Safe Word: An Erotic S/M Novel (3 page)

She turned away from him. Valiant, he thought, the poetry,
the sort of joke.

And yes, he had been planning to read her her rights, in
that highly esteemed restaurant. It would have been just about
now, too. A done deal, instead of... whatever free form nonsense
they'd gotten themselves into.

"Which scenario," he asked carefully, "would you have
preferred?"

"Well," she lifted her eyes to him, "either one would have
given us a clear script to follow."

Fair enough, Jonathan thought. Neither of as ready to
fold yet.

"You don't like just hanging out with me?"

They both smiled at the hurt tone of his voice.

"It's difficult," she answered, "with all the open questions
sort of hanging in the air between us. I mean, I get the sense that
you still want me, but I don't get at all what you've got in mind."

"I want you profoundly," he said quickly. "Complexly," he
added. "And quite against my better judgment." He grinned.
Elision through allusion. The movies as good as the Norton
Anthology for a game of hide-and-seek.

But we could play this way forever.

He made a decision.

"And I do have something pretty, uh, structured in mind.
But it'll take some explaining, and arranging. If you agree to it,
of course."

She nodded. Almost submissively.

"But" (oh, don't go away yet!), "I've been thinking that we
need this unscripted time together, before all that comes down.
Kind of a vacation. Time out, you know? I think we need to talk.
Catch up."

"Vacation... " she repeated. "You mean, seriously with no
rules, no punishments, no, uh, hardware for a while.... "

"If you think you can handle it a little longer."

He smiled at the look she threw him.

"Yeah, " she said, "I can handle it. "

But I think I might have preferred being read my rights.
Because time out sounds fair, even scrupulous, I guess, but
dangerous, too.

Well, I do like to hang out with him. Talk, laugh, reveal
trivial things about myself. Share my own meanings for words here, let me draw you a map of the territory, it'll be so much
easier for you that way, when you're ready to roll your troops
over the border and take over. When you've decoded all my
messages, satisfied yourself that I have no private meanings,
no safe words, left.

Still, he's right, this is the way to do it. Think of it as
an experiment. My science education seems to have ended in
third grade, but I used to love it when we'd shake iron filings
over a piece of paper and watch them line up in the magnetic
field, positive and negative poles. Test the strength of the
attraction, the lines of force. I'll leave when I know I can, and
I'll stay if I know I must. And I'll know which is true-well,
as I told my seatmate on the train this morning, I'll know it
when I know it.

We shook hands on that, an hour later, when we left the
train. Clasping hands, for want of a more appropriate gesture, to seal our compact, our brief intimacy between Paris
and Avignon, the unlikelihood of our meeting again. He was
a good, sympathetic listener, quiet and surprisingly unflappable, like someone who's read the book before he's seen the
movie. Call him a perfect stranger, absent a more suitable
term, bidding me a formal, reluctant farewell at the frontier.
And daring me to be as brave as I need to be. Get it right, he
urged me with his eyes. Be certain.

"Okay," I said, goaded to boldness by the memory of the
handshake this morning. "Sure."

And laughing suddenly now, at the two of us-well,
were we going to stand here exchanging coded messages
forever? When the next step was so idiotically simple?
"A vacation sounds great, Jonathan. But it begins in your
hotel room. In bed. Right now."

Part of me wanted to laugh too, especially at the look on her
face-or looks, since she couldn't quite make up her mind
between smug and terrified. I nodded cordially, as though
she'd praised the view or the weather, endeavoring not to
betray my surprise. Or the more immediate discomfortforget the part of me that wanted to laugh; how long had I
been ignoring those other, dangerously urgent, signals?

We sat quietly in the taxi, a little space between us, both
of us equally astonished by her move. Hardly touching each
other-I mean, not not touching; every so often one of our
hands would creep over that little space. But hardly touching.
Waiting. The hotel didn't have an elevator just as well, it
wouldn't have worked very well to jam ourselves into one of
those little French cages right then.

We climbed the three flights of stairs doggedly, entering
the room silently. She wandered to the window, opening it out
wide, and looked out into the courtyard, the geraniums in
pots, deep red and pale purple. You could hear birds, and you
could see two young women taking in the fragrant, billowy
sheets they'd hung out to dry that morning. "Nice," she said.

I stood next to her and closed the curtains. She turned
toward me and I looked down at her neck, rising from the
crisp, oversized white shirt under her leather jacket. She
didn't have a bra on-the shirt was loose and opaque enough
so that wouldn't immediately be apparent. But, trust me,
I knew. I looked at the inverted triangle of chest above her
shirt's top button, the shadow at the apex where her breasts
began. I almost reached to undo the button. And then ...I had
a better idea.

I took off my own jacket instead, tossing it on a chair.
Sweater and shirt, too. T-shirt. Her mouth twitched a little at
the corners, and I kicked off my shoes, reached down, and
pulled off my socks.

She put her hand on my belly, and I knew she could feel
it tremble. I leaned over to kiss her, lightly, quickly, just grazing her lower lip with my teeth.

She sighed, and then she backed up a step and folded
her arms across her chest. Well, she'd certainly gotten into
the spirit of this vacation thing. She was smiling now, full out,
looking tough in her leather jacket. Her eyes were on my belt
buckle. Hungry, amused, challenging. If she'd ever, during the
time we'd been together, if she had ever dared look at me that
way... well, it would have been unthinkable-she'd have gone
off the chart, that informal and arbitrary matrix of transgressions and punishments I'd worked out as our arrangement
progressed. Arrive late at my house, five strokes with the
rattan cane, forget to address me by name, ten....-

Well, if I'd wanted to guarantee her (hey, and me) a
monster erection, I guess I'd succeeded. Probably it was the
memory of those punishments-clashing deliciously with
her unaccustomed boldness today. I unhooked my belt, using
those memories to keep myself focused. Tossing aside my
pants, pulling off my shorts. The moment off balance as each
foot pulls through its leg hole. And then... nothing to do but
stand there and submit to her appraising gaze.

"Well," she murmured, "you're still a very beautiful man,
Jonathan. And you're right-it's crazy how little I know about
you some ways. Like, how old are you anyway?"

"Thirty-eight," I answered, trying to sound casual.
Still... the word had a cold edge to it.

She nodded noncommittally "Help me with my boots,
please?"

She sat on the bed and I knelt to take off the stiff, pretty
new boots with their intricate, multicolor stitching. She took
off her jacket but sat still. I pushed her skirt up. She had on
long black stockings, a black garter belt, no panties. Slender,
very white thighs. Her pubic hair was short, like the hair
on her head; they'd shaved her cunt, the hair was just now
growing back. The black stripes of the unadorned garter belt
drew the stockings up very high, very taut. The whole effect
was so ambiguously situated between whorish and conventlike-after a year, did she really remember so precisely what I
liked? Or maybe it was just what Constant liked.

I undid the garters. And then I put my head down and
caught the embroidered edge of a stocking in my teeth.
I could feel her thigh under my lips and I slowly pulled the
stocking down, my mouth sliding over her knee, her calf, her
foot. I kissed her instep. And then I repeated the whole business-for the other stocking, the other leg, the other foot.
She had just the slightest, heartstopping trace of a purple welt
on that second thigh, not quite healed-I lingered on it. It
made me want to eat her alive.

I reached for the hook of the garter belt, pulled it softly,
and it fell away. The little black miniskirt was made of some
stretchy fabric. It was easy to pull off, and she helped me, lifting her ass slightly. I pushed her back on the bed, very gently,
so that she was still sitting up, and straddled her. And, much
more slowly than I wanted to, I unbuttoned her shirt, while
she kissed my neck, my shoulders.

And there she finally was, and I stopped caring about what
she might want. I fell on her, grabbing her ass, tonguing her breasts, moving her up to the pillows. Forget the sensitive lover
thing; at that moment all I wanted was to get as much of her into
my hands as possible, before I got as much of me as possible
into her. She moved against me, wrapping her arms around me,
arching her back. I felt the hard points of her nipples against my
chest. I moved into her, too quickly, really, to savor the familiarity, but I would, later, next time. I tried to work carefully, moving
in long, slow strokes. I wanted to last forever, I was afraid I wasn't
going to last at all, I guess I lasted long enough-to hear her cry
out, anyway, roughly, from the dark bottom of her voice.

And afterward, after I felt her come one last time just
a little internal flutter-I heard, or maybe felt, a low laugh
bubbling up from her belly. I'd forgotten that laugh, but now
I remembered it-her laugh that caught the ridiculous edge
of sex so exactly.

I'd punished her, of course, the first time I'd heard
that laugh. I'd been charmed by it, but I couldn't let her get
away with such flagrant disrespect. I gave her four, I think,
or maybe six. It was early on in our time together, and she
was still pretty awkward in most ways, but she surprised me
by how gracefully she took those strokes. Funny what you
remember. And what pushes you forward. I wondered how
long until I'd be disciplining her again. But for now, it was
enough that she was here, under me. For now.

We must have fallen asleep. Because the next thing I remember was the sun coming through the curtains. It was low, and
the light was pink. Sunset.

I was lying on my side. Jonathan was behind me, one
arm flung across me, his hand on my breast. Long, tapering
fingers, beautifully articulated bones spreading out from his
wrists. My skin looked pink in the light, pale pink against
the olive of the back of his hand. I could probably bend my
head down to kiss his hand if I tried, I thought.

I wanted to, a little. To show him how good I was feeling. Not that I'd exactly been keeping it to myself, but still.
It was all so luxurious, so warm and indolent. During the
past year I'd occasionally thought of his hands, the bones
in his wrists. Their images would drift, unbidden, into my
thoughts, late at night, perhaps when the day's challenges
had overwhelmed my defenses. I'd remember their weight
on my body, their elegant curve around my breasts. And I'd
remembered correctly, too, as it turned out. I'll move, I'll do
something soon, I kept promising myself. But right at that
moment I didn't want to do anything but lie there with the
slanted light of the sunset lengthening against us on the bed.
Well, perhaps I could shift backward a little, a little closer to
his hip....-

His hand tightened. He was beginning to wake up.
I lifted my head and licked his fingers. I inched my ass closer
to him. He turned a little, and I could feel his cock-still a
little moist, but not yet hard jumping a little against me.

I turned a little more so that my ass was directly against
his cock, and he moved his other hand under me, reaching for
my other breast. He kissed the back of my neck. I arched my
back, stroking his belly, his stiffening cock, with my ass until
I felt him move into its furrow. Slowly now. I moved back and
forth-teeny movements really, stomach contractions, rotate
an inch forward, an inch back-while he grew against me.

"Okay," he whispered, and we moved onto our knees,
him on top of me.

The bed had a headboard. I grasped it. I didn't want him
to have to balance on his hands. I didn't want him ever to take
his hands off my breasts. He spread his fingers a little, enough
to catch my nipples between them, and then tightened. And
while I gasped at the pinch, while I lost a beat in thralldom
to that sensation and he felt me lose that beat, he moved his
cock against my asshole.

I wasn't ready for him, quite. He knew that, he'd been
looking for that moment. He wanted to feel me yielding to
him. He pushed slowly and I gave way, arching my back,
opening to him, forgetting everything except that yielding,
that always frightening letting-loose.

It hurt a little on every thrust. (It always does. I hope
it always will.) I pushed back against him. He moved more
deeply into me, and I teased myself a little. It hurts too much,
I thought, I have to ask him to stop. Yeah, right. I felt myself
opening my mouth and trying to shape some words-please,
or slower or something-and all I could hear was the sound
of myself coming.

He moved his hands from my breasts to the wall above
the headboard, leaning heavily forward, surrendering to his
own orgasm. Somehow we slid down together to the bed, my
sweaty back plastered to him while I felt him shrink slowly
in me.

I began to believe, for the first time that day, that I was
actually here. With Jonathan in a small hotel with faded blue
shutters at the windows and geraniums in the courtyard.
Lavender and lemon vervaine in a vase on the dresser; the
sheets of our bed still distantly smelling of sun and fresh air, underneath our darker, saltier smells. Vacation: You know
you're on holiday when the smells, the colors, begin to take
on this sort of painterly solidity. And when the other stuffthe rules, the plans-become vaguer, hazier. Yes, really a
vacation, time out from rules and plans, from fantasies, and
from reciting his letter to myself as though it were a mantra.
No need for romantic endings, or for any endings at all, just
yet. Only this lovely, wonderful, all-enveloping lust, in the
sweet, simple, declarative present. It would do for now. It
would do quite nicely.