The Theory of Attraction (12 page)

Right before his hand moved again I realized where he had to be headed next, and I couldn’t restrain my protest. “No, not that one. No,
no no no
, don’t do that yet. Please, no—”

“Shh. It’s okay. It isn’t coming off right this second. But you might not be able to come if it’s still on. And I know you want to come, don’t you, Camilla?”

“Why wouldn’t I be able to?”

He resumed his slow, even push and pull, coaxing my arousal back to the fever pitch I’d been at earlier. “Blood flow. Nerve pressure. Some people can, some can’t. It also depends on the clamp style and other things. But I don’t want to chance it, because I want you to come while I’m in you. I want you to come
for me.
”

I was still catching my breath from the nipple clamps coming off, and the insistent tug of the remaining clamp as Ivan worked his cock inside me was already pulling me back toward the edge. But he was right, and I could feel it now. Primed though I was, the little metal clip would keep me from getting there, to where I had to go. And he could tell.

“You’re close, aren’t you, Camilla? You’re starting to tighten around me, but you need that clamp off in order to come, I think. Do you want me to take it off?”

Defeated, in an anguish of want, I finally nodded only to hear his evil chuckle.

“If you want it off, Camilla, you’re going to have to ask more nicely than that.”

“Please? Please, Professor?”
Was that my shrill little voice? I was practically shrieking.

“No, that won’t do. I need to hear you say, ‘Please take the clamp off my clit, so I can come for you, Professor.’”

My head shook back and forth violently. There was no way. Tremors racked my body, my brain was soaring, and there was no way I could form all those words.

Then he started stroking my clit, teasing around the clamp as he pistoned in and out of my swollen pussy. I felt like things were on fire. Like things might fall off. Like I didn’t know what was pleasure and what was pain anymore, and didn’t care as long as I got to come. And somehow I shaped the words, blurting them out on a single wailing breath.

“PleasepleasetaketheclampoffmyclitsoIcancomeforyouProfessorfuckfuckfuck!”

Silently, he slipped his fingers around the tiny metal wings and pressed, releasing the pressure, and for a second or so I thought I’d been reprieved. The relief was so great, the building pleasure heightened to a breathtaking intensity by the returning sensation. I started to come, feeling the inexorable wave hit just as the searing pain did. Bound, defenseless, beaten, my body no longer knew what to accept, what to deny. The filter was gone, it was all sensation to me, and it was all as terrible as it was exquisite. On and on, seemingly forever, the throbbing finally subsiding into a dull, rhythmic ache as the last filaments of excruciating pleasure trailed through me, drawing my energy out with them as they went.

I could feel Ivan tensing, growing even fuller inside me, and he growled like a wild thing as he came. Animals together, we gasped out the end of our pleasures in unison before collapsing, utterly spent, onto the cool and welcoming sheets.

Chapter Seven

Before my foray into etiquette instruction, I considered myself an expert on searching the internet. But try as I might, I was unable to find a web page or other resource that covered how to teach your kinky lover who lived next door how to get people to give him money so he could build a better rocket.

Not that I didn’t find a host of interesting stuff along the way. The public domain is filled with etiquette manuals from the late eighteenth through early twentieth centuries, and I now knew where to look should I ever need to know when and how a gentleman uses a formal or informal bow, or whose box one may visit during the entr’acte at the opera, or in which order to place the salad, meat and fish forks for a multi-course dinner.

Sadly, bowing was out of fashion in Houston these days, and there would probably only be hors d’oeuvres at the fundraiser. So I’d decided to take a different approach and narrow down my focus to a few simple concepts for Ivan to remember throughout the evening. Guiding principles, instead of too many specific rules.

“Okay, first thing. You need a pause button.”

“Do I get to stop time for everybody else, while I can still move around? I’ve wanted one of those for a long time.”

“Focus, please.” I gestured with my hamburger and a tomato slice threatened to slip out the side. “Before you even open your mouth to talk, you need to say ‘pause’ in your head, and apply a quick test to whatever answer you’ve thought up.”

“Usually I’m thinking about my answer before the other person is through talking. So I’m ready to speak once they’ve stopped.”

In the flickering light of the tiki torch, Ivan’s handsome face took on a slightly demonic cast. I thought back to how we’d spent most of the day and shivered. Maybe I could get him to light a few candles later when we went back upstairs.

“Maybe that’s part of the problem. Let’s do an experiment. I’m talking now, and you’re already formulating what you’re going to say. So what part of what I just said are you going to—”

“I don’t think the problem is on
my
end. I’m only responding rationally to whatever’s being said.”

“Aha!” This time, the tomato squirted out to land with a wet plop on my paper plate. I picked it up and carefully re-inserted it. “That’s exactly it. This explains so much. You’re not listening to the whole thing. You latch on to the first thing being said and don’t even pay attention to the rest. You interrupt because you want to stop all that noise and respond to what
you’re
thinking about.”

“Yes. Exactly. Isn’t that what I said?” He took a bite of his own burger, looking a little grumpy and defensive. But not nearly as grumpy as he would have been a day ago.

“That’s the problem, don’t you see? You have to listen to the whole thing. Not just listen, understand it. All of what the other person is saying. Before you decide how to answer.”

He shook his head. “That would take forever. Nobody would ever be done talking if we did it like that.”

I bit back a smile. “Honey, it doesn’t take forever. It takes practice. And it takes a willingness to see something from another person’s point of view. Maybe you should try it right now. Get some practice in.”

I nodded toward the little group clustered in lawn chairs near the grill. Dinesh and Julia of course, along with Ed, Lin and two other tenants. One of them, I saw, had brought his girlfriend along. This was surprising as we had all suspected the girlfriend was fictional. But there she was in the flesh, a nice-enough-looking young woman who seemed to be getting along with everybody.

From where we sat on the low wall at the edge of the patio, Ivan and I had a good view of everything without having to participate. I knew that was his preference, but he needed to practice, and this was a particularly good opportunity as there was a stranger in the group.

“Remember, listen first to all of what they’re saying before you think up your answer. I think the pause button goes on your brain, more than your mouth. The second thing is, run everything through a filter before you say it. Is it true, is it necessary, is it kind? If it isn’t at least two of those, don’t say it, and cruel-to-be-kind doesn’t count.”

“Is that a Buddhist thing?”

“I think maybe it’s a Catholic thing. Really not sure. It was something from the internet. And now it’s your second rule.”

“I thought my second rule was to transition out of a long silence.”

Sighing, I downed the last of my burger before answering. “These are the rules for tonight. I’m trying to simplify so you don’t feel like you need to whip out the index cards. Pause button. True, necessary, kind. Try those two things, and we’ll see how that works out.”

Grumbling, Ivan reached for my plate and took our trash to the big garbage can next to the carport. Then he swung by the group as if he were just stopping on his way back to me. I wandered over to my roses and fiddled with them, surreptitiously watching as Ivan lingered to work his way into the conversation.

At first, I saw a lot of false starts. His mouth would flap open then clamp shut so quickly I could practically hear the snap of his teeth. But after a few minutes, he got a thoughtful look on his long, lean face as he leaned in to hear our neighbor Ben’s girlfriend discuss her recent trip to Costa Rica.

If I hadn’t known better, I might have been jealous. Because Ivan wasn’t merely paying attention. He was devoting his attention, bestowing it all on the speaker, taking in not only her words but her gestures and body language as well. And when she paused, he said something that startled her.

“You didn’t actually like it there.”

“I…didn’t say that. It was a great opportunity. And I’d always wanted to go.”

He ignored the slightly frantic slashing gesture I was making across my throat, and pressed her further in a soft, insistent voice I recognized from earlier, in his bedroom. It was hypnotic, that tone. “Tell me what you didn’t like about it.”

Like a bird seduced by a cobra’s hypnotic swaying, the girl started describing not flowers and colorful birds, but oppressive heat and insects large and small. And disappointment. When she finally stopped, Ivan nodded thoughtfully but said nothing, and a lull fell over the group until Dinesh broke it by offering another round of burgers.

Clearly we still needed some work on defining “necessary” and “kind.” But at least he had listened. And watched. And apparently had an epiphany, because when we went back to his place after the crowd had dispersed, he was practically cackling with glee.

“I got it. I get it now. I know what to do. This is awesome!” He swung me around his tiny living room before tugging me up the stairs after him.

“Are you going to tell me what this amazing insight was?”

“Maybe once you’re naked.”

He actually started telling me before I had shed the last of my clothes. “I decided to just focus on one person, and then I pretended I was at the club and she was a sub I was meeting for the first time. Trying to figure out what she was really interested in.”

“What?” That sounded like a tactic with potential for disaster, if ever I’d heard one.

“No, no, it’s because of what you said. About listening and understanding before I try to answer. At the club, I’m usually trying to figure out what the sub needs. Not so much from what they say, but from how they say it and their physical cues. We should shower and wash off this mosquito repellent.”

He had covered us both with bug spray before we walked out the door, citing statistics about the incidence of West Nile virus and various fun facts about encephalitis. Evidently, he was equally concerned about the potential neurological or other systemic effects of leaving toxins on the skin for too long. I had known this about him before, of course, but I had never participated in the washing-off portion of the obsession. He cleaned me off and was very thorough.

“The problem is, you kind of brought the mood down,” I pointed out, a little breathlessly, as he worked on me with a soapy washcloth. “She wanted to talk about her trip, and you made her talk about how she didn’t like it.”

“She wanted to talk about that,” Ivan insisted. “You could tell from her word choices and the way her mouth moved when she spoke that she hadn’t enjoyed the trip, despite what she was saying. Yet she raised the topic, so obviously she wanted to talk about it.”

It was difficult to explain the concept of a party pooper to somebody who didn’t really get the concept of a party. “We all recognized that, but it brings everybody down. Even if you sense that she wanted to vent or something, you don’t do it when you’re the center of attention at a small gathering. Not if it’s negative like that.”

“Fine. Obviously I will never get this. Spread your legs for me, Camilla.”

Oh. He had used
that
voice, the one that somehow seemed to be plugged directly into my libido. In one sentence, the frisky playfulness of the shower turned into something full of dark promise.

He was still being thorough. Very, very thorough. I leaned into the shower wall in front of me for support, gasping as Ivan’s fingers slipped through each fold. And then a sharper gasp as he plucked a single hair.

“Ow,” I complained, but he was already soothing the sting with gentle pressure.

“I want to shave all this off. I want to see all of you. And it will make you even more sensitive.”

Could I stand to be any more sensitive down there? I really wasn’t sure.

“Can we take a rain check on that? I’m not too sure about—”

“No. I want to do it now.” He sounded calm but decided. As if we were talking about something mundane, like paying a bill or scheduling a dentist appointment.

“What if I said no?”

“Hmm. Well, that depends. Are you saying this is a hard limit? Is it no, never, under any circumstances?”

It was getting hard to think with his fingers stealing back and forth along my slit, taking little detours to toy with the hair in question. “No. Not a hard limit.”

“In that case, saying no would mean that I restrained you, shaved your pussy while you were tied up, and then punished you for refusing in the first place.” He reached around me to turn the water off, and had handed me a towel by the time I finally responded without looking back at him.

“And if I say yes?”

He snickered into my neck before nipping there delicately. “I’ll shave your pussy first,
then
restrain you and punish you for arguing with me.”

As I dried off I pondered those two options, and the curious mindset that made both seem highly attractive. I wondered what struggling might accomplish, and thought of that delicious horror-movie fear. Neither of us had a rape fantasy, perhaps. But at the same time I felt an urge to press the limits. To see how far he really would go. Or maybe to see how far I would go.

“The safeword’s still red, right?” I whispered, hoping not to break the tension building between us.

“Yes, Camilla, the safeword is red until you change it,” Ivan confirmed, sliding his arms around me from behind and pressing a kiss to the top of my head. “That’s the other side of the trust thing, remember?”