Unbound: (InterMix) (13 page)

He obeyed, stripping to his undershirt before reclining once more.

“Shut your eyes.”

He did. Her orders lit him as brightly as the friction had.

The rough caresses returned, spurring a pleasure so intense Rob’s spine arched from
the mattress.
Bloody hell.

“Is it because it’s scratchy? Like rope?”

A tight nod.

“Imagine that’s what I’m touching you with.”

He already was.

“What is it about the rope?” Her tone was warm with curiosity, void of skepticism.

He considered it. “The texture.”

“So it’s not just the bondage, then? You couldn’t get what you wanted from handcuffs
or something?”

“No. It has to be rope.” The wool teased the soft skin of his inner forearm.
“Oh God.”

“But do your fantasies usually involve people being tied up?”

“Nearly always.”

“Them, or you? Or both?”

He swallowed. “Only me.”

“Your wrists?” She drew the imaginary rope against each such spot in turn.

Rob shuddered, forcing a nod. He could sense her looming above him, her body heat
like a hearth. “Yeah,” he managed.

“Where else?”

“Anywhere. My ankles. My legs and arms. My throat.”

He’d never shared these thoughts aloud before, heard the words in his own voice. He
told Merry as much as he dared.

“I like to feel like I’m a captive, I suppose. Like I’m helpless. Being used, or objectified.”

“Should I touch you?”

“What you do . . .” Here he faltered, shamed by how his desires marginalized any person
kind enough to indulge them. “It doesn’t really matter what you do, as long as I feel
like . . . like it’s for you.”

“How so? What are some things you imagine having done to you?”

The words felt thick, but he forced them out all the same. “Being teased. Physically.
Almost like you’re . . . This sounds terrible.”

“What?”

“Almost like you’re . . . taking advantage of me. Abusing me.” How like confession
this was, only with Merry there was no condemnation, no penance.

“Like against your will?”

He nodded.

“Okay. What else?”

Bloody hell, she was difficult to scandalize.

“Maybe like you’re using me. For my . . . cock.”
Like it’s special,
he thought, but it felt far too stupid to articulate. “Or my come.”

Christ, you sound like a fucking mentaller.

She wants to hear, though. She asked to. She wants . . .

She wanted to
know
him. But these confessions were so twisted—if not disturbing, then at the very least
laughable.

Merry traced warm fingers up the inside of his thigh, making him tremble and sigh.

“What else?”

He swallowed and let the truth flow from deep in his mind and body. “You . . . you
want to force me to come, maybe. Because you want to humiliate me for being excited.”

Scary as this was . . . telling her these things was like a bloodletting. The initial
cut hurt like hell, but with it done he could feel the toxins escaping, making room
for relief. And all at once he
wanted
to give in. With a blinding bolt of understanding, he realized he’d had it all wrong,
blaming his fetish all this time, thinking of it as some twisted, fucked-up force
that lived inside him. A thing to be drowned in liquor, glass by glass, night by night,
year after year after year. It wasn’t his desire that had poisoned him. It was his
shame.

Merry drew the pantomime rope against his skin, making him crave a different relief
entirely. Not wanting to wreck the illusion, he stole just the briefest glimpse of
her face. Of this woman he’d only ever dreamed of, offering the things that had consumed
him for as long as he could remember.
Beautiful.
He shut his eyes. He felt her shift, and her words were close enough to warm his ear.

“You like it tight?”

“Yes, tight.”

He felt the heat of her thighs and her comforting weight as she straddled his hips.
Coaxing his wrists together, she wound the blanket around them. His cock was hard,
screaming hot, a crazed and frightening creature in thrall. Trapped by Merry, it pounded
along the crease of his thigh and hip, but the restriction was as hot as any caress.

He heard his breath, raw and desperate, nearly gasping. He’d felt this before, of
course. But always alone, never with another person in control of the tension or bearing
witness to how it affected him.

“Wow.” She said it nearly too softly to detect, and there was no mistaking the persuasion
of surprise—it was awe. Awe at what this did to him, at the power she held over his
body. This thing that left Rob so frustrated and weak did something different to her.
Excited her in a way that had nothing to do with shame.

“Do you have any?” she whispered. “Any rope?”

He nodded, opening his eyes as the pressure around his wrists disappeared.

“Where?”

He urged her aside, got to his knees and leaned over the edge of the bed. The incriminating
cardboard box scraped against the floor as he slid it out. Merry cast him a questioning
look as he handed it over, and when she lifted the lid it was as though she were opening
a secret door into his head.

Inside were two identical ropes, rough hemp, a centimeter thick. She took one out,
winding it around her palm. His belly tightened with every loop.

“So is this like your stash?” she asked, smiling.

He smiled back, face hot with embarrassment—though at this moment, it was difficult
to care. “Yeah.”

“A lot simpler than a motorized rubber dick,” she offered. “And just about every woman
I know has one of those stashed under her bras.”

Rob lay back against the covers, arousal spiking as he registered how close he was
to experiencing this thing he coveted so completely. It was terrifying. Exhilarating.
A free fall.

“Can I . . . ?” She strung the rope between her hands.

He nodded. “Anything.”

Merry set the box on the floor and settled beside him again. “Give me your wrists.”

Oh, those words. Straight out of his well-worn mental script.

He turned onto his side, offering his arms as though praying. Perhaps he was. Pleading
in his mind and body,
Please, do it. Let me experience this with another human being.
He could feel his own heartbeat at his temples, hear the blood coursing in his ears,
feel it pounding in his cock.

Merry granted his wish, winding the rope around and around, loose loops to start but
promising so, so much. Whatever she deigned to give him. With each scrape of the fibers
his cock stiffened, harder and bigger and hotter until he thought he might burst,
his body swollen too-tight with need. She met his eyes, biting back a grin.

He laughed, the tiniest huff of disbelief. “I can’t believe I’m letting you see me
this way. I can’t believe you’d want to.”

“Of course I do. It’s fascinating, seeing what it does to you.” She tugged softly,
pinning his wrists so that a moan fled his lungs. “Is this tight enough?”

He caught his breath and murmured, “Tighter is better.”

“When it’s your throat . . . ?”

“Tight. But not enough that I can’t breathe. Just enough to feel . . .”

“Dangerous?”

“Maybe. Or just . . . collared.”

“Like you’re helpless.”

“Yes. I want . . .”

“What do you want?” she coaxed.

He swallowed and let the truth rush out. “I want . . . The rope has to be rough. The
rougher the better. I want to feel it between my fingers and around the backs of my
knees, my neck, the insides of my thighs. In my mouth, like a gag. Anywhere soft,
that might chafe.” The words suddenly ran dry, but still Merry showed no signs of
fleeing. Instead she dragged the tail of the rope along the crease of his elbow, coarse
grain scraping delicate skin and vulnerable pulse points. Arousal surged like a head
rush.

“And is that all you want? Or do you want that, plus sex?”

“The rope is enough, sometimes. But I want more, too.”

“Like what?”

“Like . . . Like a narrative. Like some sense that I’ve been tied down for a reason.”

“For sex?”

“Yes. Or like I’m being held hostage. Or punished.”
Or exploited.
When Rob had hit puberty, he’d done as most lads surely did and measured himself
when he was hard. The discovery that he was bigger than the alleged average had instantly
wedged new barbs into his already elaborate fantasy life. He’d entertained a thousand
variations on the theme, a strange duality wherein his cock was coveted, the rest
of him belittled and mocked. The scenarios ranged from the simple—rousing from a stupor
to discover he’d been drugged and bound by an assailant—to the whimsically complex—that
he was taken hostage by a race of beings bent on harvesting his come for some ritualistic
ceremony. But all the narratives boiled down to a single truth.

“I just want to feel used,” he whispered.

“By a woman or a man, or does it not matter?”

“When it’s my fantasy, it’s always a woman.” But that preference had never stopped
him from settling for most any porn he could find that showcased these scenarios,
the gender of the participants secondary to the rope, to the image of it pressing
and binding flesh, to pale skin burned pink from the friction.

“And you indulge all these thoughts by yourself?” she asked.

“Not often. Not anymore.” This fixation had brought him nothing but scorn and isolation
since he’d been a kid. It was easier for him to simply shut off his sexual side, for
days or weeks at a time. As long as he could hold out, ignoring that telltale box
beating beneath his bed.

“I usually just want it over with,” he said. “So the desire will go away again. But
I do, now and then.” He met Merry’s dark eyes. “I’ve never told anyone this stuff
before. No one in real life.” A few people online, before his exile, but most of them
men. A woman might indulge him to a point, but when it became clear that the rope
wasn’t some one-time accessory, but as essential an element as she was . . . rather
understandably, she felt incidental—that the rope was his lover, and she the prop.
And sad as it was, sometimes Rob had seen it that way, too. Though not always, and
certainly not with Merry.

“You’ve never asked any girlfriends to do those things?”

“Not the way I’m telling you.”

“I’m guessing whatever you did ask for, it didn’t go well?”

He felt his cock wilt, remembering the night his wife had indulged him. Though
indulged
was too generous. Even
tolerated
was a stretch. The thing he’d wanted forever, in reality a depressing, half-arsed
charade, the hope of it shot dead inside ten minutes.

“It wasn’t encouraged,” he told Merry. “It was never encouraged. Not from when I was
a little kid, even.”

“You had a thing for being tied up, even when you were little?”

“Always. As long as I can remember. If there was any kind of scene in a cartoon or
a movie where someone got tied up by pirates, or to railroad tracks, or to a pyre . . .
it mesmerized me.”

“Wow.”

He searched her expression for pity or alarm, but all he found was that eager curiosity.
Acceptance, where he’d been taught to expect rejection.

He’d unnerved his mother with the games he played, got caught too many times with
some manky old rope in his mouth or wound too-tight around his fingers. She’d sent
him to therapy.
Your father’s not to know. No one’s to know.
Six years old and made to keep secrets like those before he even understood what that
magnetism was, that dizzying pressure in his belly when he’d imagined those things
from the cartoons and films. That the shameful thing he felt was sexual, or what that
even meant. At that age, he’d only known it felt good, and exciting. And soon after,
he’d realized that he must be bad, to feel those things.

“Have you met anybody with . . . with what I have?” he asked.

She smiled, letting the rope around his wrists go slack. “You don’t have to make it
sound like a disease. I think it’s kind of cool.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“I’m sure a lot of people with fetishes wish they were just vanilla and it would make
things easier, but I think it’s sort of . . . magical.” She blinked. “That’s probably
rude or naive of me to even say. But if I was with someone who had a fetish—a realizable
one like yours—and there was a place for me in it, and it wasn’t something that scared
me . . . that sounds awesome. Like some secret trick I knew about that could drive
them crazy.”

“I imagine you’d find it tedious, in time,” Rob said. “When you just wanted a quick
shag and an early night, but your partner needed some elaborate scene to play out.”

She shrugged. “I couldn’t tell you. But I’d like to think if I was with some guy long-term
who was into what you are, for example . . . if I had the power to blow his mind,
just by taking the time to tie him down? That sounds kind of amazing. You know. As
long as he reciprocated.” She smiled, biting her lip. “And you showed me last night
you know how to reciprocate.”

He wriggled his wrists free of their bindings, ignoring the surge of arousal the friction
triggered. As the rope fell away, he took Merry’s face in his hands. He studied her
mouth, then kissed her full lips once, softly. “You may be the kindest person I’ve
ever met.”

“That’s very nice of you to say. But I might be taking advantage of your fetish for
my own selfish enjoyment.”

He smiled. “I’ll try to find that insulting.”

She wrapped an arm around his ribs, nestling her body against his. “I’m kidding, obviously.
But I do think it’s cool, the way you are. And if you ever find yourself in San Francisco,
I’ll happily track down some rope fetishists’ meet-up to bring you to.”

A fine enough thought, but an impossibility as well. Merry would be gone in a day
or two, off to Inverness and then back home, all those thousands of miles away, to
the alternate universe called California.