Bound to You (31 page)

‘But I’ve given them pleasure,’ Sebastian replied.

‘Well, sometimes pleasure isn’t enough. Sometimes people need more than pleasure,’ I retorted.

Sebastian looked simultaneously defiant and terrified.

Then it hit me. Oh God. Of course I could perform this role play. Sometimes people need more than pleasure? This was about us, about all the ways in which Sebastian was failing to give me what I needed. Perhaps it was actually going to be cathartic for me to channel my frustrations into something that would get him off. For the first time that evening I began to feel slightly less panicked. I could do this. I settled into my assumed role.

‘Life isn’t just about pleasure, Sebastian. Though you never seem short on pleasure-seeking. One of the first things I found out about you is that you took Violet’s boyfriend Dan off to South Africa on a spanking tour.’

Sebastian balked. Oh, that was a little too close for comfort, wasn’t it Sebastian?

‘We didn’t do anything too awful on that trip.’

‘But you agree you were a bad influence on Dan. Encouraging him to abandon Violet like that. Was it fun tying up those innocent little South African girls?’

‘We didn’t tie them up,’ Sebastian replied. I had no idea whether he was telling the truth or not but it hardly mattered. The point was that he was on the back foot.

‘Even if I had I wouldn’t deserve to lose my cock for it.’ Sebastian said sourly. He wasn’t a good submissive. Far too much defiance in him.

‘If you say so, Sebastian.’ I picked up the scissors nestling beside me. They were still cold, despite the proximity of my warm body.

Immediately Sebastian bristled. I looked at his crotch. There, on his ice-blue briefs, was an incriminating damp patch. God, it was incredible that even just the sight of the scissors like this turned him on. This was a full-blown fetish.

I rested the scissors lengthways across my lap and ran the tips of my damson nails along them, making a whisper of a scratching noise. The sound made Sebastian jump out of his skin and he fixed his eyes on the gleaming metal.

‘Nichi, what are you doing? Why do you have the scissors positioned like that?’

I looked up into his eyes. My face was set in a medusa-like mask. ‘Because you want this.’

‘No, I don’t, I don’t, I don’t.’ Sebastian repeated, shaking his head vehemently from side to side.

I was confused by his reaction. For a moment I couldn’t tell whether this was Sebastian trying to end the role play. Then I realised what was happening here. I was letting my actual feelings towards him interfere with the play. Of course, in Sebastian’s fantasies I wanted this and he didn’t. That was the whole point. I wanted to punish him for untold sins against me and womankind and he was merely the hapless victim of my ire. But how the hell could I make this convincing? Whatever distress he’d caused me with his sporadic emotional distance, no part of me wanted to actually punish Sebastian for anything that had passed between us. Instead, every cell of my being wanted to love him, wanted to thank Fortune, whatever God I believe in, but mostly Sebastian for entering my life.

Sebastian spoke. ‘Please don’t do this, Nichi, please don’t. I need to keep my cock. Let me keep it.’

I ran my nails rapidly up and down the scissors again, then spun them round so that the tips of the blades were pointing directly at Sebastian’s crotch.

‘I’m sorry, Sebastian, but you don’t get a say in how this goes any more.’

His eyes widened again in fright. He bowed his head and placed his hands pleadingly on my calves. I slapped his hands and shook him off.

‘It’s too late, Sebastian. You need to man up and face the inevitable.’ I took hold of the scissors in my right hand and took my left to the safety catch. It clicked audibly as it dropped, and Sebastian whimpered.

And then I realised something else. Fuck, we hadn’t actually set a special safe word for this. Were we out of our minds? Sebastian was trusting me and I was trusting myself to not let this veer into unsafe territory. Well, we’d tested the blade. I knew I couldn’t cut him. I’d never hurt a client and there was no way on earth I could hurt Sebastian. All I had to do was tease him a little with them. Perhaps rub them up and down his shaft a bit, maybe open them ominously. I presumed they made a suitably terrifying swiping noise as the blades came apart.

Focus on the role play, Nichi, make him cum and wrap this up quickly.

With the blades parted, I ran my fingertip along the dulled serrated edges. Sebastian was absolutely entranced, his cobalt-blue eyes burning like the heart of a gas-fired flame, and flickering rapidly between the blades and my face. His straining cock was poking out of the top of his briefs now. The sight of him turned on helped to convince me again that what we were doing was OK. All I wanted to do right now was give Sebastian pleasure.

I leaned forward, exposing my white cleavage in the dim light. Sebastian gazed at it greedily. Then I took my left hand and peeled back his briefs until they were resting halfway down his cock. I pulled back the waistband with my fingers then took the scissors in my right and slid them along the inside of the outstretched fabric. Sebastian made a guttural juddering sound. I wanted to keep the scissors as far away from his actual skin as possible, and hoped that this action would be enough to stimulate his fantasy.

Then I pulled the blades back up for a moment, opened them slightly and clamped them down on to the fabric. Their dull teeth gnawed clumsily on the fibres. Even if I’d wanted to, I couldn’t have cut through Sebastian’s briefs for effect. I used the scissors to pull down the fabric until his whole cock was revealed. The head of it glistened urgently, and a single drop of pre-cum trailed down his shaft. I removed the scissors and took the fingers of my left hand to him instead, wrapping them tenderly along his length. Sebastian jumped away from me in fright but I gripped on to him by his cock, got up out of my seat and planted a leg either side of his right knee, sitting back on to his thigh to anchor him.

‘You’re not getting away from this, Sebastian. It’s your fate. You know that, really. You also know deep down that you deserve it.’

I began masturbating him and leaned in to kiss him for the first time. When our lips met it was electrifying. The inverted power exchange made this feel so dubiously erotic. Sebastian kissed me as if his cock depended on it.

‘Please, Nichi,’ he began again, ‘please don’t do this.’

‘It’s for your own good,’ I repeated again. Then hesitated. What to do now? The role play was getting easier but the scissors in my hand still unnerved me. I felt as though I were armed with a weapon. But for this to work for him, I was going to have to touch his cock with the metal.

Closing the scissors, I took them gingerly to the outside of his skin and rubbed the outside of the blade along his shaft. Worried that Sebastian would jump at the sensation and inadvertently injure himself, I clung on first to the end of the blades. But Sebastian was lost in his own reverie now, and instead, of trying to flee, undulated up against them. I breathed a long hot breath of relief.

‘You could never really cut my cock off though, Nichi, could you?’ Sebastian looked up into my face imploringly. ‘You’d never try it, would it? You’d never actually put the blades around me?’

That meant he wanted me to put the blades around him. It must do. I was so loathe to do this. But I thought again about the emptiness of the days when I waited for his messages, thought about the richness of my nights when I made love to him. Perhaps this was what he needed in order to understand just how dedicated I was to him, and to get him to truly commit to me. That’s why I had to do this. For me, but more so, for him. And so, still stroking him with my right hand, I opened the scissors once more and taking the utmost care, wrapped them around the base of cock with my left.

Sebastian couldn’t have been more terrified if I’d put a gun to his head. In fact, I knew that this was truly more terrifying to him.

‘Nichi, Nichi, Nichi, Nichi, Nichi,’ he repeated, his entire body, convulsing with fright, ‘please don’t, I’m begging you, I’m begging you not do this,’ meanwhile rubbing himself deliberately up against the metal blades and my fingers.

‘Sebastian,’ I gasped. I couldn’t get another threatening word out of my mouth. This was so intense, so stupefying, I couldn’t wait for it to be over. And then he said something that made me feel as though he’d just spun the scissors round and stuck them into my heart.

‘How can you want to do this to me, how can you want to hurt me like this?’

I wanted to scream ‘But I don’t, Sebastian, I’m doing it because I love you and because I want to satisfy your ultimate fantasy and because I’d do anything, even a mad, unsafe, terrible, terrifying thing like this, if I thought it would make you happy for even a few moments.’ But I bit my tongue, choked back the tears and increased the pace of my hand until Sebastian convulsed into a demented orgasm and ejaculated all over my fingers and the scissor blades.

We sat there for a few minutes, panting and staring at one another. I waited for Sebastian to smile and tell me that had been phenomenal. But he didn’t. He merely looked up at me with fright and regret.

I slept poorly that night, lay there stock-still for most of it, deep in disturbed thought. Sebastian, meanwhile, was rigid as a corpse on the other side of the bed, and did not wake. Once or twice I kissed him on the neck and the shoulders but there was no response.

The next morning I woke first and lay there for nearly an hour before Sebastian stirred too. When finally he turned to me, even his eyes looked washed out. I went to pat his thigh affectionately. He flinched. ‘Sebastian!’

‘Sorry. I guess I’m just still a little wired up over what we did last night.’

This was exactly what I did NOT want to happen. Even now I was overwrought in exasperation. Come on, Nichi, have patience here, I urged myself. You would never have lost it with one of the clients, whatever their reaction. ‘Would you like some tea?’ I asked him, trying to be kind.

‘No, thank you. I think I’m going to go back to sleep,’ he replied without looking at me.

‘OK, well, I need to get up and get on. I’m going to have a shower and then be on my way.’

In the shower it took me at least twenty seconds to realise that the water was burning me before I stepped out of the scalding stream, the delicate skin on my chest ablaze.

I hated the mirror in Sebastian’s bathroom. The light was an inflammatory orange and highlighted every flaw, every blemish on my increasingly sensitive city-smoked skin. I dressed quickly and scraped back my flattened hair, then went back into the room.

Sebastian had fallen asleep again. I packed my bag as quietly as I could then leaned over to kiss him goodbye. His eyes sprang open again. ‘I’m going.’

‘Oh!’ he sat up. But it was an involuntary rising.

‘Do you have a busy week?’ I asked him, trying to leave with the same parting questions I always asked.

He frowned. ‘Yes. Too busy really.’

‘Well, you know we don’t ever have to make a proper night of it if you’re short on time. I have a crazy amount of work too, now that I’m broadcasting as well as editing. You can always just come and crawl into bed with me one night. If you just want to snuggle . . .’

Sebastian didn’t reply. My bruised heart heaved with fresh hurt, then sighed, dusted itself off once more. I decided to take another tack. Sebastian never arranged another date when we parted. He always left it to those delayed text messages. Well, I was sick of it. I was going to rectify it right now.

‘Are you around at the weekend?’

‘I’m busy,’ he replied flatly. Then as if realising the curtness of his response, he added, ‘Maybe the week after.’

I nodded numbly. I had to get out of here. I picked up my bag and fled down the stairs.

Outside it was a brilliantly sunny early summer day, with a gorgeous lapis lazuli sky. I passed under a cherry tree, which dusted me with its petals. It might as well have been raining black confetti. I had rarely felt so crushed. Now I knew it. I knew it all. Sebastian didn’t love me. He didn’t even care about me. He’d been so wrapped up in the pursuit of his own fantasy that I was a mere prop to that, a flesh-and-blood adjunct to what went on his head. I had never felt so used.

I must have stepped up onto the train and settled myself rigidly into a seat, but I don’t remember how. Even the faded rose print of my dress seemed to taunt me with its cheerful romance. I buttoned up my black mac and shrouded it from view. Then I covered my devastated face with my oversized sunglasses and let the tears run where they may.

When I got home I went to bed and slept for the rest of the day. It was the only thing I could think to do to put distance between me and last night’s soul-shaking events. Every hour I came to and checked my phone. Nothing from Sebastian.

When I finally woke it was dark. I phoned Gina.

‘Could you come round? I can’t tell you this over the phone.’

‘Oh, Nichi, I’m sorry, I can’t! I’ve gone away for the weekend. I’m in Cardiff, remember?’ I’d forgotten, of course. I’d become so enmeshed in the dramatic tensions of my own life that I didn’t remember anything that my friends were up to any more. ‘I can talk now if you want though?’

‘No, it’s fine, don’t worry about it. We’ll catch up later in the week.’

I hung up. Still nothing from Sebastian. I flung the phone across the room in despair. The tears started to run in rivulets down my cheeks once again. Who could I talk to about this? I had to talk to someone.

I crawled out of bed and retrieved my phone and then I called Gina back. ‘I’m sorry I’m such a basket case, Gina, but if you can talk, I’d really appreciate it . . .’

She knew me well enough to know that I was really struggling. ‘Tell me, lady.’

So I began to tell her what had really been happening over the past few weeks. I told her about the visa. ‘Come on, Nichi! You don’t marry someone just because they need a visa!’ I told her about Sebastian’s unpredictable moods and his withdrawal from me, interspersed with out of the blue gestures like calling me Nichi
mou
. Gina tutted. I told her about our date last night and the endless references to dark-haired, dark-skinned beauties. She tutted again. I could practically see her shaking her head down the other end of the phone. I stopped at a full description of scissor sex, but I told her that the play had gone too far. ‘It wasn’t fun-scary, Gina. It was just fucked up.’