Playing Knotty (15 page)

Chapter 17

T
he T on
Saturday night was busy, but Ian and Emma managed to get two seats side by side on the Orange Line. They'd stopped to pick up the suitcases from his apartment and were now headed to Sullivan Square, where Kyle Golding and his partner, Victor, were waiting. Ian should have been reviewing his schedule for the evening, but all he could focus on was the warmth of Emma's leg against his and her sweet, flowery scent. It was a combination of perfume and shampoo, and he wanted nothing more than to bury his nose in her neck and breathe her in. After she'd left his house on Thursday, her scent had been all over his room. He'd lain in bed that night, inhaling the flowery aroma mixed with the heady muskiness of her arousal, hand tight around his dick as he jerked off to thoughts of her. This was getting out of control. Emma clearly didn't want a relationship; she didn't even want their dinner date to be a date, let alone anything more serious. The deeper she got into his head, the more he was setting himself up for disappointment.

They were mostly quiet during the ride, lost in their own thoughts. As they got off the T at Sullivan Square, he tried to take both suitcases, but Emma insisted on pulling one. After another block, Ian looked up at the building. “This is it.”

“You've been here before?”

“Once. Before I book a workshop in someone's house, even if I've met them already, I make sure to go to the house and check it out. Some people have no idea of the kind of space these sort of events require, and try to host a workshop in a cluttered studio.” He grinned. “And sometimes people's homes are creepy, and I don't want to do a workshop there.” He rang the bell to the apartment and they were buzzed in.

Kyle and Victor were both big, imposing men. Ian knew they'd met playing college football; they'd told him the whole story when he'd scheduled the workshop. They'd talked for a half hour, sitting so close that their crossed legs brushed, hands clasped between them. Aside from both being tall and black, they looked nothing alike. When they opened the door, Ian watched Emma take in the sight of them. Victor wore his hair long, a mass of tight dreadlocks past his shoulders. Kyle was bald, and Ian would never ask if that was by design or genetics. Victor was wearing a grunge band T-shirt and jeans, Kyle a pair of khaki pants and a button-down oxford open at the collar. They never seemed to stop holding hands when he had visited, and their fingers were intertwined now when they opened the door to the apartment and welcomed Ian and Emma inside.

After brief introductions, Kyle stepped away to give Emma the grand tour. As they disappeared down the hallway, Victor helped Ian bring the suitcases into the living room where they'd have the workshop. The two-bedroom apartment was gorgeous, all polished hardwood floors and eclectic antique furniture that somehow matched despite being from different styles and time periods. The paintings on the walls were real, not prints, although Ian didn't know if any of the painters were famous. Were these paintings he should know? As Kyle led Emma back down the hall to where Victor and Ian were setting up, Ian could see the wide-eyed look on Emma's face and knew she was as impressed as he had been on the first visit.

“This place is something else.” Emma shook her head, hands clasped behind her back. “I think all my furniture came from either IKEA or the dumpster behind Pier 1. It looks like a museum in here. A really nice museum,” she amended hurriedly. “Not that I think your stuff looks old. Because it doesn't. It's just . . . ” Emma looked to Ian for help, but he shrugged, not sure what she was getting at, and she sighed. “I'm sorry. Words aren't working for me tonight.”

Kyle laughed. “It's all right. What did you say you do, Emma?”

“I own a bookstore. Clearly, I should be more articulate than I am.” Emma ran a hand through her hair, tangling in the loose brown curls. “Anyway, what about you? What do you do?”

Kyle and Victor immediately launched into the discussion in that
way
they had, where Victor would talk about Kyle and Kyle about Victor, filling in missing pieces for each other like a puzzle they'd learned by heart. Kyle coached high school football now, and Victor was a personal trainer. With very little prompting from Emma, they easily deviated into discussing how they had met and the history of their relationship. While they chatted, Ian set up the ropes he would need for the workshop, all the while keeping an eye on the time.

Guests started arriving shortly after he'd laid everything out and put his suitcases in the other room. Kyle and Victor had emailed him the guest list ahead of time, so he was expecting four other couples, all of whom had done some rope work in the past. He recognized one of the couples (Claire and Tom) from his beginner workshop a few months ago, when he had met Kyle and Victor; and another couple (Salome and Francine) from his local FetLife group and from play parties. The other two couples were new to him. In Boston, that wasn't a surprise: The town had a large kink scene with almost no way to meet
everyone.
As they all shook hands, Ian met the other two couples: Brian and Jorge, then Malik and Darnell. The ratio of men to women in this workshop was much higher than others, but his ties worked well on both genders with only a few modifications, so he wasn't concerned.

A few visual check-ins with Emma showed that she was shaking hands and greeting people, clearly more at ease than last time. She knew what to expect from the workshop and seemed comfortable, smiling and laughing over some tidbits of conversation he couldn't hear. When everyone had found their seats, Ian settled down near his sets of rope, Emma settling in on the seat beside him, and began.

Teaching rope work was easy, always had been. The knots came second nature to him, the various ties like a visual Rolodex in his head. In the past, his model had always been like an extension of the rope, a movable mannequin. Not that he hadn't liked his models or prioritized their safety. He checked in with them frequently for numbness, coldness, or tingling, never left them in their bonds or suspension for any extended periods of time, paid them fairly, and treated them with friendly consideration. But during the class, his focus was always on his students, on how much they were learning and whether they were performing the ties properly.

With Emma, he found himself as focused on her body and her breathing and facial expressions as he was on the class itself. When he was explaining next steps or walking around the room, his attention was on his students. But when he was demonstrating, his knuckles brushing the curves of Emma's body, drawing the rope over her sensitive skin, he was completely captivated by the moment. Several times, he wished they were alone. He wished she were asking him to tie her up for their mutual pleasure rather than for someone else's instruction. She might have been sensing his feelings; although in the past she'd often closed her eyes when he was binding her, that night she watched him, her dark eyes large and trusting. Maybe she wanted it, too.

He didn't have much of an opportunity to ask. Their setting meant minimal privacy, and even during the break midway through, she ended up in a long conversation with Malik. Nearest Ian could tell, Malik had graduated from the same MBA program a year earlier, and he and Emma were bonding over tales of their best and worst professors. She kept looking over at Ian, and each glance was accompanied by a smile. What was he to make of that?

In the last minutes of the break, Ian walked up to where she was wrapping up her conversation with Malik and brushed his hand across the small of her back. After a few words of parting, Malik turned back to Darnell, who was handing him a bottle of water. Ian guided Emma away from the crowd. “I wanted to check in with you before we continued. We've barely talked at all tonight.”

“Yeah.” She met his eyes, then glanced away, one hand adjusting the hem of her sweater. “I thought that might be best. You know, keep my mind from running away on me.”

“And is it working?”

She looked up at him again, one side of her mouth turning up. “Not in the slightest.”

He took a sip from his bottle of water, mouth dry at the idea that she was as affected as he was. “So, you ready for me to start tying you up again?”

“You'd better.” Her smile was flirtatious, teasing, and she picked up a coil of rope that he'd left draped over the back of the chair. She flicked one end back and forth, rubbing her fingers over the electrical tape he used to keep it from fraying during class. “I thought we were going to do some new rope work. This whole first hour has been review. What about the ties we did on Thursday?”

“I always do review in the first half of my advanced classes. Now we're moving on.” He took the rope from her, casually looping the end around one wrist and using it to tug her arm back and forth. “Good to go?”

Turning her wrist, she took the rope he held and used it to tug him closer. The step he took brought him right up against her. The space between them felt electrically charged, the air ready to spark. From the slight widening of her eyes and the parting of her lips, he knew she felt it, too. “Good to go,” she said, barely a whisper. He unwrapped her wrist and she stepped away, licking her lips.

As he worked through each tie for the next forty-five minutes, stopping to instruct and direct the class along the way, he let himself indulge in watching Emma. She was so lovely like this, skin flushed, hair tousled, eyes bright. Although she laughed lightly and easily when he joked with the group, he knew enough by now to read her body, and he could feel how she curled into him with each touch of his hands. By the time he'd reached the over-and-back harness that would bring her arms up and behind her head, she was practically anticipating all his moves. It felt like a dance, graceful and easy. As he explained the warnings for this particular tie, including watching out for loss of circulation, she was already holding her wrists in place for him to tie.

“Come into the middle of the circle for this one, Emma.” Ian tugged her down off her chair to kneel in the center of the group, right in the middle of the large plush area rug where they had been working. “I want you all to see this so we can do it quickly. It's a wonderful tie, restrictive and perfect for dominance bondage, but you don't want to leave your bottom in it for too long.” As he grabbed the trailing ends of rope, Emma was lifting her wrists behind her head, the action making her sweater ride up a bit in the front and exposing a swath of soft skin above the low rise of her jeans. Ian wanted to run his fingers along that skin and make her squirm.

Since the harness consisted mostly of square knots, no complex double coin knots or snake weaves, his group was able to complete their pieces in very little time. After he secured Emma, and they had each secured their partners, he explained some of the benefits of this tie while sitting on the floor in front of her.

“The over-and-back harness is ideal for subs who try and escape out of any tie. Not only are they firmly bound, but their arms are bent behind their heads, adding to the feeling of vulnerability.” He rested his hand on her hip, fingers barely above the waistband of her jeans where her stomach was exposed. “This is an ideal position for tickling. But as with everything, make sure you have your partner's consent.”

The room broke into laughter, a few partners leaning in to ask for permission to tickle, others going right to untying. The next few moments were filled with lighthearted conversation, plus plenty of tickling. Ian turned to face Emma. “Nice job.” He reached up behind her head to untie her.

“Aren't you going to ask for my tickling consent?” Her lips curled up, the tip of her tongue just visible between her teeth.

He paused, hands halfway to her shoulders. “Are you
giving
me your tickling consent?” He brought his hands down to the hem of her sweater, grinning.

“Maaaaybe.” She dragged the word out even as she tried to bend forward and protect her stomach.

“It doesn't work with maybes.” He wasn't touching her, though his fingers were close enough that he knew she could feel them. She was still looking at him, and he could get lost in the depths of her eyes.

After a moment, she nodded.

He ghosted his fingers across her belly and she let out a shock of laughter, curling in on herself and only exposing more of her sides. A light brush of his fingernails had her giggling ferociously. The ends of the rope made a handy leash, holding her exposed and keeping her from curling up when she rolled onto her side. She tried unsuccessfully to move away from his fingers as she laughed out loud, the sound bright and clear, and he was suddenly rock-hard in his jeans.

He stopped before she asked him to, dropping the leash and moving to untie her where she lay on her side. He had to straddle her thigh to reach the ends of the rope. Her giggles didn't stop as he unwrapped the rope from her hands and set it aside. Before he sat back, she lifted her leg a bit and brushed her thigh against his erection. When he looked down sharply, holding back a gasp, she was staring into his eyes with a mischievous smile. He couldn't help but smile back. After a subtle adjustment, making sure his shirt covered any evidence of his arousal, he turned back to the group. Everyone was either untying their partners or had already untied them, and the mood in the room was friendly and close. Perfect for his last tie.