Stranglehold (10 page)

It was like living with a small cruel boy who had the power to make both hers and Robert's life miserable at whim
. And was perfectly willing to do so.

Eventually he went off on business for a few days and when he came back the incident seemed forgotten.

But she never refused him again.

It wasn't worth it.

She had Robert's piece of mind to think of too.

She didn't even refuse him the night he came home from Concord with his little black bag of toys.

He was grinning as he dumped them beside her on the bed.

"It's fantasy," he said. "It's about fantasy and trust,
y'know
? Something different. It'll be fun."

Fun for who?
she thought.

But it was different, all right.

Four black leather handcuffs with silver rings attached, two for the wrists and two heavier, thicker ones, for the ankles.

Four lengths of slender silver chain.

Eight two-sided spring-clips for attaching the chains together.

And a small black braided leather whip
.

"You're kidding," she said.

"Don't worry. I'm not going to hurt you."

"Oh no? Then what's the whip for?"

He laughed. "Say ... stimulation."

She pointed to the handcuffs. She could smell them. The new rich leather. The metallic smell of silver.

"You want me to put those on."

"Uh-huh. And this."

He reached into his pocket and withdrew a black silk scarf. A blindfold.

All she could do was look at him.

He shrugged, smiling. "Part of the game. But it's pretty, no? A present."

"Oh, thanks very much."

It was hard to take this seriously.
Bondage games
. They were out in New Hampshire, for god's sake, not someplace like New York, where she guessed they were used to this kind of thing. It struck her as pretty silly.

But there was also the other thing.

Some slight element of fear.

He could see her response. He could always read her.

"Come on," he said. "Just try it." Then he laughed. "Hey, I spent a lot of
money
on all this stuff, you know!"

Okay, she thought. What was the line?
Once a scientist, twice a pervert?
Might as well humor him. Just this once.

And who knew? Maybe he was right. Maybe it would be ... sort of ... exciting.

Excitement was in short supply these days.

"What do you expect me ... what do you want me to wear?" she said.

"Nothing." He smiled. "Just this."

He held up the blindfold.

She took a deep breath.

"Okay," she said. "But none of ... that other stuff."

He knew what she meant. She meant the anal nonsense. "No. I promise."

Robert had fallen asleep long ago, but Arthur closed and locked the door behind him.

She slipped the nightgown off her shoulders.

She felt suddenly very vulnerable.

"I don't know, Arthur."

"Don't worry."

If you're going to do it then get on with it, she thought.

"Okay. How do you ... where do you want me?"

"For now just kneel there, right in the middle of the bed."

She did as he asked. He folded the scarf and draped it over her eyes and tied it behind her head. The world slipped into blackness and the scent and feel of soft, expensive silk.

He reached for her left hand and wrapped it with one of the handcuffs and buckled the cuff together.

"Too tight?"

"No." The leather felt soft actually.

"Can you slip your hand free?"

She tried it.

"No," she said.

And that was when she felt the first momentary thrill of honest-to-God fear—and it really
was
a little exciting, because once he had them all on there was no way she was going to get out of them again until he let her.

It was also kind of embarrassing.

She knelt and listened to the tinkling of chains after that as he attached them to the loops in the cuffs and then in back of her to the brass four-poster bed, telling her to spread her legs wide and then pulling the chains tight to the far low corners of the head post so that there was no way she could close her legs again, repeating the process higher up so that her arms were spread wide in back of her, chained to the top.

She felt suspended.

She couldn't fall forward to the soft protection of the bed and she couldn't fall to either side. She felt suddenly much too open to him. To whatever he had in mind. The thrill had become a kind of trembling. She felt weak and trapped and exposed. And for the first time, just a little afraid of him.

"Here's what we'll do," he said. "We'll play a game."

His voice seemed to come from everywhere at once.

"I've got eight guns here in the house, right?"

Guns?
she thought.

"Pistols, rifles, shotguns. You've seen me polishing them, cleaning them, breaking them down a thousand times. Suppose we say the eight guns correspond to eight different parts of your body? Here ..."

She felt the whip caress her inner right arm and she jumped at the touch.

"Here ..."

Then her left arm, moving from shoulder to elbow. She jumped again.

"Here and here ..."

Her inner thighs.

"Here, of course."

Her butt.

"And here ..."

Belly
.

"And finally here ..."

Moving slowly, almost torturously over her breasts.

"... and here."

The whip brushed her pubic hair.

My God, could he really be considering using a whip
there
?

No way. This was crazy.

"Arthur ..."

"Let me finish. Here's the game. I touch you someplace like I did just now. Then I name one of the guns. You tell me the
caliber
of the gun. If you get it right, I don't use the whip there. Not at all. You get it partially right, I use it, but only lightly. You get it wrong, a little harder."

"Uh-uh, Arthur. No. Not possible."

"You can't refuse,
Liddy
."

"Arthur, it isn't funny."

"
Liddy
, you can't refuse."

"The hell I can't. Want to hear me scream?"

He laughed. "If you do that, you know what's gonna happen? You'll wake up Robert. Now how are you going to explain all this to Robert? You could have a problem there, right?"

"Arthur, you son of a bitch."

She was furious. How
dare
he?

And how did I let myself get into this?

"If you do this, Arthur, if you go through with this, I swear we're finished," she said. "I'm telling you. I'll divorce you. I'm not kidding."

"Lydia, it's a
game
. Just a game. Stop taking it all so
seriously
. Look, I know what's bothering you. We'll start with what you're obviously so damn worried about. Here ..."

He let the whip move down over her pubic hair again. She flinched.

"Magnum," he said.

"What?"

"Magnum."

He brushed her again.

".357."

"There," he said. "See? There you go! You're playing. And you win, right? I don't do a thing."

Great, she thought.

I don't know your goddamned guns. I don't know half of them.

She felt the whip drift over the soft inner flesh of her right thigh. "Walther PPK."

She got the .3 in .380 right.

So that was an easy one.

Also, later, the Ladysmith .38 revolver because he'd made a point of telling her that this particular gun was hers, that he'd bought it for her protection. Though she'd never once fired it.

She also got the 12-gauge shotgun.

So that her right arm and her belly were spared.

But her buttocks weren't spared and he hit her hard there. She could feel the sting even as he moved on to the soft skin of her left thigh and her left inner arm.

Her breasts weren't spared.

And even though he used the whip more lightly there than anywhere else on her body in deference to their tenderness and sensitivity she wanted very much to scream then, only the thought of Robert holding her back, of Robert waking and wanting to know what was going on with mommy and daddy behind the locked door to their bedroom.

There were tears in her eyes when he was done.

When he released her she cursed him and showered and then she slept in the other room.

Another cold. More germs. Mommy this time.

"It was only a game," he said as she walked out the door. "Come on. You'll get over it."

The marks faded in an hour or so.

The memory never faded. She stored the memory like a chipmunk stores chestnuts for winter.

She never saw the handcuffs or the little black whip again. She assumed he'd thrown them away. Probably he was disgusted with her. Spoilsport.

She couldn't have cared less.

She threw the expensive black silk scarf in the garbage.

And for weeks there was nothing remotely like sex between them. Not so much as a peck on the cheek. She found that she didn't much mind that at all, either.

Arthur was withdrawing anyway. Spending more and more time away from the house. At The Caves. On the road. With his parents.

There were times she wondered if he had a girlfriend.

She wondered if she'd react the way she had with Jim.