backside, between my legs, holding it in place. “One spank on each side,” he reminded me, and then let a heavy smack fall on the right cheek. I yelped in surprise. Before the sting from the first one could fade, he struck the other side and I yelped again, resisting the urge to reach back and rub the sore skin.

“Now, let’s put you in something to keep this in place,” he said, steadying me with one hand on my tailbone and pushing on the glass dildo with the other. I could only groan with pleasure as the bulb of glass moved back and forth inside me. “Crawl forward onto the bed.”

I did as he asked, and he looped the rope around one leg and then the other. The rope was much smoother than I expected, no rough spots at all, almost like satin. I couldn’t quite follow what he did, but he wrapped it this way and that, knotted it here and there, and when he was done, my lower lips were spread by crisscrossing lines, while a knot sat right under the base of the glass dildo. He showed me with a mirror so I could see the ropes and how spread open I was. I was much more interested in looking at him. His shirt was mostly unbuttoned, giving me glimpses of the toned muscle of his chest and abs.

“Gorgeous,” he said, with a light and loving touch of his lips against my hair. “You look incredible. Now get up on your knees, and I’ll make a matching top to go with your bottoms.”

He climbed onto the bed behind me and this time crisscrossed the ropes between my breasts and around my torso. He worked methodically, brushing his fingers up and down my skin between setting knots and running his lips down my neck or over my shoulder, often telling me to lift my arm or move a certain way. The music had changed from violins to some kind of world music—African drums with Celtic-sounding harps—and I swayed almost like we were dancing.

When that was done, my breasts were framed by the rope and squeezed enough to make each one come to a point. He retrieved the mirror again and held it for me to see his handiwork. “It matches like a bikini,” he joked.

I giggled at that. “It’s very stylish.” The black of the rope stood out against my skin.

“Bondage is art,” he said as he set the mirror down.

“And art is…” I tried to recall his exact words. “Art is making ideas visible.”

He climbed behind me again and ran his hands over my stomach, from the edge of the ropes around my hips to the ropes across my chest, making me tremble. “Ideas and feelings.”

“And which is this?” I asked, reaching my arms up and back, hoping to pull him down for a kiss.

He growled a bit as he gave in, kissing me harder than before, then ran his hands down my front again, sucking on the back of my neck as he brushed over the tips of my nipples, down past my belly button, and then to flick lightly over my very exposed clit. “What’s visible here?” he asked, flicking again and making me jump. “What’s visible is my desire to control you. My desire to pleasure you. My desire to beautify you. Not necessarily in that order. Lie down. On your back.”

Rather than answer, I did as he asked. He wasn’t finished tying me yet. The next step was wrapping and knotting rope around my right wrist and attaching it to my right ankle, then my left wrist and my left ankle. My knees were mostly bent.

“Now, show me if you can get to your knees,” he said, standing back and watching.

It was a bit tricky, but I managed to roll to one side and then get up without using my arms.

“Good. Now face down and show me your ass.”

That was easier to do. Flopping over onto my side wasn’t that difficult, and then it was just a matter of rolling and getting my arm out from under me.

“Very good. Now on your back again.”

I returned to the first position, a little out of breath and throbbing from the constant movement of the glass inside me as I moved around. My breasts felt extra sensitive as well, brushing against the duvet and my skin as I moved.

“How do you feel?” he asked.

“Horny as hell,” I answered.

He grinned. “Make your desire visible to me. Make art.”

I looked at him, hesitating while I thought about that. Could I sing? Recite poetry? Dance? Well, I couldn’t exactly dance while tied up like this, but I could move a bit. The music was unfamiliar but beautiful, some kind of flute playing a melody over the drums and strings.

I was self-conscious as could be, but he was waiting. He crossed his arms.

I kept my eyes locked with his and folded one knee across my body, hiding my bare crotch from him.

Then I extended one leg toward him. I had to sit partway up so my arm, which was tethered to it, could also move. I pointed my toe like a ballet dancer and moved my leg and arm in a circle, turning and exposing myself to him again.

I continued to move like that, the world’s slowest burlesque, except that I was already naked before him. I arched my back, thrusting my breasts upward, my hair crackling against the pillowcase as I moved.

Then suddenly his hands were there, sweeping over my breasts and pinching the nipples. I gasped at the sudden flood of sensation, sharp and hot, then again as his tongue soothed the hurt he’d made. His hips were between my legs and I could feel the hard length of his erection against my pubic bone, through the denim of his jeans.