The Theory of Attraction (11 page)

“Professor. What were you planning to do with all the tomatoes after the experiment, by the way? Before I claimed them, that is.”

“Take them to a soup kitchen. I know somebody who volunteers at one. One of my old roommates.”

“Not the same roommate who—”

“Yes, that one. Will you come upstairs with me?” He seemed not just hesitant about asking, but actively uneasy, and I wasn’t sure what answer he wanted to hear. I was pretty sure about the answer I wanted to give, however.

“Of course.”

His eyes shifted over to his plants. But then his fingers moved over my skin again, weaving into my hair, and he turned back to me, looking perplexed and frustrated. And like a light bulb going on over my head, I realized both the problem and the solution.

“But, Ivan, you should probably finish taking care of your tomatoes first. And I need to deadhead a few roses. And then we can go up, okay?”

The sheer relief on his face was equally gratifying and worrisome. Gratifying to know I’d gotten it right in one shot. Worrisome to know that he was really that bound by his routine, and by all the compartmentalizing he did to minimize his exposure to the unknown. Almost as though his entire life was one big coping strategy. I really wasn’t quite sure how to feel about that.

* * *

I’m shallow and easily distracted by novelty, so all my concerns about Ivan’s elaborate coping mechanisms vanished within sixty seconds of entering his bedroom. His transformation when we entered that room was dramatic. From slightly disheveled fellow gardener to the Professor in one easy step. Not the astrophysics-lecturing Professor, but the one I’d met the night before. The one who could lecture me about kinky stuff any time.

“Strip,” he said curtly when the door was closed behind us. “That was your last reminder. The next time you neglect to remove your clothes upon entering this room there will be consequences, Camilla.” He moved past me to the bed, sweeping the duvet off and bundling it into the chair before returning to stand in front of me.

“Is that right, Professor?” I couldn’t shift gears as quickly as Ivan could. Possibly because this was still all new to me. My hands shook a little as I pulled my T-shirt off and started on my bra.

“Yes.” His smile was made entirely of wickedness. “Swift and unpleasant consequences.”

A shiver ran down my spine, half lust and half the kind of fear a horror movie generated. You knew it was coming, you knew it wouldn’t hurt you, but it scared you a little anyway and that was exactly what you were there for.

When my clothes were shucked off into a pile by my feet, Ivan stepped in closer and once again framed my face with his hands. “I think I’d like to keep you here all day, Camilla. Do you have any pressing obligations?”

He was close enough that my nipples brushed against his shirt, making me even more aware that he was still wearing all his clothes while I was naked as a jaybird. Or
nekkid,
as we said in Texas, which meant you were naked and up to no good.

“No, Professor. Except to please you.”

“Somebody’s been reading up. Did you go on the internet last night when you got home?” He didn’t sound too perturbed about that.

“I might have done a little light reading, Sir.”

He tugged his T-shirt off, but left his shorts on. “I may assign you some reading too. I’ll have to think of a few selections. But that will be later. For now, I have other priorities.”

After brushing a faint promise of a kiss against my lips, he stepped away and disappeared into his closet for a few moments, returning with one hand full of black webbed nylon strapping. He must have seen my eyes widen in alarm, because he grinned and shook his head.

“If you’re scared of tethers and Velcro cuffs, remind me to wait a long time before I take you to the club.”

“What are you planning to do with those?”

“About what you might expect.” He slung the straps onto the bed and patted the sheet encouragingly. “Come here.”

When I hesitated, biting my lip, his eyes grew stern and he approached me bearing a set of the cuffs. “Camilla, go to the bed now or you’re going over my knee.”

That didn’t really help me with my decision. But after a few seconds I flipped a mental coin and complied. “Yes, Professor.”

He put me on all fours in the middle of the bed, cuffing my wrists and ankles and tethering me to the head and footboard with some slack. I could see the versatility, because there was still enough play in the tethers to allow me to lie face up or down, or in any number of positions. But not quite enough for me to wriggle completely off the bed, or use one hand to free the other. When I was all secured there, trembling a little from nerves and excitement, Ivan knelt on the bed beside me and slipped a mask over my head, carefully shifting my hair to accommodate the strap as he settled the black silk blind on my nose. It was heavy and blocked the light completely. I swallowed hard and tried to focus on breathing slowly, calmly.

“The lesson for today,” Ivan murmured in my ear, “is about trust.”

“Okay. I trust you, Professor.” I meant to sound a little less anxious as I said it.

“It goes both ways, Camilla.” He started touching me, hands running over my shoulders and back, reaching under me to cup a breast or tweak a nipple. Those hands kept busy as he spoke, and I never knew where to expect them next. “You trust me not to hurt you while you’re tied up, at least not in a way we haven’t agreed on. I trust you to give me everything you can, everything I ask for, and be honest about your limits. And of course you also trust me to reward you if you comply. If you’re good.” One hand slipped between my legs, tracing up and down one inner thigh in a slow, torturous tease. “If you’re bad, on the other hand, you trust me to rein you in. Which are you going to be today, Camilla? A bad girl, or a good girl?”

“I’ll be good if you’ll move your hand up about another two inches, Professor,” I tried to joke. He pulled his hand away so fast I could almost hear a swish in the air as it moved. But his voice remained calm, smooth. In control. I felt him get up from the bed, and then footsteps as he walked around.

“No. It isn’t a negotiation. Once we’re in a scene, once we’re doing…this, the time for negotiation and bargaining is over. Which means that now, trying to talk me into giving you pleasure any sooner than I intended to makes you a bad girl, and a little slut. Do you know what happens to little sluts?”

“S-spankings, Professor?”
Woohoo!

“No. No, I think this is more serious than that. I think this calls for flogging.”

Something smooth and soft flapped over my ass and dragged up my back, tickling along my spine. It took me a second to identify it, even after what Ivan had said. Flogging. It was a flogger. A whip. He was talking about
literally
whipping my ass.

“Since this is your first time,” he went on before I could form a protest, “we’ll begin very slowly.”

It was very slow indeed. So soft it was almost a caress, those first few slaps against my butt. The wide leather strips were surprisingly gentle, almost a tease, and before long I found myself almost wishing for more contact. That wish was granted only in tiny increments, with Ivan always waiting for me to show signs of acceptance before he ramped up the strength of the blows another notch.

Later, when I knew more about it, I would consider the utter mastery of his performance with something like awe. He led me, in the space of a few minutes, from fear of the flogger to craving more of it. By his slow, measured tactics, he guided me through that same change of mind a dozen or more times, until I was tugging on my tethers and leaning hard into each sharp, biting snap of the tails against my ass and thighs. When he stopped I cried out in frustration, only to yelp when the whip snapped up sharply against my drenched pussy.

Then it was over, and I felt the bed dip under Ivan’s weight again. “That’s better. You seem a little more compliant now. Are you going to behave, and stop trying to make deals?”

“Yes, Professor.” I turned my head, even though I couldn’t see him, but he was already moving away down the bed. I wanted him back, wanted him to touch me some more. But I knew what would happen if I asked. Maybe I could be sneaky about it.

Moaning softly, as though still overcome by the flogging and the general lustiness, I slowly lowered my shoulders down until I was in that same humiliating but oddly compelling position he’d put me in last night. Presenting myself. Offering myself. I felt the caveman appeal of it, the mindless and ancient allure in such a blatant display of arousal and willingness.

“Bad girl. Back on all fours.”

He didn’t even raise his voice. If anything, he sounded amused. With a sigh, I pushed against the bed to lift myself again and was startled by a cold touch against one nipple.

“This will hurt a bit, but it will make your nipple very sensitive, both during and after the time that it’s on. The pain will generate arousal in the same places as if you were fondled there. More, possibly.”

He clipped something onto my left nipple and I tried to pull away. With soothing touches and a low, calm voice he convinced me to remain still long enough to allow the sensation to settle in. The initial pinch was sharp but receded to an ache. As Ivan brushed his fingers around the tightening skin and over the plump tag of tender flesh caught in the clamp, I was blindsided by a wave of searing pleasure-pain. The heat spread through my body like a blush and intensified when he affixed the second clamp.

I felt hot and cold and sore and tingly, all at once. My body was as confused as my brain, and only the strong undercurrent of pleasure kept me from trying to bolt. The clamps were heavy enough to drag down slightly, stimulating my nipples continuously, swaying and causing chills to race through me with each ragged breath I took. I couldn’t resist the dark glow of pleasure that had started its slow burn between my legs. Whimpering, I tried to no avail to pull my thighs together, to squeeze the needy ache into something manageable.

Ivan stroked my back, rubbed my neck with one gentle hand. He sounded so considerate, so concerned, as he was doing these deliciously awful things to me. “Easy. It’s a lot to take, isn’t it?”

Gulping, I gasped out an affirmative, only to receive a swift and sharp pop on the tush.

“Yes, what?”

“Professor! Oh, God…”

“Shh.” The warm hand on my neck again, massaging tenderly, and then another hand slipping beneath me to slide down my abdomen. I tried to buck toward it, craving his touch, but the tethers kept me from moving as far as I would have liked. “Be still. I’ll take care of you, Camilla. Trust me.”

When I stopped moving, he began stroking me, petting, dipping in and out of me. He was thorough and methodical, as though he were attempting to learn the geography of my pussy by feel. And always he talked, reassuring me.

In the absolute darkness, I clutched at his words like a lifeline. I reminded myself I’d chosen to try this, that I could stop if I wanted to. Only then did I realize it might well be an addiction in the making, because although I told myself I could stop, I knew I didn’t want to get to that point. I would let it continue because now I wanted to see what came next. Whether it was the science, or the sex, or simply the sheer weirdness of it all, I was hooked. It was something I had needed, without knowing it.

As Ivan’s questing fingers placed another clamp, sweet pain lanced through my clit. He chuckled when I gasped, and patted my butt. “And just think, these clamps don’t even have weights on them. This time. Now let’s warm that ass back up.”

I groaned as the flogger snapped against my skin, a deep guttural noise I didn’t even recognize as coming from myself. My whole body throbbed with the need for release, and the hot lash of leather served only to heighten that need. It was only a few strokes, though, and then it stopped. Ivan ran his hands over the marks, raking his fingernails delicately against my hypersensitive skin and murmuring in approval when I shuddered. When he flicked the clamp on my clit, I almost came, an instant rush of sensation that waned only a bit when the little charm I could feel swinging around finally stopped moving.

Hands, parting my labia, holding me wide open. I wanted to beg, to scream at Ivan to do it, just fuck me, make me come. I had never said such a thing in my life, never known I could be that person. But with wanting came the knowledge that he would only “punish” me, prolonging my sweet agony, if I did that. So I bit my lip and strained to be still as he did what he liked.

One finger, one long finger, dipped inside my pussy. I couldn’t stop a shiver, and the quick clench of my body around that welcome intruder. Then it was out again, traveling upward. Ivan teased his slick fingertip into my ass, and then flicked the clit clamp again. Crying out, I pushed back toward him, wedging his finger a tiny bit deeper in the process.

My orgasm hovered like a shimmering entity, surrounding my clit and pussy but not quite connecting. The added pressure in my ass sent a new batch of sensations romping up my spine, but got me no closer to coming.

“Not until I say so, Camilla. Or it will be your last one for the day.”

“Oh, God. Please!” I couldn’t help myself.

“No. Not yet. I want to be inside you, so I can feel you come on my cock.”

But he had some mercy after all, because the next thing I knew he was there, sliding into me in one hot, thick rush. I could feel the blood thumping through my body, pounding across every overheated inch of me. The friction was almost unbearably good, and I gasped with each slow slide of his cock in and out. So slow. Too slow. I pounded the mattress, tears of frustration soaking the bottom of the mask.

Ivan slid deep and then stopped, leaning his spare frame over mine and reaching under my chest with one hand. “This will hurt for a few seconds,” he warned, and released the clip from one nipple.

Many, many profanities came out of my mouth that I didn’t even know I knew. And many more when he repeated the strange reverse-torture on the other side. The pain was so sharp, and lingered longer than a few seconds. Far worse than when the clamps had been applied, which I didn’t understand. But when I said so, Ivan grunted and then gave a terse, “Explain it to you later.”