9.3
That afternoon, we went shopping together. As soon as supermarket deliveries had become a thing, Robert and I had signed up, and never looked back. Our lives, our time, had seemed so much better spent elsewhere. But this was pleasant in the most ordinary of ways, and I trailed along after Toby, pushing the trolley, and it didn’t seem like a waste of my Saturday in the slightest.
He bounced all the way home.
“Do I just leave you to it?” I asked, once we’d unpacked and my kitchen work surfaces were covered with purchases.
The look he gave me was downright wicked. Downright terrifying. “No way. You’re totally going to be part of this process.”
“In a…loading-the-dishwasher capacity?”
“Nuh-uh.” Oh God. “But first I need to make pastry.”
So I sat at the kitchen table and read the Times, not entirely successfully, as Toby got to work. He was humming under his breath—“Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart”—and seemed a little more like himself.
At last, he was rolling out his pastry and using it to line a pie tin I didn’t even know I owned. “Okay.” He popped everything into the fridge. “Now I just need to grab some things from upstairs.”
“For the pie?”
“For you. Give me like…five minutes. And”—he flashed his toothiest grin—“take your clothes off.”
I froze. “When you said you wanted a lemon meringue pie and filthy sex, I didn’t think you meant together.”
“That’s what you get for underestimating me.”
He vanished upstairs, leaving me paralysed with awkwardness. The kitchen was warmer than the rest of the house because of the AGA, and nobody would be able to see me unless they scaled the garden walls and came right down onto the patio. But there was still something a little terrifying about stripping myself in the middle of my kitchen. I felt disproportionately vulnerable for how safe I was there. It was something about the way the light fell, bright but without heat, across my skin, illuminating and revealing me. All my desires undeniable and laid bare beneath the winter sun.
Nervous anticipation stirred the hairs on my arms.
I wasn’t sure how to wait for him. On my knees? On the hard floor. Would that help? A piece of fantasy. But he hadn’t said…
In the end, I rested my hips against the table and folded my arms, as though this was perfectly normal.
It seemed like longer than five minutes. It seemed like forever.
But finally I heard footsteps on the stairs, and Toby reappeared, his arms full of…things. He paused in the doorway, his eyes sweeping up and down my body with such unabashed and possessive eagerness it made me hot and flustered and a little bit shaky. I wasn’t sure a nineteen-year-old should have been able to do that to me, but there was an absurd sort of gratification in knowing he found me worth looking at, that he liked me naked and at his pleasure.
He dumped a couple of pillows on top of the table, his hands tracing the worn-smooth surface. “This is so awesome.”
“It’s actually a magistrate’s bench. I got it at an antique sale.”
“That must be why I keep having kinky daydreams about it.” He patted the wood. “Up you get, on your knees.”
On the table? I’d be so…exposed. Little shivers chased themselves over my skin, turning me hot and cold at once. “Oh, Toby, really?”
He gazed at my hardening, traitorous cock. “Yeah, really.”
So I climbed onto my kitchen table, aroused and embarrassed, or aroused because I was embarrassed, which was its own sweet-sharp torment.
“Spread.”
I made a noise that was most certainly not a whimper and obeyed, sliding my thighs apart, and then further still, until Toby was satisfied.
He tucked a pillow under each of my knees and smiled up at me. “So fucking hot.”
I tried to come up with something grumpy to say in response, but it was hard to think, hard to breathe beneath Toby’s gaze. “The things I do for you,” I managed.
“I know.” Gleeful was how he sounded as he skated his nails up the inside of my legs, while I shivered helplessly at being so defenceless and tried to hold position, cock and adductor muscles already aching softly. “Okay. So…” He released me briefly from his attentions and rummaged again in his pile of ropes and cuffs and God knew what else. He held out his hands to me, the Gates of Hell in one, the anal hook in the other, and grinned again. “Choose.”
That was easy. I pointed at the Gates of Hell. “Cool.” He threw them back into the pile.
For a moment I groped after meaning, and then I understood, and then I groaned. “You mind-fucking little bastard.”
He nodded, utterly unrepentant. “Hands behind your neck.”
It occurred to me—as it always did at some point—that I could simply refuse. I could get off the damn table and not allow him to do anything to me. The only power he had was power I’d given him, and I could take it back at any moment, with a look, a word, the simplest of gestures.
But I didn’t want to. I wanted him to have me, to have everything, my pleasure, my pain, my pride, and my shame. I wanted to lay it all at his feet until we were both free, until I was his and he was mine, and everything else was tatters.
I put my hands behind my neck, and he cuffed them there. His fingers ruffled through my hair, tugging it lightly so that hot sparks slid all the way down my spine.
“Okay,” he said. “Down.”
I didn’t want to do it, but I wanted him to make me. I needed him, I needed his hand—firm and inevitable—to control my descent. He was so gentle that I nearly wept with mortification and a kind of terrible longing. I could feel the scars and whorls in the table beneath my cheek. Toby was just a haze of warmth behind me, standing at the delta he’d made of my body as he debased and opened me.5
I shuddered and yielded to him, impaled on his merciless, lube-wet fingers. Someone moaned, but it was Toby, the sound as naked as I felt. And I answered, pushing my hips up, needing him to know anything he wanted, I wanted too. That I wanted this. For him to do this to me. For me. With me.
His hand closed around my cock, and the sheer pleasure of his touch burned through me like the brightest sunlight. My sudden cry echoed on the kitchen tiles, too loud, too harsh, too desperately revealing. He bent over my back and kissed his way down the straining, suppliant arch of my spine. My fingers knotted against each other, but there was nothing for me to hold on to. There was just Toby, his mouth on my skin, and everything he made me feel. The truth was, pleasure frightened me more than pain. It demanded a deeper surrender.
It was almost a relief when he moved away.
But then came the blunt pressure of the anal hook, stretching me wider, pushing into me. It was a dull sort of violation. It didn’t hurt, but it seemed like it might, and that was somehow worse, holding me on the edge of a gasp.
Until Toby whispered, “Breathe,” and then the damn thing was inside me, my body struggling round it like an oyster with a pearl.
I hated it. Loved it. Loved how much I hated it.
And how safe it was to be in that place with Toby, who somehow saw the spaces between all my blurred lines far more clearly than I did.
He used the chain between my cuffed hands to draw me upright again. He was careful, but even that slight movement…jostled, reminded, pleasured, tormented. A few drops of sweat slipped between my shoulder blades, and I was so sensitive, so lost in my skin, I half thought I felt the heat of them, the scratch of salt within each sphere. My mouth gaped open, and a sound came out, wavering and unformed, a muddle of misery, need, arousal, and submission.
Yes.
Please.
This.
There was a chink of chain as Toby fed it through the ring, then the click of a snap hook as he connected it to the cuffs, and there, I was bound. I tugged, because it was always my first instinct, and the curve of the hook twisted on the threshold of my body, reminding me of its invasion, intensifying my sense of restraint. I swallowed a gasp, my pulse fluttering fearfully. Robert had often put me in more demanding bondage, but for all its crudity—perhaps because of its crudity, the harsh mixture of exposure and penetration—this stripped me, flayed me, and left me raw. My cock strained upwards obscenely between my spread thighs, pre-come slicking down the sides, and dripping onto the table.
“Oh God. Laurie.” Toby scrambled up next to me, pushing between my legs, and buried his hands in my hair. For a moment, his wild, shining eyes were my whole world, and then, with a little growl, he kissed me savagely. I didn’t dare move, not wanting to feel that awful tug and pressure deep inside me, but he had me braced—as long as I didn’t struggle, as long as I didn’t do anything but let him shove his tongue deep into my mouth, and take me, take everything.
He tasted like the tea he’d drunk earlier. Then of me. And it was so beautiful, that cruel and hungry kiss.
We were both dazed and breathless when he pulled away.
His hands skimmed across my body, stroking, scratching, owning it, while I shivered and moaned softly, tethered and untethered at the same time. The pads of his thumbs circled my nipples, stirring pleasure like glowing ashes until it flamed in me afresh, and I threw back my head, arching into his touch, heedless of anything else. The movement dragged against the cuffs and the hook, and the shock of those harsh adornments jolted through me, a cry catching at the back of my throat.
Toby leaned in to me, and put his mouth where his hands had been, covering too-sensitive flesh in a wash of exquisite heat. What little breath I had shuddered out of me, and I choked on Toby’s name, a fly in honey, trapped and drowning in sweetness. Just when it became almost unbearable, he caught my nipple on the edge of his teeth, and that rougher touch sheared through me like lightning, and I almost came in the rush of knowing myself so utterly controlled. So utterly his.
He looked up, smiling, moisture glistening on the lips that had kissed me and hurt me, and reached below the level of the table, where I couldn’t easily see. When he brought his hands back up, he was holding a set of clover clamps connected by a steel chain. They glittered between his fingers, promising pain.
I was damp with sweat and spit and ecstasy, powerless to resist, wanting and not wanting, and waiting for him to deny me the choice, to give me whatever he chose to give. His fingers fumbled against skin—once, twice—as he clamped me. And each time, his eyes held mine, the lust in them its own caress, as I hissed at the chill, sharp bite. Breathing through it and knowing it was nothing to the burning agony that waited for me when he took them off.
“There.” Toby stepped back. Surveyed me, his subject, his kingdom. He was flushed and a little sweaty too, as breathless as me, the ridge of his erection outlined against his jeans. “Fuck. Wow.”
I’d done that to him. Made him hot and hard and hazy-eyed. And in that moment, any pain, all indignity was worth it. No. Part of it. Inextricable from it. Inseparable, indistinguishable from joy.
Toby seemed to be having trouble looking away. “Okay. Right.” I loved the harshness of his voice when he was like this, fiercely turned on and full of cruelty. “I’ve got a lemon meringue pie to finish.”
“And…” My lips were dry, my body spread and aching, pain gathering intimately both inside and out. “What do I do?”
There was nothing but love in him as he told me, “You suffer for me.”
Which was what I did while Toby put his crust in the oven and began to work on the filling, talking to me all the time about what he was doing, the words blurring with the pain and the discomfort, until everything was Toby and all the ways he touched me and loved me, hurt me and delighted me. I floated, the edges of my world turned as soft and frayed as feathers. It was strange to be so physically abject, and so completely happy. Toby’s.
God. I hurt. I hurt.
There was something relentless about it, the steady heartbeat of pain and the slow drop-drop of time. Moving brought no relief, just a reawakening of harsher agonies, unwanted pleasure, the thrust and press of metal inside me, the sway of the chain, and the tightening of the clamps on my nipples. Even breathing stirred the air too much, made it rasp against skin grown tight and hot and thin.
Sometimes I could not hold back my sounds.
Sometimes my eyes would sting with helpless moisture.
And sometimes Toby would come to me, put his mouth to my mouth or against my eyes, and take my groans and all my tears.
I liked being able to watch him. My restraints, in that respect, had set me free. There was nothing for me to do but look and revel in my looking.
He seemed happy, moving around my kitchen with the same confidence he had learned in touching and taking me. The muscles of his back shifted under his T-shirt like the memory of wings as he worked, and every now and again I’d catch the flash of his forearms, all pale skin and sinew, dusted only faintly by dark hair, the occasional freckle. He was leaning most of his weight on one leg, so his arse was tightly nestled against the denim of his jeans.
Perhaps a stranger would look at Toby and see little more than a skinny postadolescent with a shockingly bad haircut. But he was my boyfriend, my dom, my fragile prince, and he was nothing less than beautiful to me. I loved the tender spot at the back of his neck and all the whisper-soft hairs that would stir beneath my breath. I loved his narrow feet and his disproportionately large toes. I loved the small, flat mole that lurked beneath his left earlobe. I loved the place between his collarbones and the hollows beneath his clavicles where sweat gathered and gleamed. I loved the slim and gorgeous cock that tasted so much of salt and him.
These were the rosary beads of my submission. Though my only god was love.6
“I’ve got about five minutes before the crust’s done.” He came and stood in front of me, and his fully clothed proximity suddenly reminded me of my own nakedness, my own vulnerability. He brought with him a waft of wholesome smells: flour and sugar and baking pastry. “Wonder what I should do with it?”
He ran his hands over the straining, sweat-slick muscles of my abdomen, and I flinched from his gentleness, which only jostled the hook and the chain and made me sob a little. He hushed me, soothed me, strung soft kisses across my body like fairy lights. I was too raw to even think of resisting. I just leaned into him, lost, seduced, begging for his touch, letting the pleasure fill me like the pain.
He gave me that as well, his nails and his teeth leaving reddened tracks and marks, gifts across my skin. By then, it was all sensation, and me all yielding. He found the tender places—the underside of my arms, the edge of my ribs, the crease of my groin, the side of a knee—and ignited them like touch paper, until I was nothing but fire and lightning, made and unmade by his harsh breath and his trembling hands and all his frantic, whispered words of wonder and gratitude, love and desire.
Then there was silence, stillness. Toby’s eyes locked on mine as his fingers closed around the clamps. A tug, and they were gone.
An infinitesimally tiny fraction of a second roared through my ears. And, after, everything was pain. Engulfing, all-consuming, inescapable. A red-hot, skin-deep rush. The taste of copper in my mouth. I couldn’t move. I didn’t dare. I could only shake and endure. Surrender. Stare into the too-bright mirror of agony until there was no fear left. Only the sharpest light and a pure, deep peace.
I heard a feral, rough-edged screaming. Me?
“Holy God. Holy holy fucking God.” Toby’s head was thrown back, his throat rippling, his mouth stretched in a helpless gasp. His hands—which, I now realised, had held me throughout—tightened on my legs. Another shudder jolted through him, and then he doubled over against the table, moaning and clawing at me.
My throat hurt, but the rest of the pain was fading.
Traceless as frost in sunlight. The world looked different, clearer, cleaner, slightly photoshopped, as if I’d inhaled pure oxygen. And I felt, strangely, like laughing.
Toby uncurled slowly. “Fucking hell.” He sounded shaken. “I just…fucking hell.”
I carefully looked down at him. Though I still didn’t precisely like them, even my bonds troubled me less. “Are you all right?”
“I…just like”—he was already flushed, but somehow he turned even redder—“totally came. When you screamed…it was…just so fucking beautiful.”
“Thank you,” was all I could think to say. But it wasn’t just a dominance game. I meant it. Thank you for the pain. Thank you for letting it mean so much to you. Thank you for believing I’m beautiful. Thank you for making me feel so powerful. Thank you for loving me. Thank you. Thank you.
“Fuck.” He undid his belt, peeled down his jeans and boxers, cleaned himself up with the boxers, and then tossed them between my legs. The familiar scents of sex and Toby swept over me like the brush of his hands. “You didn’t even have to touch me.”
His fingers glistened slightly with the traces of him. It made my own cock drip and ache with wanting. “Can I…”
He grinned. “Fuck yeah.”
He wriggled back into his jeans, one-handed, and held the other out to me. I drew his fingers into my mouth and lapped up the taste of his pleasure, earned with pain. His eyes fluttered, and I made him moan for me, and I revelled in it. The power of pleasing, in this place where only pleasing mattered.
At last, he pulled away.
“Thank you, again,” I said.
“Yikes, your voice is wrecked. I’m going to get you some water.”
He refastened his belt and hurried over to the sink. I could have reminded him there was a water filter in the fridge, but I just didn’t care. On his return, he climbed onto the table, nestling between my legs, and held the cup to my lips. It was an awkward angle, but it was still the best, slightly lukewarm, slightly chalky tap water I’d ever tasted. And it turned out I was thirsty—which probably shouldn’t have been surprising, but there was something a little startling about being given exactly what you needed before even recognising you needed it.
Afterwards, Toby put the cup carefully to one side, and curled up against my sweaty, still slightly throbbing chest. An odd cuddle, perhaps, but I liked it. There was something comforting about it, the sense of closeness, even though I couldn’t put my arms round him.
He reached up and ran a hand lazily over my shoulders. “Do you need out?”