The Dom Project (14 page)

The beef slices had gone dry and stringy from too long on the grill, and one burst into flame. He stabbed it down the slots with his chopsticks.

They both laughed, and the tension building between them vanished. Luckily, only a few pieces had been ruined by neglect, and they worked together to lay out fresh strips over the grill, turning them, charring them just the right amount for a crispy caramelized finish.

They talked about the Mareau pictures, and a leather seminar that John planned on seeing Al speak at, as long as his health allowed, and Robin’s sister’s precocious toddler back in Saskatchewan, and even Jim.

“He’s just bouncing around,” John said. “I don’t get it. I thought he’d stay with Mom and Dad. Even when Dad cuts him off, Mom at least sneaks him into the garage. Maybe it’s this new girlfriend, but that’s never held him back before.”

“Didn’t he bring home that one woman who blackmailed your mom for abortion money for a hysterical pregnancy?”

John groaned. “The one good thing I can say about Jim is that—shit, actually I can’t say
anything
good about him. Never mind.”

“Well, he’s not hard to look at. Although he’s not as handsome as you.”

Robin wasn’t blushing, but he wondered if
he
was. He rearranged the beef slices and changed the topic with a wink and joke.

Week Three

I’ve been clamped, clothespinned, caned, paddled and flogged (I still like caning best). I’ve done pinup poses wearing nothing but heels and toys. I’ve polished his leather. I’ve alphabetized his books while bound shibari-style. We’ve role-played “museum guard catches cat burglar and interrogates her in a most severe fashion in order to discover the hidden gem,” and I’m sure you can imagine its ultimate location...

Robin sprawled in her chair, her stomach fluttering. After an afternoon spent carefully avoiding burning herself on a Korean brazier or hunched over her desk at work, being able to kick out her legs under her own kitchen table felt downright sinful.

But not as sinful as the night before last. And not just playing Miss Garnet in the cat burglar scene—the movie afterward, too. All those intense feelings of heat and romance and fondness and comfort were all tangled together. She couldn’t begin to know where one ended and another began. Maybe they didn’t have beginnings or endings. Maybe everything in her life
couldn’t
be so neatly delineated by that little strand of pearls. And why didn’t that thought frighten her more. Instead, she felt...exhilarated, yes, that was the word. She crossed her legs, uncrossed them, wriggled upright and got back to typing. There was no way in hell she could have written this at work. It was tricky enough at home, alone, sitting upright at her kitchenette table.

Through everything, J has been amazing. So giving. Completely in tune with me. Back when we lived together in college, he had this uncanny way of knowing when he needed to bring me coffee and a cupcake. When it comes to our arrangement, he’s the same, except now the cupcake comes after an hour of rope bondage. I couldn’t be happier, and I trust him implicitly.

Which is good, because that trust is definitely going to be put to the test tonight in our next session.

The time limit for our experiment is coming at me faster than I ever would have guessed. Honestly, I’m kind of wishing I’d agreed to three months at the start of this instead of one, but that’s just delaying the inevitable. At some point, this whole thing has to end. So our next order of business is testing out the dynamic including someone else. That is to say, preparing me for trying this with different partners. After J. We’re inviting a third into our play as a way of taking the training wheels off while J’s still holding the seat of my bike, I guess you could say.

I was never very good at dating. I love sex. I love simply being next to someone, secure in the knowledge we’ll be spending our lives together. The steps in between? They were daunting even without the kink. But I’m ready for the work. This whole thing has proven to me that my desires are real, and they are valid. What’s missing is the right person to share them with.

Now I just have to find him.

Well that had taken a turn for the maudlin. She’d only meant to write about her insecurities with regards to introducing a third: whether she’d like him/her, whether she’d feel comfortable, whether she’d still be turned on, even. And instead, she’d sighed out in cyber-anguish,
when will I know love
?

Oh well.

As for tonight’s session, I’m nervous as hell, but looking forward to it too. No matter how it goes down, I’m sure I’ll have tons of juicy details for you guys. Um, in a manner of speaking.

Love,

The Picky Submissive

Two hours later, Robin found herself on John’s front step, watching in surprise as he said, “Oh, guess I should give you these,” and reached into his pocket.

“Here?” She immediately straightened her back and lifted her chin. Wherever. Whenever. As soon as he took out the pearls, she was his. That was the agreement. She trusted him.

“Yes, here.” He reached around her neck, almost a hug, and fastened the pearls. And then leaned forward, brushing her hair back behind her ear as he whispered, “Remember your safe word.”

She wished he’d stop saying that. But now wasn’t the time to bring it up. No, now was the time to be meek and sweet and obedient for him. Two relationships. Two Robins.
And never the twain shall meet.

John breathed deeply, as if assuming his own transformation, and opened the door.

Robin fell into line behind him, which turned out to be a mercy because it meant nobody saw her fierce blush when John said, in a strange, growling voice, “Hello, pig.”

As John stepped to one side, sweeping into the room at an angle like a stalking predator, she got her first glimpse of the man kneeling in the middle of his living room. The man John had told her about at dinner, she had to assume. She didn’t know his name, and his face was downcast, in shadow. He was their age, with dirty blond hair. Clean-shaven. As for his body, he was slightly built and covered in goose bumps, wearing nothing but a pair of white briefs. Not exactly what she had imagined. So...clean-cut.

John didn’t give her any time to acclimate to the situation, just spoke in that same aggressive performer’s voice, which was nothing like the calm, steady one he used on Robin.

“I hope you don’t mind I brought a friend along. Truth is, your mouth is good enough to suck my dick, all right, but other than that, looking at you is a turnoff. So I found someone more up to my standards to distract me while I pound you.” Without even looking at Robin, he stalked up to the man, grabbed him by the hair—and it was at this moment that she held her breath, expecting John to yank his head upward, to
see
—

—and John pushed him down onto the floor, toppling him off his knees. Put his boot on the man’s face.

She jerked in fear, hands curling into fists.

“Go kneel, sweetheart,” John said, not turning from the other man. He pointed to a cushion laid out neatly at the head of the room; she didn’t question him, didn’t hesitate, only rushed quickly to where he’d indicated. She kneeled and folded her hands on her lap. Forced herself to look at the tableau laid out in front of her.

John stepped off, grabbed the man’s chin and jerked his face up to look at Robin. The faint indentations from John’s boot formed wavy squiggles across his cheek. “Isn’t she beautiful?” he asked, staring at her with an intensity she couldn’t translate. “This is the kind of girl a guy like me marries. You? You’re just a piece of ass I keep around on the side for when she has a headache.”

Such a horrible lie, and yet the man half crumpled on John’s floor let out an equal parts nauseous/pleasured moan. Robin’s stomach twisted and a sick heat curled down her tightly clenched thighs.
John’s only giving him what he wants.
He wants this.
God
,
he wants this.
Even though John had verbally set her above this man, she was, in a more important sense...below. Outside. Not central. It made her head swim.
I
wanted this too
.

“He’s hard,” John remarked. He was looking in her direction, but his gaze had softened in intensity, seeming to focus on some middle distance. It was no less terrifying. “Do you think that’s because he likes being used like a whore? Or because he wishes he could ever fuck you?”

She opened her mouth, then closed it again. Being an observer was hard enough.

“Sometimes he gets
confused
. Forgets he’s gay for a reason, and needs to be reminded. Tell him you’ll never fuck him.”

“I’ll never fuck you,” she said, softly, not even thinking of the words. A human echo. A mirror. Doing everything and anything John asked of her.

So why did John look so
hurt
?

* * *

“I’ll never fuck you,” she said, staring at John and simultaneously not seeing him at all. It sent an ice-cold arrow lancing into his gut. Why did it feel like that was meant for him? And why did it seem like that was
exactly
what he’d asked of her?

Focus
.

“See, pig? No woman wants you, and
I
really only need you as a hole, so at this point that little hard-on of yours is pretty much worthless.”

Andy moaned. The guy loved this kind of thing, being debased, and normally John loved giving him everything he wanted, even the homophobic fetish stuff John was borderline uncomfortable with, but somehow with Robin here it felt strangely cruel.

Shake it off.
She’s fine.
You’re fine.
Andy’s fine.

Well, what he’d planned next was simple. Brutal, but reassuring in its simplicity, and something they’d done many times before.

“Can’t have you making a mess,” he told Andy in a low voice as he went to the table where he’d set out the implements. Leather suspension cuffs. Gleaming metal, spikes and screws and chains. The selection process always gave him a very pure, clean high, a nonsexual delight, and he’d figured why a long time ago: like working with the camera, it represented a union of art, purposeful technique and random synchronicity.

He chose.

And then he dragged Andy—limp, pliant, breaths shallow and panting—underneath the suspension hook, pulled him up to his knees, cuffed him, pulled up the chain and locked it tight. He moved quickly and violently. He had an audience, after all.

Andy hung from thick cuffs, arms stretched to the ceiling as if praying, weight resting on his knees. John didn’t ask him if he was comfortable. They had their rhythms, their tender moments, but tonight wasn’t about that.

Chained. Vulnerable. Bowing to him. John drank in the sight for a moment, focusing on the pale underside of Andy’s exposed arms where the flesh lay close to the bone. The curve of Andy’s biceps was defined but very subtle, just the kind of male body that most appealed to John. He grasped Andy by the chin, tilted his face up, then slapped him.
Fuck
, it felt good to work with his hands again.

And he’d used exactly the right amount of force.
Yes
. A sharp noise that still echoed. A spot of color, like the blushes on Robin’s cheeks. Andy whined deep down in his throat; his forehead was sheened with sweat.

John kneeled in front of Andy, wrapped his thumb, forefinger and middle finger in a tight circle around his balls, and
pulled
. A hissing noise burst from Andy’s mouth, pain and shock seething over.

John kept the pressure steady as he fastened the metal ring around the base of Andy’s stiff bobbing cock and tight-stretched sac. “He needs this,” he said, using a voice as emotionless and remote as possible. “The pain reminds him what he’s good for.”

“Thank you for reminding me, sir.” It was the first time Andy had spoken, and his voice cracked, straddling the line between pain and pleasure.

There were four blunt-tipped screws set on the inside of the metal ring. John tightened them one by one, until they indented the swollen flesh equally on all sides, a compass of torture. Andy let out a hiccuping sob, then fell into strained silence. John listened carefully to his breathing—shallow, but not too shallow. He waited, crouched there, until those breaths slowed and became even, and he judged that Andy’s body had found a new equilibrium. An accommodation of sorts with the leather that bound him and the metal that racked him.

Then he rose to his feet and gently raised Andy’s eyelids with the pads of his thumb, enough to see the enormously dilated pupils. He let go. Andy blinked.

No more need for words now. Somewhere—far away, beyond his current mental horizon—he remembered someone was watching.
This is everything I have
, he thought.
The bitter and the sweet
.
The truth
. And then his thoughts became very simple, divided between his own need to fuck and come and his partner’s need to breathe and receive.

He unbuttoned his jeans.

* * *

In their second year of college, Robin had seen John naked. It was 2 a.m. and she’d had an exam the next day and a splitting headache, so she’d gone to the kitchen for a glass of water to swallow her aspirin. John had been rooting around in the fridge, and when he closed the door, she got an eyeful of him in three-quarters view as he chugged a bottle of orange juice. She’d yelled something at him about putting on some damn clothes and don’t you own a fucking robe and he’d just cocked his eyebrow and jutted his hips at her, dick wagging, like the carefree pervert he was.