Page 69 of Bitter Burn
From this moment on, no more.
I take my first real breath in seven weeks of years, a shock of oxygen to my tormented system, and then somehow manage to take another. And then—a tug. A movement that’s not the micro oscillation of suspension but something more, something deliberate.
Warm hands bend my leg back so that my heel touches my backside, and they are Mark’s hands; I’d know them anywhere. Long-fingered and lightly calloused, nimble and certain and arrogant. I pull in a shuddering breath at his touch, so desperate to see and to hear him, and that very same deprivation makes the sensation of his touch almost dire in its intensity.
Quick movements of wraps and knots bind my calf to my thigh, frog-like, and then the same thing happens to my other leg, my weight shifting and moving as the lines are rerun through the hooks.
He threads rope under the place where the harness stretches from hip to hip. One more adjustment to my chest, and then I become aware that the slow tilt to the side I’ve been feeling has indeed left me sideways in the air. Pain blooms anew along one side of my ribs and one hip, and endorphins quickly follow, adding to the sparkles, the dizziness.
A hand slides to my waist and holds me as his other finds my breast.
I’m still crying, if more gently now, but the tears don’t stop the arousal rippling out from his touch. My nipple stiffens, and the soft, private place between my legs—now open to the full view of the club—begins to ache. I whimper helplessly when I feel him step between my legs, aching to get closer to him and utterly unable to do so.
Hands move to my knees and slide up my thighs, then the same from my waist to my shoulders. He’s running his palms all over me, everywhere that there’s rope, as if enjoying his handiwork, and after an eon without touch, the sudden glut of it is intoxicating. I think I might be making noises worse than whimpering—I might be mewling like a kitten—and I dazedly wonder if he’s teasing me for it in that wicked voice of his while I can’t hear anything. I wonder if he’s talking to the crowd, showing them the mess of miserable, tearful lust I’ve become.
When I feel his thumbs trace the rope running along the crease of my thigh, following the path it makes along the curve of my ass and along the outside of my labia, I’m almost certain he’s talking to the hall. That he’s showing them the pink haven outlined in red rope, asking them if they can see how slick it is.
He presses a thumb to the swollen point at the top of my cunt, and pleasure zips everywhere, moving as easily through my body as a current through water. I keen.
He tests me with a cursory finger, checking to see if I’m wet enough to take him. There’s some movement; he’s stripping off his vest and shirt, maybe, unfastening his pants. And then at long last, a big hand curls around the harness at my hip and something blunt and hot presses at my waiting hole.
Without sight or sound, I have no warning—and then he plunges straight into me like he’s got an appointment to keep.
The invasion spreads me open and stretches me wide, intent on stealing the precious breath right out of my lungs. The tendrils of an impending orgasm snake up from my sex to my belly…already, this soon, with nothing more than two thick strokes. I must be the perfect height for Mark to fuck, because he grabs the harness around my hips with each hand and begins to pull me into him, meeting me with a searing thrust every time our bodies collide with hard, sparking smacks. I can’t hear it, but I can feel it: the strength of his arms as he yanks me onto his cock, the glittering slap of his body against my clit.
It’s as if he’s adding his own body to the chalice of loneliness he’s built with rope and silk. Caging the loneliness in, containing it. There on my clitoris—the hands curled over my hips—there inside me—both driving back the loneliness and also saying it’s real, it’s real, you didn’t make it up, I see it too, we’ll see it together.
My breathing is matched to the movements of his hands and hips; every slide into my body is more delicious than the last until I wonder how I’ve gone so long without this, why I didn’t walk into Lyonesse three weeks ago, crawl right onto his lap, and help myself.
His fingers find my clitoris again, and he works it with an expert, bossy touch until I’m on the precipice, until every muscle is quivering and every bright line of pain is fused around this one single ache. Until the entire bruised, slick, trembling, and lonely sum of my existence is a single spark quivering under the demanding strokes of his fingers.
And then right as I’m poised to fall, he reaches up to push off my headphones, which tumble with a clatter below, and he unknots my blindfold.
Without it, I am truly blind under the stage lights for a moment or two, so it’s the sounds that announce themselves first—my own low whimpers, the slippery, smacking noise of penetration, and the cheers and yells of the crowd. My sight returns in slices of impression, glazed with tears: ocean eyes, golden hair. A face like a king’s as he cuts down the last of a retreating army on a smoking battlefield—determination, cruelty, triumph.
“I want it, sweetheart.” His bare chest and throat are misted with sweat, and his pants are low around his hips. The black and silver ring flashes on his hand over and over as he pulls me into him. “I want to feel it. Show me that you’re ready to be my little wife once more.”
Oh, the crowd loves that, and I do too, and I can tell myself it’s because I’m dazed and drunk on endorphins and possibly barely conscious, but I know I’d love it wide awake and sober too, and he slams into me just that much harder, caresses my clit just that much faster, and I cease to exist.
The release tears me into pieces and sends me flying in every imaginable direction, racing outward at the speed of light to some unknown destiny. I can hear screaming, as high and pure as a choir’s, and then I feel unconsciousness swooping down on me with dazzling scintillas and tingling lips and everything but the soul-destroying pleasure of this release disappearing from the world. My cunt contracts around him, my belly seizing in fierce clenches of ecstasy, and Mark groans too, impaling me with a viciousness that draws my climax on and on, even as my tears spatter on the mat below like rain.
He throws his head back, throat working, shoulders tense, and with a sudden, jerking pulse, he ejaculates, using the harness to keep himself buried as he gives me everything, days and weeks of it, in heavy surges. It keeps coming, his body still unloading, and the crowd is roaring and the world is shimmering and I’m completely limp save for the aftershocks of my orgasm and then…
His mouth on mine, but barely?—
His erection still hard and slick as he fastens his pants?—
The shush of the ropes as I’m lowered gently?—
Mark’s hands patiently unraveling the rope. Dinah speaking to the guests, asking them if they liked it, if they approve, if I was indeed found worthy. The din of approbation, the cheers as Dinah slyly asks them what they thought of Mark, the thrum of music and the shifting of the lights as the hall begins to dissolve into hedonism as we all whirl closer to the new year.
The curtains close as Mark slides the last of the rope from my limbs. He massages my wrists and arms, helps me straighten my legs. Methodically checks my fingers and toes for feeling. I murmur that I can feel everything and then close my eyes for just a moment, just for the next breath or two…
When I open them, we’re in a playroom, one of the ones on the top floor with an interior window overlooking the hall. We’re in an armchair, and I’m curled in Mark’s arms. A soft, soft blanket is tucked around me. Mark’s lips are in my hair.
“You did so well, Mrs. Trevena,” he’s murmuring. His hands echo his praise, soothing my shoulders and back and legs. “You were so brave, so good. Such a sweet little penitent.”
There’s a knock, Mark saying come in, and then hesitant footsteps as the door swings shut again.
