A Good Student

"You love it, don't you Emma! You love it!"

She looked at me in panic and I saw she was losing it. The excitement of being fingered and played with like a hot little whore was more than she could stand, and the hidden slut was coming out, wild, hungry and uninhibited.

It's magic when you have a woman like this—absolute magic. The hotter she gets, the more you want to do to her because you know it's turning her own, the shame, the loss of control. I wanted to give her more, so I reached behind her with my other hand and lifted the back of her skirt, worked my hand under the back of her panties and pressed a finger against her puckered asshole.

"Oh, Mr. D! Don't!" She gasped, pressing her head back against the wall, but I could feel her buttocks clenching on my finger as she fucked her pussy against me in helpless excitement.

"Give it to me, bitch!" I hissed as I leaned my weight against her. "Give it to me! Look at what I'm doing to you. Go on, look!"

I moved back enough to give her room so she could look down and see the way her hips were pushed out and pumping obscenely as my fingers slid in and out of her cunt. "Oh God!" she moaned, shamed by the sheer lasciviousness of her own degradation.

I grabbed her hair and pulled her head back, making her arch her back as my fingers stroked her cunt. I studied her face, seeing her lose it, seeing the look of raw animal lust on her features.

"Hold onto me now, Emma! Hold onto me as you come!"

Her thighs were trembling, her legs growing weak. She dropped her skirt and held onto my shoulder with one hand, while with the other she grabbed the hand that was fucking her pussy and used it like a dildo, fucking herself, far beyond self-consciousness or shame.

"Yes!" she screamed. "Yes! Yes! YESSS!!!!"

I was afraid her screams would attract attention, so I took my hand from her ass and covered her mouth as she shrieked out her obscene pleasure, her pussy pumping, her internal muscles pulling at me as she humped and jerked and came. And came and came and came.

Chapter 2

For a long, expectant moment Emma clung to me, in the darkened auditorium, her hips still writhing in the aftermath of her orgasm, her eyes closed and yet a look of unmistakable sensual satisfaction spread across her face. It was almost as if she were two different people, as if her pussy no longer took orders from her mind. I could feel her sense of relief, not only at her orgasmic explosion but that her secret was out at last, that I'd seen her most hidden needs, but covering that was a deep shame and quivering fear of what I'd think of her now that she'd revealed herself. Perhaps her pleasure had been worth it, but now it remained to be seen what I thought of her and how I'd treat her—whether I'd lost all respect for her.

She opened her eyes cautiously, her chest still heaving as she gasped for breath, afraid to look at me, afraid of what she'd see, and I knew that if I wanted to throw her down on one of the tables and fuck her blind like my body was urging me to do right then she could hardly stop me, but that would be the end of things between us. She'd see the whole experience as nothing more than a seduction and semi-rape and write me off as someone who saw her as nothing more than a slut and a whore and an easy piece of ass, and that was the last thing I wanted.

"Are you all right?" I asked her.

She nodded uncertainly. Her hand was still clutching her skirt up, and now I pulled it from her grasp and lowered it, then smoothed it over her thighs. I reached up and she flinched as I started to button her blouse, then she took over for me and finished it herself.

"Are you ashamed?"

She shook her head in denial, but I could see tears in her eyes.

To have said anything more at the time would have been wrong, would have seemed patronizing. To have held her against me and let her feel my erection and need would have been wrong as well, but to hold her protectively, to shield her from her own feelings—to at least try—that I could do, and I put one arm around her and cradled her head against my chest.

She was stiff and brittle and I felt her heart racing against me.

"This isn't the casual thing you think, Emma," I said. "You don't know how long I've been thinking about you, wondering if you might be the one, if you had the gift."

"Gift?" Her voice was small and uncertain.

"Yes. Gift. What you gave me tonight was a gift, and you have no idea what it means to me. I don't want this to be a one time thing. I don't want this to be the last time."

She lifted her head away from my chest and looked at the floor. "No," she said. "It's wrong. There's something wrong with me and I know it. I shouldn't be like this and I shouldn't want these things and I try not to. I try not to think about them because I know they're wrong."

"No," I said. I grabbed her head and made her look at me. "It's not wrong. It's not wrong at all. You read my stories, They're real Emma. Maybe not what happened in there, but the feelings are real. Like poetry. Is there something wrong with me too, then? Is there something wrong because we feel so deeply?"

"But no one else—"

"Fuck everyone else. What do they know? You've seen those zhlubs in class, how the words go right by their heads. What do they know? What do most of the people in the world know? You feel, Emma. You feel much more deeply than most of the people in the world do, and it's a gift. You think it's a sickness but it's a gift, and I want to show you how to use it. You don't know what kind of treasure you have inside, but I do. Look— Grab your books and come with me. Come on..."

I picked up my briefcase and Emma took a moment to wipe her eyes and straighten her clothes, then retrieved her books and I held the door for her. We walked out into the hallway where the lights were already mostly off for the cleaning crew. Far down the corridor someone was vacuuming the carpet, and now that we were out in public our recent intimacy seemed to tie us even more closely together.

I walked her over to one the plate glass windows that looked out onto the woods beyond the parking lot and the glow of the suburbs, the strings of highways lights leading off into the darkness. The moon was up, looking pale and confused.

"You look at that and what do you feel?" I asked. I didn't wait for her to answer. "You feel the night inside you, something dark and delicious, full of secrets and beauty, something beyond words or your ability to express it, don't you, Emma? I know you do."

She stared out the window, her eyes large and luminous. "Yes." She nodded, then smiled privately. "But I've always been weird."

"Yeah. And I've always been weird too." I smiled back. "But those feelings are real, and I can show you how to reach them, how to experience them. I can bring the night inside, Emma. All those things you've dreamed of? I can make them real, and you know what? They're even better in reality than they are in your imagination. They're much, much better."

I took her arm and led her down the corridor to my office and unlocked the door. She stood in the corridor looking nervously inside, and I knew all I had to do was order her inside and she'd follow. I'd lock the door and keep the lights off and tell her to lean over the desk and she would, then I'd open my pants and take out my aching cock, push her skirt up over her hips and pull her panties to the side and thrust it into her. God, I'd go in so smooth! She'd still be wet and ready and she'd gasp. Her knuckles would grip the edge of the cheap metal desk and she'd start to rock back and forth as I fucked her, moaning softly, and she'd drop her head in female submission as I held her hips and guided her up and back, plundering her pussy with my thick tool before I threw my head back in rapture and shot my heavy load into her.

Yeah. I could have all that right then and there, and my dick was aching for it, but that's not what I wanted. I wanted a lover, not a piece of ass, someone who was in this as deeply as I was, and for that, I needed for her to want me too. I had to leave her wanting more.

I put my briefcase down on the desk and stepped out of the office, closing the door behind me, and saw the trace of disappointment on her face as the lock clicked shut. She wanted it even though she knew she shouldn't want it, and that was perfect.

"Come on," I said. "I'll walk you to your car."

"I'm parked right outside."

"That's okay. I just have something to tell you."

The lots were empty for the evening classes during the summer, so we were pretty much alone. Emma drove a nice car, white and sporty. The summer air was warm and balmy and the wind rustled through the poplars. It all looked so normal and suburban and collegiate.

"Next class," I said, "Wear a skirt and no panties, understand? If you want to go further with this, if you want me to show you what I know, wear a skirt with no panties and sit where you've been sitting so I can see. That's how I'll know you've agreed. Can you do that?"

She looked at me and I saw her nostrils flare slightly. "You're serious?"

"I'm very serious."

"But you don't know anything about me."

"I know enough. The rest I really don't care about. Who do you live with? Your parents?"

"No," she said. "Some girlfriends. We share an apartment."

"Well tell them you'll be late next Thursday. You're going out for drinks after class."

Emma opened her car and stopped. "I don't know anything about you either."

"Like what?"

"Are you married? Have a girlfriend?"

"No and no."

"How can I get a hold of you?"

"You can't. I don't want to be chatting on the phone and trading life stories, but here, I'll give you my address and cell number. Just don't use them except in emergencies, okay?"

I write them down in her notebook as she watched.

"You live in the city?" she asked.

"Yes. In a loft. It's nice. Maybe you'd like to see it sometime?"

Emma closed her notebook and gave me flirty smile. "Yes. Maybe I would."

I watched her red tail lights as she drove away, then I went back into the building and into my office. I kept the lights off, spun my chair away from the door, unbuckled my pants and pulled down my zipper. The fingers of my right hand still smelled like Emma's pussy, and the memory of her soft, slippery flesh was still upon them. More, I could clearly see her face as she struggled to hold onto her composure as I masturbated her, see the female animal within her struggling to break through the inhibitions and the smooth, American-model California perfect make-up. I could see the dark female need behind that sunny artificial wholesomeness—the even white teeth that needed to bite, the painted and glossed lips that needed to suck and open in a scream of ecstasy, the sloppy, throbbing cunt beneath her cute, up-to-date clothes.

That was it—the savage, the wild, feral female, lust-crazed, dizzy with orgasm. That's what I wanted, and my hand pumped my cock as I thought of her arched in pleasure, tied hand and foot, surrendering to the sensations I caused her, pushing out her orgasms at me one after another like something she had to get rid of, and then the burning, tingling, ecstasy was on me and I spurt my come for her in hot, impotent bursts catching the jets in my other palm to keep it from splattering all over my pants.

Chapter 3

I wasn't really nervous about the next class session. It wasn't that I was feeling cocky or especially sure of myself. It was more like I was sure of Emma, sure of who she was and what she was like, and I knew that it was going to happen, maybe not then, but then next session, or the session after. We'd shared too much of ourselves, an intimacy that went beyond the merely sexual, and my acceptance of her bound her to me in a way that she couldn't easily walk away from. If I'd just played with her and then fucked her, she could have blown it off as a one-time affair, a kind of mistake, and used my own guilt against me. She could have expected I'd spend the rest of the semester avoiding her, and she would have cozied up to her own feelings of being sick and perverse and accepted my rejection as the price of her perversion.

At the time I met Emma I was in the second year of struggling with my Novel, my Big Project, a dry, overly-intellectual, over-thought pile of crap that got more and more discouraging and unreadable the longer I worked on it. What money I was making from writing came from writing porn—knocking off quicky romantica novels of sex and passion featuring dominance and submission, bondage and discipline, and the truth was, I was much better at writing this kind of stuff than I was at writing what I thought of as serious literature. When I wrote sex, I wrote it with my heart and soul. I discovered things, I remembered things, I imagined things. I wouldn't say I became obsessed, but I did become consumed with a special kind of need for a special kind of woman. I became attuned to the sexual flame that burned inside me and began to see everything by its light. I became a kind of antenna, and that's why I was so sure about Emma.

Emma came in. She was wearing a salmon pink tank top with the bra straps showing, which was the fashion that summer (although I doubted she'd worn it that way at work), and a black skirt. She was also wearing a big pair of sunglasses, which she'd never done before. The sunglasses made her look very mysterious, and the top did great things for her breasts. I wasn't the only one who stared, or, rather, who pretended not to. She took a seat in the fourth row up and crossed her legs so I couldn't see if she'd followed my instructions or not.

It was the first indication I'd seen that Emma was adept at playing this game too, that maybe she wasn't the innocent victim of her own uncontrollable desires, but that she was entirely capable of inciting them in others. She knew what she was doing, and now that the game was afoot, she was showing me she could play it too. I knew then and there she had nothing on under her skirt.

It wasn't the longest lecture of my life but it seemed like it, and Emma said little, sitting there inscrutable behind her sunglasses as if daring me to guess what was on her mind, and I had to stay behind the lectern to keep from showing the incipient erection that began the moment I laid eyes on her and continued throughout the class. It was a great relief when, towards the end of the period, some of the kids got involved in a discussion of a Robert Frost poem and I could shut up for a while. I glanced at Emma and she slouched down in her seat and uncrossed her legs.

I was leaning on the lectern and the light was bad, and in fact, I couldn't see all the way up her skirt, but then, I didn't have to. There's no reason a girl would sit like that with her knees open under the table unless she were showing you something, and she certainly wouldn't choose that moment to take off her sunglasses and rub the temple slowly across her lower lip as she looked you in the eye, nor would she raise her skirt and rub her knee.

She apparently saw in the color of my face or the clench of my jaw that her message had been received and she pushed her skirt down and suddenly sat up in her seat and looked at her notes as if they were the most interesting things in the world, crossing her legs demurely upon her salacious secret.

I felt physically dizzy. All my blood rushed either to my face or my crotch and my cock sprang violently to life like a fist trying to tear through my shorts. I thought I'd wanted her before, that I'd been aroused just when I saw her, but now I felt like a charging bull who'd just caught sight of a matador's red cape and I had to dig my fingers into the side of the lectern to hold on against the rush of pure testosterone I felt.

The conversation continued but I had no idea what they were talking about. Emma studied her notes and put her sunglasses casually up on her head so that she looked typically suburban but, to me, even more devastatingly erotic for its plainness. Her arms were across her breasts (the lecture hall often got too cold from the AC) and I don't know how she knew I was looking, but she spread hr knees apart again, her thighs straining the fabric of the skirt, and this time I could see her lurid nakedness, the shaved cleft of her pussy within the shadows of her skirt.

For a moment I had the insane idea of reaching down and masturbating behind the lectern, but that was sheer madness (although the idea of turning this class into a group of naked, masturbating, students had a certain erotic appeal) Besides, the object with Emma was to establish control. Yes she was beautiful and desirable and aroused the hell out of me, but without control this would be just another relationship, and I wanted more than that. I wanted much more than that.

At last the conversation drew to a close. I handed out the homework assignments. Some of the kids came down to talk to me and I got rid of them as quickly as possible. Emma stayed in her seat, writing furiously as if transcribing notes. I hustled the last of the kids out telling them I had to give Emma a make-up quiz and physically walking them out the door of the lecture hall so I could watch them go and be sure we were alone. Then I closed the door and turned off the lights. The dark seemed our natural element.

"Emma?"

She finished her writing, put away her pen, gathered up her books and stood up. She walked up the steps to where I stood, right where we were the other night, her face expressionless. I could see the pulse beating in her throat. Her eyes flicked up at me, then down. She was waiting. I let her wait. This was about control.

"Here," she said at last. "Do you want these?" She dug in her bag and took out a pair of tiny black panties and put them in my hand.

"Well, I couldn't very well go to work without them, could I?" she asked.

I held them to my face. They were so small. I'm always amazed at how women get themselves into things so small They smelled like powder and perfume and only faintly of her body.

"Turn around," I said.

She looked confused but turned around, and I straightened out the crumpled panties and pulled her hands back and slipped them through the leg holes, then twisted them till they tightened on her wrists like a tourniquet. I turned her back to face me, still holding her wrists trapped in her panties.

The sight of a bound woman is terrifically, almost unbearably erotic to me, even if she's bound only in play. It's been that way ever since I can remember, even before I knew what sex was. Emma was standing in front of me now with her wrists bound behind her, her breasts straining against the tight pink tank top. I pushed her back against the wall and leaned over her, my shadow covering her like a blanket. Her eyes were unusually white in the darkness

"Anyone ever do anything like this to you before?" I asked, tightening my grip on her bonds.

"Yes. Once. A long time ago. We were only playing, we were kids. We didn't know what we were doing."

With her arms behind her she was like a sculpture, all curves and defenseless softness, offering herself to me. I was already breathing fast and my cock was hard. I pressed it against her hip so she could feel very well what she was doing to me, then caressed her face with my hand, feeling the feminine warmth of her skin. I traced my way down her throat, her chest, and over the bulge of her breast, feeling the exact point where the edge of her bra confined the fullness of her flesh. I felt the firmness of her nipple under my palm.

"Did you like it?" I asked.

"Yes. I loved it. It still scares me how much I loved it."

I don't know what else she could have said that would have aroused me so much or driven me so absolutely mad with desire for her. It was that mention of fear that did it, that told me she was the genuine article, because where we were going was scary, a place where you can lose yourself, where you can find out that you're not who you thought, a place where the night takes over and swallows you up and all you have is your lover to bring you back.

Page 2

And as if that admission of fear were her last defense, she opened her mouth to my kiss and met me with a desperate, sucking hunger, giving herself and showing me how she wanted to be plundered and used. I held onto those twisted panties and felt her arms strain against them as she tried her strength against mine because she had to know I was serious. She had to know I wouldn't let her go and that she had no choice but to surrender, and I kissed her violently, making her take my tongue and teasing the inside of her mouth. My hand slid down and closed on her chest and I felt that maddening firm softness of a woman's gravid tit, heavy and filled with sensual comfort. I found her nipple through her bra and pinched it, and that seemed to set her off even more.

Oh yes I was right about her. I was right, I was right. She loved my roughness, my passion and hunger, the pleasure that bordered on pain. I held her wrists and played with her tits and kissed her, then pulled the neck of her top down till her breasts spilled over the top and I bit and licked them as my hand found its way down to her crotch and I began to lift her skirt.

"Oh no! No!" she moaned, but I knew she had to say that, just as I had to refuse to listen to her.

"Listen," I whispered into her ear. "This is Thursday and there's no one here. The cleaning crew isn't even in this part of the building on Thursdays. Understand?"

"No," she said. "No..." but her hips were already moving in a lewd and urgent invitation even though her skirt was still stretched several inches below her naked pussy.

I pressed my lips against her throat and continued to inch her skirt upwards, wanting her to feel every millimeter of thigh as it was exposed, until finally there was no need to go any higher. I touched her between her legs, an she turned her face to me, begging for a kiss, desperate to hide her emotions as my fingers slid along her exposed wetness.

"Please," she gasped. "Don't make me! Don't!"

A little plea for dignity, but dignity would be the first thing to go, was already gone. Emma's arms were tied behind her in her own panties, her top was pulled down and her tits were crowded together and almost popping out of her bra, her nipples peeking over the edge like rising suns, and her chest shining in the dark with my saliva. Despite her protests, her hips were humping and revolving against my fingers with obscene urgency as she tried to bring them into contact with her clit.

It was way too late to ask me to stop. Way too late, and I played with Emma's pussy like it was a handful of pearls, toying with her and strumming her like a harp. And if I needed any more proof of her level of excitement, I only had to bring my mouth close to hers and feel her feverish kiss, a kiss that begged and pleaded with me one minute, then bit me in savage impatience the next. Her tongue fluttered in my mouth like a little bird in a burning house, trying to get free and it drove me mad, because something was inside Emma trying to get free, and I wanted it. I wanted it with every fiber of my being. I wanted her to give it to me and me alone, and I wanted all of it.

And suddenly she gave it to me. She tore her lips from mine and cried out, then choked on her own breath and arched her body away from the wall, shoving her pussy out onto my hands. I saw a brief look of panic in her eyes, as if she couldn't believe this was happening to her, and I grabbed her panties tight and used them to press her body against mine with all my strength, as if she might fly apart. I shoved my finger into her deep, deep—deep and held it there as her thighs quivered and trembled and orgasmic spasms made her bear down on my finger in waves of peristaltic pleasure that made me absolutely dizzy with desire.

The sight of Emma coming was so intense that I felt my own orgasm start and only stopped it by sheer force of will, pulling my cock away from her body and just holding her as her body snapped like a whip with each convulsive release, trying not to think, trying to keep my mind a blank.

I held her up, let go of her panties and just held her against me as she shook and trembled and her orgasm faded like distant thunder. She worked her hands out of the crumpled garment and held onto my shoulders, panting.

"You okay?" I asked.

"God!" she said. "I was just so turned on all day, thinking about it. That was intense."

"Can you walk?"

"Of course. Yes. Why? Where are we going?"

"My office," I said. "It's my turn."

Chapter 4

Emma put herself together and got her books and picked up her panties from the floor, and we didn't say much as we walked down the hall to my office. The corridor was deserted, and only every fourth light was left on, making the place look especially forlorn.

I'd originally thought about taking Emma to a motel, but that seemed wrong somehow, and my place in the city was too far. Besides, this was not a simple love affair or sexual tryst. There was a wrongness about this and a transgressiveness that was a deep part of the very fabric of this relationship at this point. Maybe we could have done it in a car, or behind a dumpster, or in some basement boiler room, but that's the way it had to be, furtive, secretive, perverse and illicit. My office would do nicely.

As an adjunct instructor at Crane, I didn't have my own office. I had a desk in an office used by two other, full-time instructors but that was all right. No one was around after 3 PM anyhow—ever—so the office might as well have been mine. The narrow window in the office door had been covered with construction paper by one of the full-timers so he could sleep in there unobserved, and although one wall was all window with a view of the parking lot, if the office lights were off you couldn't see in.

I'd already brought in what I needed before class in a box and left it under my desk, and now, as Emma stood uncertainly in the darkness, I set about my business.

"Take off your clothes," I said as I spread a blanket over the top of the steel desk.

"What?"

"Come on. Take off your skirt and your top. No one's coming in."

Despite the darkness, I could see her uncertainty. Fear of the Teacher's Office dies hard, even in adults. Besides that, I realized I was being rude, ordering her around like a paid prostitute. That's not my way and that's not how I wanted her to feel.

"Here," I said gently. "Come here."

I reached into the box and pulled out a length of white nylon rope, finger-thick and soft as silk. I turned her around and began to wrap it around her wrists.

"I'm not going to tie you," I said. "I'm going to lash you. There's a difference. Lashing doesn't use any knots. You can always work your way free with enough effort. I don't want you to panic."

"I'm not afraid," she said. "I'm not. I trust you."

Somehow she knows just what to say to bring me to the boiling point. I quickly finished lashing her wrists with the thick white rope and spun her around and took her in a bruising kiss, crushing her against me, one hand n the back of her head, the other on her ass. I was devastated by her trust and her willingness, by the gift of herself. I'd often heard other doms talking about the gift of trust but I'd never felt it like this, this intensely. The other women I'd played with had to be coaxed and reassured, were nervous and skittish.

Emma wanted it. She wanted to be helpless for me, and the realization just destroyed me. I could have fallen to my knees at her feet at that moment, conquered by her submission.

I held her face in my hands and kissed her feverishly, her mouth, her cheeks and eyes. It was so incongruous yet so beautiful, standing in that dark and ugly office with this woman tied up for me, letting these waves of carnal excitement wash over me in this place of intellectual dedication.

My hand went to the waist of her skirt and I fumbled about, looking for the zipper. It was in the back, and I opened it and unbuttoned the button and tugged the skirt down her thighs till it puddled around her ankles like a shadow and she was naked from the waist down. At that point I was overcome and I pushed her back until her ass his the edge of the desk. I got on my knees and held her ass and began to lick and kiss her hips and thighs and belly, tasting the salt of her sweat and her female musk. Emma gasped.

"Mr. Devlin! Oh, Mr. Devlin!"

"Conner," I said. "Conner." Though this was no time to exchange names, and I didn't care what she called me.

"Please! What are you going to do?"

"What am I going to do?" I asked, dragging my tongue up her thigh. "I'm going to eat you, my dear. I'm going to suck that pussy till you come in my mouth, till you turn into a pile of quivering female jelly, and when you do—when you simply can't stand it any more, when you can't live another instant without my cock inside you—then I'm going to fuck you, Emma. I'm going to fuck you hard and deep like you've never been fucked before. Do you understand?"

"Oh God!" she moaned

I stood up and lifted her onto the narrow side of the desk and Emma leaned back on her bound hands. I lifted up her tank top and pulled it over her head, but because her hands were lashed together, I had to leave it hanging from her wrists. Her bra opened in front (clever girl!) and that met the same fate, hanging from her bound wrists, and I began to suck and kiss her tits as I opened my own shirt. We were both in a fever of excitement and Emma's head fell back in pleasure as I sucked her nipples into aching hardness and lashed them with my tongue, then peeled my shirt off and threw it aside.

I got to my knees and took her ankles in my hands. She still wore her shoes, smart little sandals, and I left them on, and as I lifted her ankles she started to fall back on the desk and I stopped and helped her lie down.

"Put your hands under the small of your back," I said. "That'll help raise your hips too."

Emma twisted around on the blanket until she was reasonably comfortable and I got back down on my knees and took her ankles again. I love holding a woman's ankles. It feels so possessive and powerful, not to mention absolutely sexy, and you can squeeze hard without hurting them. Emma had beautiful ankles and I held them tight and bent her knees up and she raised her head to look down at me with a deliciously fearful look on her face.

I must have been fearful to behold. I was aflame with lust, absolutely afire, and I hovered above her pussy like a lion above his kill. The mere proximity to her sex had the hormones gushing in my body and the muscles in my arms and shoulders were swollen and tight as I lowered my face and licked the insides of her thighs, all the way up to her pussy. Emma whimpered and twisted her hips and her scent drove me mad. I stuck out my tongue and dragged it up her slit and her juice was like honey on my tongue.

"Ahhhhh!" she arched her back and I felt her toes curl as I circled her clit with my tongue and began to suck. I already knew her most sensitive spot and I threw her thighs over my shoulders and began to suck her clit in and out as I finger-fucked her. She squeezed my head with her strong thighs and began to pump obscenely, hungry for another come, and I let her use me, reveling in her female lust. She rose to it quickly, and suddenly her hips were shaking against me, vibrating against my face as her clit twitched and pussy squeezed my fingers and she choked and gasped, writhing on the desk.

I slowed and stopped, giving her time to come down, not yet knowing how much she could take or how much recovery time she needed, but she'd barely caught her breath when her hips began moving again, twisting and rocking, shyly asking for more, more.

"Hot bitch!" I snarled. "You got more for me?"

"Oh yes, baby. Please! Please, it's so good!"

I smiled as I reached over her thigh and spread her cunt apart, exposing her hot little clit in its little nest, I fluttered my tongue against it and sucked the sweet inner tissues of her pussy, tongue fucked her then spit on her clit and licked it off. Looking up at her I could se those gorgeous tits rising like islands in the moonlight, crowned with stiff rosy nipples that seemed to pointing at the ceiling. They trembled with each shuddering breath.

I was like a satyr, a devil, sucking her between her legs, feeding on her cunt like a humming bird at a pool of nectar, and Emma seemed to come and come, one orgasm blending into another in an endless stream till finally she was gasping and moaning,.

"Oh God, no! No more! Fuck me! Please. Just fuck me!"

I got up and stood over her, my eyes burning, my face smeared with her pussy juice. I must have looked like a madman.

"You want to get fucked, Emma? Then you're going to have to agree to my terms. I want you, Emma. I want you to be mine. I want to train you and have you and use you and fuck you. I want you to be my slave and my lover and I want to teach you to do all the things I've always dreamed of doing. Do you agree?"

She looked at me fearfully, alarm breaking through the spell of lust. "What are you talking about?"

"You're something very rare, Emma. Something rare and precious, something I've been looking for for years now and I don't want you to get away."

"I don't understand."

"Okay, listen. I don't care about your life outside, about who you see and what you do, if you have a boyfriend or not and all that crap. But I want you two nights a week at least. I want to show you what you have inside, what you're capable of feeling. I've never seen anyone as sexual as you, Emma. I don't want you to just think this is a couple nights of fun and that's it, understand? There's something here. Something deeper than just sex."

She looked at me as if no one had ever said these things to her before, as if she really believed that the desires she had inside were sick and perverse and something to be ashamed of and had no idea of what they would do to a man—or to the right man.

"What do you want me to do?"

"You don't have to do anything now," I replied. "I'm not a stalker and I'm not going to chain you to the radiator, and this is something you have to enter into of your own free will. But I need for you to know that this is more than just some quickie student-teacher affair, Emma. This goes deeper than that"

She didn't know what to say so I saved her the trouble. I leaned over and kissed her. I dropped my tongue into her mouth and fucked her with it until she began to suck on it and caress it with her own, responding instinctively to having her body penetrated. Everything she did was so maddeningly female, so giving and accepting. Her nipples pressed against my bare chest and her legs closed reflexively around my ass, pulling me against her. She was still horny. She was still ready for more.

I broke the kiss and smiled down at her, knowing we had an agreement.

"Back to business," I said. "Now let me show you something."

I went to the box and got more rope, then tied several turns around each ankle as she watched me from the desk, her breasts heaving with excitement as I bound her. I turned her on her side and unlashed her wrists, then pulled off the tangle of her tank top and bra and tossed them on a chair and tied cuffs of rope around each wrist. I strung lengths of rope through each cuff and down to the corresponding ankle and pulled them snug so that Emma's arms were drawn down and her ankles pulled up against her ass, her knees forced open in an obscene, froglike position, totally exposing her sex, leaving her open and helpless.

"You've heard of hog-tying?" I asked as I tied the ropes tight. "Well this is called frog-tying and it's one of those things I talked about wanting to show you."

Emma whined. She tried to close her knees but the ropes were too tight and the strain too much, and her legs trembled and then fell lewdly open again as she panted from the effort. I reached out and caressed her breast, then ran my hand down her body and roughly massaged her pussy. I stuck my finger inside her and began to finger fuck her and there was nothing she could do. It was like I owned her totally now—my own private little cum-slut, unable to do anything but lie there in the ropes and take it. She began to pant, excited by her own helplessness, and her pussy seemed to suck greedily at my finger.

At the heart of the BDSM experience there is always a moment like this, at least for me. There's a moment when woman as icon—all the attraction and longing and desire she inspires—has been stripped away and the man feels, however rightly or wrongly, that he's reduced her to his level—to that of a sexual beast, a creature of pure sensuality. That's something he understands. That's something he feels he can master. He'll never conquer his longing for her or the weakness she makes him feel when he looks at her, but in conquering her body and in taking charge of her sensations, he at least feels he's gained some control of his heart again. He feels like a man again.

Or at least that's the way I felt with Emma tied and exposed on that desk—something primal and primitive and more basic than even love or affection, a kind of deep sexual polarity of male and female, blind and biological.

"This is the way I keep a bad girl exposed," I said in a hoarse whisper as I caressed her pussy and studied her face. "This way I can fuck her or play with her or eat her or do almost anything to her. Like spank her when she needs spanking. When she's a greedy little cum-whore and needs spanking"

I slapped her lightly on the clit and Emma jumped. I spanked her again with the same result, and now she bit her lip to keep from crying out.

"Ever come from having your clit spanked?" I asked. "Too bad I didn't bring a whip. I could make you come like that. Emma. Sounds pretty nasty, doesn't it?"

I stood up and at last I began to take off my pants, opening my belt and pulling down my zipper. I kicked off my shoes and socks, then stripped off my pants and threw them on a chair. My shorts were soaked with pre-cum, a wet spot the size of a dollar bill covered the fly where I'd been leaking during our play. From her awkward position, Emma raised her head to watch me undress and see what was in store for her. I didn't care. It just felt so fucking good to let him loose at last.

I won't lie. I'm no Johnny Wadd and don't sport a ten-incher, but I was harder then hell and those veins were pumping and he was red and drooling like a rabid cobra, straining to get inside her like a mastiff on a leash. He looked like I felt—mad, evil, and swollen to bursting with power and lust.

"You ready, Emma?" I growled. "You ready to get fucked?" I pulled her ass to the edge of the desk and pushed her knees apart . My cock arced like a missile over the open trench of her cunt.

She didn't say anything, just tugged at the ropes and mewled, so I stuck my thumb in her pussy and started fucking her with it as I thrummed her clit, giving her one last tease.

"Come on, baby. Are you ready? Do you want it? Or do you need to come some more?"

"Oh please," she said. "Just do it! Fuck me!"

"No. I think you've got more. I think you've got more for me, don't you? You're holding out, Emma. You're holding out."

I pulled my thumb from her cunt and spanked her clit with the back of my hand, just flicking my fingers against it. Emma groaned and tried to close her legs, but I had one hand on her knee and there was nothing she could do. did it again, then again, and again, setting up a regular rhythm, my fingers splashing down in the wet trough of her pussy, rudely spanking that turgid little nub. She was hypersensitive by now, and every spank made her jerk and twitch, made her thrust her cunt up and made her asshole contract. The muscles on the insides of her thighs trembled and she moaned feebly, too ashamed to admit that even this crude punishment felt good.

Page 3

"Come on, baby," I hissed at her. "Give me that come, Emma! Give me that one last come. I want to shove my dick into you while you're spitting out that hot juice. Look at you all tied up like a fucking slave! You can't even move, can you? I'm going to stand here and slap that hot little cunt till you give me that come, bitch, till I see the juice running down your ass. So come on. Give it to me! Give it to me, Emma!"

"Oh! God! No! No!" she grunted as I spanked her pussy. Her hands twisted desperately in the bonds, her stomach tightened convulsively and her tits quaked on her chest as spasms of painful pleasure wracked her body.

I grabbed my cock in one hand and opened her cunt with the other and began to slap the head against her clit. My dick felt like it weighed a ton and the sound it made as it splashed into her wet trough was like a log splattering into a muddy swamp. I beat her cunt with my prick and each blow was a jolt of pleasure for us both

Splatt!! Whapp!! Smackk!! Shplapp!!

I bent over and grabbed her hair as if I could pull the come out of her, pulling her head to the side till she opened her teeth in a grimace of pain.

"Give it to me, bitch! Give it to me, you hot cunt!"

Slapp!! Whackk!! Splatt!! Plapp!!

Faster and faster I beat her with my cock, and Emma wailed and screamed so loud I was afraid they'd hear her at the other end of the hallway, so I quickly grabbed her rumpled panties from the chair and stuffed them into her open mouth. That seemed to be the last straw, the final indignity she needed. She wailed behind the black gag of her panties and arched her back and started to come again—the big one this time, the soul-killer—and at that moment I stopped slapping her with my dick, pushed the head dick down with my thumb so it found her hole, and shoved the whole length into her with one thrust of my hips, right at the height of her climax.

"Oh Jesus Fucking Christ!" I moaned, throwing my head back in ecstasy. She was coming hard inside, her pussy clamping down and fluttering around my shaft, her thighs squeezing me convulsively as I invaded her. She was all soft and tight inside, and slick and hotter than hell and I could feel those secret feminine muscles milking and pulling at me as she howled through her panty-stuffed lips.

I grabbed hold of her tits and held them like handles as I started fucking her, swinging my ass like a wrecking ball against her, using the big muscles in my ass and thighs to send my cock thundering up into her against the resistance of her spasming pussy again and again, the lewd squelching sounds of cock in pussy and the sharp violent slap of loins against thighs like pistol shots in the room. With her hands pulled down almost to her feet, Emma was able to just reach my thighs as I fucked her and she scratched and clawed at me in her frenzy as I fucked her with savage power. I let go over her tits and grabbed her thighs so I could hold her steady because I was shoving her across the desk from the force of my thrusts.

"Ugh! You fucking bitch! Do you like this cock, Emma? Do you like this fucking cock?"

I reached up and pulled the panties from her mouth and threw them aside, but all she could do was wail, head back, eyes open wide and sightless as I fucked her, tits sloshing on her chest from the force of my blows. She seemed stunned by the force of her last orgasm, out of it, in a state of semi-shock and limp, but when I slid my thumb against her clit and started playing with her, she suddenly came alive, her head jerking up to watch my thick cock sluicing in and out of her pussy.

"Oh God yes! Yes!" she cried. "Make me come! Make me come! Make me come!" She chanted it like a breathless mantra as her body rocked on the table and it drove me mad. I felt my orgasm start and I grabbed her ass in my hands and squeezed, holding her buttocks and cramming that dick into her, fucking her so fast that I was like a jackhammer, fucking her so fast I couldn't even breath. All there was was the feeling of her cunt on my dick,. that pressure in my balls, that feeling of her body in my hands.

"Oh fuck yes!" I cried. "Gonna come, baby! Gonna come in you, Emma! Jesus! Jesus, baby!"

I loomed over her now with a look of absolute rage on my face, muscles swollen, fingers digging into her ass—the rage of orgasm, the helpless gush of seed. Emma was hysterical, squeezing me, twisting her hips, trying to pull it out of me. I rose up on my toes as I felt it start, trying to cram the last inch of dick into her as the thunder shot from the soles of my feet and blasted from my balls and the come blew out of my dick with the force of a fire hose.

"Fuck!" I cried, "Fuck, Baby! Take it! Take my hot come!"

I leaned back, hips out, fingers clawed into her ass, holding her against me like some come-receptacle as my ass flexed and body twitched in powerful contractions, sending my semen shooting in hard, heavy gouts deep into her quivering belly, one after another, each one accompanied by a burst of mind-shattering ecstasy. I could picture the hot white seed splattering into her soft pink insides and dripping from her tissues, coating her with my thick ejaculate, and the image just brought fresh bursts of come boiling up from my balls.

I came so hard my legs started to tremble, and then my arms, and my belly—all of me, wracked by a post orgasmic weakness like I'd rarely known. The girl had sucked it all out of me, had made me come like a hydrant. With trembling hands I untied the ropes that held her wrists to her ankles and her legs flopped over the desk.

"Can you move?" I asked.

"I don't know," she replied. "I don't think so."

I laughed. I moved to the side of the desk and grabbed her waist and pulled her up till she was lying on the desk. It was big enough that I was able to climb up there with her and put my arms around her. She seemed uneasy.

"You don't have to," she said.

"Don't have to what?"

"Hold me."

I looked at her. "What if I want to?"

She made a face and shrugged. "Most other guys don't."

"You've done this before?"

"Not like this. Not so... elaborate. But I told you, there's something wrong with me. I like it too much. Men don't like girls like me, so I seem to have a lot of one-night stands. They always think they have to hold me afterwards, but it's okay if you don't."

I stared at her now as she lay there. I'd left bruises on her tits and the rope was still on her wrists. She was full of my semen and more of it was even now leaking out between her legs and drying on her thighs.

"It's a fucked-up world," I said, "Filled with fucked-up people. But I don't think you're one of them. I think these other guys were. I want to hold you because I want to hold you, not because I feel sorry for you. We have an agreement, remember? This is only the start."

Emma looked at me and brought her hands up over her breasts, as if to protect herself. Her eyes in the dark were luminous. "You're serious?" she asked.

"Yes. Dead serious."

I slid my arm under her head and pulled her to me and she rolled partway so that she was pressed against my side. I kissed her shoulder and caressed her hair and she put her leg over mine.

"It feels good, being held," she said.

"It feels good holding you."

Outside the office and the dull, plain community college building the parking lot ran down to a patch of grass, then a copse of trees separated the campus from the highway that led to the dreary grid of suburban streets and fast food places, most of them eerily empty at this hour. I had promised her connection and intimacy, and instead had delivered sexual pleasure, with ropes and violation and overt perversity.

There'd be time to find out if they were the same.

Page 4

A friend of mine says that a woman's biggest fear is abandonment and a man's biggest fear is responsibility. I don't know if I believe that, but I suppose that's as good an explanation as any for why I was living alone at the time I met Emma. I was twice her age and had had my full share of relationships of all shapes and sizes, and while I'd found them kind of interesting in a morbid kind of way, I'd come to accept the fact that I was pretty lousy at them. I was a spectator, not a participant, and it seemed best that way. To be honest, I was selfish, irresponsible, immature. I still am and suppose I always will be. I was no longer looking to change.

No matter how my relationships started out, they always seemed to end up the same way, as a burden and an imposition. I know that living with someone and loving them is a co-operative effort, a two-way street, but for some reason it seemed that the things I had to give up and sacrifice in order to keep the peace were never worth it in the long run. I was married twice, once for two and a half years, then, twelve years later, for four, and in both cases my wives had big plans for me. I couldn't live up to them. I tried, but making her happy by making myself miserable didn't seem like sound emotional economics.

They tell me that I probably wasn't really in love then—that when you love someone, you'll do anything to make them happy. I don't buy that. In fact, that seems like a pretty good working definition of slavery to me, but this is the kind of stuff I would hear from women, who seemed to have the moral high ground when it came to definitions of love and relationships. They certainly seemed to know what they were talking about, so I tended to keep my mouth shut and avoided the whole subject.

When I met Emma, then, I wasn't really looking for anything, or if I was, it was maybe the exact opposite of what was generally accepted as a normal relationship. If anything, I wanted to strip away all that jockeying for moral superiority and sense of social obligation and get down to the raw, primal genital imperatives of male-female attraction. I didn't want to get into a situation where I'd have to meet her friends and listen to her music and get involved in her life any more than was necessary, and I didn't want to impose all my crap on her either. I wanted to be her lover, not her friend, and meet in that place where our bodies and minds felt nothing but raw animal pleasure. From there we could see where the emotions led us and see if we couldn't develop some kind of arrangement that wouldn't get all suffocated under a mess of domestic trivia and crushed by interpersonal fatigue syndrome.

I wanted to see how long the two of us could keep this thing at the boiling point without getting overcooked.

Of course, it's impossible to have a sexual collision like Emma and I had that night in my office and come out of it emotionally unscathed. I spent that entire weekend sitting around in my loft in my cut-offs, thinking about her and aching. It was hotter than hell but I wouldn't even turn on the AC because that meant closing the windows and that felt like cutting myself off from her somehow, as if she might be sending me thoughts and pheromones on the breeze from way up in the burbs wherever she lived, so I just drank bottled water and sweated and remembered the feel of her skin and the way her muscles trembled against the ropes as I fucked her and she came on my cock. I could still smell her sex in the sweat of my body.

My novel was almost finished and it was entirely bullshit, I could see that now. The intensity of emotion I'd felt with Emma made me realize how false and contrived everything I'd written was. Yes, sex is sex and always intense. Sex deals with immediate sensation and literature deals with abstract ideas and they really can't be compared, but it was becoming clearer to me all the time that ideas were what you played around with when you couldn't get any sex. Intellect is pretty much maybe 80% the mind trying to figure out how to get the body laid. Whether it's writing books or solving quadratic equations, it's all loneliness and we're all stuck with it.

So I sat around and obsessed about Emma. She was upsetting all my theories. I mean, it was only sex after all, sex isn't the same as love. The problem is, I know what sex is, but I'm never sure about love. My own personal guide to love is that it's measured by how much I want to be with someone. By that definition, I was pretty much wildly in love with Emma.

I had her number and thought about calling her, but the last thing I wanted was to bother her. It wasn't just a case of not wanting to look uncool or needy, but it also went against my new non-relationship relationship rules. Besides, I was supposed to be the Dom, and in my ignorance at the time I thought that meant that I should be cold and aloof and unfeeling. That was nonsense, but what did I know?

At eight I went out to the bar down the street to get a beer and some cool air, and when I came back there was a message on the phone.

"Hi, it's me, Emma. I was just bored and wanted to talk but it was nothing important, and I guess you're out. You can call me if you get home like before eleven or so. Bye."

My hands were shaking when I sat down and picked up the phone. She got it on the third ring. "Hi, Emma? It's me. Conner."

"Oh, hi." She sounded a little fuzzy, sleepy, but came alive at the sound of my voice. "It's nice you called me back. I didn't think you would."

"Of course I would. Why wouldn't I? How are you, Emma? Everything okay?"

"Mmm, yeah. I guess so. Just bored."

It was the first time we'd spoken since I'd walked her to her car after tying her wrists to her ankles and fucking her raw on the desk in my office at the community college where she was in my poetry class. The event hung between us like a huge weight we had to cautiously feel our way around.

"Bored? Me too. You should have come over here. I could have found something for us to do"

I could hear her sly smile over the phone. "Oh? Like what?"

"You know what."

"No," she teased. The sound on her end changed, as if she'd cupped her hand around the phone or moved it closer to her lips. "Tell me," she whispered. "I want to hear you say it. Please?"

I couldn't resist. She made me want to do it, and the words just spilled from my mouth before I could stop them, my voice low, my urgency real. "I want to fuck you, Emma. I want to tie you up and get my cock inside you and make you take it, every fucking inch. I want you to come for me till you can't stand it any more. You understand?"

I heard the dry sound of her breath. "Oh God," she said. "No one's ever talked to me like that before."

"Do you like it?" I was already getting hard.

"You must think I'm horrible," she said. "A real slut."

"I don't think anything like that."

She didn't say anything for a while, and then: "Conner, I have to tell you something. I've got a boyfriend. We're engaged. Well, almost engaged."

I'd already suspected as much. A girl like Emma doesn't go around unattached. I'd thought I was above it and wouldn't mind, so the brief stab of hurt surprised me but I pushed it down. I had no right to it.

"Congratulations," I said.

"Doesn't that make you hate me?"

"No. What does that have to do with me?"

She was quiet for a while, then said, "He's really a great guy and he's got a great job. We're just waiting for him to finish his training. He's with—" and here she mentioned some outfit I guess I was supposed to have heard of—UniServe or TeleCom or UniTel or something— "and he's doing three months of training in Atlanta. Then he'll be assigned to San Diego and we'll probably move out there. If we get married here first then the company will pay to move me too, but I'm not real sure yet. I don't know if we'll get married here or there, or maybe somewhere else, like in Mexico, you know? I mean, I'm not really sure of the details yet, but I thought you should know."

"Un-huh. And when's he done with his training?"

"About six weeks."

Silence. I wasn't sure what she wanted me to say. I had no plans for her that extended beyond the length of my dick. I was determined not to lie about that.

"He doesn't know about me," she said. "The kind of things I like. I mean, I tried to get him to do some of that stuff but he just laughed. He couldn't believe I was serious. He thought it was sick, 'cause I guess he's kind of straight. That's not good, is it?"

I shrugged but she couldn't see it. "You're not married yet, right?"

"No."

"Not even engaged."

"No. Not officially."

"Do you love him?"

The pause. The fatal pause. "I think so. He comes back and sees me every couple of weeks."

"Well what do you want me to do, Emma? You want me to not see you anymore?"

"No," she said. "No." There was no pause now. "I just thought I should tell you."

"Un-huh. Well, it bothers you. I can understand that, but you're an adult, honey, and you have to decide what you want to do. Just let me say that I don't want to interfere with your happiness or your life. I have no intention of asking you to break up with your boyfriend or do anything else you don't want to do. This is a physical relationship, Emma, physical and sexual, and beyond that, I don't expect anything from you and I'm not asking for anything. I want your body, Emma. I want you as my lover, that's all."

I was surprised to hear my own words, so clear and unambiguous, so reasonable.

I was even more surprised to hear the response from her lips a few heartbeats later—the hurried whisper, almost a sigh: "God! Why does that make me so hot?"

*****

We didn't talk much more that night. A roommate came home and she didn't want to use the phone, and we hadn't yet exchanged e-mail addresses. I didn't hear from her again until the Monday night before class.

"Hi, it's me, Emma. Did you miss me?"

"Like the sky misses the stars." I smiled, and in truth I had. The last phone call had only increased my desire, and now that I knew she loved being talked to over the phone, I let the words pour out of me. "I miss the feel of you on my cock, your body writhing against mine, your hair in my hands, the way you shiver when I shove my dick into you, the blinding ecstasy as I jet my come into your hot pussy."

I laughed as I heard her catch her breath. She hadn't been expecting anything like that. "Am I going to see you after class?" I asked.

She suddenly grew grave, her voice quiet. "Oh God. I don't know, Conner. I really don't know. I've been thinking about all weekend and I don't know what to do."

I felt like an idiot for my dirty talk and it came out as coldness. "It's your decision, Emma," I said.

"Well, 'Gather ye rosebuds while ye may'."

"What?"

I recited: "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, Old Time is still a-flying: And this same flower that smiles to-day Tomorrow will be dying. Robert Herrick, seventeenth century poet, 'To the Virgins, to Make the Most of Time"

"I get it," she said. "But I'm not a virgin."

"Oh yes you are," I replied. "More than you know. A lot more than you know."

When she walked into class on Tuesday it was impossible to tell from her clothes what her decision about us had been. She wore a white cotton boat-neck top and a short denim skirt, unusually casual attire for her, and I didn't know if that meant she was comfortable with me now or she just didn't care. She kept her sunglasses on during class, but again, that might have meant she was hiding from me or it might have meant she was trying to conceal her lust.

In any case, I'd already decided to try and ignore her as much as possible during the lecture. What else could I do? But at the same time it was impossible not to be aware of her and what had happened between us. Thankfully, I'd rescheduled things so the lecture was an easy one for me, just playing recordings of various poets reading their own work. It was legitimate— wanted the kids to hear the poems as the poets heard them when they wrote them, the cadence and music of the language, something that doesn't always come across on the printed page—but I didn't have to do much. I'd have the students read a poem to themselves from the handouts, paying attention to how they heard it in their heads, and then put on a recording of the poet reading it in his or her own voice—the elderly, scratched brogue of Yeats, Eliot's eerie prissiness, the roiling madness of Ezra Pound, the ecstatic jazz of Kerouac, Gregory Corso's exuberant word salad, Edna St. Vincent-Millay's repressed and sublimated sexiness. The words rolled out and at the end I just turned down the lights and played recordings at random and we sat and listened. The power of the spoken word seemed to turn the cold auditorium of that third-rate community college into someplace special—a kind of campsite or temple or clearing under the stars where magical things happened, where evanescent feelings were captured and preserved in words and things were shown to us that we'd otherwise never see.

The poetry ended, the voices faded away, and the silence seemed like vacuum left in the room, as if a big train had just passed by. In the silence, I could hear someone softly snoring from one of the upper row but I didn't mind. These kids worked hard. Most of them had jobs. Sitting there and listening, I was reminded of why I'd chosen to try and be a writer myself, and I was proud, and that didn't happen very often. I had goose bumps on my arms.

I didn't want to break the spell by turning on the lights, so I just stayed where I was and announced, "That's all for tonight. Class dismissed."

I turned off the CD and the class gathered up their things and shuffled for the exits. I looked up and saw Emma sitting in her usual place, four rows up. She was slumped slightly in her seat as if she'd been thrown there, as if stunned. Her shoulders were back, and even in the darkness of the hall the shadows of her erect nipples were visible against the thin white fabric of her top. Her sunglasses were pushed up on her head and she was looking directly at me with a weird intensity, as if trying to cast a spell on me or maybe just capture my attention. Beneath the table her knees were spread apart quite plainly and her denim skirt was hiked up to mid thigh. It was too dark to see all the way up her skirt but there was no mistaking that gesture. She was offering herself to me, awaiting my instructions.

The room emptied as took my time, winding up the cord on the CD player, putting my notes away. Emma stayed in her seat, motionless until the door closed on the last student and their voices faded in the hallway. I looked up at her.

"Are you staying?"

"Do you want me to?"

"Yes," I said. "Very much."

I put the CD player away beneath the lectern. "Lock the doors. Take one of those folding chairs and jam the legs under the push-bars"

I'd discovered this trick on my own. The doors could still be forced from the outside, of course, but I liked the feeling of added security and of being locked in, and I liked the idea of making Emma do the locking. The cleaning crew didn't do this side of the building on my class nights anyhow, so there was little chance of our being discovered.

She stood up and smoothed down her skirt. I watched the tight roll of her ass as she climbed the broad stairs towards the back and almost disappeared into the darkness near the exits, then picked up a chair and slid it into place. She turned, pushed her hair back behind her ears, and started walking back down.

"Slowly," I said, my voice echoing in the empty room. "Walk slower. I just want to look at you."

I could adjust the lights from the podium, and I set them now so the auditorium was in complete darkness. There was only the spotlight over the podium and on the whiteboard behind it. Emma walked slowly down the steps, her shoulders back, her eyes flickering from the steps before her up to my face to see my reaction as I watched her in the simple act of approaching me, and act that was suddenly full of portent. She was getting excited. I could sense it from her, the way she had to restrain herself as she stepped down the stairs, pausing at each one, and the sense of power I felt was turning me on just as much as the sight of her. She was bringing herself to me at my command, and the very act was arousing us both, alone in that vast empty space.

She descended the last stair and came to the podium and I was going to talk to her, ask her if she'd made her decision, when I realized it was best not to say anything. She was here. What else was there to say? I looked into her eyes and took her hand and brought her close to me, so close I could feel the warmth from her body and smell her, so close that our bodies touched. I let the impending kiss hang in the air for what seemed like forever, till the tension became too much, over-ripe and swollen, and then I brought my lips down on that hot mouth and took her sweetness.

Emma doesn't kiss so much as she somehow surrenders with her mouth, with her breath, with her whole body, and my first thought was to pity the man who didn't fall in love with the delicious sin of that mouth. Her surrender brought forth a surge of male hormones in me, a rush of blinding sexual desire that made me feel like a conqueror—an emotional acceleration that turned me into an animal who seized her hair and held her mouth to mine like it was fruit of the desert. She shuddered before my onslaught and melted against me, and the more I took, the more she wanted to give until I felt like I was ready to crawl into her mouth and have her from the inside. She drove me insane.

Call it love or call it lust but it was good enough for me and it was more than good enough. It was exactly what I wanted and it was exactly what Emma wanted taken from her. I pushed her back until I had her pressed up against the whiteboard, never breaking that kiss, and I grabbed her wrists and held them against the board to let her know I owned her now and she was under my control. I leaned against her to show her how hard she'd made me. It was her fault she was being treated like this.

The whiteboard was covered with my own scribbles of poetic emotions we'd been discussing—love, hate, joy, fear, sadness, anger, desire, shame—and now I held Emma against it and worked her white cotton top up over her naked tits as she turned her face to the side to gasp for breath. She grabbed my hands to try and stop me and I shook her off angrily and grabbed her wrists again and pressed them against the board.

"You know the rules," I growled. "You don't touch me without permission!"

"I thought we were just going to talk," she said fearfully. "Someone could still come in."

"I don't give a fuck who comes in. When we're together I'm in control. You don't touch me or interfere, understand?"

She nodded and I went back to lifting her top over her tits. I wanted her naked and exposed under that spotlight, pinned against that whiteboard, but the top was snug. Halfway up I slid my hands under her breasts and ran my thumbs around her nipples and kissed her again, and again Emma opened her mouth to me in submission, closing her eyes and sucking on my tongue with meek supplication. Her nipples were wildly sensitive in a way I didn't remember from last time, possibly from being braless all evening, and rubbing my thumbs against them caused her to push her hips out at me and moan into my mouth. When I pinched them she gave a little shriek.

I knew I was going to fast for her, making her confused and dizzy with my sudden attack, but I liked it this way. I shoved her top up and lowered my head and took a nipple into my mouth, sucking it and lashing it with my tongue. She knew now she wasn't allowed to touch me, but she didn't know what to do with her hands, so all she could do was hold them up and squeeze them into frustrated fists or spread her fingers wide—lovely fingers with beautiful nails, the kind of nails that got a lot of attention. The shine of her nails got to me. For some reason they made me want to bite her breasts. She was all so perfect. I squeezed her tits in either hand till the nipples stood out then I licked and nibbled them till she hissed like a cat, arched her back and gave a little cry.

Page 5

I reached down and grabbed the hem of her skirt and started working it over her hips but it was snug and she had to help me, moving her thighs together and rolling her hips. Soon enough I got it high enough that I could feel her panties between her legs. I was surprised. We had a kind of agreement that she wasn't supposed to wear underthings to our sessions. I touched her pussy and she stiffened. SO she'd been right. She really hadn't known whether she was going to go through with this tonight.

"Panties?" I asked. "You wore panties tonight?"

"I wasn't sure," she said nervously. "I wasn't sure if I was going to..."

I leaned back and looked at her, my anger flaring. "You weren't sure? You really weren't sure? Are you sure now, Emma? Or do you want to think about it some more?"

"No. I'm sure. Really, I'm sure. Conner, don't..."

I pulled her skirt up and shoved my hand down the front of her panties, hooked my finger beneath the soft crease of her pussy and parted her lips. She was smooth and wet and I could feel her greasy little clit lick at my finger like a tongue as I rubbed back and forth. Emma moaned and gasped and dropped her hands to her sides, clawing at the walls as if trying to hang on.

I leaned against her and the feel of her pussy in my hand made me hot with lust and hunger and a feeling of ownership, with a feeling of power and control. I loved the way she came alive at my touch, the way she responded. At the same time, the idea that she'd even considered denying me what was so clearly mine filled me with anger. I slid my finger into her as if to remind her who she belonged to, pushed into her without apology as my thumb played with her clit. My face was right against hers and I stared directly into her eyes, daring her to tell me no, just daring her—almost hoping she would. The idea that she could have someone else—a boyfriend, a lover, a fiancée, even a husband—who could touch her the way I did or feel about her the way I did just infuriated me.

She looked at me fearfully but didn't say a word. Her legs parted slightly and I pushed my finger in deeper, violating her, penetrating her, trying to hurt her and she closed her eyes and grimaced but accepted it. There had to be no doubt here who owned whom, and yet inside I wondered whose heart was beating faster? Who was more excited? Who had the power and who was surrendering to whom?

I pulled my finger out of her and she relaxed slightly, daring at last to breathe. I took her arm—"Come here"—pulled her over to the lectern and pushed her face down over it. "Here, on your elbows, ass up, legs straight. That's it. Now spread them. Keep your face down"

Emma did as she was told, leaning her forearms on the wooden lectern, keeping her knees straight so that her trunk was almost parallel to the floor. Her top was still up under her armpits her tits hung beneath her, heavy and free, distended by gravity. I undid her skirt and pulled down the zipper then yanked it down over her hips and let it slide down her legs. She stepped out of it, giving a little mewl of embarrassment at appearing so naked and exposed in so public a place as an auditorium, but she didn't protest. Her panties were thin, robin's egg blue, stretched across the firm globes of her buttocks and low enough so the top of her asscrack was visible, tight enough so the ripe bottoms of her cheeks emerged from beneath as well. I ran my hand over her ass, feeling the warmth of her skin through the thin, slick fabric as she looked nervously back at me over her shoulder.

"Eyes front," I said as I caressed the humid pit of her sex between her legs. "So you weren't sure? You weren't sure you were going to give me this ass tonight?"

"Connor, I—"

I drew my hand back and gave her a good hard slap on the underside of her right buttock—a loud one, a slap that echoed in the empty auditorium like a gunshot and made her squeal and rise up on her toes in surprise.

"Owww! Conner! No! No! That's not what I meant!"

"Keep your hands on that lectern! Don't you dare take them off of there, Emma!"

Whapp!! I slapped her on the left cheek, just as hard, hard enough to make her drop her head and gasp, her fingers digging into the edge of the lectern as if she had to hang on

Smackk!!! Slappp!!! Two more blows, one on either cheeks, hard and sharp, and now my hand was starting to sting and her ass was jiggling and beginning to redden. The sting felt good and as I spanked her again, Emma gasped and jerked her head up, her mouth open in shock and something else—surprise maybe, but surprise at her own reaction, at finding she liked it, liked being spanked like this, treated like a naughty little high school slut.

I spanked her again. I was standing behind her and just to her left so I could swing my right hand back and land my blows squarely on the center of her ass, right on top of her innocent blue panties as her buttocks quaked and trembled and clenched together in reflexive avoidance.

Her hands were holding onto the top of the lectern and she lowered her face and rested her cheek against them, her brows knitted against the pain as she awaited the next blow, and how the emotions tore at me as I spanked her! Her fragile beauty and the way she offered herself up to my punishment brought out something both savage and tender in me, and I stopped the spanking, reached in front of her with my left hand and found her pussy and began to caress her, massaging and stroking her the way I knew she liked, washing away the pain with soothing tenderness. I caressed her ass as well, sliding my hand over her slick panties, feeling the heat from her beaten flesh through the fabric. The softness felt good against my tingling palm.

Emma began to grind herself against my hand, tentatively, as if checking to see whether the storm had passed. When she received no further spanks, she grew bolder. She began to search for pleasure, rolling her hips and her ass as she pushed her pussy against my fingers, working herself off. She became hungrier, more desperate. My fingers pressed the fabric of her panties up into her sticky slit and it felt as though she might somehow actually open up and take me inside, and at that point I realized she was about to seduce me with her need. I drew my right hand back and started spanking her again—Slapp!! Whapp!! Crackk!!—smacking her ass as I continued to massage her pussy, mixing pleasure and pain, sweetness and thunder, till Emma was clinging to the lectern and almost sobbing, humping and writhing like a bitch in heat, not sure which way to turn.

Now I was sweating too, my hand numb, my dick throbbing and oozing in my pants. I stepped back and pulled off my necktie as Emma writhed and moaned against the lectern, swiveling her ass shamelessly. I grabbed her wrists and used the tie to bind them behind her back. She didn't resist, just lay there with her face against pressed against the hard wood as I roughly tied her wrists together and she panted with urgent excitement. Even as I pulled the knot tight her ass continued to weave and undulate in obscene invitation as if it had a mind of its own and was hungry now for more punishment, more pleasure, for whatever I wanted to give her.

I pulled down her panties—pulled them down till they were stretched just above her knees—and exposed her naked buttocks and the swollen and glistening pussy that was nestled between them. I played with her and spanked her some more till her ass was a bright red and her moans had turned into a hoarse and urgent panting. Her hands were twisting in the bonds and her thighs were trembling, her copious lubricant was seeping over my fingers in shameful excess and dripping onto the floor, a sight that only made me spank her harder. I aroused her and punished her for being aroused at the same time. She stopped trying to protect herself or avoid the spanks, sticking her ass up high and humping savagely at the hand invading her pussy, desperate to get off.

It was bizarre, obscene. We were like the centerpiece in some classroom demonstration of carnal depravity, the overhead spotlight illuminating us on the dais as she bent slavishly over the lectern with her cheek pressed against the wood, her hands tied behind her, naked ass in the air while I spanked her and fingered her cunt and she moaned and writhed and gasped, the sounds echoing off the darkened walls. I was feverish with desire and couldn't resist her anymore. I fell to my knees behind her, grabbed the fronts of her thighs and pulled her ass back to me and buried my face in her cunt like an animal

"Oh! God!" she cried at this new outrage.

My nose pressed against her asshole and my tongue pierced her lips, sucked greedily at her flowing juices, slurped at her cunt, the lewd, slushy sounds enough to give even me goose bumps. I was sick, insane with lust for her. She clenched her ass and I felt it trap my face in the hot valley of her crack and I just slapped her again to make her let go, then reached around and began to frig her clit, beating her off and spanking her clit like it was a naughty little monkey, slapping my fingers into the wet sticky trough of her pussy.

Her cheek was pressed into the lectern, her face rolling back and forth so that her voice was muffled, but I heard her groans and entreaties and her nervous pleas. "Oh God! God, Conner! Someone could come in! Someone could come in!"

"Yeah. Let 'em," I said, my mouth full of her flesh

Before us was the entire auditorium, all these empty seats facing us as if peopled by ghostly observers, all of them watching us, watching Emma having her cunt eaten out from behind by a man squatting on his haunches like a lunatic ape. I got my pants open and pulled out my cock as I ate her and started beating off, my wrist rocking easily on that big stalk, working the skin up and down as I sealed my mouth against her pussy and pierced her with my tongue or let it slither along her juice-filled crease. When I pulled my mouth away, her mucus coated my lips and I pressed my mouth against her ass and flicked my tongue maddeningly against her tightly clenched asshole, making her squeal and lift her foot reflexively as if to push me away, as if this final outrage were just too much.

It wasn't too much for me. I grabbed her ankle and planted her foot right back down on the floor. Yes, I licked her asshole. I spread her asscheeks and tried to work my tongue into her and she screamed and clenched her butt until I slapped her again to make her relax to show her there was no part of her I wouldn't take if I wanted to.

And once we established that—once she accepted that every piece of her was mine—I stood up with a look of grim satisfaction on my face and opened my belt and let my pants drop and my cock spring free. I looked down at that beautiful body bound and bent before me. I knew then that she was mine—mine to have, mine to fuck, mine to do with as I pleased. The previous sessions had been seductions on my part and I'd taken her, but this time I'd waited for her to come to me, and she had. She'd come to me and that made all the difference. She was complicit in this affair. She'd accepted the terms, and she knew very well what they were.

Emma waited breathlessly as I moved into position behind her. My handprints were all over her ass, her juice was dripping from the pouting, swollen lips of her pussy. She didn't move, didn't breathe as I ran my hands over my property, then shuffled forward with my pants around my ankles, shuffled forward and pressed the head of my cock against her opening.

I felt her stiffen for an instant. Her pussy seemed to suck inward in sudden, automatic reflex, then I took hold of her hips and leaned back like a cowboy and slid that long shaft into her cunt and could almost hear it sizzle like a bar of white hot iron quenched in a trough of oil.

"Ohhhhh! Conner! Conner!!!"

"Fuck!" I spat.

The pleasure was so intense I felt like I'd been punched in the gut, and already I felt my balls churning, ready to spit. She was so hot, so tight, so perfect, and it was her—Emma—mine. So she had a boy friend, she had a fiancée. She'd had men before and she'd have them again. But for tonight, this one was mine: my slave, my beauty, my lover, my woman—and she was all that I could ever want. I pushed in deeper and felt her hot ass press against my belly and heard her moan of fulfillment as I stuffed her so full of cock that she finally slid forward on the lectern, unable to take anymore.

"Oh yessss...!"

I could look down and see my shaft stretching the tight ring of muscle at the entrance to her pussy. I could picture that hard meat inside of her, pressing against her tissues, stimulating her secret nerve endings, sending hormones gushing through her bloodstream and hot, shuddery ripples of pleasure along her nerves, her legs, her spine, up to her fevered brain. She was tied, helpless, naked in that auditorium, panties pulled down around her legs—there to be fucked and take it, there to be used, to be filled with my come.

"Jesus!" I swore. "Oh fuck!"

I grabbed her hips and started fucking into the slick clutch of her cunt, punching my hips into her and pulling her back onto my thrusting shaft, hearing the wet slap of her ass against me, her lewd, helpless moans. Her tits were swinging back and forth like sandbags as I fucked her. My balls were swinging too, and as I pumped her against me I felt viscous strings of our commingled juices swing against my thighs and stick there as they seeped from her pussy.

"Good, isn't it?" I snarled at her. "You like being fucked like this, Emma? You like driving me so crazy I fuck you like this?"

She just moaned, too overwhelmed with the lewdness of her position to speak. I reached over and grabbed her hair, pulled her head up so she arched her back and I suddenly increased the tempo, double-timing, fucking her so fast that the slap of her tits against her chest joined the obscene chorus of sexual noises we were making. Her long, constant moan of salacious pleasure was punctuated by sharp, involuntary, animal-like grunts as I punched into her, sending my tool slithering deep and knocking the wind out of her.

Through the hot red haze of my primal fucklust I remembered her clit, how she loved to be played with—that hot, swollen love bud nestled between her lips and I reached down into her swampy cunt and spread her apart and forked my fingers around it and then squeezed just enough to make her whine, then started beating her off as I fucked her, sliding my hand up and back while holding her hair in one hand and pulling her face up like a headsman's trophy.

"Oh God! Oh God! Oh God!" she chanted mindlessly, overcome by the double sensation of being fucked and played with. I could shove my dick into her and hold it there and then vibrate her clit so fast I could feel it in my shaft, like she was a human vibrator. It felt good. It felt insanely good.

There was nothing Emma could do but scream. My hand was in her hair, her chest was pressed against the podium and her wrists tied behind her back, my cock was pumping in and out of that sweet little cunt and my fingers were digging and vibrating against her engorged clit as her juice poured and slopped over my fingers. She screamed—screamed in pleasure and total submission, screamed as her I took her and rode her hard and gave her just what she wanted. Screamed as I felt her cunt convulse and her body begin to hunch and jerk against me, out of control as she came, legs shaking, choking on her own cries of release, hands twisting in her bonds.

I pulled up on her cunt, pulled it tight like a rubber glove around me and shoved deep, rising up on my toes to make her take every last fucking inch of cock, then I grabbed the back of her neck and pushed her down against the lectern as I felt it start. I wanted to hold her right there as I shot it into her—right there—mine, mine! I threw my head back in ecstasy and growled like a lion with his kill as I felt the thick bolts of come gush up from the well of my soul and thunder down my cock to spew hard and heavy into Emma's quivering sheath, one after another, each a burning jolt of fiery bliss and absolute triumph, an explosion of fulfillment, sending my soul into her—my need, my strength, my love.

I poured it into her—marking her, branding her, making her mine—standing above her on the podium like a king over his slave and watching my cock jerk and spit into her body as if it weren't even mine—as if our bodies spoke directly one to another—and even in my moment of triumph I felt her take possession of my soul just as she took possession of my come. I felt her conquer me with her very submission, and I knew as the final pleasure of climax seeped through my body like warm honey that I was totally lost.

*****

There was no place else to go and so I'd opened a folding chair down in front of the lectern and sat there with Emma in my lap, naked except for her top. I was dressed, and that was part of it, a sign of her status. She didn't seem to mind, and in fact, she found my desire to hold her afterwards strange but terribly gratifying. Apparently she'd always felt that revealing the wild and submissive side of her sexuality would somehow disqualify her from receiving affection afterwards, as if she were no more than a whore. My need to hold and caress her and keep her close almost seemed to embarrass her at first, and it took her a while to realize that I was serious and not just doing it to patronize her.

I loved to hold her, though. I especially loved to play with her and feel my come dripping from her pussy. It was like a mark of ownership, and it made me proud in a terribly selfish, embarrassingly male kind of way. So she sat there in my lap with my left arm around her, her legs slightly apart as I kissed and nuzzled her breasts and slid my fingers around, smearing my come over her thighs, lost in that post-orgasmic sense of peace and fulfillment.

"Conner?"

"Yes?"

"This is dumb, but do you mind if I talk?"

"About what?"

"You know. About him?"

I never stopped licking her breasts. "If you want," I said. I really didn't care.

She seemed to be gathering her thoughts, and whether consciously or unconsciously I don't know, but I started playing with her pussy. Emma's arms were around my neck, and she tightened them slightly and leaned back a bit so she could open her legs more. That made her breasts more accessible and I sucked a nipple between my lips and began to suck as my hand of its own volition started to seriously massage her pussy.

I didn't do this on purpose. I wasn't trying to shut her up or distract her, but Emma's extremely orgasmic. It's one of the amazing things about her. She turns on extremely quickly and has a very short latency period between orgasms. It was something I was just discovering at the time but had not yet fully realized.

"What?" I asked. "What did you want to say?"

She was already breathing faster.

"Never mind," she whispered, her hand gripping the back of my neck. "It's not important."

I lowered her till she was more nearly lying recumbent across my lap and continued playing with her, sliding my fingers over her come-slick clit and up and down her crease and Emma seemed to go limp and tense at the same time. I could look down at her face and see the pleasure of my hand take her and render her helpless. Her hips started to move.

"God, when you touch me!" she gasped. "God, Conner! What are you doing to me?"

I found her clit. I knew what she liked. Her hips started to move with purpose now, lewd, obscene purpose, pumping, lifting against my fingers, the muscles in her stomach knotting. She opened her eyes a slit and looked at me.

"You make me so bad!" she whispered.

"I love you this way!" I said. "Now give it to me, Emma. You know what I want. Give it to me!"

Page 6

"Ohhh!"

She bit her lip but she couldn't refuse. I could almost see her nipples tightening on her breasts, her labia swelling. I definitely could feel her clit becoming turgid and rubbery and resisting my touch. She was wonderful to watch—a lesson in female sexual response.

"Ohhhh... Oh, God, Conner!"

When Emma comes, she gives it to you. It's like something she has to get rid of, something she has to eject from her body, through her cunt and her skin and her mouth and her eyes—a terrible coiled up ferocious pleasure that starts somewhere inside and bursts out of her. My urge is always to hold her, to wrap my arms around her and hold her tight so that she doesn't fly apart or explode as the pleasure rips from her.

And that's what I did. I pulled her against me with my left arm, crushed her against me so hard neither of us could breathe as my right hand continued to coax the orgasm out of her and I felt her shudder and twitch like a rag doll as she moaned and sobbed helplessly in my embrace.

I held her so hard I felt tears squeeze out of my eyes and roll down my cheeks, catching me surprise as she came and came and I thought through my joy how absolutely foolish I was. This was only sex after all. This was only sex to hold a woman's heart and soul in your hands and know that she wanted you to do whatever you wanted to her and have her respond like this. That you touched each other in places that no one else had ever touched and made you feel things that were beyond your ability to describe. Only sex that for one brief instant no matter how short and fleeting the barriers fell away and you were somehow one with her—this stranger—and you weren't alone anymore.

Only sex.

Only sex.

Page 7

The night was just settling in, the sky in the west was a forlorn and tattered pink under low gray clouds as I turned off the blacktop and pulled into the motel parking lot. A glance into my rearview mirror showed Emma's headlights behind me, dipping and rising as she made the turn and followed me in. We were out in an unincorporated no man's land stuck between the far end of the airport runways and a suburban industrial park, a strip of motels and weedy fields that squatted in the shadow of the expressway, a place where no one stayed, where nothing was permanent.

I slowed down and cruised beneath the motel's huge and garish neon sign and past the front office, then headed back through the sparsely-filled parking lot. When I slid down the car window I could hear the distant whining of jet engines and see the strobing of the runway landing lights reflected in the low cloud clover. It looked like heat lightning. My tires crunched on the dry gravel as I pulled into a spot and Emma pulled in right next to me and when we cut our engines it was quiet enough to hear the crickets in the weeds and the soft hum of the motel's air-conditioners.

This night was soft and close and smelled of Midwestern earth and fertility. The place was so nowhere, Emma and I might as well have been the only people in the here.

I got out of the car and took my briefcase with my school papers. I'd already stopped here before class to set up some things and this was all I had. Emma popped her trunk and got out of her car and locked it. She didn't even look at me as she got a tote bag out of the trunk and then closed it. She'd taken off the blue sweater she'd worn in class and draped it around her shoulders, revealing the tight, pink tank top she wore beneath. She wore a pair of khaki shorts and sandals and her long chestnut hair was pinned up on top of her head. I'd made her go into the ladies' room and put her hair up before we'd left the campus. I'd also made her take off her bra and panties and put them in her bag so that she was naked beneath her shorts and top. With the arms of the sweater hanging over her breasts I couldn't tell for sure whether she'd followed my instructions, but I had no reason to doubt it. Emma never disagreed with me.

When I'd called her the night before and told her I'd be taking her to a motel tonight, she'd agreed as well. It wasn't easy for her to talk at home because she had two roommates who didn't know about us, and she couldn't take calls on her cell because she had to keep that clear in case her boyfriend called from Atlanta. He was very jealous.

I took her arm. "We're on the second floor," I said.

I'd intentionally picked this forlorn, anonymous motel not because she didn't deserve better, but because at this stage in our relationship it seemed appropriate—someplace seedy and furtive, a place that used its proximity to the airport as cover for what it really was: a rendezvous for people who wanted to have sex or meet for other small-time illicit activities. The nice downtown hotels with the rich carpets and silk sheets could come later. For now I wanted something more from Emma than I'd been able to get from meeting her after hours at school. So far, for all we'd done it had still been basically a student-teacher affair and I wanted it to be more. This seemed to be the logical next step and I was excited, and my excitement showed in the tight control I kept on myself.

Emma was excited too and I knew her well enough to recognize it. She showed it the same way I did, hardly saying a word, barely looking at me.

I gestured to the stairs and she started to climb, and I followed her, aware that she was naked under her clothes, aware that she must know very well what she was getting into. Her face was passive, but I noticed a glint of excitement in her eyes. Somewhere between here and the school she'd found time to adjust her makeup because her face was flawless and despite the harsh, yellow-tinted lights. I'd never seen her looking more beautiful, placid and perfectly composed.

I directed her down and to the left. We passed by silent, firmly closed doors, the stucco walls tinged a sickly green from the motel's neon marquee. I stopped in front of 232 and swiped the keycard, pushed open the door and we stepped into a typically generic motel room, so bland and featureless as to be almost invisible, the carpet brown, the walls orange. It looked clean enough, everything orderly and tidy—two beds, tightly made up, a closet, dresser with mirror, chest, television. It was only on second look that Emma noticed the end of a rope hanging over the top of the closet door, the collection of sex toys neatly arrayed on a towel on the dresser.

I watched her face as she looked at the dresser. I'd laid everything out earlier—cuffs and chains, rope and clips, vibrators and dildos clamps, whips and floggers—all neatly arrayed like a surgeon's instruments.

Emma's expression didn't seem to change as she looked at the dresser but I felt the sudden surge of tension and excitement, and I saw it in her eyes and in the brief flare of her nostrils. I knew that for all her submissive proclivities and native talent, Emma was relatively naïve when it came to the actual tools and practices of BDSM. These things held a horrid fascination for her.

A jet whined overhead so close that the lampshades vibrated, the light trembling against the walls and ceiling, and that seemed to break the spell, and I felt a sudden surge of excitement. I realized now why this was so important to me. All our other meetings had been acts of passion. This was something else. Alone like this with my little toys on display, I was showing her who I was and what I wanted from her, and she could have rejected me on the spot and there would have been nothing I could have done about it. Despite what they say, D/s is always a co-operative affair. You can't force anyone to submit to you. It has to be given willingly, otherwise it's nothing but rape.

Emma didn't reject me. She didn't turn and walk out or tell me "no". She looked at those things and she got excited, and I knew then that she was willing. I knew then I'd been right about her and that there was a connection between us that went beyond coincidence and happenstance. She'd had her own reasons for following me out here, and while neither of us might know what we were involved in, we both sensed it was something bigger than either of us and we approached each other with a sense of caution, of fear, a feeling that things might happen here that we wouldn't' be able to control and that would change things for us—change everything.

I felt as though we both stood on some huge and elaborate machine that was suddenly starting to move, shuddering to life and bringing us closer. It made me dizzy, as if the floor were actually moving beneath my feet.

"Come here," I said.

Emma turned and came to me, arms at her sides, eyes lowered. I was aware of her femaleness as something deep and profound and totally opposite to my own masculinity, something necessary and complementary—the curves of her body and the delicacy of her face, her soft fluidity against my hard eagerness. I was aware of the urgency of my need for her. It was something that went far beyond the desire to just get laid or get off. So far it had been all sex between us and it had been wonderful as far as that went, but I now wanted more, and I didn't know what that was.

I undid the sweater and threw it on the bed. Her breasts were lush and vulnerable and her nipples were already pressing against the thin fabric. The sight of the toys had aroused her, or maybe it had been my simple command. She kept her eyes down and didn't say a word.

I took her breasts in my hands and felt their weight, then rubbed my thumbs over her areolas and she sighed and closed her eyes in acceptance, instinctively pushing her chest into my palms, offering herself.

"We're alone now, Emma, and we're going to see if you like the things I think you'll like. You know I'll never push you too hard. I'll never make you do anything you really don't want to do. All you ever have to do is tell me to stop and I'll stop. I don't want you to ever be afraid."

Her eyes were closed and she nodded. but I knew she'd never tell me to stop, no matter what I did to her. It wasn't in her nature. The one thing she could do was give her body, totally and without question. I just wondered whether that was enough any more.

I slid my hands from her breasts and around her back, pulled her to me and kissed her, pressing my lips against hers. She was soft and warm and had a kind of trembling readiness, eager for more, and I wondered if she could feel my own anxiousness as well and how her kiss aroused me. I had to fight the sudden desire that threatened to overwhelm me and make me weak, that turned my strength against me and made me crush her against me and plunge my tongue into her mouth in my sudden fever to possess her.

Emma took my force and bent back like a willow in a gale. She knew the rules, that she wasn't allowed to touch me without my permission, and her arms hung nervously at her sides, but as my hands spread across her back and I pressed her to me she seemed to melt against my body like sugar in the rain and her mouth opened to my kiss in a total and instinctive surrender, offering all that she had. She inflamed me, and even as her body softened against mine her nipples seemed to harden and push into me with a sudden blind urgency.

I broke the kiss and looked at her, my eyes searching her face. Submission isn't passivity and it isn't laziness. It's a kind of active surrender, a willing acquiescence and sexual invitation and Emma just radiated it with every fiber of her body. She drove me wild by not doing anything.

"You can touch me," I said.

Her hands came up and held my cheeks and she looked at me. I wasn't prepared for the power in her eyes, the depth and the clarity, the absence of any doubt. She looked at me like I was something beautiful, almost godly, her eyes studying me from chin to forehead, memorizing me. Then she closed her eyes and let her fingertips glide over my face, giving them their turn. She put her hands on the side of my head and opened her mouth, held my face like it was a bowl she wanted to drink from, then she tipped my mouth into hers, kissing me. I kissed her back and pulled her against me, overcome by what she'd made me feel.

She was such a strange mixture of angel and animal, almost spiritual one moment and filthy and obscene the next. Is that what drove me so wild about her? Because I had no doubt as to what I was. Like a beast I pushed my cock against her so she could feel my erection and she moaned in acknowledgement. Her hands tangled in my hair and she held me tighter. Her ass flexed beneath my hands as she ground back at me.

She had a luscious mouth, a mouth that teased and promised and took its time, that invited my tongue in and sucked on it, licked it and dared it to do more, and already I sensed that she was way ahead of me, more excited than I'd thought. She'd looked so calm and composed when we'd entered the room, but Emma was a girl who was able to keep up a cool front, and obviously she'd been excited for some time. All it had taken was this kiss to set her off and she was instantly on fire.

I slid my hand down her back, down between her buttocks and pressed her shorts up between her legs and she groaned and pushed back against me and then forward, grinding her crotch against my leg. She was caught between my finger and my leg and wanted them both and meanwhile her kiss never stopped. I increased the pressure and she bit my tongue and moaned with obsequious pleasure, her thighs quivering as she tried to center her clit over the bulge in my pants. I could feel her muscles working through her shorts and knew that she was ready.

I let go of her and stepped back to the equipment on the dresser. Emma stood there looking suddenly cold and exposed and momentarily confused

"Your wrists, Emma," I ordered, and she held out her hands.

She looked at the cuff as if having trouble focusing, and when she held out her hands, they were shaking slightly. I'd bound her before—with rope, with her own panties—but those had been spur-of-the-moment affairs. This was different. This was intentional, by design, with leather cuffs and metal buckles, implements meant for restraining someone. This was me telling Emma I was taking deliberate control of her.

She watched in mute fascination as I slid the leather around her wrist. She was all curves and softness and shadow and I'd never been so aware of a woman's femininity as I was when I slid the ends through the silver buckles snugged them into place. I did one wrist and then the other, then fastened the cuffs together in front of her with a sturdy chromed clip. She raised her hands and the rings jangled softly as she studied them—the way the leather looked against her skin. There was excitement in her eyes, but also shame, and a bright blush had spread beneath her carefully maintained tan. I'd never seen Emma looking so nervous or so excited.

I led her over to the closet. Earlier I'd fastened a length of nylon rope to the inside doorknob, tied a loop in the end and passed it over the top then closed the door. Now I passed another length of rope through this loop and fasted the free end to Emma's cuffs and hauled on it, lifting her wrists over her head. I tied it off around the doorknob, leaving her standing there so that her arms were raised, her elbows at eye level, her breasts crowded together.

"Yes," I said. "Yes, that's good."

Emma had lost her expression of cool equanimity now. Her lips were parted and swollen, her eyes were wary, guarded and more than a little afraid. She was seriously helpless and naked beneath her clothes, strung up against this closet door in this little low-rent motel with a man she didn't know very well, a man she'd decided to give her body to and now she must be having her doubts. I could see her pulse in her throat and it was racing. My stillness made her nervous but I was in no hurry. Just looking at her was getting me insanely aroused.

She raised a leg and pressed a foot against the door, then put it down. She shifted her hips, trying to get comfortable.

"I can't move," she said. A silly thing to say.

I smiled. "Yes. I noticed."

I went over to her and leaned over her and admired her in her helplessness one more time, then I just let my passion overwhelm me. I grabbed her hair and pulled her head back and slowly licked her lips. Emma shuddered with relief and opened her mouth, expecting a kiss, but I avoided that. Instead I just tasted her—her lips, the slickness of her lipstick, her yielding warmth and the nervous heat of her breath. I ran my other hand down over the doe-soft skin of her face, down her throat, between her tits, over the waist of her shorts and down between legs where I began to rub her, showing her just how defenseless she was tied like this. She moaned a little and her fingers closed on the rope and she pulled, but the rope held. I could touch her anywhere, take anything I wanted and there was nothing she could do to stop me. I reached up into the leg of her shorts and caressed the smooth, tender skin on the insides of her thighs and she whimpered. She pulled at the rope and brought her elbows together as if she could hide her face behind them.

"Mmm..." I sighed as I kissed her. Her thighs were like silk and I loved her helplessness, loved the fact that she couldn't move. I leaned against her so she could feel my hard cock pressing on her hip and pushed it against her, slowly dry-humping so that she'd know I was ready and that she could be taken any time. I slid my hand under her tank top and closed it on the warm globe of her tit and she groaned.

"God, I love you like this," I whispered. "Mine to use as I please. You make me so fucking hot Emma!"

I kissed her now, thrusting my tongue into her mouth and she whimpered, the back of her head softly hitting the closet door as I continued to massage her breast so hard that her body swing back and forth. I let go of her hair and slid my other hand down her body and began to rub her pussy through the shorts and she gasped into my mouth at the feel of the rough khaki against her naked flesh. She thrust against me, wanting me to touch her with my finger, but I held off.

"Let's get these off, shall we?" I asked.

She closed her eyes and said nothing as I crowded her against the door, resting my forehead against hers. My hands went to the waist of her shorts and I slid the button through the hole, the backs of my fingers brushing lightly against her belly and making her jump. I could feel her trembling as I touched the sensitive skin below her navel, and then I slowly—very slowly—lowered the zipper on her shorts, tooth by tooth. I took her lower lip between my teeth and held her there, pulling up on her shorts to keep the zipper taut and making the crotch dig into her delicate pussy as I unzipped her. It was mean I know, but I loved being mean to her.

Emma moaned and moved her hips back and forth, trying to work herself off against the fabric, and her tight, liquid motion made the blood pound in my veins. She was such a hot little piece, the way she came alive under my hands, dangerously sexual. You'd never think it to see her in school, walking down the street, sitting in class—a girl like any other girl, nothing special—but entirely sexual. It was her medium, her natural element, the only place she really came alive, and how she came alive!

I got her shorts open and I knew she was waiting for the touch of my hands on her bare flesh but I stopped, left the shorts hanging open with the V of bare skin showing all pink and vulnerable. I slipped both my hands up under her tank top and started squeezing and kneading her breasts. Her warm, pliable flesh was like human dough in my hands and my mouth was close enough to hers that I could taste her breath.

"Ohhhh! Oh yes!" she sighed. Her hips rolled in tight, impatient circles and I pressed my cock against her so I could ride her urgency. She twisted against me, trying to bring her pussy into contact with the hard bar of my dick, hungry for something to rub against, the imperative of her own pleasure taking precedence over everything else now.

"You like this, Emma? You like being tied like this?" I asked her, and she moaned impatiently, too busy concentrating on her hips to give me a full answer.

She worked frantically, trying to get herself off on her own shorts, but all she managed to do was make them slip farther down till they hung uselessly low on the saddle of her hips. I helped her get them off, pulling them down then holding her so I could feel her work her thighs and pelvis to make the shorts slide all the way down her legs, undressing herself for me. It was a beautiful display, selfish and obscene, a nasty little girl just dying to get her panties off for the bad boys.

Still, I didn't touch her, didn't give her what she wanted. I pushed my knee up hard against her pussy, lifting her slightly and giving her something to rub against. She was only too grateful for the ride and I felt her moist warmth searing through my jeans as she rubbed against me like a bitch in heat. I pinned her against the door as I peeled her top up and over her head, but because her wrists here clipped together I couldn't get it all the way off, so I left it dangling from her wrists. The heavy globes of her breasts were now exposed, covered with a sudden rush of goose bumps.

More than losing her shorts, losing her top seemed to make Emma truly naked. Her tits were gorgeous—generous, giving, vulnerable. No doubt part of the appeal of having her hands tied over her head was the way it left her tits so flagrantly exposed, so deliciously defenseless. I grabbed her bound wrists in one hand and pushed them up even higher, raising her breasts so I could bend my head and suck and lick her nipples. I nuzzled against her tits and pushing them around with my face. licking and biting as they jiggled and bounced against my cheeks like ripe fruit. I wanted to devour her, just eat her up, and the more excited I got, the more excited she got. She was ready to be devoured. I could feel it.

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She was panting as I reached up and started searching for the pins that held her hair in place, removing them one by one till her hair tumbled over her face and the long silky strands hid her breasts like a curtain, parting just enough to let the pink-brown nipples poke through. She opened her eyes and looked at me through her hair like an animal through a jungle brake, wild and feral, waiting for me to strike, waiting to see what I was going to do next, ready for whatever I wanted.

I kissed her then, letting all my the passion just flood over me and take control, and I kissed her and lost myself in her mouth as I held her hair in my fist and my other hand roamed all over her naked body, squeezing, caressing, possessing her, the heavy softness of her tits, her tight belly and the sweet flare of her hips. My hand went between her legs and she moaned and pressed her thighs tightly together as if suddenly afraid, a gesture that infuriated me. It was too late for that now, way too late to play shy and modest, and without pausing an instant I slapped her thighs—two sharp little slaps on the insides of her thighs to make her open them and keep them apart—surprising her and making her cry out in alarm, right into my mouth.

I owned her now and we both knew that, and how dare she try and refuse me? I slapped her thighs again and Emma trembled as she spread them wider. She whimpered and pulled on the rope as if suddenly having second thoughts but I was having none of it. I slid my finger against her naked crease and when I kissed her again I could taste her hot, shameful excitement, her nervous arousal.

"Don't you close your legs for me, Emma!" I snarled. "Don't even think of it. I own you now, baby. All of you. Or do you have a problem with that?"

"No," she gasped. "No. I'm sorry. I wasn't thinking."

"No, you_were_ thinking. That's the problem. Don't think. Understand?"

She was naked, her wrists tied to a closet door in this seedy motel on the edge of nowhere, but the things that were going on between us were deep and real and profound and I wasn't fucking around. I was in charge. I grabbed her hair and pulled her head back and kissed her deep and she groaned. Her tongue shot into my mouth in eager invitation, showing me what she wanted my finger to do to her below, fluttering in my mouth, thrusting, teasing, and she hummed with pleasure.

I leaned against her and kissed her and played with her pussy and in a matter of moments the smooth muscles of her belly were clenching, rolling with hungry and barely controlled urgency as tried not to fuck back at me. She wanted to get off—her body wanted it—but she resisted, she fought. I felt the lady fighting with the whore inside, and it drove me wild. I knew which one I wanted right then. She knew it too.

"God, you get me hot, Emma!" I whispered in her ear. "You get me so fucking hot!"

I slid my finger against her pussy and then pushed it up into her and she groaned. I felt that hot, tender tightness spread before my crude invasion and Emma kissed me, then dug her sharp white teeth into my lower lip and hung on as I fingered her. She was trying not to hurt me but I could feel the pain and humiliation as I fingered her like a cheap little sex toy, reaching high into her secret heat. Her tits shook as she trembled in the cuffs but there was nothing she could do. It hurt her but it felt good too, I knew it did. I knew just how it felt.

"Who owns you, Emma? Huh? Who owns you, baby? Whose bitch are you?"

I shoved my finger up deep inside her so that my knuckles crushed against her labia and Emma let go of my lip and grimaced, pulling herself up against the door. She didn't answer. Her eyes were closed.

She made me crazy like this because I knew she loved it. I knew she loved the pain, the feeling of being used, of being tied up and violated. She loved it as much as I loved doing it to her, and it made me crazy. She was so fucking beautiful like this.

"Come here when I'm talking to you," I said, and I used the finger inside her to pull her towards me. I drew her towards me with my finger inside her pussy, but with her wrists tied to the door she couldn't really move and could only take a shaky step, her hips thrust forward—a cheap, sleazy gesture that filled me with an obscene sense of power.

"I asked you who owned you, Emma. Who owns this pussy?"

"Ohhh," she breathed.

I pulled my hand to the side and she followed, drew her back and she followed again. I squeezed her, one finger inside her and my thumb on her shaved pubic mound and I turned her sideways. I spanked her on the ass and she pushed herself onto my fingers trying to escape the blow. She hid behind her raised arms.

Slapp!!!

"Now who owns you?!"

"You do!" she cried. "You do. You own me."

I pulled her back so that she was standing in front of me, her breasts rising and falling, her face hidden in her fall of hair, and I began to finger her, rubbing her clit as I did. Emma was on fire and there was no hiding it. She trembled as I touched her and made little mewling sounds, and then gasped and shook and I heard her swallow what sounded like a scream. It might have been a little climax.

I had to get control of myself. My cock was hard and throbbing and already aching for release and we hadn't been at it for more than ten minutes. I had to calm down.

I stepped back and went to my equipment, leaving Emma hanging from the rope, panting and covered in a sheen of perspiration. I picked up some ankle cuffs and a spreader bar and came over. I knelt and buckled the leather cuffs around her ankles, making a conscious effort to ignore the proximity of her pussy, then clipped the bar to the cuffs so that her feet were held apart at about shoulder width.

By now I had no doubts that Emma loved what I was doing to her. She loved the rope, the submission, the possession, the passion and the roughness. But now we were getting into something new, something that went beyond just spanking and hot sex. There was something humiliating in the spreader bar, the way it held her ankles apart and exposed her and kept her that way. There was no way she could close her knees now or hide herself. This was a little piece of equipment designed specifically to make her into something entirely sexual, and I could tell, it excited her.

I grabbed an 18-inch riding crop and a vibrator and put them on the closest bed where I could get to them Emma leaned against the closet door, her feet held apart by the bar, her elbows up by her face, watching every move I made. I turned off the far bedside light and threw a red cloth over the remaining lamp to give us a suitable hellish and murky atmosphere, and then I walked over to her.

I pushed her hands back and lowered my head, sucked a nipple into my mouth and took her pussy in my hand like I owned it. I touched her gently, aware that she had just come, but Emma recovers very quickly, and as soon as I touched her she sucked in a quick little breath and bit her lip against the pleasure. I stroked her like she was a nervous cat, soothing her, soaking up her warmth. My thumb slid slowly around her clit. She was very wet

"Nice?" I asked her. "Nice being all tied up and held open like this? Nice having your pussy played with?"

She didn't answer, but I could tell by the way fast, shallow way she was breathing that she liked it.

"Nowhere to go, is there?" I teased. "All mine, That pussy—everything you've got is all mine."

I took my finger from her cunt and brought it to her lips.

"Taste it, baby. Taste what you're like when you're excited. Your own juice, Emma. Come on, Don't pretend you never tasted it before. Suck it. Suck my finger like it's a little cock."

She resisted for just a moment, then opened her mouth and sucked my finger inside,. Her eyes closed and her cheeks hollowed as she sucked, and she was so fantastically beautiful at that moment, tied and bound and sucking my cum-smeared finger like a little slave. I had to taste her too. I wanted to taste that pussy too, her excited female juice.

I dropped to my knees and she gave a little squeal of alarm. I grabbed her buttocks in my hand and licked her belly, licked her thighs, bit them softly till I felt her tremble. Her mound was hairless and looked like a little girl's, all sweet and innocent, but I knew different. I could feel her eyes on me as I knelt at her feet. I could feel her trying to keep her cool—one part of her trying to resist while the other part wanted to shove her pussy into my face like a little whore and have me eat her till she came. I knew how hot she was, how coming once was never enough for her and how much she must need it, and I knew what torture it must be to be tied up and spread open like this and not be able to do anything about it. I could feel her quiver as I dragged my tongue across her belly and teased the very edges of her pussy, bit her thighs and blew my breath on her clit. I knew how mean it was for me to spread her pussy apart with my fingers and reach my tongue for her and yet not touch her, to bitch-slap her cunt with the backs of my fingers like it was an insolent little punk till she moaned and started to beg me, started to plead with me to do whatever I had to do to make her behave. I knew it was mean, but God, I loved it!

"Come here," I growled.

I reached through her legs and grabbed one of her buttocks and pulled her hips towards my face so that she was thrusting her cunt out like a common whore. With my other hand I parted her labia and held her spread for me, watching how her legs shook as she tried instinctively to close her thighs. I leaned forward so she could feel my breath on her and I could bathe in her pure female heat. Then, when I was sure she was watching, when I knew I had her total, undivided attention, I leaned forward and touched my tongue to her clit.

"Ohhhhhh!"

Just the tip of my tongue, the tip of her clit, the coalescing of my saliva with her female secretions, just that intimate and that obscene, so that when I drew my tongue back a viscous little strand formed between us, a clear little thread of mucus that finally snapped like a broken heart, and as if that were the signal, I finally leaned forward, took a deep breath and began to lick her clit with long swipes of my tongue. I sucked it between my lips and tongued it as my middle finger plunged into her cunt and began to fuck her.

It was heaven, heaven. Heaven to have her tied up and spread wide and helpless before me, mine to use as I wished. Heaven to have her sexual soul between my lips and the tight channel of her cunt speared on my finger and feel her shudder inside with filthy sexual pleasure, feel that tight belly begin to work cramp and bunch in a greedy search for more pleasure, feel her melt and dissolve into a lascivious, sex-driven whore. I love those feminine muscles—hot, hungry, sucking, pushing that pussy onto my mouth and fingers without shame or compunction, desperate for her selfish little come.

I flashed my eyes up at her as I ate her cunt, opened my mouth wide and sucked her soft flesh into my mouth. Her tits still hung like heavy fruit, the bottoms now covered with goose bumps, nipples stiff and projecting like bullets through the curtain of hanging hair that covered them. Her eyes were closed, mouth open in rapture, her fingers spreading and then clenching as she hung from the rope in abject helplessness, the willing victim of my lust. The muscles on the insides of her thighs quivered occasionally as she still tried to instinctively close her legs against the maddening probing of my tongue and fingers, but as I'd told her, there was no escape. Her ankles were held open by the spreader bar. My tongue swirled around her clit and plunged into her pussy. I sucked her clit between my lips and spit it out and pumped my fingers into her and Emma's head bumped against the door as she stiffened in a sudden spasm of overwhelming pleasure.

"Oh God! Coming! Oh! Coming!" she squealed, and I lashed her clit with my tongue and held her pussy pressed to my mouth as I felt her loins tighten and pump against me as she gasped and moaned and jerked in her bonds like a marionette. I licked deep, scooping up her juice, then licked again and swallowed her down—essence of Emma, as powerful an aphrodisiac as I'd ever tasted. My dick was hard and aching and oozing in my pants, throbbing to get at her, but I wasn't done with her yet.

She collapsed against the door, quivering and gasping, half-turning as if to shield herself from more abuse. I stood and stripped off my shirt. It was hot in there by now and both of us were sweating. I wanted to feel her skin against me, and I would have taken my pants off too except I knew that would just lead to me fucking her sooner, maybe just taking her as she was against the door, bending my knees sand sliding my dick right up into her as she hung from her wrists, holding her ass and humping her like an animal till I shot my load into her. It would be nice, but I had other things to try. Control. It's all about control.

So she liked the ropes. She did well in bondage. Okay. That was a start. Now what about the whip. What about the vibrator?

I had no doubt about the vibe. There are some women who are embarrassed by their reaction to it, but I've never found any who didn't really like it. I turned Emma to the front and brushed her hair back from her face, The flush of orgasm was still on her face, her eyes closed, lips parted. I kissed her because I wanted to, because she was so beautiful. Then I rubbed the vibrator across her lower lip.

"Suck it for me, darling," I whispered. "Pretend it's my cock. Show me how you suck it."

She opened her mouth like a baby bird and her pink tongue came out and I slid the tip of the vibe inside. Emma closed her lips over it with a look of deep satisfaction and sucked. I could feel her tongue swirling around it and I smiled. She was a natural. I slid it slowly in and out of her mouth and she moaned softly. Her lips were sensitive enough so that she found the friction erotic in itself. That was good.

I removed the vibe and turned it on, then slid it down her tits, over her nipples, slowly awakening her from her post-orgasmic haze. She sighed. I alternated working on her nipples with first the vibe and then my mouth, sucking and teasing them into sensitivity again, and then, when Emma seemed recovered, I slid it down to her pussy.

"Ohhhh! Oh, yes! Oh God, that's good!" she moaned.

"Is it, baby? You like that? Around your clit like that? Back and forth Slow?"

"Yes. Yes. Just like that."

It didn't really matter. I just held it against her clit and she moved her pussy over it as she wanted—pumping slow, then faster, faster, then pushing, then backing off and starting over. I studied her face, the way she licked her dry lips, the sound of her breath as her hips worked, the sound of the vibrator, the pitch changing as it was engulfed in her hungry, searching pussy.

Again—heaven. Just standing there, leaning over her, so close that she could arch her back and press her naked tits against me, holding the buzzing vibrator as the bound Emma worked herself off on it, getting herself more and more aroused, and making me hotter and hotter till I thought I couldn't stand it any more. I ached for her, needed her. I wanted to fuck her, shove my cock in her and hurt her with it, make her cry out for me. She was driving me wild—driving me to that state.

Her hips were pumping steadily now, no more slowing down. She was getting close—very close—and she pursued her come with a fierce and single-minded dedication, almost ignoring me. I reached down on the bed and picked up the crop, never moving the vibrator. I picked up the crop and leaned back and slapped the end against her right breast.

"Oww!" Her eyes flew open in surprise.

"Don't stop," I said. "I want you to get off."

"But—"

"Don't stop! You're going to come for me, understand?"

Her hips started moving against the vibrator again but tentatively this time, because her eyes were on the whip now, watching in disbelief as I brought the crop back and it hovered threatening in the air and then struck, slapping her left nipple—a hard, flat sound, rude and nasty just enough to make her feel she was being driven, being driven like an animal under her master's hand.

Emma was a good girl, a nice girl, and she'd never seen anything like this let alone had anyone actually do it to her, use a whip on her own ripe and virginal tits. Someone was doing it now, though, and she understood exactly what it meant—the sharp slap of leather on innocent flesh, the sting, the defenselessness. She twisted in the ropes and pulled at her bonds, her excitement growing as I pressed the buzzing vibrator between her legs.

"Oh! Oh! Oh!"

I spanked her tits with the whip, one than the other, the tops, the undersides, the nipples, the areolas. They peaked, grew even stiffer and seemed to be reaching for the whip on their own, reaching for the abuse as if they wanted it, as if they wanted to be broken and punished. Emma looked down at her tits in shame and confusion as if she couldn't believe their betrayal, as if this body couldn't be hers. I know what she was thinking—that she wasn't like this, she didn't like being whipped or treated this way, but the look on her face said otherwise and the sounds that escaped her clenched teeth were sounds of frantic excitement. She began to arch into the whip, pushing her chest at it, wanting it faster and harder. Her hips pumped hungrily at the vibrator.

I began to whip her thighs, the insides, the outsides, holding the vibe in place and working around it, increasing the force of the blows so they made a vicious sound as they landed on her skin and began to leave red marks. Emma loved it and her hips worked hard, fucking the vibe, fucking the whip, trying to make love to them both, giving herself to the pleasure and cloying pain as her ass bumped softly against the closet door and she grunted and groaned with the effort. It was the final indignity, being buzzed and whipped to orgasm like she was nothing but an animal—a racehorse being driven down the final stretch by a feverish jockey using spurs and whip, foam-flecked, panting.

God knows why she drove me so crazy, why I wanted this so much. It wasn't to hurt her. It wasn't because I hated her. It was because I just wanted her so much—everything she was and everything she had. I felt like I held her heart in my hand, her body and soul quivering at the touch of that whip.

"Oh! Harder! Harder! Harder!" she cried. She began to tremble uncontrollably and she grabbed the rope with both hands, staring down at her own pussy as if she couldn't believe what she was seeing.

At the last second I dropped the vibrator, just dropped it on the carpet and shoved my finger into her. I pulled her towards me and turned her so I could ship her behind and I held her with my finger in her pussy as I lashed her ass with the crop, swearing at her, begging her, imploring her—"Come, baby! Come for me, Emma! Come for me, gorgeous! Please baby! Give it to me, Please, you fucking whore! Please, baby, please!"—and that was all it took. She threw her head back and screamed and I dropped the whip and grabbed her and crushed her against me like I could feel her right though her skin. I held her tight and shoved my finger deep into her, looking for that special place, the heart of her femaleness, the center of her come. Her hips lurched and jerked in an obscene orgasmic dance, her contractions so intense that I felt her internal muscles bear down on me inside, felt the hot stream of shameful lubricant ooze from her pussy and run over my fingers like a secret confession, a private gift I knew she'd given no one else in her life. I held her and held her as if I could somehow absorb her into my body. I felt her trembling inside.

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I couldn't stand anymore. As soon as it was decent but before she'd even stopped twitching I untied her wrists from the door. I picked her up in my arms and carried her over to the dresser. She couldn't walk because the bar was still chained to her ankles so I just carried her in my arms as kept her eyes closed and pressed her bound wrists against her breasts as if in prayer, still trembling with the aftershocks and looking like a frightened deer.

I carried her over to the dresser and put her down in front of it. Both of us were shaking, me with need, and Emma from the force of her orgasm.. I turned her around and gently bent her over the dresser so she was leaning on her forearms, her legs straight and knees locked, ass up like a bitch waiting to be mounted. I stepped back and looked at her and began to tear off my clothes, kicking off my shoes and socks and stripping off my shirt, pulling down my pants and shorts in one motion and throwing them aside, my eyes never leaving her. Aside from the rapid rise and fall of her breathing and the occasional helpless tic or tremor in her thighs and ass, Emma was perfectly still, as if the slightest movement might set her off again. The image that came to mind was that she was waiting to be_mounted_, like a heifer or mare, waiting to be inseminated by her bull or her stallion, and that's what I felt like—something wild and bestial.

My cock was hard and swollen, aching with need and sore from being bruised inside my clothes. It felt like a fire-breathing dragon standing out from my loins, a rocket tethered to the earth only by the enormous weight of my balls. Emma stole a glance back at me and down at my cock and quickly looked away, dropping her head between her shoulders as if she was sorry she'd seen.

I was too naked, stripped too bare. My lust and my need were too apparent and I must have been terrible to look at, like looking into the face of the sun. She moaned softly as I approached her, a soft, almost beseeching sound. I could see the marks of the whip on her ass.

I put my bare foot on the spreader bar between her ankles and stepped on it. There was enough play so I could press it solidly against the floor and Emma adjusted her stance. I moved both feet so I stood squarely on the bar, holding her in place so she couldn't move her ankles. The head of my cock was inches from the wet vertical slit of her pussy. I could see the juice oozing out of her. She was drooling for me

I put my hands on her hips, felt her softness, her warmth. I slid my hands up and under till I cupped her naked, hanging breasts and then down again, luxuriating in the feel of this body that I owned.

How many woman had I had in my life and how much sex, and always confused and compromised, complicated and hedged with conditions and permission, tangled in words and explanations and apologies, or part of some emotional deal or trade, a reward or prize or part of a package? How women had I lusted after and wanted with a pure and simple desire, just to know their softness and beauty and the sweetness of their embrace of their kisses. How many had I ached for and resented, compromised myself for and tried to please? How twisted and contorted I'm become and how lonely; how wounded and angry, how choked with complicated lies and rationalizations over women and my love for them.

And now, with Emma helpless and bent before me waiting for my thrust, how very fucking clean I felt. How strong and alive and unashamedly male. I felt like Poseidon, like the Bull from the Sea, pure and bright, everything as perfect and obvious as male and female, light and dark, cock and pussy. She was something I wanted. Something I wanted so deeply that I had no words for it, only this raw hunger, and suddenly I wanted to hear her say it too. I wanted to know we were here for the same thing.

I ran my hand down her flawless back, from her shoulder to her ass, then back up. She arched beneath my hand like a cat.

"What do you want, Emma?" I asked, my voice barely a whisper. "Tell me. What do you want, baby?"

Her pussy was open, inches from me. She didn't know what to say.

I repeated it. "Tell me what it is. Do you want me, baby? Do you want my cock?"

"Yes. Yes. I want your cock, Conner. Please."

"Why?"

"Why?" She turned her head and looked back at me. "Oh God, Conner! You're asking me why?"

I smiled. I was enjoying this. "I'm asking you why."

She said nothing.

I leaned forward. The red dome of my cock touched the sticky ring of her hole and I felt her flesh give. She twitched inside and shocks of pleasure raced to my brain. A kind of sensual darkness began to absorb me and the words began to spill out beyond my control.

"Because you want to be owned, Emma? Because you want someone to use you, to find their pleasure in you? To take it from you, take that pleasure?"—I looked down. I was slowly pressing into her without even meaning to, leaning forward. Her cunt was dimpling inward as my thick head pushed into her, tucking her flesh inside. The heat was growing, the pressure, her grip on my cock—"Because you want to feel me? Feel me inside you, all over you, fucking you, making you my whore, my fucking whore, my sweet, filthy, fucking whore? That's what you want? To be mine, my slave, my bitch, my lover? My cumslut, my dirty fuckdoll, my sub, my goddamn fucking cunt? To be everything to me? Is that it? Is that what you want? You want my filthy fucking love? My heart and soul?"

"Oh Conner! Oh God! God! Conner!"

She wailed and I pushed my cock into her and pulled her onto me at the same time, leaning back and grabbing her hips and holding her like a water skier holds his rope as I stood on that bar to keep her feet fixed on the floor as I made her take me. I was like a maniac as I fed my prick into her, entering her, taking her, filling her with it, beyond rational thought. I kept my eyes locked on her face as I did, and I felt chills as I realized that I was part of her now and she was part of me. This was bigger than any sex I'd ever known, and I was closer to her than I'd ever been to another human being in my life, this stranger, this girl I hardly even knew.

"Oh Jesus, Emma!" I grabbed her hair and pulled her head back, making a bow of her back. "Oh Christ!"

She gasped and she must have known how I felt just from the way I fucked her. I could see her face in the mirror, her eyes flying open in shock as I finally lost control and shoved it all the way inside her in one huge stroke, mashing her pussy flat and trapping my balls against her clit. I rose up on my toes and grabbed a double fistful of her hair and pulled her even tighter on to my aching cock, pushed harder, wanting every millimeter inside her. I wanted it deep. I wanted to hurt her. I felt her grab and suck on me with muscles I didn't even know women had.

"Oh God!" I moaned. "God you are so fucking good!"

She was still throbbing and trembling from the vibrator orgasm, little tremors and twitches in her legs and her internal muscles, so I just stood there and tried to control myself, waiting for her to calm down. I let go of her hair and tried to relax, tried not to move, and Emma clutched at the edge of the dresser with her bound hands, resting her face against the cool surface. I waited. It was hard, but I waited.

I waited till I felt her move, till I felt her seem to firm up beneath my hands and around my cock, till she got some strength back, and then I reached over and got another vibrator from the towel next to us on the dresser. I could have just fucked her, but honestly, I was afraid to move. I was afraid that if I so much as pumped once or twice I would come like a fucking fountain inside her so I decided to play with her some more instead and make her do the work. I decided to make her my slave and my toy, to turn her own sexuality against her. I waited till she was starting to push gently against me, testing my hardness, and then I turned on the vibrator and pressed it against her pussy and Emma reacted with a start. Emma jumped. It was as if someone had hit a button and Emma cried out and came alive.

I stood behind her, my feet planted on that spreader bar, reaching around her and holding her pussy open with one hand while the other played that buzzing dildo lightly over her aroused little clit and Emma moaned, she groaned, she snarled and began to move her ass in abject surrender, not even trying to control herself anymore. She squeezed her pussy around me and pumped with her thighs. She rocked back and forth, sucked my dick inside her and spitting it out, her tight cunt sliding along the shaft like a ring of slinky steel.

"Fuck me! Fuck me!" she spat, savoring the filthiness of the word. "Harder! Fuck me harder!"

And I did, I did. I dropped the vibe and grabbed her hips and started to slam into her so hard that she grunted like an animal, her tits slapping against the flat top of the cheap dresser. I reached between her legs and started to play with her again, knowing how it drove her crazy, how she loved being touched. I masturbated her as I fucked her, beating her off like some naughty little boy as my big pole slid in and out of her juicy cunt like the giant drive shaft of a runaway locomotive.

"Come on, baby!" I hissed. "Come on, Emma! Give me that come, bitch! Give me that filthy fucking come, you little slut! Give your daddy what he wants, baby! Give it to me! Give it to me! All over me, baby. All over my big fat cock!"

I frigged her, slapped her, spanked her clit, fucked her ruthlessly as she clung to the dresser and whined and snarled like an animal, and then I just pressed my hand against her cunt and shook it, frantically, shamelessly making her cunt vibrate around my straining cock like she was nothing but a goddamned vibrator built for me and me only. I beat myself off using her pussy as my machine, frantic with lust.

That was too much. That was just too much for her, and through the red haze of my own incandescent climax I heard her gasping wail—"Yes! Yes! Coming! Oh God! Conner! Conner! Coming! Coming!"

"Oh fuck yes! Coming too! Here, baby! Here it is! Take it, Emma! Take it!"

She clung to the dresser and lifted her ass like a bitch in heat as I threw my head back and felt that scalding release start deep in my balls, the soles of my feet, roaring up for her like a torrent of magma. My body was at her command now and I think she must have known it, she must have felt that too, that I had no more control then that she did and had no choice but to give it to her, my dumb stupid cock sunk deep in her pussy, my body clenched as I spewed my come into her in agonized paralyzing pleasure, one jolt after another. For a moment I was totally free, far beyond thought, pure sensation and energy, with Emma coming and hunching beneath me with sighs of luxuriant and breathless pleasure, her ass rolling as she sucked my seed inside her. I could feel the heat coming off her body, my sweat seeming to sizzle as it fell on her skin just as my come seemed to sizzle as it splattered inside of her, like water on red-hot steel.

I fell forward onto the dresser, cock still sunk inside of her, catching myself on my hands as I continued to come, growling and moaning as I continued to pour that cream into her in one flawless, gushing stream.

There was a satisfaction in the way she took it. She lay flat on the dresser with her ass in the air, the slightest smile on her face, almost a smugness, as if she had some secret arrangement with my body that I'd never understand, something dark and feminine and private and it excited me to think that she might know some part of me so well, so instinctively. My orgasm left me weak, almost a child, and yet it seemed to give her some strange strength and sense of fulfillment.. She was terribly beautiful, even down to the recumbent, feminine line of her back, her satisfied lips, her eyelids now heavy and filled with peace.

I was reluctant to leave her, but really, she was lying on the dresser and I was on top of her. I lifted myself up.

"Oh Conner, don't move..."

I managed to kneel and unclip her ankles from the bar, then pulled her over to the bed where I collapsed onto the duvet, pulling down with me, both of us covered in sweat. Instantly she nestled into the crook of my arm and formed herself against me, her thigh over mine, breasts against my ribs, her body like a salve against my raw nerves. I held her and ran my hands over her skin, and when I felt the welts on her bottom I winced.. Emma didn't say anything. She just rubbed her cheek against me, proud of her marks. Strangely, I felt proud too and held her tighter, my heart filled with her. She'd earned everything I could give her. I felt in her debt.

She lifted her hand to stroke my chest but then hesitated. She lifted her head. "May I touch?" She was only half teasing.

I smiled. "Of course. We're just people again. No rules. People touch."

She laid her head back on my shoulder and played with my chest and I dropped into a feeling of deep peace. I felt as if I were lying on a beach and Emma was the sun and the sea and her fingers were the waves breaking over me. I thought how I'd never felt so fulfilled from an act of sex, drained not only of tension but of anger and a kind of fury I hadn't even been aware of, something I carried around with me as a constant companion, this hunger for a woman's softness and comfort.

I felt a terribly deep and perverse pride knowing that Emma was filled with my come, that I could feel the warm stickiness oozing from her pussy as she ground herself contentedly against my leg. I closed my eyes and thought of how she was still being fucked as my sperm were still beating their way inside her, looking for that target. I knew she was on the pill, but I liked to think of them finding her egg, entering her again in another cellular fuck, fusing with her—my essence and hers, genes and strands of delicate nucleic acids unwrapping and wrapping around each other like lovers' limbs with blind chemical passion.

The idea was getting me aroused—the simple, basic biology of it, like a force of nature, like gravity or heat or light—and though Emma couldn't possibly know what I was thinking, she must have been able to feel me stir and she instinctively responded, pressing against me, already offering herself to my reviving need, ready for whatever I might want.

There was a sudden burst of melody from her bag—her cell phone, some classical rondo played too fast, annoying and absurd and clamoring for attention, and my first reaction was to swear at her and tell her to turn the damned thing off, but then I remembered how scrupulous she was about answering her boyfriend's calls, and how I'd promised her never to interfere in her outside life. That applied even here in this motel where I'd just tied her and whipped her and fucked her and come inside her.

"Go ahead and answer it." I started to rise. "Let me get my pants on and I'll go outside and leave you alone. I'll grab a cigarette." I didn't want to embarrass her.

"No," she said. "No, not now. I don't want to talk to him tonight."

"I thought he gets all suspicious if you don't answer."

She raised her head and looked at me. "Do you think I can talk to him right now? Do you really think I'm that good a liar?"

The phone rang six times and then stopped. Emma put her head back down on my chest and I felt like an asshole.

"He calls every night?" I asked.

"Usually, yes. Unless he goes out with his friends."

"He's jealous?"

Her voice was flat and regretful. "More like possessive."

"Can I ask...?" It was awkward, but I wanted to know. "Are you like this with him? Sexually? Does he know about all this?"

She didn't seem upset. She spoke calmly, her face against my chest. "No. But then, I don't think I knew about 'all this' myself before you. This is all new to me, you know that don't you, Conner? You don't think I'm like this normally."

She lifted her head and looked at me and I felt embarrassed yet shamefully proud. I kept my face passive, but inside I burned with terrible male ego.

This was what I'd wanted from her all along, wasn't it? Not just sex, not just physical sensation, but conquest, ownership, a place in her heart—something I might think of as love. I wanted to be the first. I wanted to be the one she'd always remember. I was ashamed to admit it to myself after I'd sworn to keep it physical, but I wanted her love.

"I never thought about it," I lied.

She rolled over onto her stomach and looked at me. "What am I to you, Conner? Do you have a lot of girls you do this with? Am I just one more? I want to know. I think it's fair you tell me. You owe me that much."

I was slow in answering. I'd been waiting for this but I still wasn't sure what to say. "I thought we had an agreement. We keep our private lives out of this."

"No," she said. "It's too late for that. I want to know. Look at me, Conner. Look at me."

She raised herself up on her elbows, gathered her long hair and swept it back behind her head, then arched her back so her breasts stood out. They were criss-crossed with lines and marks from the whip, some no more than faint pink lines, some of them raised and angry-looking welts against her smooth, innocent flesh.

"Look at me. Do you think I'd let anyone do this to me? Do you really think I've done this before? That I just give this to anyone?"

Guilt welled up inside me, guilt and a sickly pride, a dirty kind of lust and self-satisfaction, and I knew she felt the same thing, showing off her wounds, shaming me with what she'd suffered at my hand. I did owe her, and not just for the whipping.

"His name's David," she said, sinking back down. "Naveed, actually. He Americanized it to David. His family's Lebanese and he has no idea I'm this way. He'd die if he found out and I don't know what I'm going to do. I never suspected either, never thought I'd get off on this so much. At first I thought it would just be fun, like a fantasy. I've always had these fantasies—being kidnapped and tied up, made to do things—but I thought they were just fantasies, that the reality wouldn't live up to the dream. It does though, doesn't it?"

Her eyes searched my face, looking for an honest answer, for confirmation.

"Yes," I said. It was what I'd discovered too. It was even better than I'd thought it would be.

She nodded. "Yes. And now I don't know. I don't know what to think. Now it's like I don't even know who I am. Conner, no one's ever done these kinds of things to me. No one's ever made me feel this way. Can I tell you something? Can I trust you?"

"Yes."

"I'm scared."

She was beautiful, heart-breakingly beautiful—her eyes and her lips, the stripes on her naked breasts, her vulnerability. I reached up for her and pulled her down against my chest and held her close, felt her press against me.

"There is no one else, Emma" I whispered. "There are no other girls, and I haven't done this kind of thing or felt this way with anyone for a very long time. A very long time. Believe me, Emma. This is something special, and I'm kind of scared too."

My words brought her relief, brought her comfort her, and we huddled there together, protecting each other from our fear, soothing each other; then feeling it, wallowing in it. Is that what love is at the start? Being able to scare yourself, being willing to let someone else scare you with what they make you feel? Being afraid excited me and it excited Emma too. It made her rub against me like you might rub against a shark even though you knew it was dangerous, sheer madness, playing with the danger and loving the fear. She teased me, provoked me, kissing me soft and hot and deep and stretching and writhing against me like a cat. Her arousal was sharp and urgent and in her excitement she reversed our rolls, grabbed my wrist in her slim fingers and made as if to hold me down as she kissed me. She lifted her leg and rubbed her smooth thigh over mine, ground her sticky cunt against my hip as if to remind me what she was there for. She moaned as my sweat stung the welts on her tits.

Page 10

A jet roared overhead and Emma raised her mouth from mine, her hair spilling over her dark face, her eyes glowing. She touched her nail to my lower lip, looking at me in wonder.

"I feel like two people," she said. "One of me's the good girl David knows in Atlanta. The other one's your whore right here in this motel. How did you do this to me?"

I grabbed her head and kissed her, biting at her ripe lips. My hand slid down to her whipped ass and squeezed possessively. I parted her cheeks and my finger played at her anus. She groaned.

I let go of her lip. "Which one do you want to be?" I asked.

"What do you think?"

We melted together in a kiss, her nostrils flaring, her breath hot on my cheek as her hips pumped against my leg with slow, steady force. She was going to get herself off with or without me and was already well on her way. I could tell by that little shudder in her rhythm. Her finger circled my nipple, teasing it to erection, daring me to do something, and then she raised her thigh still higher till she was sliding the soft inside against my turgid cock.

I didn't need any more arousing. Without a word I slid out from under her and got behind her as Emma laid down on her stomach, spread her legs and raised her ass. I got between her thighs behind her and got myself in position, then bridged over her over and grabbed her wrists and held against them against the mattress.

She was on her chest now, ass cocked up, legs spread. I was on my knees and hands, holding her wrists, my prick waving around over the wet cleft of her pussy like some grotesque boom swinging in the wind, looking for her.

I lowered myself and found her easily. like sliding into a funnel

"Ohh..."

Another jet overhead, shaking the lamps. They seemed to be coming hot and heavy now as I slid my cock into her and she parted her legs even farther, her knees sliding against the bedcover, her ass pressing eagerly up into my belly. I levered myself up over her so I could watch her fingers tighten into fists as my prick sunk home into that tight meaty channel and I started fucking her. Her long hair obscured her face like a thousand strands of silk and she writhed on my cock like a butterfly on a pin, delirious with pleasure.

She was so good, so fucking good, and crazy with the feel of her and her tight grip on me my thoughts suddenly turned inexplicably to all the people in the jets overhead—people with plans, with briefcases full of papers and contracts, money and photographs, people coming and going with lonely and hungry eyes or eagerly running back to families and lovers and dying relatives and newborn nieces and nephews. And I thought of all these people out in the dark and looked at Emma beneath me grunting and snarling as she took my prick and my flesh and she worked herself off on me and squeezed me with her body and I started fucking her hard, hard, squeezing her wrists and rocking the bed, my loins slapping against her ass. I fucked her and I gave myself to her and I melted into her and fused with her—this beautiful girl and gorgeous whore, this woman and cunt and source of life and joy and pleasure. I fucked her and I fucked her and I never wanted to stop, my ecstasy all the more intense because of the filth it grew out of, like a diamond found in the muck, a pearl plucked from the slimy ooze.

"God I love to fuck you!" I gasped. "I fucking love it! And I love you Emma! I fucking love you, you know that? I don't care what you think. I love you, you bitch! I fucking love you!"

They were words. They weren't promises, they weren't agreements or negotiations. They were explosions of breath. Ejaculations, but they said how I felt. They were true. They were truer than most things I'd ever said in my life.

I was close. I was close. It was all I could say. Her name, holding her wrists and fucking her. gasping, almost sobbing—"Emma! Emma! Oh God, Emma!"

"Oh God yes, Conner, give it to me! Give it! I love you too, baby! Fuck me! Fuck me I'm going to come! Take it, baby! Take it! Take me, Conner! I love you! Take me! I love you, Conner! I love you too!"

Page 11

The roads are pretty deserted out here in the suburbs. An occasional car slides past, but mostly I'm alone and I can think about her as I drive. One road links to another and pretty soon I'm on the expressway and headed for the city. There's a little traffic—hardly any because it's very late, and it's late because I stayed late in that motel where Emma and I made love, that motel where I tied her and whipped her and made her come and come again and then fucked her and fucked her again too. And even then after she left I laid on the bed and masturbated thinking about her—masturbated and sucked her juices off one of the vibrators I'd used on her, sucking it like it was her cock and I was_her_ sub as I jerked off and my dick jumped and spat like it was her little puppet, filling me with a weird mixture of bliss and shame, the white cream flowing over my hand and me moaning out loud and getting off on the humiliation of playing that role as I slurped that plastic dildo like a satisfied baby.

I shift in the car seat and lean my elbow on the sill so I can feel that hot wind like water on my skin as I drive. It's an old Pontiac and all the gears and cylinders know each other so well that they just kind of glide against each other, oil dripping, pumping... Everything is sex tonight as I eye the rearview and hit the signal and drift over into the center lane where I can just cruise and not worry about passing and being passed. There's a big Ford Explorer coming up fast in the left lane and I'm about to pass a Lexus on the right and I don't want to have to concentrate on that because I just want to think.

I'm trying to be objective about this and serious but all I can think about is what it was like to be inside her and how it felt when she lifted against me when she came, the way she tried to refuse me and how she fought and how she lost and how she looked as she surrendered—surrendered utterly: her back arched, mouth open, shuddering, begging, giving herself to me—how I wanted to claw the soul from her body and just rip it from her and eat it whole and dripping like some insane Aztec sacrifice...

Something catches my eye to the left and I glance up, surprised to see that the moon's still up. It makes me smile because of course it's so big and it's so obvious and it's something we don't understand at all, even though it always looks like it understands us so well. Tonight it looks especially knowing and so I ask it something and of course I get no answer.

I'd told her I loved her and she'd said the same to me, but what did that mean? I'd been inside her, on the verge of orgasm, and at the moment I meant it with all my heart, but we still hardly knew each other. How could it be that we could be that close sexually—fused so closely that it felt like the barriers between us had totally disappeared and I held her naked soul in my hands—but then when she dressed and I lay there and smoked and she ran a brush through her hair and straightened her clothes, I felt this wall settle down between us again, this discouraging silence.

I'd gotten up and seen her to the door and turned her to me and kissed her on the forehead and she'd stopped. For just a moment she'd leaned against me as if for strength or as if there was something she'd wanted to say, and immediately my body had responded, something inside me trying to elbow myself out of the way and grab her again, something telling me not to let her go, but I knew that wouldn't be right, so I'd just kissed her and smiled and she'd smiled and I said, "I'll see you in class," and she nodded and I opened the door for her and let her out into the night.

I'd followed her out and stood on the balcony, leaning on the railing and smoking, watching as she walked across the parking lot. I thought about that part of me she carried inside her. I felt this insane, sudden surge of possessiveness, as if she belonged to me now, but I made it go away, and as I watched her, I wondered what she thought of herself.

She got into her car without looking back and as she did I couldn't help but admire it. I'd come to learn that suburbanites have a special relationship with their cars, one that city boys like me don't understand. It was a language I was trying to master, and already I knew enough to know that Emma had way overbought. She had a gleaming, brand new yellow convertible with a sharp, high ass, proud and sassy—a silly word, but totally appropriate. It was a car to turn heads, and it was a car she could only afford if she assumed David would be picking up the payments once they were married. She could never afford it on her own.

She strapped the seat belt over the tits I'd just been licking and fondling, checked her eyes in the rear-view mirror, and did something with the stereo as she pulled out, perfectly at home behind the wheel. Barely an hour ago she'd been tied in the doorway, gasping and convulsing in stomach-clenching orgasms, reveling in her shame as I whipped her naked cunt and held her hair in my hand like she was some trophy animal, begging me to strip her bare both mentally and physically and take everything a man could take from a woman, strip her down to the bone. And now here she was, insulated from the world by her yellow convertible and another man's love, safe behind tinted glass and steel and climate-controlled air-conditioning, like butter wouldn't melt in her mouth. She made me smile. She made me hunger.

She drove to the edge of the parking lot and stopped. Her taillights flashed once, the equivalent of a female flouncing her skirts—a kind of automotive kiss-off—then pulled onto the highway and was gone.

I turned back and watched the runway approach lights at the airport strobing in the dark in a kind of silent, insistent come-on, listening to the sounds of the crickets in the weeds beyond the motel, then I turned and went back into the room.

It was still thick with the smell of our passion. The stain of our mixed secretions was there on the sheets. The spreader bar lay on the floor, the leather cuffs that held her ankles apart were still affixed to it. The ropes hung over the door, the toys were still spread on the towel on the dresser.

Supposedly I'd been domming her. Supposedly I'd tied her up and forced her to do shameful and degrading things. And yet now she was driving home in her yellow convertible, body lax and satisfied, sated with pleasure. I went around the room and started straightening up, picking up the toys and dropping them into my bag, cutting down the rope and throwing it away, wrapping the toys up in the towel.

The whip smelled of her. The vibrators were sticky with her lubrication.

I start seeing more cars now but it's still late enough (or actually early enough) that the expressway's all but deserted and it's like a special privilege to be out driving now, seeing a different world, the world of cops, ambulance drivers, drunks, dreamers, cabbies, and it's sweet to be able to lie back and just cruise—like dreaming—winding through the sinuous turns as if the car's on rails. The old sights and landmarks roll by, the expressway lights sweep over the cars. The buildings look half asleep and adream, stark-lit and shadowed and naked and exposed, and I hit the radio looking for a human voice.

This is my city and it's been a long time since I've felt it this way, alive and aglow like this, rich with menace and promise. Every car looks like it knows me and knows where I've been and wants to get next to me like a dog and smell my ass. Yes, menace. Danger. That's what passion is: dangerous love. Love that puts you in danger, that gets a hold of you and makes you do things you wouldn't normally do. It's the only love worth having and it's the kind of love that's been missing from my life.

I'd forgotten the danger of this place. In the last few years and the hell I'd been through, I'd decided to play it safe and I'd forgotten the excitement and the potential, all the doorways and the windows and the places they led, the curious streets and the way they lay and the sound of voices as you walked past the alleys. I'd forgotten all of it. Like I'd forgotten the thrill of having a woman like Emma, of having her tied to a chair waiting for you, knowing she wants you to take her, knowing she expects it and she's waiting for it, and knowing where taking her takes you as well.

The big green highway signs pass overhead like guillotines and I don't even read them any more, don't even notice. I check the rearview and hit the signal and drift over to the cutoff for 294, where the lanes swing out to the west and dip down, and at the bottom of the little spur where the dome of that funny Polish church is on my right, "Wild Nights" comes on the radio and I twist the volume way up, push my back against the seat and punch the gas, send the car swooping down and up onto the great broad merge where it joins like an artery with 294 to form one vast broad vista, ten lanes of mercury-lit concrete gazing straight down toward the buildings and towers of downtown, hovering like a crown in the night

And as Van Morrison wails away about his jukebox thunder I slam the dashboard and cover my mouth with my hand so no one else will see. I laugh in sweetness and in real pain, frightened and amazed.

"Oh Jesus fuck! You poor bastard! You sorry son of a bitch! You're in love!"

*****

But how could I talk about being in love? I was twice her age, burned out, bitter, from a different world. What did I know of her? Sexually we were fantastically compatible. There was no doubt about it—it was almost uncanny the way we got along, the way we seemed able to read each others minds and hearts and feed on each other's passions. But otherwise we seemed to be about as different as two people could be.

And that was the problem. I wanted more now. I wanted more than just the sex. I wanted all of her, or at least I thought I did. I didn't even know what I wanted. I didn't even know how to find out.

The way I thought of it was like this: the sexual roles we played of dom and sub were like masks that we hid behind. And because we could hide behind them, they freed us.

But who was she behind the mask? And who would I be for her behind mine? Would she still want me and would I want her? Would it matter?

In the face of this fantastic sexual richness we had to play with, did anything else matter at all?

*****

I called her the next night:

"Hello?" Her voice was flat and non-committal.

"Emma? It's Conner. How are you?"

A pause. The longest one-second pause in the world as I waited for her reaction.

"Conner? Oh! Hi! I'm fine. How are you?" A bit of sudden breathiness. I didn't know if it was for real or if it was affected, but either way was all right.

"I'm fine," I said. "Or no. Really I'm not. I'm not, Emma."

I held the phone like it was her and I spoke to her ear, not to her: "I can't stop thinking about last night. I can't get it out of my mind. It's like it haunts me, like it did something to me. You were incredible, Emma, do you know that? Do you understand?"

Silence for a moment. Then, whispered: "Oh, Conner..."

"I have to see you tomorrow night."

"After class?"

"Yes. I have to see you."

"Yes. Yes, all right."

"But listen, I want to do something. Can you talk?"

"A little. I'm alone right now, but they're coming home pretty soon. Any minute. What is it?"

She was talking about her roommates. As far as I knew, they still didn't know about us.

"I want to bring you into my place in the city. Now wait—before you say anything, just listen to me. I'll drive you in and I'll drive you back the same night so you don't have to worry about your roommates. We'll leave your car out at school so you don't have to worry about driving into the city and parking and all that. I'll give you my keycard and you'll leave it in the faculty garage so it'll be safe and no one will see it. Okay."

"The faculty garage? You can do that?"

"Yes. It's no problem at all. And then—I'm going to kidnap you," I said.

A silence—"What?"

"I said, I'm going to kidnap you. From Crane. Abduct you."

"What are you talking about?"

I laughed. "Shhh! This is a fantasy I've had forever, something I've always wanted to do. I want to pretend to kidnap you from campus. Throw you into a van and tie you up and drive you off. Abduct you. I'm going to rent a van, and tomorrow night after class is out, you'll move your car into the faculty lot, then you'll start walking across the lot between D and G buildings, across from the duck pond? You know where that is? By the construction?"

"Yes?"

"I'm going to be parked there. As you walk by I'm going to drive by and grab you, throw you into the van and tie you up. You're going to be my victim."

"Conner, you're crazy! What if someone sees us?"

"No one will see us! And if they do, then we're just screwing around. What can they do? We're just goofing off—a prank. No victims, no one to complain. Just do it, okay?"

"Conner, I don't know! This sounds crazy."

"Emma, think about it! You in the back of a van with a desperate maniac, running his hands all over you, all tied up and helpless, making you do all sorts of lewd and perverse things, slowly undressing you ..."

"Oh God, Conner! You're insane!"

"Tell me you've never had fantasies like that yourself!"

"But I never really thought of doing them."

"Well you should. Don't you see what we've got here, Emma? A chance to make all these fantasies come true. How many people ever get that?"

She made a low sound of disapproval into the phone. "You're really serious?"

"Yes."

"You really want me to see your place?"

I laughed. "Yes."

"What do I have to bring? What are we going to do?"

"Do you really have to ask me that? You don't have to bring anything. Believe me."

I could hear her smile.

"Oh, all right."

"Good. Tomorrow then."

I hung up and started trying to clean up the place. Luckily I don't own enough stuff to make a mess anymore, but still—a bachelor in the city...

Two hours later the mood had changed. She called me back, sounding thoughtful. "Conner? Conner, it's Emma."

My stomach knotted. "Yes?"

"Conner, I just want to make sure of something, because of what we said the other night. Because of what I said."

I braced myself. "Yes?"

"I said something I shouldn't have, the other night when we were making love. You know what it was. I shouldn't have said it. It was something you said we shouldn't talk about. You know what I mean?"

"Yes. I know," I said. What she was talking about was when we said we'd loved each other in the midst of making love. It was true enough at the time. Now, who knew? "Don't worry about it. Passions were running high. I understand."

"I mean, I know this sounds stupid but I don't want anyone to get hurt. I know I shouldn't be doing this, but I'm not really engaged, I mean, not really, and I don't know if I'll ever get a chance to do this again in my life. You said it was just about sex anyway, and it is, right?"

It was a good thing she couldn't see the look on my face as I answered, the gall I was biting back. "Yeah. That's what I said."

"So as long as we keep it on those terms, it's just like a game, right?"

I turned to the window and there was the moon again, seeing everything, judging everything, suffering so. "Right. It's just like a game."

"Good. Good. I just wanted to make sure we understand each other, because I really don't want anyone to get hurt."

"No. No one's going to get hurt."

I pushed it all back down inside. We still had the summer and part of the fall and there was no telling what might happen by then. Certainly by then the novelty would have worn off and we'd be sick of each other—probably way before then—and until then he really didn't have to exist for me. I could fix it so he wouldn't exist for me. I could probably fix it so he wouldn't exist for her too, if she'd just give me the chance.

In any case, there were more important matters at hand. There was tomorrow night for one thing.

"So we're on for tomorrow after class?" I asked her.

I heard her smile. "Do you want me?"

*****

It was fascinating to see how Emma had changed in the few short weeks we'd been together. She knew how I wanted her and she suspected I wanted her as a sub, which was partially true but not entirely, because the truth was, I never wanted her as a slave. I never wanted her to grovel or be less than me. In fact, as that incident in the motel parking lot had shown, my urge to dominate her wasn't without its masochistic side, a certain sick liking for the feel of a stiletto heel sliding against my dick, and she'd always had a stubborn streak of arrogance and pride from the first day met her. She used it defensively, as a kind of barbed-wire fence. But she also had a way of crossing her legs just so, of casually stretching so that her shirt pulled across her breasts with just the right amount of tension, of turning her head so as to display the sculpted column of her neck to the best advantage, that showed she could use it offensively as well.

She played with her beauty like it was an edged weapon, and she wielded her submission the same way—using it to cut both ways, offensive as well as defensive. I was aware of that and that's why I'd decided on this little kidnapping game. It would give her a chance to participate, and I wanted to see how far she'd go, whether she'd just be entirely passive or whether she'd really get involved. I wanted to see how much—if anything—she had invested in this relationship, or whether I were the only crazy one.

I was worried at first. Her second phone call with her caveat about her boyfriend stuck in my mind like a drowning fly at a picnic and wouldn't go away. It had the potential to contaminate the whole thing. Late afternoon turned gray and blowy with a strong wind sending grit and papers swirling in the parking lot, threatening rain and worse. There were thunderstorm warnings on the radio, and it looked like that long-expected front was coming through, finally bringing relief from the heat that had settled upon the upper Midwest like a pot lid for the last ten days. It didn't bode well for a night of outdoor abduction games.

Emma avoided my eyes as she took her seat, wearing one of the most unattractive pantsuits I've ever seen on this side of a fast food counter, so unflattering that I half-expected her to tell me that not only was our little game off for tonight, but that she'd thought things over further after her phone call and decided to end the whole sordid affair.

But Emma was too good an actress and I soon saw that what she was up to was playing the part of the little night school ingénue for our upcoming drama, even down to simulating a job at an eat-it-&-beat-it joint. All evening she did a wonderful job of looking normal and wholesome—even helping the hateful Mrs. Gonzales write down the reading assignment and bustling about like some Future Teacher of America candidate. I caught her glancing up at me to see if I was enjoying the act and I couldn't repress a smile. She was good. As the class emptied out she picked up her books and approached the lectern.

"You have something for me, Professor Devlin? A parking permit?"

Even in that pantsuit her barely repressed excitement made her radiant and she got to me. I felt something stir inside, like a sleeping beast just starting to wake, and I thought, this must be what a hound feels like when he first catches scent of a fox. She moved closer and I felt the last extraneous minutiae of the class fall away as the beast stretched and took notice, felt my body begin to tighten in anticipation, prepare itself for its one true function, the animal reason for which it was placed on earth.

I gave her the pass and glanced around but no one was watching. They were all shuffling out.

Page 12

"You'll wait for me, won't you?" she asked. "I have to change first into my special abduction clothes but it won't take a minute. Did you like my outfit?" She showed me a quick curtsy.

"It's awful," I said.

She smiled. "We wear these for inventory. Can you believe it?"

She lowered her voice and asked," You'll be between C and G buildings, right? Where they have the overflow parking? What kind of van is it?"

"A Dodge. Dark green, no windows. You brought special clothes?"

She slipped the keycard into her pocket. "Of course I did. This was always a fantasy of mine too and I always pictured how it should be. But I should warn you—I'm not much of a fighter. You're not going to get all violent?"

"No. Not like that, no." I smiled. "I can't guarantee what I'll be like when I get you inside, though."

She gave me a knowing smile. "I'm not worried about that. I just want you to do it."

She turned to go but I called her back. "Emma? I want to give you a safe word. You know what a safe word is?"

"Really?" She looked like she was going to say something but then changed her mind. Her eyes were glowing. "What is it?"

"Your name. Emma Fiore. Just say your real name. And if you can't talk, tap, bang, hit me 3 times, over and over."

"You think I might have to use it?"

"No."

She grinned at me. "Then maybe you're not doing your job, Conner."

*****

It was pitch black and blowing hard by the time I was settled in the van, facing the new faculty parking garage and dying for a cigarette. The big cottonwoods were bowing and swaying in the wind and there was no doubt a big storm was coming. The radio crackled with bursts of static and there was vicious lightning in the southwest. It made me nervous.

From where I was parked I could hardly miss her yellow convertible as it pulled into the ramp. Emma's bare arm emerged and fed the card into the slot and the gate rose up obediently and she drove inside. Even though it was all pretend, my hands were sweating.

There was a lot of construction going on over the summer, especially at this end of the campus, and the new faculty garage was part of it, all clean fresh concrete and bright fluorescent lights. Down where I was, they'd already started tearing up the old parking lot and the lights had been disconnected, leaving it very dark and deep in shadow, and looking at the new garage from the darkness was like staring at some old Donkey Kong game with its maze of ramps and levels. I could see her car come into sight and disappear as it climbed upwards, wending its way through the empty structure. Why would she be going so high except for the dramatic effect? I'd been waiting there for almost half an hour already and I was eager to get started before it began to rain, and eager to get a glimpse of her.

At last I lost sight of the car and knew she must be parking, and when I saw her again she was on foot. The wall of the garage blocked her from the shoulders down, but she seemed to be wearing a white shirt or light jacket, and the way she walked told me she must be wearing heels. That was all it took to make my stomach tighten, knowing she'd dressed for me, that she'd chosen her clothes knowing that I'd be taking them off her. That always did it for me. I sat up behind the wheel and looked around. There was no one. She got into the elevator and I lost sight of her.

And at that moment it started to drizzle, the first drops spattering against the windshield.

Damn! It wasn't bad yet, but if it got worse I'd have to forget the abduction and just drive over and pick her up. I didn't want her getting drenched.

In a few moments she came walking out of the doorway at the foot of the structure, stepping out onto the sidewalk where the lights bleached the brick all bright white and yellow and pale green like some artificial electric beach. I could see her now—long legs and a short, pale blue sundress kind of thing with a white shirt over it, a white canvas bag over her shoulder, looking as fresh and clean as dew on summer grass. Christ, the girl knew her business, what buttons to push. Shadows spilled at her feet and raked over her as she stepped brightly off the sidewalk and entered the darkness of the lot, back erect, tits out, long legs eating up the distance with smooth, unhurried grace. As if it had been waiting for her, the rain began to fall.

She looked stunningly sexual. Not sexy, not cheap, but sexual—a woman in the full pride of her beauty alone in the dark on a hot summer's night, and to cap it off, the whispering rain and lightning sizzling in the background. The wind had stopped and the rain stopped for a moment as it does just before a downpour as if the clouds are taking a breath. In this perfect stillness the crickets took this last opportunity to sound their plaintive calls and Emma walked into the darkness, all lips and tits and ass and long, sinuous leg, walking right out of the world of living men and into the world of my perfect fantasy. She was mythic, she was a dream, and I was absolutely stunned with desire for her.

I was parked on the east side of the lot, hidden in with a few other cars, and if she knew where I was she deliberately chose not to look because she walked right past the van maybe some twenty yards distant and kept on going, head held high, bag on her shoulder. I saw the tight lines of her thighs beneath the fabric of her dress, the proud thrust of her ass, the gentle bounce of her breasts, the secret suggestion of everything she promised. She looked like a ghost—like one of those ghostly images of phosphorescent sea creatures you see on television documentaries who appear at night, pose for an instant and then sink back down into the ocean's subconscious again.

The rain began to patter down as I watched her, and suddenly the game we were playing began to take on a life of its own. I felt the big empty space of the van behind me, the thin, cheap mattress on the floor, the ropes and tape and scarves all laid out. I saw Emma's tight, lush body glowing in the dark, felt the aloneness and isolation of the night, and realized I'd perhaps set things up too well. This was more than I'd bargained for. This was more than I'd expected. The beast she'd been flirting with before had now entirely awakened and had taken over. I suddenly wasn't in my right mind. The hairs rose on the back of my neck.

And somehow David was involved, her status as David's woman. Mixed up in the lusting beast I'd suddenly become was a good portion of the green-eyed monster, and somehow I had the idea that she wouldn't be out here in the dark like this if she were really David's woman. If she were really David's woman she'd be back with David in David's cave, and the fact that she wasn't made her fair game. No. More than that. In my sudden, lust-drenched and desire-wracked mind, her being out here was like a sign that she was trying to escape. Somehow I decided that Emma's agreeing to this game of abduction was a sign that she wanted to be with me.

The skies suddenly split and the patter of rain became a roar. It began to pour—a deluge of water falling from the sky and thundering on the roof of the van and obscuring the windshield, filling the air so completely that I totally lost sight of her. I started the van, hit the wipers and yanked on the lights then threw it into gear, hit the gas and roared around in a tight U-turn, the tires sizzling on the steaming tarmac. Emma turned and looked at me and this time I could tell she wasn't acting.

I don't know what she'd been expecting—maybe she thought I'd call the whole thing off because of the rain and just pull up along side her and tell her to hop in—but apparently she hadn't been expecting a maniac roaring down on top of her at 40 miles an hour in a tight U-turn in this oversized van with his brights on. She was already good and wet and the rain was streaming in her face and now the sensation of being lit up in the dark by a pair of 5000 candlepower headlights must have sent some primal wave of fear surging through her body and she froze like a deer on the highway.

She quickly gathered her wits and looked around for cover, but there was no place to go except for the weeds at the edge of the parking lot some twenty yards away and I angled the van to cut her off that way. She turned back, hesitated just a moment, and started to run.

In my fantasy I'd dreamed of pursuing her in the van, running her down in the relentless glare of the headlights, but that had been fantasy. Now I was consumed with this weird obsession of stealing her away and I didn't have time for games. One part of me felt foolish but the beast was in control and the beast just stomped down on the accelerator and ran up along side her and squealed to a stop. I threw the lever into park and tore the door open, jumped out and grabbed her by the arm even before the van stopped rocking.

She was soaked now and her hair was stuck to her face, the dress clung to her body. She got one glimpse at the look of insane desire in my eyes and she blanched with fear.

"Oh wow, Conner! No!"

She was really scared. Somehow she knew exactly what was going on. She could tell from my face just what was racing through my mind, and she knew that our little game had turned into some private and demented caveman ritual that was far too close to the real thing. If she went along with me, there could be consequences. She could see that now. She could see it in my face and she could feel it in the way I held her. She could sense it in the way I stood over her with the lightning flashing over my back and the rain streaming down over both of us in the dark and deserted parking lot like some crazy Cro-Magnon tableau.

"Shut up!" I shouted. "Just be quiet! Come on!"

I used my strength on her, pulled her to the side of the van and wrenched the door open, and Emma dug in her heels. She wasn't very big and I'm a strong guy. I could have thrown her in easily, but I stopped, one foot inside the van. I knew I was acting crazy and I tried to calm down. I looked inside the empty van and then I looked at her.

"You know your safe word," I said, daring her.

I held her arm so tightly that she was half bent over and I could see the tops of her breasts where the bodice of her dress hung loose, the pretty lace bra she'd worn. She tried to pry my fingers off her arm, and then looked at my hand and at the grip I had on her. She looked up at my face but she didn't say anything.

I hauled her up into the van and pushed her inside, lowered her to the floor, then climbed in and slid the door closed behind me with a loud thump.

It was dark in the van and the rain thundered on the roof with a constant roar. The yellowish light seeping into the back had a wavy, greenish, undersea cast. Emma cowered against the wall of the van, her skirt riding halfway up her thighs. My heart was pounding in my ears and when I looked at her she looked scared, but her eyes were glowing like coals.

I'd tacked strips of duct tape against the inside of the van and now I grabbed a piece and used it to bind her wrists behind her back, then I took another and wrapped it around her ankles. I grabbed a scarf from the box behind the back seat and blindfolded her, then wrapped another around her mouth for a gag.

"Are you okay? Can you breathe?" I whispered. "Give me two if you can breathe okay."

"Mnh! Nnh!" she groaned.

"Good. Three times is your safe word, okay? Two more if you understand."

"Mmmpff! Mnngh!"

I slid behind the wheel and threw the van into gear and drove around toward B building. In all, it had taken me maybe two, three minutes to get her into the van and I don't think anyone had seen, not with this rain coming down. I drove back by the parking lot by B, over by the far end where there were big trees, back by the duck pond. The rain was pouring down and already the van was splashing hubcap deep through big puddles; water was dripping down the back of my neck.

I pulled into a spot and turned off the engine and crawled into the back where Emma lay against the wall bound, gagged and blindfolded, breathing fast, her legs bent and knees together. The sight of her inflamed me and I felt wild and desperate and dangerous.

It didn't matter that it had been a game and I'd planned it. I'd become an outlaw for her, I'd broken the law for her and I felt it in a burning lustful cock-centered rage. I'd had some plans about keeping her here for a while, about playing with her—feeling her up and teasing her, maybe making her blow me, taking my time—but now my blood was up and I forgot all about that. I felt desperate. Huddled in the van with her as the rain poured down it was like we were two animals in a cave, reduced to the most elemental level of existence. I pulled her against me like I'd won her and felt her panting with excitement. I ran my hand over her body and touched her between the legs and heard her moan.

I got to my feet and untied the gag and tore it from her mouth, grabbed her hair and pulled her up and held her head in a death grip and she gasped, afraid to move. She arched her back and groaned, trying to ease the tension on her hair, waiting while I held her and fumbled with my pants with the other hand. I pulled at my belt and clawed at the zipper, shoving them down and pulling out my dick, then I pulled her head up and pressed my cock against her expectant lips. She knew what I wanted. She already knew the price she had to pay.

"Take it!" I hissed, tightening my fingers in her hair. "Take it, Emma! Take it! I'm not fucking around!"

I was standing there bent over, almost trembling with need, and if she hadn't opened her mouth and sucked me inside the way she did, I don't know what I might have done. As it was the pleasure of her mouth was like some scalding relief to me, so intense that I had to brace my hand against the roof of the van to keep from falling over, and Emma moaned and sucked hard, obsequiously, with slavish joy and abandon, glad to be conquered and glad to be used. The pleasure was so intense that I lost my grip on her hair and braced both hands on the roof and Emma remained fixed to me by the sheer force of her powerful suction, like some sort of cum-starved leech. Even the spastic reflexive jerk of my hips as her tongue rubbed across my hypersensitive glans couldn't dislodge her. My hips punched forward at her in a powerful thrust but she hung on, hands tied behind her, hanging on to me like a fish on a line.

It was good she was blindfolded and good she couldn't see because I didn't want her to witness the naked animal ferocity on my face. I was all beast now, all savage, and I knew I must be terrible to look at. And I was glad too that I couldn't see her eyes, whether they showed fear or pleasure, either one, any sort of sign that she wasn't totally involved in what was happening right now because all I needed her to be was just this—a sucking mouth, a cunt, a woman in the crudest, most basic sense. I needed that because I needed the freedom to be just as cruel and inhuman as I felt . This wasn't about love and this wasn't about tenderness. This was about the crushing ferocity of sex and desire. This was the rock that everything else grew from, and I didn't need anyone reminding me of everything I was repressing and throwing away.

I took one hand from the ceiling and slid my fingers through her hair again and tightened my grip. I slid my hand across her cheek and felt the way her jaw was distended to take my prick in her mouth and I kept my hand there against her face and ground my hips around in lewd, tight circles. I wanted to feel the tip of my prick press against the inside of her cheek, feel it there working in her mouth, touching her teeth, her palette, the private places where she made her words and ate her food. I anted her full of me, choking on me. I loved fucking her mouth, violating that beautiful face with my big, ugly dick...

I tightened my grip in her hair and held her head, bent under the roof and, turned her so I had her pressed up against the side of the van and began to fuck her mouth with short, savage strokes, my heavy balls slapping against her chin. The pleasure was intense, unutterable, the feeling of possession. The rain was thundering down against the roof but still I could hear the thump, thump, thump of her head as it hit the side of the van from my blows and hear Emma's cries of protest and acceptance, and then as my stomach clenched in the warning spasms of pre-orgasmic pleasure and the world started to fade and get blurry and indistinct, I suddenly realized that she was crying out in groups of threes and stopped and pulled myself back from the edge—stopped, drew my cock from her mouth and let go of her hair.

"My arms," she coughed. "It's my arms. They're too tight."

I pulled off her blindfold and she blinked and looked at me. Something in my face must have alarmed her, because she added, "They're just too tight, that's all. I didn't mean for you to stop."

I pulled the tape off her wrists. She couldn't see me smile. "You bitch."

I taped her wrists together again, this time in front, but the break had drained the ferocious insanity out of me, had brought me back to reality, albeit altered. We'd crossed some bridge and she was mine, at least temporarily. We had time now. This cave had become a temporary home.

I pulled her into the center of the van and put her on her side. I shucked my shoes and pants and shorts off and got on my knees and I held her bound wrists above her head in one hand as I slid my cock into her mouth again and started to fuck her, slower this time, without the savage desperation, feeding it to her and letting her show me what she could do, how she could love me with her mouth, just how good she was.

And she was good. I knelt by her head and rolled my hips in a steady, even pace and Emma kept her jaws apart, her cheeks hollowing and filling as my cock slid in and out. She hummed softly, a kind of tender chant of pleasure as she let me have her mouth, sucking me and chasing me with her tongue, offering me her slavish devotion for whatever I might want. She was ready to accommodate me in anything, and when I pulled my cock out and bent the shaft up against my stomach and leaned forward Emma immediately pushed her face forward and began to lick and fondle my balls with her tongue.

Such a good slave deserved something of her own. I rose up on my knees and rolled her onto her back so that she was arched over the pile of blankets, her body entirely on display, her rain dappled dress stuck to her skin, then I reached down and peeled the tape from her ankles. Emma sighed as I returned to my position at her head and the steady pumping of my cock into her softly sucking mouth.

Her body was rich and lush and as I held her wrists over her head with one hand, I used the other to roam over her breasts and body like a conqueror taking possession of his territory. I pushed down the bodice of her dress and pulled her bra up out of the way and filled my hands with the ample flesh of her tits, then slid my hand down beneath the dress and over the warm, smooth skin of her belly. Lightning ripped through the sky and illuminated her lying there half naked, my cock dipping into her mouth, my hand ravishing her body, her legs parted in abject surrender. I began to fuck her faster, leaning forward and thrusting straight down into her throat, loving the soft, sudsy sound my shaft made as it churned up her saliva. She could sense my excitement now and must have felt the clenching spasms of my cock and known I was getting close, but still it was very quiet in the van—the sound of my cock in her mouth, our deep breathing, her soft, airy moans of pleasure—the tension, the sounds of two people intent on one person's pleasure.

I slid my hand down between her legs. She was wearing cotton panties, the kind little girls wear, sweet and innocent. They went with her entire outfit and that allusion to innocence and naiveté was just too perfect, too wickedly brilliant. It spoke to that basic sweetness and purity that women aspire to, the difference between girls and women, between pretty and sexy, and it spoke to the basic reason that Emma had come to me—to have that purity defiled. She knew us too well.

Page 13

I ran my finger up the soft cotton crotch and looked down at Emma as she was lost in sucking and laving my cock in whorish pleasure. I grabbed the panties and locked them in my fist, and slowly and steadily I tightened my grip. Emma groaned and shifted her hips as the fabric bit into her sex. I pulled and her voice rose in alarm. Her sucking increased as if she were trying to appease me. I pulled harder and the cotton began to rip, and Emma whimpered submissively, trying to calm me, trying to stave off the all but inevitable rape that was certainly coming, a silly thing to do given the nature of our relationship, but instinctive I suppose when a man starts ripping your innocence off.

The panties ripped wide and Emma fell back with a cry. I yanked and tore at them and Emma raised her head and stared down at herself as I pulled them off, shredding them to pieces until nothing remained but a few scraps of cotton and elastic hanging forlornly around her waist and thighs, and then her head fell back in surrender. She was exposed now. She had nothing left to defend anymore.

She turned her head and sucked my cock back into her mouth, as if what happened to her pussy was none of her concern.

"Raise your knees," I whispered.

She moaned around my cock and slowly lifted her legs—too slowly, so I slapped her between the legs and she squealed with alarm and lifted her knees all the way up to her breasts, leaving herself totally revealed. Another bolt of lightning lit out the inside of the van and showed her lying there luridly exposed, knees up, arms stretched over her head. I traced my finger down her slit and began to finger her, playing in the soaking slit of her sex as she sucked me, nursing on my cock like a starving child. She moaned and her knees jerked when I touched her.

"Oh! Conner! No! Don't! Please!"

I slapped her pussy and she jumped.

"Keep your knees up and apart," I warned her. "Understand?"

She was mine, my toy, all of her, and I played with her tits, her pussy, caressed her face, but mostly I lorded it over her—let the sensations of her slaving mouth satisfy me and drive me higher as I reveled in the pleasure of having her naked body right there to use with and enjoy, having her so lewdly and shamelessly exposed for me. I put my fingers inside her and thumbed her clit, pumped her and took her to the edge as she panted and begged and gagged on my dick—begged me not to make her come, not like this, so wickedly, so nakedly, so obscenely on display. I knew she wanted to hide and I knew she wanted to refuse and I knew she wanted to resist but I wouldn't let her. I wouldn't let her hold back or deny me anything, and as she lay there with her knees up and her legs spread and her feet twisting nervously in the air I felt her excitement pulling my own orgasm out of me. I felt that electrical quiver of violent release gathering in the center of my body and I started fingering her harder, my hand slapping against her pussy as I pushed her up and over ahead of me.

"Ugh!" she groaned. "Oh! Ugh! No! Ohh! Conner! Oh! God!"

Her own shame was making her come. It wasn't my touch. It wasn't my dick in her mouth. It wasn't being kidnapped and thrown in the van. It was the fact that I knew she loved it—she loved it all. That's what was doing it, that's why she was begging me to stop, but I wouldn't. I played with her pussy and I pumped my cock into her mouth. I held her arms over her head so she was my captive and I felt it start—hot, rich, thick, filthy—"Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!"—the harsh load of my seed churning up from the depths of my depraved soul in a wash of blistering ecstasy and I snarled like an animal and threw back my head and I just let it go—just let go of everything and let it come. I pushed my fingers into Emma's rich and spending pussy and felt the very center of her and I let myself come.

"Oh God, Conner! Yes! Yes! God! Yes! Give it to me! Give it to me!"

Her voice was a tight, frantic plea, squeezed out as she turned her head to watch and my steely-veined dick twitched and began to spew out his thick gouts of come, thick jets that slurred down her cheek and lashed over her lips and chin in viscous strands and webbing. Emma squealed in frustration as she came too, and her trembling made her too spastic to get my dick back into her mouth so that she grabbed and searched for it with open mouth like a baby bird frantic for food as I continued to ejaculate all over her, and meanwhile her tight pussy clamped down on my fingers and quivered and her own juice spilled out and wet my hand as if she were weeping and begging for mercy, as if it were simply more pleasure than she could stand.

"Ugh! Yes! Fuck! Fuck!" I spat, hunching my hips with every jolting eruption, holding her down, almost lying on top of her as I finished—thrusts getting weaker, spasms more prolonged—pouring the rage into her, the anger, the need and the deep, draining sense of relief—pouring it all into her, and conscious of Emma pressing up against me, her thighs squeezing my hand tightly as she too drained herself and took her reward, feeding off my pleasure and swallowing it into herself.

Slowly I stopped. My motions got less frantic and urgent as I squeezed the last bits out and ground to a halt, then pulled my softening cock from her swollen lips. I got down and stretched out next to her and we both lay there in the darkened van, panting for breath and listening to the rain drumming on the roof, the thunder pealing someway off into the distance now. Emma let her knees fall to the floor and closed her eyes and I saw her throat working as she swallowed. She brought her bound hands down and brushed some stray hair away from her face. The air inside was very still. She seemed totally relaxed, totally fulfilled.

I reached over to untape her wrists and she pulled her hands away and looked at me. "Leave it on, please, Conner?"

"You like it?"

"Yes," she said. "I do."

I leaned over and kissed her, and I wanted to stay in that kiss. I had so much to say in that kiss that I hardly knew where to begin, but I remembered the pledge about love and her worry about entangling emotions. She seemed so at peace now that I didn't want to ruin it, and just lying with and being aware of our shelter from the rain was enough, so I just held her and moved close and listened to the rain fall.

There was no peace though. She was against my chest and I could almost feel her thoughts and the words trying to break free.

"You don't want to talk?" I asked.

"I can't," she said. "It wouldn't be good, Conner."

I nodded. "Okay. Well, then, let's get straightened up. We should go."

"Where?"

I sat up and started pulling my pants on. Everything was damp now and it didn't feel good.

"The city. I'm still taking you to my place. The plans haven't changed."

That seemed to please her. She sat up and started arranging her clothes.

I had to redo her wrists. I tethered them with a ten-inch strip of tape which left them connected but gave her enough slack to use her hands, and that made her happy enough, and as I pulled out of the lot, Emma looked in the rear-view mirror and tried to salvage her make-up and fix her hair, using her bound hands as if it were entirely natural.

It wasn't natural for me though, and driving along with this girl who loved slavery so much had me in a state of simmering arousal. The wipers lashed the rain from the windshield and the van felt like an ark.

I nodded to her hands. "Tell me about it," I said.

She'd finished her make-up and she looked as normal as could be achieved given that we'd been caught in a downpour. I'd given her my jacket for warmth and she pulled it around her and looked at her hands.

"I don't know. I just always liked it. It makes me feel secure, kind of, and sexy, and like adventurous. Don't you like it?"

"Yes, I like it. I like it a lot."

She looked at the tape cuffs as if they were jewelry. "I always used to play I was being kidnapped and tied up, and that's how I used to masturbate, tying my knees and ankles together and rubbing against something. I was very young when I started. It always got me off."

"And what did you think about?"

"When I was little? Nothing really. Just men tying me up. I didn't even know what boys did with girls then, back when I first started."

"And now?"

She ducked her head and looked at me from beneath her hair. "It wouldn't be any fun if I told you. You have to kind of guess."

Then she laughed and said. "So far you've done a pretty good job."

I pulled onto 51, the old four-lane that led to the expressway, about as scenic a road as runs out here, skirting the edges of the suburbs through some forest preserves. The rain had let up to a steady soaking summer shower, the kind the farmers love, and you could almost feel the grass and the trees sucking it up in pleasure. The wipers could handle it easily and it was nice to be in the van. Even with the memory of the wild sex we'd just had, it was almost cozy. It felt sheltered and safe.

She leaned back in the seat and tried to stretch but couldn't because of the tape.

"But that's enough of this for now," she said, and started peeling it from her wrists.

I made a sound of disappointment and she smiled.

"You take it all so seriously. It's just sex, you know. Just fooling around. There's more to life than sex." She smiled. "There is! I'm serious!"

She tuned on the radio and hunted around for a station, found something I didn't recognize and left it there, turned way down.

"Tell me about where you live," she said. "Is that the place you talked about in class, where there's that bar where they have poetry readings? Where do you live?"

I stopped at a light and tried to think of how to describe it without alarming her. "How well do you know the city?"

"Not very well. David—" she caught herself at the mention of his name but only for a second, "—his brother has season tickets for the Bears and Bulls and sometimes we go into the city when he's in town, and go out to dinner and stuff—Michigan Avenue—but other than that... He says it's kind of dangerous. Hard to park."

"Yeah. Well, you'll see. I live in a kind of strange neighborhood. Little Saigon they call it. Mostly Vietnamese, but it's still pretty affordable." I didn't want to insult her by telling her it was people like David who'd driven up the rents to the point where people like me couldn't afford to live there any more. "The El runs right by my place. The elevated train?" I laughed at the look on her face. "You never took the El? Don't worry. I'll protect you. You'll be fine."

I pulled away from the light. "So what else is there besides sex, then?" I asked. I was teasing.

"Movies, shopping," she said. She was teasing too. "No. You know, the usual things. I don't know. Well what else do you do? You don't just do sex all the time, do you? I mean, I hope not. Or poetry. You're into other things too. Sports and things. You're into sports."

"Actually no. I'm not. I've got no use for them."

She looked at me like she'd never heard such a thing. She must have thought I was jealous of David's brother's tickets. "What do you mean, 'no use'?"

"Just that. They don't do anything for me. Don't interest me. They used to, and then I got tired of them. It's always the same thing. Winning and losing. I got tired of it and now I don't bother. I don't miss it."

I looked over at her and smiled. "You don't really like football either, do you? I mean_really?_"

"Well, no. But it's all the other stuff—going to the game, tailgating, being with friends, going out afterwards, seeing the players, talking about it. It's something to do."

I nodded. "Yeah. I guess so. It's a spectator thing."

She was silent for a while as we drove past a stretch of road that was lit with overhead lights, the edge of the village of Park Forest. Thunder still peeled in the distance, sounding almost apologetic. The rain was almost gentle now.

"No," she said. "There's the normal things. Family and friends and a career; community, where you live and making it better—helping others. And your own family, of course. That's very important. Raising one. Having kids. A nice house and bringing them up right, a home—you know. A garden. A car."

Her voice trailed off and she was silent. We came around a descending curve at the base of a hill where Half Day Road ran into 51 at a brightly lit intersection with a big traffic signal and extra lanes, totally deserted in the rain. On the other side of Half Day was a slight rise, and atop this rise was a park, a wide swath of grassy fields set with ball fields and benches and picnic huts separated by big trees and illuminated by neatly spaced halogen park lamps. In the bright white light of the lamps the rain was falling like strings of silver tinsel, shining against the green-black of the trees.

I pulled up at the red light and we sat there. It was a spellbinding sight. It almost looked like ice.

"I can't believe I just said that," she said.

We sat at the light with the wipers thunking rhythmically, and suddenly Emma wrenched the door open and leaped from the van and out into the rain. She slammed the door shut and ran across Half Day Road up the hill towards the park, her bare feet slipping in the wet grass.

There was no one around. I ran the red light and pulled over at the base of the hill, hit the flashers and jumped out of the van and ran after her, slipping as she had in the rain-slick grass, falling to my knees, the warm rain soaking me.

"Emma? Emma!"

The hill couldn't have been more than eight feet high but the wet weeds were slick as glass and I was breathless by the time I got to the top and looked over the brightly lit park stretching out before me. The rain was pouring down like cascading silver in the lamplight, and Emma was running aimlessly towards the darkness of the trees—not fast, running like she wanted to be caught. I took off after her, my feet splashing in the soaked turf.

I could hear her laughing as I got close and I started laughing too, not knowing why. I was angry and annoyed. Her dress was as wet as tissue paper now and plastered to her skin and without her panties I could see her buttocks flexing as she ran and even the muscles of her back. I reached for her and she screamed in excitement and dodged and I almost fell on my face, but I maintained my balance and slid on the grass then took off in a new direction and cut her off by a little stream that the rain had cut through the field. I grabbed her around the waist and pulled her down to the ground.

She laughed and screamed and fought with me and I fought with her and once again my sense of what I was doing and what was real totally left me. Somehow I ended up sitting on my ass and she was straddling me and her tits were soft and warm against my chest and she was kissing me and urging me on with her tongue and her body and the sounds she made and then somehow I had her down on all fours with that wet dress pushed up around her chest and I was kneeling behind her with my pants around my thighs, leaning over her, kissing and biting her back and milking her tits like an animal.

The rain was dripping from her hair and her lips were red as blood and the water was dripping from her lips and running down her ribs and dripping like milk from her nipples too.

"Oh yes! Yes, Conner! Give it to me! Make me your whore! Do it to me! Fuck me, Conner! Fuck me!"

I raised my head and looked around at the little park drenched with rain and the lampposts standing like silent witnesses. The van was down there with the blinkers on and at any moment someone might come to investigate. The patch of grass we were in was soft and wet and we'd already churned it up into a puddle of mud with our thrashing and Emma was kneeling in mud and had mud splattered on her body. She was shivering and her skin was covered with goose bumps and the water was steaming where it splattered against her skin. She was humping her ass at me, grinding it like she was some barnyard animal, naked out in the rain and the muck and the mud.

I think I growled as I grabbed the back of her neck and pushed her down into the grass—pushed her tits down into the mud and the wet grass and held her bent down like that, ass-up, slavelike before me as I took my dick and parted her folds with it and punched it into her hot crease and heard her snarl with feral satisfaction. Yeah, I knew what she wanted. I knew exactly what she wanted—that raw, hot cock, the one hard, warm thing in this cold, wet world, and I rammed it deep, grabbed her shoulders and pulled her back onto it, stabbing her with it as she dug her fingers into the muddy dirt and screamed again in savage bliss. She was hotter than hell inside—hot and tight and already trembling on the verge of orgasm

"Oh fuck, Emma! Fuck!!!"

I stared down at her in disbelief as that sweet soothing rain fell down upon us both, soaking us to the bone. Already Emma was rolling her ass in tight little circles, egging me on, begging me to unload inside her, begging me to get rough with her and let her have it, her sweet little tongue peeking from between her white teeth.

"Fuck your bitch, Conner! Fuck her like a slut! Take me, you bastard! Ride me good and let everyone see!"

I didn't know what she wanted. I didn't know what kind of crazy thoughts went through her head. All I could do was take what I wanted, do what I wanted, and that's what I did.

I awkwardly got up on my feet with my prick still inside her. I spread her cheeks apart so I could see my dick piercing her body and her labia stretched in protest around it, see the raindrops gliding down the slopes of her ass. I reached out and grabbed her hair—grabbed a big handful in each hand like they were a pair of reins—and used them to pull her head back, making her arch her back and thrust her tits out like she was the figurehead on a boat, some boat cutting its way through this dark, rainy park, and then I started riding her, slamming my dick into her, fucking her so fast and hard I could hear her tits sloshing on her chest; hear her breathing cut into a series of involuntary animal grunts by the slapping blows of my belly against the meat of her ass; fucking her so fast I could feel the heat of the friction of my cock moving in her tight sheath and the wild swinging of my heavy balls as they slapped wetly against her turgid clit.

And finally it was too much. Finally she couldn't take the force of my blows and she collapsed, fell face down in the mud and the cold grass and I had to pull her up and hold her against me, hold her pressed against me as I punched my dick up into her and squeezed her tits and shot my load straight up into her sopping pussy.

"Oh!" she sighed as I came. "Oh!"

That's all. She turned her face up to the sky and pressed her hand down so she could feel my cock where it entered her body and feel the semen jet along my urethra, as if she wanted to make sure it got there safely, as if this whole thing were about me.

I sat there and held her, and when I let her go, she was shivering.

"Cold?" I asked.

"God! Freezing."

"Yeah. It's cold." I didn't move.

"Conner? Can we go? I'm really cold now."

"In a minute," I said. I looked around at the falling rain. "You were right. It is pretty here. A nice place to stop."

We were both of us soaked to the skin.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I don't know what got into me. I just had this sudden urge to run. To escape. I guess those thoughts depressed me. Can we go now?"

"Well I have this sudden urge to stay. To remain. You understand?"

Emma got up and stared at me for a moment, then marched angrily away, arms wrapped around herself. She went maybe twenty feet, then turned. She was really shaking with cold.

Page 14

"Alright, Conner. I'm sorry. I apologize. Please, Conner. Please!"

She wasn't a stupid girl. I think she understood what had happened and I think she'd learned a lesson. I don't know if she accepted it, but she'd learned there was a difference between what happened sexually and what happened outside of sex. She'd learned that I liked to be manipulated within limits, but that I had limits.

I stood up. "You're lucky I like you," I said.

I went to her and straightened her tattered, muddy dress and helped her down the rainslick hill to where the van stood with its blinkers flashing. Inside there were blankets she could use as towels and to keep herself warm, and inside was a change of clothes that, with some instinctive prescience, she'd brought along just in case. For all that had happened, it was still fairly early, and ahead of us everything I'd prepared at my place still was waiting.

I helped her in, climbed into the driver's seat and we took off.

Page 15

Emma was quiet the rest of the drive into town but perked up as we exited the expressway and started driving through the city. The rain had let up and as we neared my neighborhood things started feeling more urban—the buildings, the lights and neons and action in the streets—and pretty soon she was sitting up and looking around. I wasn't exactly angry with her but I was a bit guarded, and I felt better that we were at last on my turf. Running from me in the rain had probably been no more than a little tease—a way to provoke my lust—but it had reminded me of the trickiness of the game we were playing and of the difficulty of trying to decide what was real and what was pretend.

It also brought to mind something that had been simmering in the back of my mind about this relationship: the old consumer warning—beware of deals that seem too good to be true, because they usually are. So far Emma had given me everything I'd wanted while taking little in return, and while it was possible that she was in this just for the sex, I was, I was beginning to doubt it. I was beginning to sense some shadows moving behind the veil.

I pulled off the expressway and the tires splashed in the potholes full of water as we hit the city streets. Emma stretched. The ride had been boring. I was bored too.

My neighborhood's known as Chinatown North or Little Saigon. It's close to the lake (it's officially known as Lakeview) and back in the 20's was actually a very nice area, with big apartment buildings and lots of shopping and a couple of huge ornate movie theaters and the El (which was new then) running right through it. It had become a slum in the '40's and stayed that way till Chinese and Vietnamese started colonizing in the 70's, and it still had the feel of an immigrant ghetto in parts—a weird, eclectic mix of all sorts of people. But now the gentrifiers and developers smelled money and construction barricades were going up. You could still find some good, reasonable places, though, and the neighborhood itself was full of little jewels—great restaurants and tiny bakeries, weird herb shops huddled under the El tracks next to hi-end boutiques; rehabbed deco buildings next to brand new blister-pack condos. I'd been here for seven years.

Even after that deluge there were still people out—always people here, going out to eat, to and from the El, standing outside smoking, hanging around in little doorways getting some air—and it felt kind of good after that drive from the suburbs. The streets looked slick and shiny with the reflected neons, the little Chinese groceries blinking cryptically in the dark. Emma was staring out the windows with guarded fascination, the lights shining on her face, and she looked beautiful. I couldn't tell what she made of it, and I wasn't sure how I felt. On the one hand I was glad there was so much activity, on the other, I'd kind of hoped I would have had her to myself. I didn't want to have to compete for her attention.

"Oh wow," Emma said as we drove by a bus stop. "Look at him. That guy's nuts."

He was. Some tall thin man in a tattered Cubs jacket was yelling "Fuck Youuuu!" at the top of his lungs and throwing both arms up in a double bird towards the moon, it appeared.

"Yeah, well... You see that occasionally. Cubs play today?"

She shook her head and we drove on. I knew she wasn't entirely comfortable in the city and I was trying to make things easy on her. There were a lot of weird characters in this neighborhood.

I pulled down Carmen and took the alley that ran in front of a viaduct covered with graffiti from the Ghost Tiger gang and Insane Gangster Nation and others: RGraham05 and PureRules. Some Viet boys glared at the lights and hid their joint, gave me the finger. The alley led to an enclosed parking lot behind Lakeview Hardware and the Three Happiness Restaurant, and here I parked the van, where the air smelled like hot garlic and sesame oil. We could hear the sizzle of water hitting hot wok and oriental music from a radio, the distnat roar of the El.

Emma rummaged around in her bag and started to pull out her phone, then stuffed it back in. She took out a silver bracelet and glanced at it, then pushed that back into the bag too.

"What's that?" I asked.

"Nothing. A watch."

"A watch? Can I see it?"

She sighed unhappily and retrieved it and handed it to me. It was a very handsome watch, the band made of brushed silver, the watch face a deep, featureless blue, slightly iridescent, and covered with a thick crystal dome. It was very masculine in a very feminine way.

"Why don't you wear it?"

"I don't want to. It reminds me of a ring."

I looked at her. "But it's a watch."

She took it back and put it in her bag. "It's round. It goes around me. It's almost the same thing. I don't like it." She looked around. "Where are we? Are we here?"

"Oh. Yeah, we're here. Almost. Come on, it's just around front. I'll show you."

She took her bag and I locked up.

Carmen's a side street that runs right off Broadway in the heart of Little Saigon, lined with shops—groceries, noodle shops, dry cleaners, a little pharmacy, all local, all jammed together. I live upstairs above First Service Auto Parts and as we walked down the street, the rich, foody smells from the front of Three Happiness suddenly reminded me of how hungry I was. I was cold too, soaked to the skin from being out in the rain.

Emma stopped by the window of Ho Ho's grocery, transfixed by the roast ducks hanging there illuminated by the blue neon sign. "Those things still have their heads!"

"Come on, Emma. I'm freezing."

"Do they eat the heads?" She looked at me.

"Come on." I grabbed her arm when a voice accosted me.

"Hey Conner, man! How you doing? " Jimmy Vu stepped out of the doorway of Ho Ho's, wearing his green fatigue jacket and drinking a juice box. Jimmy's uncle owned First Service Auto Parts and he was always around. He was a big Baby Huey kind of guy with a bad buzz cut that made him look like a baby chick.

"Hey Jimmy." I saw right away that his eyes fixed on Emma. The straw of his juice box stayed in his mouth but didn't move. I smiled. I don't know that he'd ever seen me with a woman before, at least, not one like Emma.

"Emma, this is Jimmy Vu. He knows everyone in this neighborhood and can fix anything, right Jimmy? If you're ever in trouble, Jimmy's the man to see."

This was total bullshit. Jimmy does know everyone and is a very sweet guy but he's totally ineffectual, but I knew Jimmy would like it, and he was clearly knocked out by Emma.

He shifted hands so he could keep the juice box in his mouth and still shake hands. "Pleased to meet you." he said.

"Pleased to meet you, Jimmy." I knew Emma was embarrassed by how she looked.

"We got caught in the rain," I said. "Terrible. Almost drowned. Clinging to tree limbs. Got to go change before we both get pneumonia. Excuse us, Jimmy."

"Yeah sure. It was a bitch, huh?"

"Global warming," I said. We turned and pushed through the street door. I opened the double lock at the bottom and we started up. I live up a long, dark flight of stairs, and halfway up an El went by.

I won't lie. It's very loud. The building shook a little, the stairs trembled. Emma froze, grabbing onto the rail, her mouth open in fear. I'm used to it, I just kept walking, then realized she wasn't with me. I turned back and smiled at her.

"IT'S JUST THE EL TRAIN," I screamed at the top of my lungs. "YOU GET USED TO IT."

The train rumbled off into the distance and we continued up to the apartment door. I unlocked it and pushed it open and let her step inside, watching her, trying to see the place through her eyes. Closed the door, locked it behind her.

It's a semi-converted loft. What that means around here is that it's a big, even vast, unfinished industrial space with a kitchen and two bedrooms and a bathroom tucked into one corner and I did most of the dry wall on those myself. But other than that it's pretty much the same as the auto parts storeroom below me only smaller (I have half of this floor. A restaurant supply outfit has the other). I've got the same plain wooden floors and raw exposed brick walls, the same crude wooden beams. Of course, I sealed my walls to try and keep the dust down and the same for the beams so they have a bit of finish and shine, but other than that, it's pretty much like living in a factory.

It gets better towards the back, towards the living part where the kitchen and bedrooms and bathroom (and El tracks) are, and back there I have a sofa and a few chairs, all my books and my desk and TV and that's where I work, but up in front where you enter, where the windows overlook Carmen, it's just a big, empty space with a kind of industrial grimness, a harshness, maybe even a cruelty. You could play hockey in there. I don't know how much the vases of willow buds and Chinese silk screens and movie posters do to alleviate that emptiness.

I didn't know how a girl from the suburbs would react to it.

Emma stepped into the space I thought of as my living room and looked around. The front windows are big and arched. They look down on Carmen and then out onto the diminishing blocks of the city. The streetlights from outside painted her shadow on the floor behind her and elongated her into the darkness. It was like standing in the mouth of a cave.

"Wow," she laughed. "Conner, this is really cool..."

Her pleasure made me smile. "Yeah. I know."

She raised her hands as if she could feel the space, then she started spinning. All this room usually makes people do things like that. They either spin or they yell.

"Here, I'll show you the kitchen."

I led her towards the back, and as we crossed the front room Emma noticed the chain hoist Jimmy Vu had helped me mount on an eight-foot length of Unistrut just that morning. I'd bought it from Just-Right Auto Parts and we'd driven it into one of the solid oak beams that spanned the front of the loft just that morning: working capacity 1500 pounds. I told Jimmy I was getting into metal sculpture and he'd bought it. The hoist slid smoothly on its four solid steel ball-bearing-loaded wheels up and down the length of the I-beam with the touch of a finger and stopped with a handheld brake.

I stopped and watched her as she examined it.

She looked at me and then the hoist but I didn't say anything. She didn't say anything either. She looked down and saw the deck shackles I'd installed in the floor. These are like screw eyes but made for floors. They fold flush with the surface when you're not using them. You get them at yachting supply places. I know my hardware.

She looked back up. My ceilings are ten feet high. Even from where I was standing I could see her breathing increase.

Any residual anger I held towards her from that episode in the park faded after that as the spell started working between us again, just like that, with just that look she gave me as she examined the hoist and knew I had something planned for her. I showed her the kitchen with the back door that led out to the fire escape and the roof beyond, the windows that looked out onto the El tracks and past that across city blocks to the wall of high rises by the lakefront and the little squares of lighted apartments where people lived their lives, and yet farther beyond, to the great blue-black immensity of the sky over the lake the moon had vacated. I showed her my bedroom with the four-poster bed freshly made up, the chains already attached, and then the other bedroom, the spare room with the door closed and locked and I saw her sudden curiosity and impatience. Everything had been swept and tidied and cleaned with that bachelor's pitiful attention to a woman's company.

I had things planned for us so I wanted Emma to hurry in the shower. I even wanted for us to take turns and her to go first to avoid any funny stuff, but it was no use. I have a great shower, a fantastic shower—a room within a room with a marble floor, glass walls, dual shower heads, my one luxury—and of course I had to go in and show it off, and once I decided to get in with her, all thoughts of a quick rinse just disappeared. I peeled off my wet clothes and dropped them on the floor and stepped into the shower and turned it on. I moaned as the water came on and I just stood there, head into the spray leaning against the wall and letting that blessed warmth soak into my bones.

After a while it occurred to me that I was alone.

"Emma? Aren't you coming in?"

"Did you want me to?"

"Of course I want you to! What do you think?"

Silence. Through the foggy glass I saw her putting her hair up, then take off her clothes. She seemed uncertain. The bathroom was filling with steam, then the door opened and she stepped into the stall.

"I didn't know whether you wanted me to or not."

I was going to say something smart but she stepped into the shower with her hands held up over her chest like a child, blinking against the spray, looking shy and vulnerable and. I held my tongue.

"Come here under the water. I'll soap you."

Her skin touched mine as she slid past. She was cold and she seemed small. I took the hand piece down and trained it on her and she grimaced as the hot water struck her body. She closed her eyes and I ran the water all over her, washing her front from the neck down—her breasts, her chest, her belly. I gently pushed her hands down till she stood in front of me naked and exposed, trusting, hands at her sides. She was embarrassed, I could tell, and it struck me how she could stand in front of me naked if she were tied and not be embarrassed—she could stand in front of me and take the whip—but to stand here and be washed was something else. I was seized with some powerful feeling I can't explain—some need to both violate her and protect her at the same time. I started getting hard and hating myself for it.

"Turn around," I said. "I'll wash your back."

"Shouldn't I do you—?" She looked at me and then dropped her eyes. The attention made her uneasy. "Sorry."

She turned around and pressed her forehead against the tiles. Her hands crossed over her breasts again. It occurred to me that she still carried my semen inside her. I'd have to leave so she could wash herself.

"I'm sorry I ran from you," she said. "It was a silly thing to do."

It took me a moment to remember what she was talking about, and then I just shrugged. "Don't worry about it," I said.

I didn't ask her why she did it. I really didn't feel like I had to know.

I had honestly meant to wash her off and get out. I was like a social director. I had things planned, things I wanted to show her, places I wanted to go with her, but none of them seemed very important now. Here we were warm and wet and my hands were moving over her body and she was getting soft as I touched her.

"Lean against the wall," I said.

I was worried the soap might dry her skin but she was content to let me do what I wanted with her. I soaped my hands and began to rub her down, kneading her muscles as the water streamed down upon us. She rested her cheek against the tile and she suddenly seemed so small and delicate, fairylike, a sylph in the falling water. I was hard now, hard and red and throbbing, some sort of ogre. I leaned against her and my cock slid beneath the globes of her ass and pressed up against her pussy. She automatically thrust her bottom out in invitation, spreading her legs.

I sighed and began to move, dragging my prick against her wet slit, back and forth, holding her hips. Emma gave a little whimper, a kind of questioning sigh, a kind of "Yes? Is this it?" She was ready for whatever I wanted, and once again, her complaisance, her willingness to give herself to my pleasure, just drove me mad with desire.

I began to fuck her, never entering her but pumping, sliding my cock back and forth. The pleasure, the friction was excruciating. I reached up and took her breast in my hand and she covered my hand with hers and showed me to squeeze, to take her.

"Emma—"

"ah...?"

Again that little questioning sigh: "Whatever you want..." I reached for her hair and pulled it free and down it came, catching the water and falling wet into my hand where I seized it and pulled her head back, pulled her away from the wall—she leaned back against me and I took her mouth in a bruising kiss and she melted against me, opening her mouth and surrendering, offering herself, giving it all. My fingers slid around and slid up into her pussy and I felt the thick residue of my own earlier ejaculation still incubating in the heat of her body. I grabbed her breast and holding her tight I backed awkwardly into the shower, as she arched against me lost in that hungry, sucking kiss.

God, she just got to me again—the way she yielded, like anything I wanted to do to her was fine, anything I wanted to take from her, that's what she wanted to give. She even felt that way in my hands, as if she were swollen with some sort of womanly sweetness, bursting with it —her tits, her hips, the tightness of her thighs—and if I didn't relieve her of it, if I didn't squeeze it out of her of pierce her or make her come—she'd just explode.

"Emma!"

"Oh, Conner!"

It was insane, holding her pressed against me as the water streamed down against us. It ran over her face and down her body, dripped from her eyelashes and chin and nipples. It reminded me of come, like she was being bathed in come.

"Put your hands up around my neck, Emma. Hold on to me!"

"What—?"

I showed her, taking her arms and putting them up around my neck so that she was standing, leaning back against me. I reached up and got the hand piece from the shower.

"Don't let go, Emma."

"Oh, Conner! No! Don't!"

I spread her pussy apart with my left hand and trained the shower head on her clit with my right, flicking it across her so the spray whipped across her exposed flesh and made her jerk and cry out as if struck. She instinctively closed her legs and brought her arm down to protect herself.

"Don't you dare, Emma!" I warned. "Keep those hands around my neck like I said!"

"Oohhh..." She whined and locked her fingers around the back of my neck, seeing she had no choice but to close her eyes and hang on. I got a better grip on her, pressing her against me with my forearm and spreading her labia apart and pressing them down to expose her turgid clit, my fingers sliding in her swollen and slippery flesh.

I whipped her with the water again and again and each time she jerked spastically, lifting her hips to the spray and crying out without restraint, her voice echoing off the hard, tiled walls. She was coming, coming with each lash of hot water, hardly even struggling, helpless to resist giving herself to me again and again as if this were her only function in the world.

I felt like a master musician must feel, one with his instrument and joined with it, holding Emma in front of me like a cello, like a string bass, bowing her with the lashing water and feeling her vibrate with orgasm, feeling every stab of pleasure and every ounce of her joy and before I knew it Emma was sobbing and shuddering and I dropped the spray and let her slide from my arms. She fell to her knees and I stood tall over her with my head up and back slightly arched and grabbed her hair and pulled her up and took my prick in my hand and pressed it against her face and with one stroke, then two and then three—I exploded against her, thrusting my hips out, my eyes rolling back in my head in savage release as I pulled her up against me with the strength of my arm, pulled her up and made her take it, my cum splashing all over her, spurting all over her face as I held her there and she rubbed her cheeks and mouth all over my erupting dick, moaning, and panting in a transport of bliss.

*****

We were famished after the shower. Emma wanted to stay in because she thought her hair looked awful and felt her clothes were too muddy but in fact her hair looked fine and I found an old boat-necked sweater that worked well enough for her and I knew she really wanted me to get her outside. Already this was taking on the giddy up-all-night feeling of a teen-aged sleepover and she was glowing with excitement.

Page 16

We skipped down the stairs and out into the street and I wanted to take her across the street to Long Viet which is this tiny hole-in-the-wall place I've always dreamed of taking a girl to, pitch black on the inside and as wide as a closet with a tiny porthole for window and lit only by the blue neon sign, a ridiculously narrow mirrored bar in the back like a sliver of glass, makes it feel like an aquarium.

Down on the street we ran into Jimmy again, this time he was with Uncle Stanley, a little, round-headed, sloe-eyed guy I didn't know very well, and Ricky Sun, who I did know and liked. Ricky'd been in the poetry course I'd taught at Truman College which was just a few blocks down and was a funny kid with bleached blond hair combed into a sculptural brush that gave him an unfortunate resemblance to Beavis or Butthead. It was unfortunate because I think Ricky did it intentionally out of the mistaken belief that people thought Beavis and Butthead were cool, which they did, but not in the way that Ricky thought.

"Conner, Conner, it's an honor!"

The other thing about Ricky is that he wrote poetry by lifting strings of words out of the rhyming dictionary.

I smiled. "You guys still around?"

"Where we supposed to go, Conner?" Rickey smiled.

Emma stepped out where they could see her and the boys, taken by surprise, stood up a bit taller and gave her polite little bows, I introduced her around and they all shook hands, and I was touched to see this sweet formality and Jimmy's showing off as he told the others, "Oh, we've already met, haven't we Emma?"

I gave her my arm as we crossed the street and she took it. I hadn't felt so fucking proud in years. As I pushed open the door of Long Viet I looked back across the street and saw Jimmy and Uncle Stanley smiling at me, their heads almost touching, and Ricky Sun with eyes wide giving me both thumbs up.

*****

It was time for us to talk and there were things I wanted to tell her, but they were confused things and only half clear and I'd hoped for better than that. At my age and for where I thought I'd be in terms of maturity and knowing my own mind, I'd really hoped for better than that. But sitting there in that dark and intimate place with Emma right across from me and almost waiting for me to say something, it seemed impossible to start, and so we sat and ordered food and talked about this and that and I never did say what I should have said.

But what I should have said was this:

I'm a writer, Emma, and a bad poet, and I'll never have the money your David does. I don't know what I've gotten myself into here. I started an affair with you because I wanted your body. I wanted to fuck you and do terrible things to you and I thought that's all I wanted. Now I seem to have fallen in love with you and I don't understand how and I don't know what to do about it.

I don't even know you very well, and I'm almost afraid to know you better. Maybe I love you because I don't know you. Maybe if I knew what you were really like and what you wanted out of life and what you think is important I wouldn't care for you at all and that would be the end of this. You're a lot younger than me and we see things differently. Things matter a lot more to you—material things—and I gave up on those a long time ago, probably because I know I'll never have them, but also because I think I found something more important in my writing.

I don't talk about this much because I feel silly when I do, but when I write, I feel like the most important man in the world, because when I write, I give meaning to things. I create significance, and I create meaning, and as hard as that may for you to believe, that's really even more important than life and death.

You're sitting here with me now, and we were just up at my flat and I was holding you and making you come in my arms, and what does all this mean? We're both here now telling ourselves stories, trying to find the one we like best to describe what's going on. Are we just playing with each other sexually? Are we in love? You're wondering if I'm just using you, if I think you're just a whore. I'm wondering if I'm just some cheap thrill you know you can string along and then dump before you settle down with your boyfriend. We're writing this story, Emma. Everyone's a writer. We all write our own lives and the lives of those around us. It's just that I do it all the time and I think about how I do it more than most people. I do it large. I'm aware of it.

There are stories within stories within stories, Emma. We live in a sea of stories and meanings and symbols. When I first fucked you in that cold empty lecture hall, don't you think I knew what that meant? The echoing emptiness of that auditorium, a place where students gather to learn from a teacher; your aloneness in the dark as I touched you, as you wordlessly begged to be touched? It was cold in there and dark. It was hard. I wasn't kind. Do you know why it had such an effect on you?

When I chased you down in that rainy park and took you in the mud like an animal, do you know what that meant? How you were burning to be free yet needed to be captured and ridden to the ground and fucked in that field in the rain and the grass and the mud with no pretense and no apology and nothing but raw animal passion. I nailed you to the dirt with my cock, Emma. Pulled your hair back till the rain was in your face and rode you like a bitch. It was just what you wanted, wasn't it?

Do you see, Emma? This is what I can give you. This is why I brought you here. Because tomorrow, or the next day, or the next, I'm going to take you around the city and I'm going to show you other stories, magical stories, impossible stories and unbelievable stories, and I'm going to show you how they connect to you and to what you feel and how they reach deep and connect us to unimaginable things. Unimaginable things—the emeralds in the gem room at the Field Museum, the Gods of ancient Egypt, the opium dens of colonial China, the Kabalistic Tree of Life, the gold of the Incas in Pizarro's treasure Ships, the magic of the Italian renaissance, the Italian beef sandwiches of Taylor street and the swaying of the willows by Diversey Harbor. They're all linked by erotic imagination and the power of poetry and that's no small stuff. That's the very fire and chains of love right there, Emma, and I'm offering to give it to you. I'm offering to lay all of this at your feet, to bring it to you, bathe you in it. We'll live in it, because that's what I can give to you, Emma. Do you understand?

And just where are we in all of this? In all this meaning and talk and all this thinking and explaining. Do I even have to say it? It's the one thing that's obvious, that I've been saying all along.

I've been saying it all along the only way it can be said. Not even a writer can say it with words, because it has to be felt, and it has to be felt because it's not even an idea, it's a sensation, an emotion, a certainty, Emma, that's what it is—that sheer presence of me in you, of me against you, of me with you, melting into you, possessing you, having you, being you. It's that one certainty that's too important for words.

It's where we start, it's where we end.

This is what I need you to understand, Emma, more than anything, and this is what I can't even say.

When I started this I thought it was some naughty fun—a game about D/s, BDSM, whips and chains. I never knew this would happen to me, that you would open up this floodgate of emotion, break down this dam of passion. You think I'm playing games, and I almost wish that were true, but what I'm feeling is real. It's real and now I don't know how to convince you it's real. You think I'm playing games, and I almost wish that was true. What I'm feeling is real. It's real and now I don't how to convince you it's real -- and if I can, I'm terrified that I might find out it isn't real to you.

You devastate me, Emma. You destroy me with what you give me. I'm supposed to be the master, I know, and yet you make me weak and helpless, fill me with rage and strength, turn me into a man like I've never been before. It's sick, insane, maybe pathological, but I don't know if I can live without it anymore. When you give yourself to me the way you do, you take me apart and put me back together into something new and strong and clean. You empty me of my rage and anguish and take it into yourself and turn it into something beautiful. I don't know how you do it. I've never known anyone like you.

And yet I know how it must be for you too. Maybe I'm wrong but I swear I can feel what you feel, how you seem to swell with this sweetness as if you're going to burst, your breasts and your pussy and your whole body all filled with this languorous heaviness, and forgive me Emma, but what you want then is not more sweetness and gentility but to have that pleasure pulled from you, beaten from you and taken, your body pierced and punctured, crushed and squeezed by the arms of desire, bruised by fevered kisses and punished by passion. You want to know that a man wants you enough to go mad to have you, will kidnap you and tie you and spend himself upon you and batter you both to pieces in his need to possess you.

That 's how it feels, isn't it? Because that's how it feels to me, and I know that when we're together like that, when it's good like that, we're feeling exactly the same thing. Two people don't get any closer than that, Emma. You don't know how rare and precious that is, for that one brief instant to be you and feel your own love

So that's what I know, Emma. That's all that I know. That all of us live most brightly in our lover's hearts, and in mine right now you have a palace.

I can't even make you an offer yet and I don't know what else to say. Just take what I've told you and think about it, but just know that you're much more to me than what you might think, and that this is much more to me than a game.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

That's what I should have said to her at Long Viet as we ate our bowls of pho and our barbecued pork and pot stickers and drank our tiny cups of tea. That's what I should have said, but I didn't. She looked so beautiful as she sucked up the noodles, the ends whipping around and splattering drops of broth before disappearing between her pursed lips. She laughed at the delicious implications.

I didn't say anything because I was afraid that she really was in it just for the sex, just sowing her wild oats before her marriage to David, and that if I bared my soul to her like that, I'd only make a fool of myself and embarrass us both and lose whatever authority as a Dominant I already had.

But mostly I didn't say anything because I'm such a stupid man.

*****

From Long Viet we went right over to Dee's, one of a chain of weird discount clothing stores scattered around the city and close-in suburbs. I'd discovered Dee's before with a friend but never had an opportunity to shop there myself. They specialized in trendy cut-outs and fashion knock-off stuff that was hot one day and cold the next and ended up selling at Dee's for five dollars for a pair of pants and three for a tee shirt, seven dollars for an entire outfit. They specialized in clothes that were a bit too hip, and had a few too many hanging threads, but every so often my friend said you could find an outrageous bargain, and at those prices you could wear the stuff once and throw it away, which is pretty much what I had in mind.

Dee's was in an over-illuminated over-chromed mini strip mall on Broadway that also contained a blindingly bright fruit market/grocery whose stacks of grapefruits, apples and bananas extended out into the street. Everyone there wore sunglasses. They had to. The mall was frequented by a bunch of pretzel-thin hipless, breastless Asian and Chicano girls who looked faintly green under the powerful fluorescent lights. They made Emma look especially voluptuous, almost meaty.

Thankfully Dee's itself wasn't so bright. Emma had no idea what we were doing there till she rifled through some of the racks and saw the Lurex, velvet, spandex, mesh, vinyl, and then looked at the price tags.

"You've got to be kidding!" she said.

Several of the pretzel girls looked up.

"I know they're kind of flashy, " I said, leaning over a rack of iridescent tops the size of dinner napkins, "But I like flashy. Sue me. I want to buy you some clothes, Emma, my treat. I want to play sugar daddy so you can't say I never got you anything. I know this isn't the highest-end stuff in the world, but still, just for the hell of it. I've got a hundred dollars I don't want to walk out of here with. Okay?"

But Emma's face suddenly got dark and sad, and I realized I'd done something wrong.

"No, Conner. That's okay. couldn't."

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing. It's just... I'd rather not. Is that all right?"

I'm very stupid when it comes to women. Vaguely I sensed something swimming around between us like a fish in the dark again—that same business about what was real and what was a game.

"No, look, Emma," I said, grasping at straws. "It's not like I'm really buying you something. These aren't really clothes. They're props. That's what they are, get it?"

She smiled and shook her head but I think my earnestness must have gotten to her, or she realized she'd hurt my feelings, or something, because she relented.

"Props," I repeated, "And at these prices, I want you to shock me with your lurid and whorish purchases, understand? And check it out—they have underwear too. Behind you."

She looked at me and then looked behind her at a display of demi-bras (my friend had told me their underwear was especially good, their stockings too), and she surrendered: "Well, these bras aren't bad..."

Who was the poet who wanted to be a pair of his lover's panties?

I walked up to the counter and made a show of giving the cashier two fifties. "Don't give these back to me no matter what. I'm an irresponsible madman and will only spend it all on books. Make sure she spends it all. I'll be right back. I have an urgent need for a grapefruit."

I thought Emma might be more motivated if she knew she could surprise me with her purchases, and I secretly liked the corny domesticity of the idea of the woman surprising her mate, so I walked outside and stood in the parking lot and had a cigarette while she spent my money on sexual enhancements.

It was a gorgeous night and I was right where I wanted to be—both satisfied and aching for more. secure and feeling like I was on the edge of a dangerous precipice, almost feeling like I was loved. My failure to tell her how I felt in the Long Viet came back to me. I should tell her, and yet things were going so well. It would be so easy to ruin everything at this point.

Besides, she knew what was going on. We hadn't really made love yet. She knew I hadn't brought her all the way into the city just for a quick shower and a bowl of noodles. She'd seen the hoist and the locked room and now here I was buying her clothes at Dee's and she knew I had something planned. The main event was still to come. There was time.

I was worried about leaving her alone so I walked back in. The cashier nodded towards the changing booths in the back and I walked back, and I heard her voice coming from one of the stalls, tight, low, urgent, talking on her cell phone.

"...Well see? That's why I didn't want to_tell_ you! If you didn't_know_, then you wouldn't_have_ to lie! You're the worst liar in the world, Angela, and David knows that too! ...(pause)...Well— Well— Well, just turn it_off!_ Just don't answer it anymore! Angela—? Angela—?Angela! Would you listen to me—!?"

I turned and walked out, went outside, face burning, dizzy.

Supposedly no one knew where she was. Her roommates didn't know. Her fiancé didn't know. It was our secret affair, private, our own little game, something we shared. If anyone got hurt it would be just us. And now here it was—the tone of her voice, tight, pinched, pleading,manipulative.

Strange how my face burned. Throbbed almost—the part of me I show the world. As if I'd been slapped.

I leaned against a car and watched as Emma came out of the dressing room, putting her phone away. She didn't look at me. She looked at the outfits she'd taken in with her. I tried to see her for who she was.

But was it really so weird, I asked myself? What had I heard? I'd heard her having words with Angela her roommate about David's calling her and that was really all. So Emma had lied to me when she told me her roommates didn't know about us. Was that such a big deal? It kept me from pestering her at home. It kept me from dropping by or trying to make more of this thing than it was. Was that so unreasonable?

Still, the doubt remained. Her tone of voice on the phone wasn't the tone of voice I knew.

She'd stepped out of character and I hated that.

I wasn't sure who she was anymore. The idea that maybe I was playing a part in her game wouldn't leave me, that I was a minor character in the story she was writing featuring her and David wouldn't leave me. The lights in Dee's suddenly seemed too harsh and too flat at the same time, and Emma seemed to pick up some of that green cast to her skin as well.

We paid for her stuff and went back to my place.

"Should I model what I bought or do you just want to—?"

"No, let me see. Let's see it all," I said.

We were back in the bedroom surrounded by the white and black bags from Dee's and I started going through them as if David might be inside. That was my obsession now, that Emma was having this affair with me just to make him jealous and goad him into adopting D/s as if it were nothing more than a lifestyle like yoga or vegetarianism—("Oh, come on, David! You know that Conner Devlin in Chicago did D/s with me and we had a great time! You should really try it!")—that she was making mental notes of what I was doing so she could report to him as if it was a technique he could learn off 3X5 note cards. I felt like my recipes were being stolen.

I started drinking. I was tense and angry and it started to hit me right away.

She'd bought nice things. Fairly conservative, handsome clothes; skirts of fabrics that might not be expensive but still, hung with simplicity, tops of soft and elegant cut. Amidst all the flash and glitter and whorishness at Dee's, Emma had managed to find clothes that remembered a woman's beauty and made me ashamed of the particular kind of hot-pants lust I was looking for, and that only irritated me more.

"That's it? That's as slutty as you could find?"

She looked at me. "I bought more. I was saving them for later."

I picked up a gray skirt. It was some synthetic I suppose, soft, like cashmere. Not unusually tight or short. It wasn't what I'd been expecting. It wasn't what I'd been hoping for.

"Fine. Let's go then. Get dressed. One more place I want to take you and then we can come back and get down to business. I've got some stuff to get ready while you change,"

"Do you want me to wear that skirt?"

"Sure, yeah, whatever. Wear the skirt. No, wait a minute. I got something else you can wear."

I went over to my dresser and opened the top drawer, I'd been saving this for later, but I was a little drunk now and it seemed to me that this was as good a time as ever.

I took a gift-wrapped box and gave it to her and I should have known—I should have seen the look in her eyes that said, "Don't do this to me. Please don't do this to me," and maybe I did. Maybe I saw that look and I gave it to her anyhow because I had the feeling at this point that things were somehow already over and maybe I just wanted to hurt her. But I gave it to her and I made her take it and I stood there while she unwrapped it and tore the paper off and then opened the box.

Page 17

It was a collar. A silk-lined, leather collar, cushioned with velvet, set with mother-of-pearl studs and tourmaline cabochons and three stainless steel rings. It had a stainless steel buckle and a lock and key and four silver bells that hung free and chimed so I'd always know where she was by the sound it made. I'd had it custom made and it had cost me four hundred and sixty-five dollars.

Her face went pale. She lifted it out of the box and said, "Oh Conner. I can't wear this. You know I can't."

"It's not a fucking ring, Emma. Okay? It's a collar. It's a fucking collar!" I took it from her hands and threw it in the box and threw the box in the drawer.

*****

The Blue Moon is the oldest bar in continuous existence in the city of Chicago. What that means is that they've been drinking there since 1923. Al Capone drank there, actually owned it for a while. The booth he sat at is still there. The basement room he and his flunkies gambled at is still downstairs but stripped now and used for storage only, but there's still a tunnel that runs beneath Broadway and comes up on the other side of the street a block away for use in case of police raids, of which there were none, because Capone owned the police.

The Blue Moon is the quintessential private eye bar, forever stuck in that era of hard booze and fast women, garish green lights and red juke boxes, men in fedoras and women in low-cut dresses. The people who go there know it and they dress the part, so going there is half night-out, half costume party. It's always kind of surreal.

Harvey the bouncer met us outside and we squeezed in through the crowd at the door and made our way down the long bar towards the bandstand in the back where the booths were, already occupied. The place was dark and crowded as usual, but there always seemed to some space you could slide into. It was noisy without being loud, bubbling and alive, crowded without being crushing. It was a perfect bar, exciting and relaxing at the same time, a sense of anticipation always in the air. You walked in and looked around and there were people looking for you. The dim booths, shadowy corners, colored spotlights reflecting in polished brass instruments, rows of bottles standing against cloudy mirrors. It was here that they'd started the poetry slams in the early 80's, opening up the mikes to any poets who wanted to read, and suddenly the word went out and people started crowding in to hear this new, spoken music and things took off. That's how I found this neighborhood and found this life, and that's why I'd brought Emma down here to this place I'd told her so much about, to meet my other mistress. But now that we were here I was feeling strange and confused, still upset about that phone call and the collar and so many things. And it was early yet, not even midnight

We found a place at the very edge of the bar almost next to the bandstand under a bust of Plato. The band was a Retro big band called Retro Metro-- 18 pieces, 3 singers in 40's outfits and camellias in their hair, great brass, all professionals. They suck up a room and spit it out, and for someone like Emma who'd never heard live big band, they were a revelation, like discovering music for the first time There was one stool at the end of the bar right next to the band stand and I slid Emma onto it as the band was playing "Night in Tunisia" and her eyes just went wide. We were so close you could almost feel the blast from the trumpets and hear the keys on the saxophones slapping and hear the musicians laughing and kidding each other and ordering drinks from the bar. The air smelled of beer and sweat and gardenia and people were dancing in a way you don't see anymore—jitterbugging, foxtrot, tango, really good dancers, dancing out of sheer joy. But I was irritated and confused and ordered a double whiskey for myself while Emma had a rum and coke.

I'd made it a point not to really look at her when we left my place, but now I did, when I took off her sweatshirt and threw it on a stool, not caring whether anyone took it or not.

She was wearing the gray skirt, which hung on her without pleat or wrinkle, an exquisite, mistlike curve that showed where space stopped and Emma began. Above the skirt she wore a white top with a square neck and long, tight sleeves that was gathered between the tits in a way that was both innocent and suggestive. It was made of some material that looked very tactile—the urge to touch it was almost overwhelming, and I guess that was the point.

Her entire person was made for holding, I realized—her shape, her scent, the colors she'd chosen, the way she moved, the textures of her clothes. In the mood I was in it was maddening, not just that she was made for holding, but that she had designed herself to appeal this way to me. Why did she do this to me if she didn't want me to hold her? I was trapped now and confused, angry and humiliated about the collar.

The band rushed up to a close, hit the note and held it. The dancers stopped, fell away in happy applause, whistles.

I noticed the clock: midnight. I turned to her. "Aren't you expecting a call?"

"Who?"

"David. He should have called you by now."

Emma looked at me cautiously. "Sometimes he doesn't call."

I nodded wisely, as if in sympathy. "Good thing he didn't call tonight with us being in a bar and everything, huh?"

The Band started playing and Emma put her drink down. "Conner, what's wrong? Why are you so angry? What have I done?"

"Who says I'm angry? It's just a lucky coincidence that he doesn't call tonight while you're out with your other boyfriend."

I looked at her. It was terrible. I was hurting her and it was like I was cutting my own stomach open but I couldn't stop.

"He doesn't know you're out with me, does he, Emma? No one knows you're out with me, right? That's what you told me, and you wouldn't lie to me."

I saw the fear in her eyes then. She knew I'd found out. She spun so she was facing the room, sideways to me. She was so incredibly beauiful. Even with what she was doing to me she was beautiful

"No," she said, "No one knows about us."

I took a sip of my drink, as the band started up the next number. I was leaning against the bar so I was a little behind her. I put my drink down and leaned over her, slid my arm over her chest and caressed her breast.

"You're a terrible liar," I whispered in her ear. "You must even be a worse liar than Angela."

I felt her stiffen. I kissed her on the side of the neck. She smelled wonderful. Like flowers.

She pulled away and turned around. "Conner? I think that's enough. I think it's time I went home. I want a cab. You're too drunk to drive."

I looked at her for a moment and then smiled. "Sure, honey. Fair enough. One dance, okay? One dance."

The band was playing a slow, campy version of Fats Domino's "Blueberry Hill", bloated and overdone, a grotesque, rollicking parody of itself. A lissome girl in a black velvet 40's evening gown stepped up to the microphone and started belting out the lyrics with super exaggerated enunciation, wrapping her lips and tongue around each syllable with cock-sucking, clit-licking enthusiasm. I took Emma's hand and dragged her off the stool.

I don't dance and Emma doesn't either, not to a song like this, but she was too shocked to resist, and too frightened. I was frightened myself, with no idea what I was feeling or what I was trying to do. I grabbed her and put my arms around her and held onto to her and she had no choice but to follow. The room was a garish green, the music was swollen and staggering, the singer sounded like she was having sex with the microphone, and in my arms was the girl who was killing me with the love I felt for her. I pressed my face into her neck and crushed her to me like I wanted to kill her.

"I found my thrill..."

I held her in my arms and she was already a million miles away, she was already a memory, a ghost, and this would be all I'd have of her, this stiffness I held in my arms.

"Call me_'master'_," I whispered.

Emma sighed and I squeezed her against me. It felt good to use my strength. It felt good the way she yielded.

"Master!" Emma whispered.

I twisted her wrist behind her back and pushed it up, up between her shoulder blades—up until she gasped and her breast pressed into me.

"Again!"

"Conner! God! Master!Oh! Master! Conner!"

I pushed her back into a dark little corner, behind a phony column where shadows hid us and only one beam of sickly yellow light could get through and slash across her face and in that light I saw her looking at me fearfully. I kept her arm twisted behind her back.

"You're a liar, Emma. You're a liar but you're going to give me what I want anyway, understand?"

"No, Conner. No, I—"

"Master!"

"—Master! I—"

"Shut up! I'm tired of playing games, Emma. I'm tired of being yanked around. You're not going anywhere tonight. I'm not taking you back to campus, I'm not taking you back to your car. You're staying with me tonight and you're staying for as long as I want you to stay. I'm not playing with you any more, Emma, do you understand? You're coming home with me and you're going to give me what I want. You're going to give it to me if I have to fucking crawl inside your mouth to get it!"

"Conner! Conner!Master!"

I grabbed her face in my hands and I kissed her. I kissed that lying mouth. I kissed her and I bit her lips and I felt the tears spill down her cheeks. I was on fire and my cock was hard, stabbing her like a dagger as I held her face in my hands and leaned my weight against her, pressing her back against the wall.

The band was playing and the singer finished her verse and the trombone player must have stood up because as I kissed her and sucked the air from her lungs I heard the first golden blast of that pure, fat horn on my back and it seemed to drive me harder on top of her, pushing her into the corner till it was like we were in a world of our own, just me and Emma unseen by anyone. I dropped one hand to her leg, her thigh, and slid it up under her skirt, lifting the skirt, and Emma was biting me frantically, and I don't know if she wanted me or she hated me and anyhow I didn't care because it didn't matter anymore either way. Tears were spilling down her face.

I abandoned my assault on her thigh and my hand went around to her behind where I started lifting her skirt, my hand gathering up the soft fabric. I gathered it up till I felt her naked ass. She was wearing some kind of thong and I spread her cheeks apart with my fingers and began to run my finger up and down her crack. Emma moaned and put her hands on my cheeks and now apparently she decided she wanted it because she kissed me, holding my face as if she were trying to hold me steady or make me slow down—

"Don't touch me, slave!" I hissed at her.

She pulled her hands away as if struck and pressed them against her shoulders, clenching them into tight, nervous little fists. I pushed my finger against her asshole and she whimpered.

"Oh God, Conner! I don't know what to do! What do you want me to do? Master! Master! What do you want me to do?"

I didn't answer. Standing in that little alcove with the shadows of the dancers sweeping over us, I pressed her against me and pushed my finger against her asshole while in front my hand slid under her skirt and found her pussy. She had managed to find some naughty things at Dee's after all—a g-string with a gauzy invisibly fine little pantie that clung tight to her little mound like a shadow, no thicker than a piece of cellophane—and split around her pussy so that her labia were revealed to the air and the night. How interesting...

I leaned against hers. I pressed my weight against her and pushed her into the wall as I slid my hand under her skirt and continued to investigate her as if I were learning all this for the first time.

The panties were split, and hanging down over her clit was a little string of beads or pearls, I couldn't tell, but they hung down so that they'd slap against her clit as she walked, as she moved, spanking herself, keeping herself aroused and ready. It didn't matter that I'd made her buy them, that I'd insisted she buy slutty underwear and that she wore them just for me. They made me nuts for her, filled me with rage and excitement. They must have been spanking her all the time we were walking to the Blue Moon—and now as I fingered and fondled her clit she totally forgot my no-touch order and totally forgot my rage and anger and she turned on and lit up like a little flare as I touched her, igniting and melting against me, rubbing her hot, open mouth against mine and dissolving into a buttery pool.

"Conner, please! Don't make me... Don't..."

"Come, Emma! You're going to come for me right here you little slut! You're going to come for your Master to show him how much you love him! To show him you love him more than anyone!"

Her face was screwed up into a tight litle mask of shame and denial and her body was trembling as she fought me but I wouldn't let her win. I refused to let her win. I needed her more than she needed herself, much more than she needed herself and I played with her clit and pressed against her anus and felt her shudder and sob.

"Conner! Please! Master! Oh God! Master! I can't!I can't!"

But already she was gone and as soon as my middle finger broke through her tight little sphincter in back she sobbed and pushed her pussy at me and I felt a hot little stream when she came, a hot little dollop of her lubricant dripping out into my hand, so utterly filthy. I loved it—all dressed up in her sweet little outfit, yet play with her pussy and stick your finger in her ass and the cum drips out of her like juice from a peach. She'd squirted before when she'd come but never like this, never in this precious little drop, and she shuddered deeply, trembling so violently I thought she might fall, so that when she grabbed onto me I didn't object. She buried her face against my chest, mouth open, gasping for air.

"Master, Master!"

"Again, Emma! Again, damn it!"

"No! Please, no!"

The trombone player was still soloing, the rest of the brass limbering up, preparing to dive back in and see the song home, and I felt Emma's thighs quivering, the wad of come sliding off my finger as I pushed her towards another orgasm.

She was helpless when she got like this. She couldn't stop coming. She dug her nails into my shirt. Opened her mouth and bit me. I shoved my finger up into her ass.

"That's it, slut! Bite me, Emma! Bite me! Fucking make me bleed!"

She snarled like a feral cat and her ass squeezed tight on my finger, her snarl becoming a high squeal of release as she came again. My shirt was wet where she bit me.

"Conner, no more! Please, no more! Not here. Please!"

I looked at her, tiny—helpless, her eyes closed tight . The music washed around us in a river of rich golden sound and Emma was caught like a beautiful little tropical fish on the hook of my fingers. I wanted to crush her in my fist and I wanted to take her in my hands and cherish her next to my heart. It was a place she always put me—paralyzed between boiling sexual rage and weeping tenderness, and in the eye of this testosterone-fueled hurricane, Emma stood and hid against me from my own rage and shivered in constant orgasm. It was more than I could stand.

"Come on!"

I grabbed her hand and led her out through the front of the bar. The band was just getting to its feet and lifting their horns and all standing up and putting their horns to their mouths and blowing—the solid, hard-driving, good-rocking-tonight wide open final chorus, down the streets of the city and over the roofs of Chicago and out into the darkness over the Lake and I grabbed Emma and led her stumbling with her tear-stained face and shaking legs out through the press of people—some my age, some hers; some who looked at us, some who didn't—out the door and out onto the heat of Broadway in the summer night, across the street dodging cars and down the block, neither of us speaking, neither of us saying a word. In the wake of the rain the air had died and grown stifling and hot and I began to sweat as I led her along by the hand, her having to trot occasionally to keep up, till we came to Carmen and we turned down my street, passed the now-dark windows, came to my door and I opened it and led her into the hot dark inside.

"Come on," I said. "Upstairs."

I remember my mind was unusually sharp as I followed her up, although I'm not quite sure what that means in this context, because I really didn't know what I was doing anymore. Or maybe that was it. I didn't have to worry about sending the wrong message or being misunderstood anymore, so that made things very clear and simple. I didn't have to be careful and try and see things through her eyes and wonder if she'd misinterpret or misunderstand. I didn't have to think about anything at all. I'd taken Emma and she was mine—for the night at least—and at this point there was no tomorrow and no fucking around. I was going to have my way with her.

The front of the loft was totally dark when we entered. There was just enough light coming in from the street so you could make out the chain hoist hanging there from the beam, looking as ominous as a hangman's noose. There was a plain white wooden trunk standing nearby I'd put there earlier while Emma'd been changing. All my gear was in there, things I'd been collecting against this night.

"Go stand over there," I gestured towards the wall near the hoist.

"Conner, what are you going to do?"

"Just shut up and do it!"

She did as I said,

Despite all the windows being open it was so hot and sweltering in the loft that the place was giving off its ancient smell of musty wood and machine oil, and it was almost enough to make me feel bad for her, seeing her dressed up in those clothes I'd bought for her. Almost. But then what did I care?

It occurred to me how stupid I must have looked to her, taking her to Dee's. She had no sense of irony when it came to things like clothes and material goods. This was David's girl. She probably thought I'd been serious when I'd taken her there, and as I watched her cross the floor now in that skirt and her white top, the foolishness of this entire affair hit me.

I turned to ice inside. I went to the trunk I'd pulled out earlier and dragged it over closer. I got what I needed: a spreader bar and anklets, the suspension cuffs, a metal carabineer. I went to Emma and stood in front of her and began to buckle the cuffs on. They weren't simple, having fours buckles each and it took some time. Her tits were rising and falling with each breath and she kept her eyes closed, waiting. As I worked, I spoke to her.

"You know, this emptiness, it's a female thing. The space in here. It's female."

She said nothing.

"I'm telling you what this means, Emma. I'm telling you what everything means from now on, because I don't think I'm getting through to you."

I finished the one cuff and started on the other. It's funny I hadn't noticed her scent in the bar, or earlier, or ever before in our relationship as far as I could recall, but now I did, very subtle and opulent and sexually arousing, so that I really wanted to bury my face in her neck and inhale her fragrance. And how had she done that? Had she brought perfume in her bag? Had she applied some while I was dragging her down the street? Or was her nervousness making her emit some natural pheromone meant to soothe a male attacker and deflect his wrath into thoughts of sex?

"Darkness is female too," I said. "And silence and quiet and all things that receive and take in and that are passive and horizontal and wet and soft and cool and sweet."

I snugged the last buckle in place and clipped her wrists together with the carabineer.

Page 18

"And with all this femininity at work, the poet in you asks, where are the masculine influences to counterbalance them? Because in poetry class we certainly learned how inportant it is to maintain a balance between masculine and feminine elements, between light and dark, passive and aggressive, hidden and overt. Well, here they come..."

I grabbed the chain hoist and slid it over and we both looked up as this cast iron demon swept in smoothly above us on its steel wheels like one of the four horseman of the apocalypse. A 1500-pound capacity chain hoist isn't a huge piece of machinery but it's still handsome and menacing, all manly and metal and dripping chains, and what male doesn't get off on seeing a nice powerful piece of industrial machinery at work?

I locked the brake on the hoist and pulled down the lifting chain, opened the toggle on the stainless steel hook and clipped it to Emma's wrists. I pulled on the hauling chain and the lifting end ran through the block with a smooth, clocklike whirr and Emma's hands lifted up to eye level.

"Conner...!"

I bent down and attached the spreader bar to her ankles, buckled the anklets in places then attched the short chain to the the bar to one of the floor shackles and stood up. Emma stood there and looked at me with her eyes wide in the darkness, her breasts rising and falling. I could feel the emptiness of the loft stretching around us.

The hoist had a thirty-to-one mechanical advantage and as I ran the chain through my hands, Emma's wrists starting rising inexorably, up, up, up over her head. Up till her hands were extended like the hands of a diver and she was standing straight and reaching up, then on her toes, then reaching high. The chain to the spreader bar pulled taut and she started to fall back but the chain caught her and held her, suspending her from her arms and she cried out in alarm.

She stood there rocking slightly, feet apart, arms extended, looking straight ahead, helpless.

She was still dressed though, still wearing her clothes from the bar. I stood behind her. I reached into my pocket. The knife was about three and a half inches long and opened with the smoothness of silk upon silk. I pulled out the hem of the white top she was wearing. It was too bad—it fit her so well,

"Don't move," I said.

In the dim light of the loft it only took a few seconds to cut off the top, running the knife up from the hem to the collar, and then along the arms. Her skin beneath was flawless. I was very careful. As I cut her clothes off her, I talked to her.

"There's something I read that says that this is all a form of worship, Emma, that in a funny way, I'm worshipping you. I think that's kind of right. Because when we worship something, we're trying to get control of it, aren't we? We're trying to tell God or whatever, be nice to me, give me a break. We're trying to say, I adore you, you're fantastic, but take it easy on me too, aren't we? And yeah, I'd say that about sums up what I'm trying to do with you, Emma. That comes pretty close."

I'd cut through the skirt and yanked it off and she cried out. She was scared now, hanging in that chain, and I knew her arms wouldn't take much of this. I had to hurry.

I went up behind her. I whispered in her ear. "I have to take your bra off, baby. Your pretty panties too."

She nodded nervously.

I slid my hands along her skin. She was warm and soft and so ready to be fucked just like this. And I was so on fire for her.

I slid the knife under the straps of the bra and sliced through them, then unhooked it and let it fall. I pulled the sides of her panties out and sliced through those as well, then pulled the garment through her legs.

"Are you ready, Emma?"

"Yes."

I took up the little bit of the slack in the hoist, pulling till her body was bowstring tight and the soles of her shoes started to rise off the floor. She cried out and gasped. Her rib cage lifted and her stomach sucked in and she started to pant like a dog.

"You all right, baby?"

"Yes. Yes!"

I stepped behind her. "I'm afraid I have to gag you."

"All right. Do it. Do I get a safe word? What's my safe word? Three times?"

I moved behind her and slid the ball between her teeth and buckled the gag into place behind her head. I finished and took a moment to just run my hands down her perfect body, over her breasts and her swollen nipples, her ribs, the dramatic in-tuck over her waist and flare of her hips.

I stepped back and tested the balance of the flogger in my hand,

"No, baby," I said. "I'm afraid I can't give you that. This time there is no safe word."

I raised the flogger and brought it down hard on her ass and then again and Emma yelled—a desperate, muffled sound in the loft—and I had to stop myself because I didn't want to end up beating her. That's what I'd been afraid of and I didn't want that, so I backed off and walked in a circle a couple of times just to cool off. I was too hot, too on edge, still pissed about the whole David business.

I started in again, this time just brushing her ass with the flogger, aiming it so the fall just singed her buttocks and tickled them with pain and I saw her flex her ass and arch her back. That's what I wanted. To arouse her. To drive her crazy with it like she drove me crazy. That was how to use my anger. Emma threw her head back and bit into the gag. Her hands gripped at the chains, then she dropped her head again and closed her eyes as the whip fell. I knew she was concentrating on the sensation, that teasing, stinging, driving sensation. Conner's telling you you're a slut, honey. Conner's saying it. Conner and his nasty whip. Is he right? Is he?

I began a steady, rhythmic series of figure eights, bringing her senses alive. The flogger came down in the darkened loft with a wicked scything sound, and soon I began to hear Emma's muffled moans.

I am right, aren't I, Emma? Yes, I am. You like it, don't you? You love it. Nipples getting hard. Pussy starting to throb. You love it, Emma. You love being whipped.

Her head went back, eyes closed. Starting to feel good now. The pain's starting to buy her something, a certain kind of freedom, a permission to own a part of her sexuality that I can only admire. God, she's fucking beautiful when she gets whipped! Just incredible!

The flogger first stings, then burns, then numbs and raises a deep, throbbing, endorphic hunger, and as I whipped her, I fixated for some reason on her foot in her shoe, on the delicacy of her ankle and the way it moved as the whip came down—the little twitch and surrender, as if eager to get going, the pull against the anklet that held her bound to the spreader bar. Strange how we fix on such little trivial things and find such incredible heat in them.

After a time I stepped in front of her and grabbed her hair, pulled her head back and saw the fear and excitement in her eyes. If she were faking, I couldn't tell—fear and excitement, and she wanted more. I put my hand between her legs and pushed up and my palm came away smeared with wetness. She stared at me and dared me to go on.

I started whipping her chest, her breasts, the same figure eight, upper left to lower right, upper right to lower left. Emma let her head fall back at first and then raised it again, tucking in her chin to look down at her chest as the flogger fell, watching the marks appear on her skin, watching her breasts as they shook and recoiled under the flogger's blows, watching what was happening as if it weren't happening to her, as if it were someone else, as if she could almost believe it till every few strokes I'd have to stop and reach out and caress her breasts and feel how hot they were, and the nipples, feel how swollen.

I switched to her thighs, swinging the flogger back and forth as if I were scything weeds, feeling the leather slap against the firmness of her legs and stick and drag over her sweat-slick skin. It was as if she had something of mine. She had something and I wanted it back. I didn't know what it was, or maybe that wasn't even it. There was just something, something she did to me that I couldn't stand. She just tore me up, this girl, this woman. She tore me up and did things to me and I felt like I was fighting for my life here, fighting for my sanity, pitting my 235 pounds against her maybe 135, and me with my whips and hoists and chains and ropes and I didn't have a chance.

Outside in the street a car had stopped, subs cranked, bass booming through the deck, you could feel it in your chest, the muffled rattling, impotent boom

"Damn it, Emma! Damn it!"

The sizzling hiss of the whip as I flogged her tits, her nipples. She gasped and wailed but there was nothing she could do to escape or avoid the blows, stretched as tight as she was, crucified almost, caught in mid air and suspended between the spreader bar and the hoist, rigid, gagged, exposed, and despite her shuddering and her protests the sheen of her own obscene juices smeared on her thighs by the blows of the whip showed how excited she was. She was driving me mad, and her own quivering excitement was making me hit her harder, whip her faster, going for the essence of her, reaching for the bone. Emma was shaking. Saliva began to ooze from the corners of her mouth.

Slapp!! Whapp!! Smackk!! Whackk!!

"What the fuck have you done to me, Emma?" I snarled. "I want to know what you've done to me!"

I aimed the flogger at her cunt, bringing it up between her legs so the fall slapped against the flesh of her pussy, the strands slapping against her buttocks from below. She howled behind the gag, her eyes clenched tight.

Whapp!! Whackk!! Slapp!! Smackk!!

"You've taken something from me, bitch! You've fucking taken something from me and I want it back! Understand me? I want it back!!"

She's flying now, her body rigid like a diver's—arms stretched overhead and wrists together, legs flexed and rigid and held apart by the spreader bar, long hair flowing over her tits, her eyes clenched tight in painful endurance as the flogger slaps up against her pussy again and again and Emma's muffled cries of rising excitement get higher and higher and more and more urgent and hysterical, out of control...

Whackk!! Flackkk!!! Smasshh!!! Slasshh!!!

"Come on, Emma! Come on bitch! Get it, Emma! Get it for me, baby! Give it to me! Get it for me, Emma, damn it!! Get it! Get it!!"

I could see she was starting to come, see she was starting to lose it I could see it in the way she was trembling, her stomach heaving, jerking, her breath rushing in and out of her dilated nostrils like the snorting of a bull, her fingers spreading wide as if they'd break off and then clenching tight into trembling, agonized fists. The muscles on the insides of her thighs quaking with the strain of fighting it off and her eyes were closed tight and clenched in the pain of overwhelming ecstasy...

I dropped the flogger and rushed to her, terrified she'd pass out, yanked the gag from her mouth and tore slack from the hoist to lower her. She started to crumple, falling into my arms like a sack of wheat. She gasped for breath, sucked in a piteous lungful of air and turned to me, eyes still closed—"Conner! Conner—!"

"Emma! Yes, baby, yes! I've got you! I've got you now! I've got you"

"Connerrrrr!!!"

I held her as she jerked and spasmed in convulsive orgasm as if a thousand volts of electricity were ripping through her in total sensory overload and I crushed her to me as if only I could keep her from exploding into pieces out of sheer ecstasy. She hung half in my arms and half in the hoist and jerked and twitched and came and came and came, and it was like heaven, it was glorious, it was like it was me myself who was doing it, who was coming like that, and I actually felt the thrills rip through my own body in waves of concentric bliss, as if there were parts of her that I had somehow internalized or ingested that now responded to the pleasure in her like the ocean responds to the pull of the moon and they rushed to her, feeling what she felt.

—But no, it was better than me myself doing it because it was her, and I'd taken her there. It was the place I'd taken her, the story I'd told her, the heart I'd given her, and I stood there and held her and squeezed her and took everything back from her—anything she'd taken from me and anything I'd given her, anything she'd stolen and anything she'd borrowed, I got it all back from her right then, it all came flooding back in overflowing and I unhooked her from the chains and sank to the floor with her in my arms and sat there holding her and rocking with her and thinking that this was only sex and this was only sex and that's all that this was, only sex.

And I thought: if I took her back tomorrow, we still were even.

*****

"Conner, please—"

"Quiet, Emma"

"Conner—"

She was standing under the hoist, completely naked. The cuffs were gone, the spreader bar and anklets were gone. The gag was lying on the floor. Her wrists were lashed behind her, and I was fastening my collar around her neck.

"It doesn't mean anything, okay? It's just a piece of decoration, a piece of jewelry I happen to like. Can you think of it that way. Does it have to be some big fucking deal? It looks good on you, that's all. It turns me on, Emma, isn't that enough?"

She looked like she was going to cry. It had been a long fucking night.

"Come here."

I pulled her towards me, took her in my arms and kissed her neck, inhaling her scent and the smell of the leather and burying my face in her hair. I couldn't help it, the thing did turn me on. It's a shameful secret of mine—the sight of a collar on a woman is a powerful aphrodisiac to me. It's ridiculous but true, and Emma was still mine for the night.

I took her ass in one hand and massaged her breast carefully in the other. I was cautious in the way I touched her. She was red and hot from whipping and I'd already salved her down, but Emma was Emma—upset or not she melted against me and flowered beneath my touch and my kisses, pressed herself into my hands and began to purr.

"That's better," I said. "That's better, better..."

In all this time I hadn't come, I hadn't had any relief. I'd been up and I'd been down and I was aware of the ache in my groin and the wetness in my shorts but I hadn't even allowed myself to think of relief. And now it was time. Now it was time.

I went to the trunk and pulled out a bunch of things already wrapped in a towel. I was already prepared for this. The last thing I took out was a big blanket which I folded in half and spread over the trunk for a bed.

"Come here, Emma. Come here."

There in the darkness in the middle of the big empty floor I had her sit on the edge of the trunk and I kneeled between her legs. It was late now and there wasn't much noise off the street as I leaned forward and closed my eyes and lost myself in the softness of her tits again, that shy and generous sweetness. Breasts would be fantastic even if they weren't erotic. The fact that women love to have them played with just makes them miraculous, a reason to be glad to be alive. As I nuzzled and kissed her flesh, Emma sighed and her face took on an innocent look of sensual pleasure, She closed her eyes touched my cheek with her fingers as if welcoming me to her boobs, as if I'd been a stranger. I understood. After all this time of being focused on her, it was as if, who was this man? Who's coming to use this body? But it was my turn. It was time.

I stood up and slid off my shorts. I was hard and ready. I kneeled back down on the floor and picked up the silver chain and found the clamp, slid it around her nipple and screwed it on. We both watched. Not too tight. I don't want to distract from the main event. I just want her to be aware. We both watched as I affixed the hardware to her body, the jewelry, putting my mark on her, no matter how temporary. First one, then the other. She winced, then relaxed, moved her shoulders back and forth. For now, these were Conner's. She was letting me use them. Her breathing increased.

We still haven't talked. In all that's happened between us, we still haven't talked, and it's important you know this in light of what happened next. Am I spoiling my story by telling you what an idiot I am? I hope not, because I think you should probably know that by now. At this point, after all that's happened, I still think that Emma's going back to David tomorrow, and so does she. We have a sexual affair so perfect that we can't get past the sex.

I lower her down onto her back on the trunk. I bring her ass to the edge of the trunk and I stand up. I'm rock hard and aching. She's absolutely beautiful lying there wearing my collar, despite the lash marks on her breasts and thighs or perhaps because of them, despite the uncertainty on her face, the trace of sadness and threat of tears.

I touch her knees to spread her legs.

"Please, Conner. I want you so much!"

"Yes."

I bend my knees slightly. I don't even have to touch my cock. He seems to know the way, and she's so swollen and wet and open it's like they're magnetized. He finds her and he touches her and with the slightest move from me he parts her and she opens and he just slips inside, just barely, because I'm holding him back.

Even so, Emma arches as if struck, gasps, her hands seize my forearms and her nails dig into my skin, Her knees rise. Despite my need, I force myself to stop there just to torture us both.

"Are you ready?"

"Oh yes!"

I slide into her.

Despite all the attention and foreplay and bondage and whipping and orgasms and all the baroque and bizarre sex, Emma's still tight, hot, fresh, and quivering with need for this simple act of love. She spasms when I enter, cries out with painful satisfaction, greets me with animal heat and I plunge all the way into her with a pure, primal hunger of my own, pushing my weight into her.

"God, Emma! Christ, you're good! God, I forget how good you are like this!"

Her face is all sweet and creamy with lust. She smiles as she squeezes me with her buttery pussy. She makes me groan.

"Fuck me, Conner. Fuck me!"

I pull out of her and plunge back in, my loins whapping against her upturned thighs. Emma arches and squeezes me again.

I start to fuck her now, pumping into her, riding her, my ass rising and falling in steady rhythm, brushing her hair away so I can see my collar on her throat, that beautiful collar against her swanlike throat. She thinks it's a decoration. She doesn't know what it means to me.

It would have been so beautiful, so easy. It fits her so well and she looks so fucking beautiful in it

Anger makes me fuck her faster, knowing it could be the last time. My hands close on her whipped and beaten ass and I dig my fingers in. Emma winces, then squeals and wraps her arms around me, her hips begin to slap up at me.

"It could have been so good, Emma!" I whisper. "It could have been so good. I couldn't give you what he could, but there's other things, Emma. He can't give you this, can he? He doesn't do this for you, any of this—what I showed you in the dark and in the rain, the stories, the secrets between us..."

I get up on my knees and then on my feet. I pick up her ankles and hold them in the air as I fuck her, hold them as if she were a post-hole digger and I'm the mad driller. She feels so good and I want her so much and I begin to fuck her hard, slinging my hips at her, trying to hurt her with my cock, hammering my words home.

I'm not sure what I'm doing, because I'm fucking her and I'm talking to her and I'm watching my prick run in and out of her, entering her and pulling out, over and over, but it's like I can't stop talking to her, can't let her go like this, and so I'm talking and fucking her and fucking and talking:—

Page 19

"Because I don't think you understand Emma, goddamn it! I don't think you know what we have between us or how special this is, to feel what I feel for you, you bitch! To go crazy for a woman like I go crazy for you, Emma. —Ugh!— To want to whip someone and hurt someone and love someone and die for them and fuck them to death like I do for you, Emma. (Jesus!!!) Do you understand me? (Fuck!!) Do you know what I'm saying, you bitch! Do you know how much I fucking love you, Emma, (Oh GOD!!) you beautiful goddamned slut!? —CHRIST!!!—Jesus, Emma! God! I'm close, baby! Emma! Fuck, I'm close!!!"

I'm hanging over her with my cock sunk all the way in her and her legs draped over my arms, absolutely at the point of tears and Emma gets up on her elbows and stares at me astonished and says, "Oh God, Conner, Conner! What are you saying? God, what are you saying? I don't understand this! I don't understand any of this! All I want is for you to love me! That's all I want. That's all I ever wanted. Just tell me what I have to do for you to love me, Conner! Please! Because I can't stand this anymore. I don't want him! I want you. Oh, Conner!"

And then she did start crying, hard, which made her squeeze me inside with every sob.

"No!" I said. "No crying! Not now! Not now when I'm going to come, damn it! Not now damn it fucking shit fuck ass cock ball cunt dick fart!"

But she wouldn't stop, and so she laid there with her hands over her eyes crying with me with my dick inside her on the edge of orgasm and I'm on the verge of tears too, and what can you do in a situation like that? Well, I'm sorry but like a bastard I went and finished fucking her and had one of the worst orgasms of my life thank you very much and she hardly even noticed, because she was having some kind of emotional orgasm of her own, and she wrapped her arms around me and kissed me like crazy and really started sobbing and I was like suddenly drowning in the sweet salt of her tears.

Things were amazingly messy there for a moment. And then they weren't. Then they were very clean.

And then I hold her and we talk, and talk, and she tells me how afraid and ashamed she's been, certain that I only wanted her because I think she's a sub and a slut and a whore. And that's why she thought I'd offered her that collar and that's why I'd taken her to Dee's, and in fact, that's why I even bothered with her, because I thought all she was good for was tying up and whipping and fucking. She said she'd loved me all along but that she'd been afraid to tell me because she knew I'd never want to have anything to do with a sub and a fuckslut.

And I tell her that I thought all she wanted me for was as a master, someone to tie her up and whip her, that I thought she'd find me too old and weird to have as a real-life lover, and that if I ever told her how I really felt she'd get creeped out and run.

And so there we were, trapped in these ritualized sexual roles of Master and slave, unable to show our genuine feelings, afraid we'd scare the other one off.

Suddenly we're looking at each other without the masks now, and there's me, and there's Emma. She wants to know if this means she can't still be my slut, if I still won't tie her up, and I smile and say, "Don't be ridiculous."

*****

It's really late now, like 3:35 in the morning, and the streets are quiet and empty, the lights are all off. I'm sitting in an arm chair in the living room with my pants on and nothing else, a bottle of tequila about half gone, one end of a rope in my hand.

What's on the other end of this rope is my heart. She's naked, lying face down, hanging from a block and tackle attached to a beam in my ceiling. Her ankles are tied against her thighs, her elbows are tied together behind her back. There are ropes around her waist, her legs, her wrists, her breasts, her arms, her chest. They're placed along her body so as to distribute her weight evenly such that no rope cuts into her skin and causes discomfort, and in this way she can hang suspended for some time facing the floor as she wishes, her hair hanging down obscuring her face, anonymous but unmistakably female. She might be an ornament, or a captive, or a fruit that has grown in my home, a gift of my own imagining, or perhaps just a mystery, suspended between heaven and earth. I sit here and admire her, watching her as she revolves very, very slowly in the darkness, like a dream in the mind of the sleeping city, feeling all sorts of things, my heart and my mind filled with her, not sure what she is, thinking she must be everything to me. I never want to stop looking at her. In the background, John Coltrane plays, "My One and Only Love." It's a heartbreakingly beautiful song.

In a moment I'll go and untie her and help her down, help her stretch and massage out any cramps she might have. I might make her dance with me because I so love this song and I so love to dance with a woman I love. Moving your body together with someone you love through artistically structured time is one of the more beautiful things human beings do. Dancing is one of the ways we do that. BDSM is another.

I think we live our lives in other people's hearts and minds. Alone by ourselves we're not very much good at all. But when we let someone else in with their stories and all their sights and sounds and songs and smells and sensations, we suddenly start filling our shelves and boxes with books and books of them and building up our libraries.

Some of these books are pretty thin reading with faded ink and hardly any pictures and dull stories. And then others are nice, heavy little volumes filled with stories of whippings and weird, perverse sex, dark Chinese restaurants with weird food and drugs being dealt in the back, hot women coming in your hand in loud bars with brassy music playing.

It's nice when one of these books falls into your hands. It's nice when you read through the first few pages and know it's going to be a good one, and you settle down and know you've got pages and pages to go.

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