Macho Sluts (14 page)

The first rain of fire fell upon my skin. I struggled and cried for mercy. “I can't stand this,” I wept.

“You have to,” she replied. Again and again, she let the molten liquid sear me. She watched my face carefully, spacing each incident so as to give me time to catch my breath, doling out the pain with absolute precision. She moved from thighs to belly to breasts and back down to thighs. I could no longer tell whether the burning wax hurt or not. I forgot what was producing these intolerable sensations. I gasped, cried out, beat the mattress—and climbed, step by step, up the ladder she made for me.

When the candle had burned down to four inches, she blew it out. “Look at this,” she told me. I swam out of chaos to raise my head and focus on Jessie's hand. She had long, slender fingers. Blue veins pulsed beneath the brown skin. “Do you know what I'm going to do with it? Can you guess?” Her hand reached for the smaller of my orifices, began to titillate it. Her finger sneaked into my ass, nudging it open. I held my breath—as if that would do me any good. “Relax, or you'll just make it harder on yourself.” She held the candle against the ring of muscle, twisted it, and pushed it in.

She bent her raven head and took my clitoris between her lips while she tormented my anus with the candle. I no longer thought about the future—coming, hurting, servicing her sweet, furry slit. I did not exist, except as a response to her touch. There was nothing else, no other reality, and no whim of my own will moved me.

She must have left me long enough to take off her pants, because now she was kneeling over my face, encouraging me to suck her off, but snatching her clit out of my mouth when she got too close to coming.

She retreated and busied herself with my restraints. My wrists and then my ankles were released. “I'm not through with you yet,” she panted, removing the candle from my ass. “Get up on your hands and knees. Put your ass in the air.”

This position was more humiliating than any bondage could be. I had no knotted cords to excuse me. I knelt there, offering myself because I could not live without this, the pain I solicited from her hands. This was more than consent. It was desperation.

“Yes,” she hissed. I felt the doubled-up belt caress my buttocks and the inside of my thighs. I waited, crying inside for her to begin.

“Beat me,” I finally begged. She did not need a second invitation.

The first light blow slapped my buttocks, stinging. Second. Third. I counted, my teeth clenched, my whole body shuddering in response to the belt. Now it did not sting. Each blow was a solid hit, embedding the belt in my ass. Gradually, I became aware that we were breathing in time with each other. She was moaning and gasping as loudly as I, and the blows were increasing in strength. I held myself there for her for as long as I could, taking the weight of her arm on my quivering cheeks, but she finally beat me down onto the bed. I could not have endured that in silence, and she did not ask me to. I grabbed the mattress with my outstretched hands as she marked my shoulders and buttocks and the backs of my legs. There were a few seconds when we hung in perfect balance—she was beating me with every ounce of her strength, and I was at the outermost limits of my tolerance, almost out of my mind.

The blows ceased. She took me by the shoulders and threw me onto my back. The silk wings of her kimono fell on either side of us, a fragile shelter. With one of her hands, she pinioned both of my wrists. She used her other hand to open and fill my cunt, then threw her hips against her hand and my pelvis, creating a burning rhythm of pressure against my urethra and clitoris and cervix until I was beside myself. Then her hands were on my shoulders. She rode hard on my hip bone, rocking sure and swift toward her own pleasure. I gripped her thigh with an immediate, bruising strength. We were slippery as two fish, skidding on the salt in our perspiration, our bellies clinging and making obscene noises when we pulled away from each other. There was a point I passed with my eyes closed, going so fast I didn't realize it was the point of no return.

The bubble of my self, the prison of my mind, exploded, expanded—I was twisting in her arms, and she in mine—I was hurtling forward on deep, sobbing currents of my breath, waves unleashed from the bottom of the sea. The long throbbing seconds of liberation and silence and obliteration.

Epilogue

I woke the next day to find her hand clasping my wrist. Not wishing to be released, I lay quiet beside her until she also emerged from sleep. Our eyes met and acknowledged each other—yes, I know what we did to each other, but it has passed and become part of us both. Then she yawned.

I laughed and snuggled down between her breasts. She radiated heat like a wood-burning stove. She tousled my hair, gently tweaked my ear lobes, touched a bruise above my collarbone. “Do you have to be somewhere today?” she asked me. I was darting my tongue in and out as fast as it would go, ringing her nipple with tiny wet dots.

“What time is it?”

She squinted at the clock. “One-thirty.”

“Not now, I don't.”

“Oh, did you miss an appointment?”

“Nothing special.” I had guests coming in from out of town. Oh, well, they were grown men. Maybe the landlady would let them in.

“Then let's have some breakfast.”

I demurred. “I'm a lousy cook.”

“So go get a Sunday paper and I'll cook. There's a mom ‘n' pop grocery in the next block.”

She gave me her keys and sent me out the door. When I returned, the house smelled like bacon and eggs. We ate in near silence, trading sections of the paper and passing each other the toast and butter. When we finished, I began to stack the dishes, but she stopped me. “No, leave them,” she said. “I have to empty the dishwasher.”

I stood in the middle of the kitchen with a dirty plate in my hand, not sure where to go or what to do. “I feel awkward,” I said, so softly I wasn't sure she would hear me, and put the dish gently on the edge of the table.

“Dammit, I'm out of cigarettes,” she complained, hunting through a drawer. “I'll have to go out and get some.”

I tried to picture myself doing these things with her—emptying a dishwasher, walking down to the store for cigarettes—and decided it was easier to pour myself another cup of coffee. When I turned around from the stove, she was sitting at the table again, so I sat beside her. She took my hand, turned it over, and slipped her finger under the leather bracelet.

“I—uh—yes, I feel a little strained myself. Everything I want to say sounds like the understatement of the year. How shall I put it? I had a great time last night?” Did you? said her eyes.

I paused a little, not wanting to sound too glib. “It was the best,” I shrugged. My voice was high and unconvincing. “It was the best ever,” I repeated firmly. “I guess that's what makes today so difficult.”

“Yeah. I hardly know you—I don't know if you play piano, I don't know what kind of business it is you run, I don't know your shoe size—but I know you better than anyone else in the world.”

I nodded. “Instant intimacy,” I said flippantly. I was shaking cold inside, getting ready to run scared.

“So what do we do?” she asked me. “I'm tempted to either lock you in my closet or bounce you down the front steps. I hate to let go of something that was so good, but I'm afraid I'll spoil it if I try to hang on. I'm afraid to try again, for fear it won't be the same.”

“Shit, Jessie, I don't know what I want from you.” Anger had crept into my voice. She shouldn't be asking me what I wanted. It was way out of character. Then I got pissed at myself. I had a lot of nerve, expecting her to play master at the breakfast table. It would be stupid to think she hadn't asked me what I wanted every step of the way. Okay, so she didn't tip her hat and say, “Miss Liz, would you keep company with me?” But she was checking me out constantly. I could have said no any time. She was asking me an honest question, and I'd better get my act together. “I know I don't want a twenty-four-hour-a-day S/M relationship,” I said quietly. “I'm not a social masochist. I enjoy taking care of Number One like any reasonably sane, adult woman.”

She grinned with relief. “Hey, that's not what I want, either. I can't top somebody full-time. To borrow a famous quote, kicking ass is hard work.”

I shook my head, smiled, drank coffee.

She picked up my hand again, toying with my wristlet. “I know there's one thing I want to do,” she said.

“Name it.”

“Come into my bedroom.”

Despite the unmade bed and the toys strewn on the floor, magic still hung in the air. We had enacted a vital ritual here, a ceremony essential to us both. She asked me to kneel. I complied, blinking in the hot sun that streamed through the window.

Jessie stood between me and the glass, shading me. She fished a pocket knife out of her Levis and unfolded its longest blade. I don't know what I expected. The crazy thought flashed through my head that she was going to carve her initials on me, like a tree. I didn't dream of protesting.

She ran her thumb along the edge of the blade. “You are wearing the tokens of another woman,” she said. Her words were carefully measured out. “I find that … distracting. May I?”

She lifted one wrist and cut the band of leather.

“I don't need anything as crude and obvious as this to set my mark on you. Do I?”

She cut my other wrist free.

She paused before severing my collar, her thumb holding it to the knife, to look into my face. “If I call you, you'll come to me, won't you?” she demanded.

“Yes,” I whispered.

A loop of leather fell onto my thighs. When she brought me to my feet, it fell to the floor. I rubbed my wrists. They felt curiously light without my bracelets. And my neck—I was more acutely aware of where my collar had been than I ever was of its actual presence.

I shook my head in amazement. Her boldness was more appealing than iron chains. Her confidence created an intangible bond between us. A determination was kindled in me to justify that confidence she had in her own power.

“You—” I began. And could not finish.

She nodded, well satisfied. “Come on, then. I have to get some cigarettes anyway. I'll show you where the bus stops.”

The Finishing School

It was dusk, but the heavy drapes had not yet been drawn. Outside, the late afternoon breeze had freshened into a gusty wind which was marching up and down the driveway, interrogating the two rows of young poplars on either side of the drive. The slender, lacy trees betrayed their agitation and bowed in submission again and again.

Inside, the woman, Berenice, was seated on a brown (mocha, actually) velvet sofa. Despite the fire leaping from log to log in the grate, she tucked her feet under an embroidered cushion and drew her red satin dressing gown a little tighter to her breast. She was in her early forties, a tall woman with a fine head of short and curly dark hair. When in motion, she gave an impression of grace and strength. In repose, she seemed remarkably self-possessed and alert. One could not imagine anything that would surprise or offend her. A silver tea service on a small mahogany table emitted steam and the smell of chocolate and spice. Berenice inhaled this friendly odor and smiled at the stirring spectacle the windows presented. The girl, Clarissa, was seated on the floor. Everything was in its place. Her universe was in order, complete.

She put a hand out and stroked the fair head, which had been bowed in misery for the past half-hour. A little, tear-streaked face soon turned up to stare at her. She laid a warning finger on those sweet full lips, a ripe cherry.

“Don't,” she instructed. The girl bowed her head again, and her shoulders trembled. The woman resumed stroking her hair, lifting handfuls of the champagne tresses and slowly releasing them. Her little beauty was wearing a black velvet corset, cinched just tight enough to set off her small waist and plump up the perfect round cheeks of her behind. It also held her breasts, which were just beginning to bud, up and together. The nipples were so tiny and pink that they were barely visible. A pair of black silk stockings encased her coltish legs, trimmed with lace garters with black rosettes, and disappeared into a pair of black velvet high-heeled shoes. Each shoe had a tiny silver ring in the back, just above the heel. A fine silver chain ran from ring to ring, constraining the length of steps Clarissa could take and the positions she could arrange her limbs in when at rest. In addition, a silver chain was looped in a figure-eight about each instep and heel, securing the shoes to Clarissa's feet.

Berenice tightened her grip on the little one's hair and drew her head back. Her fingertips traced the course of a single tear down the cheek, the throat, the heaving bosom. “My sweet,” she said tenderly, “you will spoil your complexion and give yourself a headache. Wouldn't you like some cocoa now?”

Clarissa's head was firmly held. She stared into wise, brown eyes. They were calm, loving, and quite merciless. She bit her lower lip and managed a timid, “Yes, please.”

“I'll pour tonight,” the woman said, and slid off the couch. She tipped a small amount of brandy from a crystal decanter into one of the cups, then added cocoa and stirred. For herself she poured a balloon of the same brandy. “This will do you good,” she said briskly. Clarissa took the cup with both hands.

Berenice put her brandy on a side table and went over to the window to close the drapes. She added another log to the fire. It caught immediately, so that the room brightened and grew quite warm. Her robe had no sash. As she moved about, it fell open from time to time and displayed the full lines of her figure. Her skin was slightly brown, her hips generous, the whole effect sensuous and maternal. Well aware of Clarissa's attention, she came back to the sofa and curled herself up as before.

They sat in companionable silence, sipping and watching the fire. Some color returned to Clarissa's face. She let go one shuddering sigh and then carefully set her cup and saucer on a low table. Turning, she put her hands beneath the cushion and sought out her mistress's supple feet.