A Good Student

The roads are pretty deserted out here in the suburbs. An occasional car slides past, but mostly I'm alone and I can think about her as I drive. One road links to another and pretty soon I'm on the expressway and headed for the city. There's a little traffic—hardly any because it's very late, and it's late because I stayed late in that motel where Emma and I made love, that motel where I tied her and whipped her and made her come and come again and then fucked her and fucked her again too. And even then after she left I laid on the bed and masturbated thinking about her—masturbated and sucked her juices off one of the vibrators I'd used on her, sucking it like it was her cock and I was <I>her</I> sub as I jerked off and my dick jumped and spat like it was her little puppet, filling me with a weird mixture of bliss and shame, the white cream flowing over my hand and me moaning out loud and getting off on the humiliation of playing that role as I slurped that plastic dildo like a satisfied baby.

I shift in the car seat and lean my elbow on the sill so I can feel that hot wind like water on my skin as I drive. It's an old Pontiac and all the gears and cylinders know each other so well that they just kind of glide against each other, oil dripping, pumping… Everything is sex tonight as I eye the rearview and hit the signal and drift over into the center lane where I can just cruise and not worry about passing and being passed. There's a big Ford Explorer coming up fast in the left lane and I'm about to pass a Lexus on the right and I don't want to have to concentrate on that because I just want to think.

I'm trying to be objective about this and serious but all I can think about is what it was like to be inside her and how it felt when she lifted against me when she came, the way she tried to refuse me and how she fought and how she lost and how she looked as she surrendered—surrendered utterly: her back arched, mouth open, shuddering, begging, giving herself to me—how I wanted to claw the soul from her body and just rip it from her and eat it whole and dripping like some insane Aztec sacrifice…

Something catches my eye to the left and I glance up, surprised to see that the moon's still up. It makes me smile because of course it's so big and it's so obvious and it's something we don't understand at all, even though it always looks like it understands us so well. Tonight it looks especially knowing and so I ask it something and of course I get no answer.

I'd told her I loved her and she'd said the same to me, but what did that mean? I'd been inside her, on the verge of orgasm, and at the moment I meant it with all my heart, but we still hardly knew each other. How could it be that we could be that close sexually—fused so closely that it felt like the barriers between us had totally disappeared and I held her naked soul in my hands—but then when she dressed and I lay there and smoked and she ran a brush through her hair and straightened her clothes, I felt this wall settle down between us again, this discouraging silence.

I'd gotten up and seen her to the door and turned her to me and kissed her on the forehead and she'd stopped. For just a moment she'd leaned against me as if for strength or as if there was something she'd wanted to say, and immediately my body had responded, something inside me trying to elbow myself out of the way and grab her again, something telling me not to let her go, but I knew that wouldn't be right, so I'd just kissed her and smiled and she'd smiled and I said, "I'll see you in class," and she nodded and I opened the door for her and let her out into the night.

I'd followed her out and stood on the balcony, leaning on the railing and smoking, watching as she walked across the parking lot. I thought about that part of me she carried inside her. I felt this insane, sudden surge of possessiveness, as if she belonged to me now, but I made it go away, and as I watched her, I wondered what she thought of herself.

She got into her car without looking back and as she did I couldn't help but admire it. I'd come to learn that suburbanites have a special relationship with their cars, one that city boys like me don't understand. It was a language I was trying to master, and already I knew enough to know that Emma had way overbought. She had a gleaming, brand new yellow convertible with a sharp, high ass, proud and sassy—a silly word, but totally appropriate. It was a car to turn heads, and it was a car she could only afford if she assumed David would be picking up the payments once they were married. She could never afford it on her own.

She strapped the seat belt over the tits I'd just been licking and fondling, checked her eyes in the rear-view mirror, and did something with the stereo as she pulled out, perfectly at home behind the wheel. Barely an hour ago she'd been tied in the doorway, gasping and convulsing in stomach-clenching orgasms, reveling in her shame as I whipped her naked cunt and held her hair in my hand like she was some trophy animal, begging me to strip her bare both mentally and physically and take everything a man could take from a woman, strip her down to the bone. And now here she was, insulated from the world by her yellow convertible and another man's love, safe behind tinted glass and steel and climate-controlled air-conditioning, like butter wouldn't melt in her mouth. She made me smile. She made me hunger.

She drove to the edge of the parking lot and stopped. Her taillights flashed once, the equivalent of a female flouncing her skirts—a kind of automotive kiss-off—then pulled onto the highway and was gone.

I turned back and watched the runway approach lights at the airport strobing in the dark in a kind of silent, insistent come-on, listening to the sounds of the crickets in the weeds beyond the motel, then I turned and went back into the room.

It was still thick with the smell of our passion. The stain of our mixed secretions was there on the sheets. The spreader bar lay on the floor, the leather cuffs that held her ankles apart were still affixed to it. The ropes hung over the door, the toys were still spread on the towel on the dresser.

Supposedly I'd been domming her. Supposedly I'd tied her up and forced her to do shameful and degrading things. And yet now she was driving home in her yellow convertible, body lax and satisfied, sated with pleasure. I went around the room and started straightening up, picking up the toys and dropping them into my bag, cutting down the rope and throwing it away, wrapping the toys up in the towel.

The whip smelled of her. The vibrators were sticky with her lubrication.

I start seeing more cars now but it's still late enough (or actually early enough) that the expressway's all but deserted and it's like a special privilege to be out driving now, seeing a different world, the world of cops, ambulance drivers, drunks, dreamers, cabbies, and it's sweet to be able to lie back and just cruise—like dreaming—winding through the sinuous turns as if the car's on rails. The old sights and landmarks roll by, the expressway lights sweep over the cars. The buildings look half asleep and adream, stark-lit and shadowed and naked and exposed, and I hit the radio looking for a human voice.

This is my city and it's been a long time since I've felt it this way, alive and aglow like this, rich with menace and promise. Every car looks like it knows me and knows where I've been and wants to get next to me like a dog and smell my ass. Yes, menace. Danger. That's what passion is: dangerous love. Love that puts you in danger, that gets a hold of you and makes you do things you wouldn't normally do. It's the only love worth having and it's the kind of love that's been missing from my life.

I'd forgotten the danger of this place. In the last few years and the hell I'd been through, I'd decided to play it safe and I'd forgotten the excitement and the potential, all the doorways and the windows and the places they led, the curious streets and the way they lay and the sound of voices as you walked past the alleys. I'd forgotten all of it. Like I’d forgotten the thrill of having a woman like Emma, of having her tied to a chair waiting for you, knowing she wants you to take her, knowing she expects it and she's waiting for it, and knowing where taking her takes you as well.

The big green highway signs pass overhead like guillotines and I don’t even read them any more, don't even notice. I check the rearview and hit the signal and drift over to the cutoff for 294, where the lanes swing out to the west and dip down, and at the bottom of the little spur where the dome of that funny Polish church is on my right, "Wild Nights" comes on the radio and I twist the volume way up, push my back against the seat and punch the gas, send the car swooping down and up onto the great broad merge where it joins like an artery with 294 to form one vast broad vista, ten lanes of mercury-lit concrete gazing straight down toward the buildings and towers of downtown, hovering like a crown in the night

And as Van Morrison wails away about his jukebox thunder I slam the dashboard and cover my mouth with my hand so no one else will see. I laugh in sweetness and in real pain, frightened and amazed.

"Oh Jesus fuck! You poor bastard! You sorry son of a bitch! You're in love!"

*****

But how could I talk about being in love? I was twice her age, burned out, bitter, from a different world. What did I know of her? Sexually we were fantastically compatible. There was no doubt about it—it was almost uncanny the way we got along, the way we seemed able to read each others minds and hearts and feed on each other's passions. But otherwise we seemed to be about as different as two people could be.

And that was the problem. I wanted more now. I wanted more than just the sex. I wanted all of her, or at least I thought I did. I didn't even know what I wanted. I didn't even know how to find out.

The way I thought of it was like this: the sexual roles we played of dom and sub were like masks that we hid behind. And because we could hide behind them, they freed us.

But who was she behind the mask? And who would I be for her behind mine? Would she still want me and would I want her? Would it matter?

In the face of this fantastic sexual richness we had to play with, did anything else matter at all?

*****

I called her the next night:

"Hello?" Her voice was flat and non-committal.

"Emma? It's Conner. How are you?"

A pause. The longest one-second pause in the world as I waited for her reaction.

"Conner? Oh! Hi! I'm fine. How are you?" A bit of sudden breathiness. I didn't know if it was for real or if it was affected, but either way was all right.

"I'm fine," I said. "Or no. Really I'm not. I'm not, Emma."

I held the phone like it was her and I spoke to her ear, not to her: "I can't stop thinking about last night. I can't get it out of my mind. It's like it haunts me, like it did something to me. You were incredible, Emma, do you know that? Do you understand?"

Silence for a moment. Then, whispered: "Oh, Conner…"

"I have to see you tomorrow night."

"After class?"

"Yes. I have to see you."

"Yes. Yes, all right."

"But listen, I want to do something. Can you talk?"

"A little. I'm alone right now, but they're coming home pretty soon. Any minute. What is it?"

She was talking about her roommates. As far as I knew, they still didn't know about us.

"I want to bring you into my place in the city. Now wait—before you say anything, just listen to me. I'll drive you in and I'll drive you back the same night so you don't have to worry about your roommates. We'll leave your car out at school so you don't have to worry about driving into the city and parking and all that. I'll give you my keycard and you'll leave it in the faculty garage so it'll be safe and no one will see it. Okay."

"The faculty garage? You can do that?"

"Yes. It's no problem at all. And then—I'm going to kidnap you," I said.

A silence—"What?"

"I said, I'm going to kidnap you. From Crane. Abduct you."

"What are you talking about?"

I laughed. "Shhh! This is a fantasy I've had forever, something I've always wanted to do. I want to pretend to kidnap you from campus. Throw you into a van and tie you up and drive you off. Abduct you. I'm going to rent a van, and tomorrow night after class is out, you'll move your car into the faculty lot, then you'll start walking across the lot between D and G buildings, across from the duck pond? You know where that is? By the construction?"

"Yes?"

"I'm going to be parked there. As you walk by I'm going to drive by and grab you, throw you into the van and tie you up. You're going to be my victim."

"Conner, you're crazy! What if someone sees us?"

"No one will see us! And if they do, then we're just screwing around. What can they do? We're just goofing off—a prank. No victims, no one to complain. Just do it, okay?"

"Conner, I don’t know! This sounds crazy."

"Emma, think about it! You in the back of a van with a desperate maniac, running his hands all over you, all tied up and helpless, making you do all sorts of lewd and perverse things, slowly undressing you …"

"Oh God, Conner! You're insane!"

"Tell me you've never had fantasies like that yourself!"

"But I never really thought of doing them."

"Well you should. Don’t you see what we've got here, Emma? A chance to make all these fantasies come true. How many people ever get that?"

She made a low sound of disapproval into the phone. "You're really serious?"

"Yes."

"You really want me to see your place?"

I laughed. "Yes."

"What do I have to bring? What are we going to do?"

"Do you really have to ask me that? You don't have to bring anything. Believe me."

I could hear her smile.

"Oh, all right."

"Good. Tomorrow then."

I hung up and started trying to clean up the place. Luckily I don't own enough stuff to make a mess anymore, but still—a bachelor in the city…

Two hours later the mood had changed. She called me back, sounding thoughtful. "Conner? Conner, it's Emma."

My stomach knotted. "Yes?"

"Conner, I just want to make sure of something, because of what we said the other night. Because of what I said."

I braced myself. "Yes?"

"I said something I shouldn't have, the other night when we were making love. You know what it was. I shouldn't have said it. It was something you said we shouldn't talk about. You know what I mean?"

"Yes. I know," I said. What she was talking about was when we said we'd loved each other in the midst of making love. It was true enough at the time. Now, who knew? "Don’t worry about it. Passions were running high. I understand."

"I mean, I know this sounds stupid but I don't want anyone to get hurt. I know I shouldn't be doing this, but I'm not really engaged, I mean, not really, and I don't know if I'll ever get a chance to do this again in my life. You said it was just about sex anyway, and it is, right?"

It was a good thing she couldn't see the look on my face as I answered, the gall I was biting back. "Yeah. That's what I said."

"So as long as we keep it on those terms, it's just like a game, right?"

I turned to the window and there was the moon again, seeing everything, judging everything, suffering so. "Right. It's just like a game."

"Good. Good. I just wanted to make sure we understand each other, because I really don't want anyone to get hurt."

"No. No one's going to get hurt."

I pushed it all back down inside. We still had the summer and part of the fall and there was no telling what might happen by then. Certainly by then the novelty would have worn off and we'd be sick of each other—probably way before then—and until then he really didn't have to exist for me. I could fix it so he wouldn’t exist for me. I could probably fix it so he wouldn't exist for her too, if she'd just give me the chance.

In any case, there were more important matters at hand. There was tomorrow night for one thing.

"So we're on for tomorrow after class?" I asked her.

I heard her smile. "Do you want me?"

*****

It was fascinating to see how Emma had changed in the few short weeks we'd been together.  She knew how I wanted her and she suspected I wanted her as a sub, which was partially true but not entirely, because the truth was, I never wanted her as a slave. I never wanted her to grovel or be less than me. In fact, as that incident in the motel parking lot had shown, my urge to dominate her wasn't without its masochistic side, a certain sick liking for the feel of a stiletto heel sliding against my dick, and she'd always had a stubborn streak of arrogance and pride from the first day met her. She used it defensively, as a kind of barbed-wire fence. But she also had a way of crossing her legs just so, of casually stretching so that her shirt pulled across her breasts with just the right amount of tension, of turning her head so as to display the sculpted column of her neck to the best advantage, that showed she could use it offensively as well.

She played with her beauty like it was an edged weapon, and she wielded her submission the same way—using it to cut both ways, offensive as well as defensive. I was aware of that and that's why I'd decided on this little kidnapping game. It would give her a chance to participate, and I wanted to see how far she'd go, whether she'd just be entirely passive or whether she'd really get involved. I wanted to see how much—if anything—she had invested in this relationship, or whether I were the only crazy one.

I was worried at first. Her second phone call with her caveat about her boyfriend stuck in my mind like a drowning fly at a picnic and wouldn't go away. It had the potential to contaminate the whole thing. Late afternoon turned gray and blowy with a strong wind sending grit and papers swirling in the parking lot, threatening rain and worse. There were thunderstorm warnings on the radio, and it looked like that long-expected front was coming through, finally bringing relief from the heat that had settled upon the upper Midwest like a pot lid for the last ten days. It didn’t bode well for a night of outdoor abduction games. 

Emma avoided my eyes as she took her seat, wearing one of the most unattractive pantsuits I've ever seen on this side of a fast food counter, so unflattering that I half-expected her to tell me that not only was our little game off for tonight, but that she'd thought things over further after her phone call and decided to end the whole sordid affair.

But Emma was too good an actress and I soon saw that what she was up to was playing the part of the little night school ingénue for our upcoming drama, even down to simulating a job at an eat-it-&-beat-it joint. All evening she did a wonderful job of looking normal and wholesome—even helping the hateful Mrs. Gonzales write down the reading assignment and bustling about like some Future Teacher of America candidate. I caught her glancing up at me to see if I was enjoying the act and I couldn't repress a smile. She was good. As the class emptied out she picked up her books and approached the lectern.

"You have something for me, Professor Devlin? A parking permit?"

Even in that pantsuit her barely repressed excitement made her radiant and she got to me. I felt something stir inside, like a sleeping beast just starting to wake, and I thought, this must be what a hound feels like when he first catches scent of a fox. She moved closer and I felt the last extraneous minutiae of the class fall away as the beast stretched and took notice, felt my body begin to tighten in anticipation, prepare itself for its one true function, the animal reason for which it was placed on earth.

I gave her the pass and glanced around but no one was watching. They were all shuffling out.

"You'll wait for me, won't you?" she asked. "I have to change first into my special abduction clothes but it won't take a minute. Did you like my outfit?" She showed me a quick curtsy.

"It's awful," I said.

She smiled. "We wear these for inventory. Can you believe it?"

She lowered her voice and asked," You'll be between C and G buildings, right? Where they have the overflow parking? What kind of van is it?"

"A Dodge. Dark green, no windows. You brought special clothes?"

She slipped the keycard into her pocket. "Of course I did. This was always a fantasy of mine too and I always pictured how it should be. But I should warn you—I'm not much of a fighter. You're not going to get all violent?"

"No. Not like that, no." I smiled. "I can't guarantee what I'll be like when I get you inside, though."

She gave me a knowing smile. "I'm not worried about that. I just want you to do it."

She turned to go but I called her back. "Emma? I want to give you a safe word. You know what a safe word is?"

"Really?" She looked like she was going to say something but then changed her mind. Her eyes were glowing. "What is it?"

"Your name. Emma Fiore. Just say your real name. And if you can't talk, tap, bang, hit me 3 times, over and over."

"You think I might have to use it?"

"No."

She grinned at me. "Then maybe you're not doing your job, Conner."

*****

It was pitch black and blowing hard by the time I was settled in the van, facing the new faculty parking garage and dying for a cigarette. The big cottonwoods were bowing and swaying in the wind and there was no doubt a big storm was coming. The radio crackled with bursts of static and there was vicious lightning in the southwest. It made me nervous.

From where I was parked I could hardly miss her yellow convertible as it pulled into the ramp. Emma's bare arm emerged and fed the card into the slot and the gate rose up obediently and she drove inside. Even though it was all pretend, my hands were sweating.

There was a lot of construction going on over the summer, especially at this end of the campus, and the new faculty garage was part of it, all clean fresh concrete and bright fluorescent lights. Down where I was, they'd already started tearing up the old parking lot and the lights had been disconnected, leaving it very dark and deep in shadow, and looking at the new garage from the darkness was like staring at some old Donkey Kong game with its maze of ramps and levels. I could see her car come into sight and disappear as it climbed upwards, wending its way through the empty structure. Why would she be going so high except for the dramatic effect? I'd been waiting there for almost half an hour already and I was eager to get started before it began to rain, and eager to get a glimpse of her.

At last I lost sight of the car and knew she must be parking, and when I saw her again she was on foot. The wall of the garage blocked her from the shoulders down, but she seemed to be wearing a white shirt or light jacket, and the way she walked told me she must be wearing heels. That was all it took to make my stomach tighten, knowing she'd dressed for me, that she'd chosen her clothes knowing that I'd be taking them off her. That always did it for me. I sat up behind the wheel and looked around. There was no one. She got into the elevator and I lost sight of her.

And at that moment it started to drizzle, the first drops spattering against the windshield.

Damn! It wasn't bad yet, but if it got worse I'd have to forget the abduction and just drive over and pick her up. I didn't want her getting drenched.

In a few moments she came walking out of the doorway at the foot of the structure, stepping out onto the sidewalk where the lights bleached the brick all bright white and yellow and pale green like some artificial electric beach. I could see her now—long legs and a short, pale blue sundress kind of thing with a white shirt over it, a white canvas bag over her shoulder, looking as fresh and clean as dew on summer grass. Christ, the girl knew her business, what buttons to push. Shadows spilled at her feet and raked over her as she stepped brightly off the sidewalk and entered the darkness of the lot, back erect, tits out, long legs eating up the distance with smooth, unhurried grace. As if it had been waiting for her, the rain began to fall.

She looked stunningly sexual. Not sexy, not cheap, but sexual—a woman in the full pride of her beauty alone in the dark on a hot summer's night, and to cap it off, the whispering rain and lightning sizzling in the background. The wind had stopped and the rain stopped for a moment as it does just before a downpour as if the clouds are taking a breath. In this perfect stillness the crickets took this last opportunity to sound their plaintive calls and Emma walked into the darkness, all lips and tits and ass and long, sinuous leg, walking right out of the world of living men and into the world of my perfect fantasy. She was mythic, she was a dream, and I was absolutely stunned with desire for her.

I was parked on the east side of the lot, hidden in with a few other cars, and if she knew where I was she deliberately chose not to look because she walked right past the van maybe some twenty yards distant and kept on going, head held high, bag on her shoulder. I saw the tight lines of her thighs beneath the fabric of her dress, the proud thrust of her ass, the gentle bounce of her breasts, the secret suggestion of everything she promised. She looked like a ghost—like one of those ghostly images of phosphorescent sea creatures you see on television documentaries who appear at night, pose for an instant and then sink back down into the ocean's subconscious again.

The rain began to patter down as I watched her, and suddenly the game we were playing began to take on a life of its own. I felt the big empty space of the van behind me, the thin, cheap mattress on the floor, the ropes and tape and scarves all laid out. I saw Emma's tight, lush body glowing in the dark, felt the aloneness and isolation of the night, and realized I'd perhaps set things up too well. This was more than I'd bargained for. This was more than I'd expected. The beast she'd been flirting with before had now entirely awakened and had taken over. I suddenly wasn't in my right mind. The hairs rose on the back of my neck.

And somehow David was involved, her status as David's woman. Mixed up in the lusting beast I'd suddenly become was a good portion of the green-eyed monster, and somehow I had the idea that she wouldn't be out here in the dark like this if she were really David's woman. If she were really David's woman she'd be back with David in David's cave, and the fact that she wasn't made her fair game. No. More than that. In my sudden, lust-drenched and desire-wracked mind, her being out here was like a sign that she was trying to escape. Somehow I decided that Emma's agreeing to this game of abduction was a sign that she wanted to be with me.

The skies suddenly split and the patter of rain became a roar. It began to pour—a deluge of water falling from the sky and thundering on the roof of the van and obscuring the windshield, filling the air so completely that I totally lost sight of her. I started the van, hit the wipers and yanked on the lights then threw it into gear, hit the gas and roared around in a tight U-turn, the tires sizzling on the steaming tarmac. Emma turned and looked at me and this time I could tell she wasn't acting.

I don't know what she'd been expecting—maybe she thought I'd call the whole thing off because of the rain and just pull up along side her and tell her to hop in—but apparently she hadn't been expecting a maniac roaring down on top of her at 40 miles an hour in a tight U-turn in this oversized van with his brights on. She was already good and wet and the rain was streaming in her face and now the sensation of being lit up in the dark by a pair of 5000 candlepower headlights must have sent some primal wave of fear surging through her body and she froze like a deer on the highway.

She quickly gathered her wits and looked around for cover, but there was no place to go except for the weeds at the edge of the parking lot some twenty yards away and I angled the van to cut her off that way. She turned back, hesitated just a moment, and started to run.

In my fantasy I'd dreamed of pursuing her in the van, running her down in the relentless glare of the headlights, but that had been fantasy. Now I was consumed with this weird obsession of stealing her away and I didn't have time for games. One part of me felt foolish but the beast was in control and the beast just stomped down on the accelerator and ran up along side her and squealed to a stop. I threw the lever into park and tore the door open, jumped out and grabbed her by the arm even before the van stopped rocking.

She was soaked now and her hair was stuck to her face, the dress clung to her body. She got one glimpse at the look of insane desire in my eyes and she blanched with fear.

"Oh wow, Conner! No!"

She was really scared. Somehow she knew exactly what was going on. She could tell from my face just what was racing through my mind, and she knew that our little game had turned into some private and demented caveman ritual that was far too close to the real thing. If she went along with me, there could be consequences. She could see that now. She could see it in my face and she could feel it in the way I held her. She could sense it in the way I stood over her with the lightning flashing over my back and the rain streaming down over both of us in the dark and deserted parking lot like some crazy Cro-Magnon tableau.

"Shut up!" I shouted. "Just be quiet! Come on!"

I used my strength on her, pulled her to the side of the van and wrenched the door open, and Emma dug in her heels. She wasn't very big and I'm a strong guy. I could have thrown her in easily, but I stopped, one foot inside the van. I knew I was acting crazy and I tried to calm down. I looked inside the empty van and then I looked at her.

"You know your safe word," I said, daring her.

I held her arm so tightly that she was half bent over and I could see the tops of her breasts where the bodice of her dress hung loose, the pretty lace bra she'd worn.  She tried to pry my fingers off her arm, and then looked at my hand and at the grip I had on her. She looked up at my face but she didn't say anything.

I hauled her up into the van and pushed her inside, lowered her to the floor, then climbed in and slid the door closed behind me with a loud thump.

It was dark in the van and the rain thundered on the roof with a constant roar. The yellowish light seeping into the back had a wavy, greenish, undersea cast. Emma cowered against the wall of the van, her skirt riding halfway up her thighs. My heart was pounding in my ears and when I looked at her she looked scared, but her eyes were glowing like coals.

I'd tacked strips of duct tape against the inside of the van and now I grabbed a piece and used it to bind her wrists behind her back, then I took another and wrapped it around her ankles. I grabbed a scarf from the box behind the back seat and blindfolded her, then wrapped another around her mouth for a gag.

"Are you okay? Can you breathe?" I whispered. "Give me two if you can breathe okay."

"Mnh! Nnh!" she groaned.

"Good. Three times is your safe word, okay? Two more if you understand."

"Mmmpff! Mnngh!"

I slid behind the wheel and threw the van into gear and drove around toward B building. In all, it had taken me maybe two, three minutes to get her into the van and I don't think anyone had seen, not with this rain coming down.  I drove back by the parking lot by B, over by the far end where there were big trees, back by the duck pond. The rain was pouring down and already the van was splashing hubcap deep through big puddles; water was dripping down the back of my neck.

I pulled into a spot and turned off the engine and crawled into the back where Emma lay against the wall bound, gagged and blindfolded, breathing fast, her legs bent and knees together. The sight of her inflamed me and I felt wild and desperate and dangerous.

It didn't matter that it had been a game and I'd planned it. I'd become an outlaw for her, I'd broken the law for her and I felt it in a burning lustful cock-centered rage. I'd had some plans about keeping her here for a while, about playing with her—feeling her up and teasing her, maybe making her blow me, taking my time—but now my blood was up and I forgot all about that. I felt desperate. Huddled in the van with her as the rain poured down it was like we were two animals in a cave, reduced to the most elemental level of existence. I pulled her against me like I'd won her and felt her panting with excitement. I ran my hand over her body and touched her between the legs and heard her moan.

I got to my feet and untied the gag and tore it from her mouth, grabbed her hair and pulled her up and held her head in a death grip and she gasped, afraid to move. She arched her back and groaned, trying to ease the tension on her hair, waiting while I held her and fumbled with my pants with the other hand. I pulled at my belt and clawed at the zipper, shoving them down and pulling out my dick, then I pulled her head up and pressed my cock against her expectant lips. She knew what I wanted. She already knew the price she had to pay.

"Take it!" I hissed, tightening my fingers in her hair. "Take it, Emma! Take it! I'm not fucking around!"

I was standing there bent over, almost trembling with need, and if she hadn't opened her mouth and sucked me inside the way she did, I don't know what I might have done. As it was the pleasure of her mouth was like some scalding relief to me, so intense that I had to brace my hand against the roof of the van to keep from falling over, and Emma moaned and sucked hard, obsequiously, with slavish joy and abandon, glad to be conquered and glad to be used. The pleasure was so intense that I lost my grip on her hair and braced both hands on the roof and Emma remained fixed to me by the sheer force of her powerful suction, like some sort of cum-starved leech. Even the spastic reflexive jerk of my hips as her tongue rubbed across my hypersensitive glans couldn't dislodge her. My hips punched forward at her in a powerful thrust but she hung on, hands tied behind her, hanging on to me like a fish on a line.

It was good she was blindfolded and good she couldn't see because I didn't want her to witness the naked animal ferocity on my face. I was all beast now, all savage, and I knew I must be terrible to look at. And I was glad too that I couldn't see her eyes, whether they showed fear or pleasure, either one, any sort of sign that she wasn't totally involved in what was happening right now because all I needed her to be was just this—a sucking mouth, a cunt, a woman in the crudest, most basic sense. I needed that because I needed the freedom to be just as cruel and inhuman as I felt . This wasn't about love and this wasn't about tenderness. This was about the crushing ferocity of sex and desire. This was the rock that everything else grew from, and I didn't need anyone reminding me of everything I was repressing and throwing away.

I took one hand from the ceiling and slid my fingers through her hair again and tightened my grip. I slid my hand across her cheek and felt the way her jaw was distended to take my prick in her mouth and I kept my hand there against her face and ground my hips around in lewd, tight circles. I wanted to feel the tip of my prick press against the inside of her cheek, feel it there working in her mouth, touching her teeth, her palette, the private places where she made her words and ate her food. I anted her full of me, choking on me. I loved fucking her mouth, violating that beautiful face with my big, ugly dick…

I tightened my grip in her hair and held her head, bent under the roof and, turned her so I had her pressed up against the side of the van and began to fuck her mouth with short, savage strokes, my heavy balls slapping against her chin. The pleasure was intense, unutterable, the feeling of possession. The rain was thundering down against the roof but still I could hear the thump, thump, thump of her head as it hit the side of the van from my blows and hear Emma's cries of protest and acceptance, and then as my stomach clenched in the warning spasms of pre-orgasmic pleasure and the world started to fade and get blurry and indistinct, I suddenly realized that she was crying out in groups of threes and stopped and pulled myself back from the edge—stopped, drew my cock from her mouth and let go of her hair.

"My arms," she coughed. "It's my arms. They're too tight."

I pulled off her blindfold and she blinked and looked at me. Something in my face must have alarmed her, because she added, "They're just too tight, that's all. I didn't mean for you to stop."

I pulled the tape off her wrists. She couldn't see me smile. "You bitch."

I taped her wrists together again, this time in front, but the break had drained the ferocious insanity out of me, had brought me back to reality, albeit altered. We'd crossed some bridge and she was mine, at least temporarily. We had time now. This cave had become a temporary home.

I pulled her into the center of the van and put her on her side. I shucked my shoes and pants and shorts off and got on my knees and I held her bound wrists above her head in one hand as I slid my cock into her mouth again and started to fuck her, slower this time, without the savage desperation, feeding it to her and letting her show me what she could do, how she could love me with her mouth, just how good she was.

And she was good. I knelt by her head and rolled my hips in a steady, even pace and Emma kept her jaws apart, her cheeks hollowing and filling as my cock slid in and out. She hummed softly, a kind of tender chant of pleasure as she let me have her mouth, sucking me and chasing me with her tongue, offering me her slavish devotion for whatever I might want. She was ready to accommodate me in anything, and when I pulled my cock out and bent the shaft up against my stomach and leaned forward Emma immediately pushed her face forward and began to lick and fondle my balls with her tongue.

Such a good slave deserved something of her own. I rose up on my knees and rolled her onto her back so that she was arched over the pile of blankets, her body entirely on display, her rain dappled dress stuck to her skin, then I reached down and peeled the tape from her ankles. Emma sighed as I returned to my position at her head and the steady pumping of my cock into her softly sucking mouth.

Her body was rich and lush and as I held her wrists over her head with one hand, I used the other to roam over her breasts and body like a conqueror taking possession of his territory. I pushed down the bodice of her dress and pulled her bra up out of the way and filled my hands with the ample flesh of her tits, then slid my hand down beneath the dress and over the warm, smooth skin of her belly. Lightning ripped through the sky and illuminated her lying there half naked, my cock dipping into her mouth, my hand ravishing her body, her legs parted in abject surrender. I began to fuck her faster, leaning forward and thrusting straight down into her throat, loving the soft, sudsy sound my shaft made as it churned up her saliva. She could sense my excitement now and must have felt the clenching spasms of my cock and known I was getting close, but still it was very quiet in the van—the sound of my cock in her mouth, our deep breathing, her soft, airy moans of pleasure—the tension, the sounds of two people intent on one person's pleasure.

I slid my hand down between her legs. She was wearing cotton panties, the kind little girls wear, sweet and innocent. They went with her entire outfit and that allusion to innocence and naiveté was just too perfect, too wickedly brilliant. It spoke to that basic sweetness and purity that women aspire to, the difference between girls and women, between pretty and sexy, and it spoke to the basic reason that Emma had come to me—to have that purity defiled. She knew us too well.

I ran my finger up the soft cotton crotch and looked down at Emma as she was lost in sucking and laving my cock in whorish pleasure. I grabbed the panties and locked them in my fist, and slowly and steadily I tightened my grip. Emma groaned and shifted her hips as the fabric bit into her sex. I pulled and her voice rose in alarm. Her sucking increased as if she were trying to appease me. I pulled harder and the cotton began to rip, and Emma whimpered submissively, trying to calm me, trying to stave off the all but inevitable rape that was certainly coming, a silly thing to do given the nature of our relationship, but instinctive I suppose when a man starts ripping your innocence off.

The panties ripped wide and Emma fell back with a cry.  I yanked and tore at them and Emma raised her head and stared down at herself as I pulled them off, shredding them to pieces until nothing remained but a few scraps of cotton and elastic hanging forlornly around her waist and thighs, and then her head fell back in surrender. She was exposed now. She had nothing left to defend anymore.

She turned her head and sucked my cock back into her mouth, as if what happened to her pussy was none of her concern.

"Raise your knees," I whispered.

She moaned around my cock and slowly lifted her legs—too slowly, so I slapped her between the legs and she squealed with alarm and lifted her knees all the way up to her breasts, leaving herself totally revealed. Another bolt of lightning lit out the inside of the van and showed her lying there luridly exposed, knees up, arms stretched over her head. I traced my finger down her slit and began to finger her, playing in the soaking slit of her sex as she sucked me, nursing on my cock like a starving child. She moaned and her knees jerked when I touched her.

"Oh! Conner! No! Don't! Please!"

I slapped her pussy and she jumped.

"Keep your knees up and apart," I warned her. "Understand?"

She was mine, my toy, all of her, and I played with her tits, her pussy, caressed her face, but mostly I lorded it over her—let the sensations of her slaving mouth satisfy me and drive me higher as I reveled in the pleasure of having her naked body right there to use with and enjoy, having her so lewdly and shamelessly exposed for me. I put my fingers inside her and thumbed her clit, pumped her and took her to the edge as she panted and begged and gagged on my dick—begged me not to make her come, not like this, so wickedly, so nakedly, so obscenely on display. I knew she wanted to hide and I knew she wanted to refuse and I knew she wanted to resist but I wouldn't let her. I wouldn't let her hold back or deny me anything, and as she lay there with her knees up and her legs spread and her feet twisting nervously in the air I felt her excitement pulling my own orgasm out of me. I felt that electrical quiver of violent release gathering in the center of my body and I started fingering her harder, my hand slapping against her pussy as I pushed her up and over ahead of me.

"Ugh!" she groaned. "Oh! Ugh! No! Ohh! Conner! Oh! God!"

Her own shame was making her come. It wasn't my touch. It wasn't my dick in her mouth. It wasn't being kidnapped and thrown in the van. It was the fact that I knew she loved it—she loved it all. That's what was doing it, that's why she was begging me to stop, but I wouldn't. I played with her pussy and I pumped my cock into her mouth. I held her arms over her head so she was my captive and I felt it start—hot, rich, thick, filthy—"Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!"—the harsh load of my seed churning up from the depths of my depraved soul in a wash of blistering ecstasy and I snarled like an animal and threw back my head and I just let it go—just let go of everything and let it come. I pushed my fingers into Emma's rich and spending pussy and felt the very center of her and I let myself come.

"Oh God, Conner! Yes! Yes! God! Yes! Give it to me! Give it to me!"

Her voice was a tight, frantic plea, squeezed out as she turned her head to watch and my steely-veined dick twitched and began to spew out his thick gouts of come, thick jets that slurred down her cheek and lashed over her lips and chin in viscous strands and webbing. Emma squealed in frustration as she came too, and her trembling made her too spastic to get my dick back into her mouth so that she grabbed and searched for it with open mouth like a baby bird frantic for food as I continued to ejaculate all over her, and meanwhile her tight pussy clamped down on my fingers and quivered and her own juice spilled out and wet my hand as if she were weeping and begging for mercy, as if it were simply more pleasure than she could stand.

"Ugh! Yes! Fuck! Fuck!" I spat, hunching my hips with every jolting eruption, holding her down, almost lying on top of her as I finished—thrusts getting weaker, spasms more prolonged—pouring the rage into her, the anger, the need and the deep, draining sense of relief—pouring it all into her, and conscious of Emma pressing up against me, her thighs squeezing my hand tightly as she too drained herself and took her reward, feeding off my pleasure and swallowing it into herself. 

Slowly I stopped. My motions got less frantic and urgent as I squeezed the last bits out and ground to a halt, then pulled my softening cock from her swollen lips. I got down and stretched out next to her and we both lay there in the darkened van, panting for breath and listening to the rain drumming on the roof, the thunder pealing someway off into the distance now. Emma let her knees fall to the floor and closed her eyes and I saw her throat working as she swallowed. She brought her bound hands down and brushed some stray hair away from her face. The air inside was very still. She seemed totally relaxed, totally fulfilled.

I reached over to untape her wrists and she pulled her hands away and looked at me. "Leave it on, please, Conner?"

"You like it?"

"Yes," she said. "I do."

I leaned over and kissed her, and I wanted to stay in that kiss. I had so much to say in that kiss that I hardly knew where to begin, but I remembered the pledge about love and her worry about entangling emotions. She seemed so at peace now that I didn't want to ruin it, and just lying with and being aware of our shelter from the rain was enough, so I just held her and moved close and listened to the rain fall.

There was no peace though. She was against my chest and I could almost feel her thoughts and the words trying to break free.

"You don't want to talk?" I asked.

"I can't," she said. "It wouldn't be good, Conner."

I nodded. "Okay. Well, then, let's get straightened up. We should go."

"Where?"

I sat up and started pulling my pants on. Everything was damp now and it didn't feel good.

"The city. I'm still taking you to my place. The plans haven't changed."

That seemed to please her. She sat up and started arranging her clothes.

I had to redo her wrists. I tethered them with a ten-inch strip of tape which left them connected but gave her enough slack to use her hands, and that made her happy enough, and as I pulled out of the lot, Emma looked in the rear-view mirror and tried to salvage her make-up and fix her hair, using her bound hands as if it were entirely natural.

It wasn't natural for me though, and driving along with this girl who loved slavery so much had me in a state of simmering arousal. The wipers lashed the rain from the windshield and the van felt like an ark.

I nodded to her hands. "Tell me about it," I said.

She'd finished her make-up and she looked as normal as could be achieved given that we'd been caught in a downpour. I'd given her my jacket for warmth and she pulled it around her and looked at her hands.

"I don't know. I just always liked it. It makes me feel secure, kind of, and sexy, and like adventurous. Don't you like it?"

"Yes, I like it. I like it a lot."

She looked at the tape cuffs as if they were jewelry. "I always used to play I was being kidnapped and tied up, and that's how I used to masturbate, tying my knees and ankles together and rubbing against something. I was very young when I started. It always got me off."

"And what did you think about?"

"When I was little? Nothing really. Just men tying me up. I didn't even know what boys did with girls then, back when I first started."

"And now?"

She ducked her head and looked at me from beneath her hair. "It wouldn't be any fun if I told you. You have to kind of guess."

Then she laughed and said. "So far you've done a pretty good job."

I pulled onto 51, the old four-lane that led to the expressway, about as scenic a road as runs out here, skirting the edges of the suburbs through some forest preserves. The rain had let up to a steady soaking summer shower, the kind the farmers love, and you could almost feel the grass and the trees sucking it up in pleasure. The wipers could handle it easily and it was nice to be in the van. Even with the memory of the wild sex we'd just had, it was almost cozy. It felt sheltered and safe.

She leaned back in the seat and tried to stretch but couldn't because of the tape.

"But that's enough of this for now," she said, and started peeling it from her wrists.

I made a sound of disappointment and she smiled.

"You take it all so seriously. It's just sex, you know. Just fooling around. There's more to life than sex." She smiled. "There is! I'm serious!"

She tuned on the radio and hunted around for a station, found something I didn't recognize and left it there, turned way down.

"Tell me about where you live," she said. "Is that the place you talked about in class, where there's that bar where they have poetry readings? Where do you live?"

I stopped at a light and tried to think of how to describe it without alarming her. "How well do you know the city?"

"Not very well. David—" she caught herself at the mention of his name but only for a second, "—his brother has season tickets for the Bears and Bulls and sometimes we go into the city when he's in town, and go out to dinner and stuff—Michigan Avenue—but other than that… He says it's kind of dangerous. Hard to park."

"Yeah. Well, you'll see. I live in a kind of strange neighborhood. Little Saigon they call it. Mostly Vietnamese, but it's still pretty affordable." I didn't want to insult her by telling her it was people like David who'd driven up the rents to the point where people like me couldn't afford to live there any more. "The El runs right by my place. The elevated train?" I laughed at the look on her face. "You never took the El? Don’t worry. I'll protect you. You'll be fine."

I pulled away from the light. "So what else is there besides sex, then?" I asked. I was teasing.

"Movies, shopping," she said. She was teasing too. "No. You know, the usual things. I don't know. Well what else do you do? You don’t just do sex all the time, do you? I mean, I hope not. Or poetry. You're into other things too. Sports and things. You're into sports."

"Actually no. I'm not. I've got no use for them."

She looked at me like she'd never heard such a thing. She must have thought I was jealous of David's brother's tickets. "What do you mean, 'no use'?"

"Just that. They don't do anything for me. Don't interest me. They used to, and then I got tired of them. It's always the same thing. Winning and losing. I got tired of it and now I don't bother. I don't miss it."

I looked over at her and smiled. "You don't really like football either, do you? I mean <I>really?</I>"

"Well, no. But it's all the other stuff—going to the game, tailgating, being with friends, going out afterwards, seeing the players, talking about it. It's something to do."

I nodded. "Yeah. I guess so. It's a spectator thing."

She was silent for a while as we drove past a stretch of road that was lit with overhead lights, the edge of the village of Park Forest. Thunder still peeled in the distance, sounding almost apologetic. The rain was almost gentle now.

"No," she said. "There's the normal things. Family and friends and a career; community, where you live and making it better—helping others. And your own family, of course. That's very important. Raising one. Having kids. A nice house and bringing them up right, a home—you know. A garden. A car."

Her voice trailed off and she was silent. We came around a descending curve at the base of a hill where Half Day Road ran into 51 at a brightly lit intersection with a big traffic signal and extra lanes, totally deserted in the rain. On the other side of Half Day was a slight rise, and atop this rise was a park, a wide swath of grassy fields set with ball fields and benches and picnic huts separated by big trees and illuminated by neatly spaced halogen park lamps. In the bright white light of the lamps the rain was falling like strings of silver tinsel, shining against the green-black of the trees.

I pulled up at the red light and we sat there. It was a spellbinding sight. It almost looked like ice.

"I can't believe I just said that," she said.

We sat at the light with the wipers thunking rhythmically, and suddenly Emma wrenched the door open and leaped from the van and out into the rain. She slammed the door shut and ran across Half Day Road up the hill towards the park, her bare feet slipping in the wet grass.

There was no one around. I ran the red light and pulled over at the base of the hill, hit the flashers and jumped out of the van and ran after her, slipping as she had in the rain-slick grass, falling to my knees, the warm rain soaking me.

"Emma? Emma!"

The hill couldn't have been more than eight feet high but the wet weeds were slick as glass and I was breathless by the time I got to the top and looked over the brightly lit park stretching out before me. The rain was pouring down like cascading silver in the lamplight, and Emma was running aimlessly towards the darkness of the trees—not fast, running like she wanted to be caught. I took off after her, my feet splashing in the soaked turf.

I could hear her laughing as I got close and I started laughing too, not knowing why. I was angry and annoyed. Her dress was as wet as tissue paper now and plastered to her skin and without her panties I could see her buttocks flexing as she ran and even the muscles of her back. I reached for her and she screamed in excitement and dodged and I almost fell on my face, but I maintained my balance and slid on the grass then took off in a new direction and cut her off by a little stream that the rain had cut through the field. I grabbed her around the waist and pulled her down to the ground.

She laughed and screamed and fought with me and I fought with her and once again my sense of what I was doing and what was real totally left me. Somehow I ended up sitting on my ass and she was straddling me and her tits were soft and warm against my chest and she was kissing me and urging me on with her tongue and her body and the sounds she made and then somehow I had her down on all fours with that wet dress pushed up around her chest and I was kneeling behind her with my pants around my thighs, leaning over her, kissing and biting her back and milking her tits like an animal.

The rain was dripping from her hair and her lips were red as blood and the water was dripping from her lips and running down her ribs and dripping like milk from her nipples too.

"Oh yes! Yes, Conner! Give it to me! Make me your whore! Do it to me! Fuck me, Conner! Fuck me!"

I raised my head and looked around at the little park drenched with rain and the lampposts standing like silent witnesses. The van was down there with the blinkers on and at any moment someone might come to investigate. The patch of grass we were in was soft and wet and we'd already churned it up into a puddle of mud with our thrashing and Emma was kneeling in mud and had mud splattered on her body. She was shivering and her skin was covered with goose bumps and the water was steaming where it splattered against her skin. She was humping her ass at me, grinding it like she was some barnyard animal, naked out in the rain and the muck and the mud.

I think I growled as I grabbed the back of her neck and pushed her down into the grass—pushed her tits down into the mud and the wet grass and held her bent down like that, ass-up, slavelike before me as I took my dick and parted her folds with it and punched it into her hot crease and heard her snarl with feral satisfaction. Yeah, I knew what she wanted. I knew exactly what she wanted—that raw, hot cock, the one hard, warm thing in this cold, wet world, and I rammed it deep, grabbed her shoulders and pulled her back onto it, stabbing her with it as she dug her fingers into the muddy dirt and screamed again in savage bliss. She was hotter than hell inside—hot and tight and already trembling on the verge of orgasm

"Oh fuck, Emma! Fuck!!!"

I stared down at her in disbelief as that sweet soothing rain fell down upon us both, soaking us to the bone. Already Emma was rolling her ass in tight little circles, egging me on, begging me to unload inside her, begging me to get rough with her and let her have it, her sweet little tongue peeking from between her white teeth.

"Fuck your bitch, Conner! Fuck her like a slut! Take me, you bastard! Ride me good and let everyone see!"

I didn't know what she wanted. I didn't know what kind of crazy thoughts went through her head. All I could do was take what I wanted, do what I wanted, and that's what I did.

I awkwardly got up on my feet with my prick still inside her. I spread her cheeks apart so I could see my dick piercing her body and her labia stretched in protest around it, see the raindrops gliding down the slopes of her ass. I reached out and grabbed her hair—grabbed a big handful in each hand like they were a pair of reins—and used them to pull her head back, making her arch her back and thrust her tits out like she was the figurehead on a boat, some boat cutting its way through this dark, rainy park, and then I started riding her, slamming my dick into her, fucking her so fast and hard I could hear her tits sloshing on her chest; hear her breathing cut into a series of involuntary animal grunts by the slapping blows of my belly against the meat of her ass; fucking her so fast I could feel the heat of the friction of my cock moving in her tight sheath and the wild swinging of my heavy balls as they slapped wetly against her turgid clit.

And finally it was too much. Finally she couldn't take the force of my blows and she collapsed, fell face down in the mud and the cold grass and I had to pull her up and hold her against me, hold her pressed against me as I punched my dick up into her and squeezed her tits and shot my load straight up into her sopping pussy.

"Oh!" she sighed as I came. "Oh!"

That's all. She turned her face up to the sky and pressed her hand down so she could feel my cock where it entered her body and feel the semen jet along my urethra, as if she wanted to make sure it got there safely, as if this whole thing were about me.

I sat there and held her, and when I let her go, she was shivering.

"Cold?" I asked.

"God! Freezing."

"Yeah. It's cold."  I didn't move.

"Conner? Can we go? I'm really cold now."

"In a minute," I said. I looked around at the falling rain. "You were right. It is pretty here. A nice place to stop."

We were both of us soaked to the skin.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I don't know what got into me. I just had this sudden urge to run. To escape. I guess those thoughts depressed me. Can we go now?"

"Well I have this sudden urge to stay. To remain. You understand?"

Emma got up and stared at me for a moment, then marched angrily away, arms wrapped around herself. She went maybe twenty feet, then turned. She was really shaking with cold.

"Alright, Conner. I'm sorry. I apologize. Please, Conner. Please!"

She wasn't a stupid girl. I think she understood what had happened and I think she'd learned a lesson. I don't know if she accepted it, but she'd learned there was a difference between what happened sexually and what happened outside of sex. She'd learned that I liked to be manipulated within limits, but that I had limits.

I stood up. "You're lucky I like you," I said.

I went to her and straightened her tattered, muddy dress and helped her down the rainslick hill to where the van stood with its blinkers flashing. Inside there were blankets she could use as towels and to keep herself warm, and inside was a change of clothes that, with some instinctive prescience, she'd brought along just in case. For all that had happened, it was still fairly early, and ahead of us everything I'd prepared at my place still was waiting.

I helped her in, climbed into the driver's seat and we took off. 

* * * * *

Emma was pretty quiet the rest of the drive but perked up as we exited the expressway and started driving through the city. The rain had let up and as we neared my neighborhood things started feeling more urban—the buildings, the neons—and pretty soon she was sitting up and looking around. I wasn't exactly angry with her but I was a bit guarded. Running from me in the rain had probably been no more than a little tease—a way to provoke my lust—but it reminded me of the trickiness of the game we were playing and of the difficulty of trying to decide what was real and what was pretend.

It also brought to mind something that had been simmering in the back of my mind about this relationship: the old marketing saw—beware of deals that seem too good to be true because they usually are. So far Emma had given me everything I'd wanted while taking nothing exceptional for herself, and while it was possible that she was in this for the same reason I was, I was beginning to doubt it. I was beginning to sense shadows behind the veil.

I pulled off the expressway and the tires splashed in the potholes full of water as we hit the city streets. Emma stretched. The ride had been boring. I was bored too.

My neighborhood's known as Chinatown North or Little Saigon. It's close to the lake (it's officially known as Lakeview) and back in the 20's was actually a very nice area, with big apartment buildings and lots of shopping and a couple of huge ornate movie theaters and the El (which was new then) running right through it. It had become a slum in the '40's and stayed that way till Chinese and Vietnamese started colonizing in the 70's, and it still had the feel of an immigrant ghetto in parts—a weird, eclectic mix of all sorts of people. But now the gentrifiers and developers smelled money and construction barricades were going up. You could still find some good, reasonable places, though, and the neighborhood itself was full of little jewels—great restaurants and tiny bakeries, weird herb shops huddled under the El tracks next to hi-end boutiques; rehabbed deco buildings next to brand new blister-pack condos. I'd been here for seven years.

Even after that deluge there were still people out—always people here, going out to eat, to and from the El, standing outside smoking, hanging around in little doorways getting some air—and it felt kind of good after that drive from the suburbs. The streets looked bright and shiny with the reflected neons, the little Chinese groceries blinking cryptically in the dark. Emma was staring out the windows with guarded fascination, the lights shining on her face, and she looked beautiful. I couldn't tell what she made of it, and I wasn't sure how I felt. On the one hand I was glad there was so much activity, on the other, I'd kind of hoped I would have had her to myself. I didn't want to have to compete for her attention.

"Oh wow," Emma said as we drove by a bus stop. "Look at him. That guy's nuts."

He was. Some tall thin man in a tattered Cubs jacket was yelling "Fuck Youuuu!" at the top of his lungs and throwing both arms up in a double bird towards the moon, it appeared.

"Yeah, well… You see that occasionally. Cubs play today?"

She shook her head and we drove on. I knew she wasn't entirely comfortable in the city and I was trying to make things easy on her. There were a lot of weird characters in this neighborhood.

I pulled down Carmen and took the alley that ran in front of a viaduct covered with graffiti from the Ghost Tiger gang and Insane Gangster Nation and others RGraham05 and PureRules. Some Viet boys glared at the lights and hid their joint, gave me the finger. The alley led to an enclosed parking lot behind Lakeview Hardware and the Three Happiness Restaurant, and here I parked the van, where the air smelled like hot garlic and sesame oil. We could hear the sizzle of water hitting hot wok.

Emma rummaged around in her bag and started to pull out her phone, then stuffed it back in. She took out a silver bracelet and glanced at it, then pushed that back into the bag too.

"What's that?" I asked.

"Nothing. A watch."

"A watch? Can I see it?"

She sighed unhappily and retrieved it and handed it to me. It was a very handsome watch, the band made of brushed silver, the watch face a deep, featureless blue, slightly iridescent, and covered with a thick crystal dome. It was very masculine in a very feminine way.

"Why don’t you wear it?"

"I don’t want to.  It reminds me of a ring."

I looked at her. "But it's a watch."

She took it back and put it in her bag. "It's round. It goes around me. It's almost the same thing." She looked around. "Where are we? Are we here?"

"Oh. Yeah, we're here.  Almost. Come on, it's just around front. I'll show you."

She took her bag and I locked up.

Carmen's a side street right that runs off Broadway right in the heart of Little Saigon, lined with shops—groceries, noodle shops, dry cleaners, restaurants, a little pharmacy, all local, all jammed together. I live upstairs above First Service Auto Parts and as we walked down the street, the rich, foody smells from the front of Three Happiness suddenly reminded me of how hungry I was. I was cold too, soaked to the skin from being out in the rain.

Emma stopped by the window of Ho Ho's grocery, transfixed by the roast ducks hanging there illuminated by the blue neon sign. "Those things still have their heads!"

"Come on, Emma. I'm freezing."

"Do they eat the heads?" She looked at me.

"Come on." I grabbed her arm when a voice accosted me.

"Hey Conner, man! How you doing? " Jimmy Vu stepped out of the doorway of Ho Ho's, wearing his green fatigue jacket and drinking a juice box.  Jimmy's uncle owned First Service Auto Parts and he was always around. He was a big Baby Huey kind of guy with a bad buzz cut that made him look like a baby chick.

"Hey Jimmy." I saw right away that his eyes fixed on Emma. The straw of his juice box stayed in his mouth but didn't move. I smiled. I don't know that he'd ever seen me with a woman before, at least, not one like Emma.

"Emma, this is Jimmy Vu. He knows everyone in this neighborhood and can fix anything, right Jimmy? If you're ever in trouble, Jimmy's the man to see."

This was total bullshit. Jimmy does know everyone and is a very sweet guy but he's totally ineffectual, but I knew Jimmy would like it, and he was clearly knocked out by Emma.

He shifted hands so he could keep the juice box in his mouth and still shake hands. "Pleased to meet you." he said.

"Pleased to meet you, Jimmy." I knew Emma was embarrassed by how she looked.

"We got caught in the rain," I said. "Terrible. Almost drowned. Clinging to tree limbs. Got to go change before we both get pneumonia. Excuse us, Jimmy."

"Yeah sure. It was a bitch, huh?"

"Global warming," I said.  We turned and pushed through the street door. I opened the double lock at the bottom and we started up. I live up a long, dark flight of stairs, and halfway up an El went by.

I won't lie. It's very loud. The building shook a little, the stairs trembled. Emma froze, grabbing onto the rail, her mouth open in fear. I'm used to it, I just kept walking, then realized she wasn't with me. I turned back and smiled at her.

"IT'S JUST THE EL TRAIN," I screamed at the top of my lungs. "YOU GET USED TO IT."

The train rumbled off into the distance and we continued up to the apartment door. I unlocked it and pushed it open and let her step inside, watching her, trying to see the place through her eyes. Closed the door, locked it behind her.

It's a semi-converted loft. What that means around here is that it's a big, even vast, unfinished industrial space with a kitchen and two bedrooms and a bathroom tucked into one corner and I did most of the dry wall on those myself. But other than that it's pretty much the same as the auto parts storeroom below me only smaller (I have half of this floor. A restaurant supply outfit has the other). I've got the same plain wooden floors and raw exposed brick walls, the same crude wooden beams. Of course, I sealed my walls to try and keep the dust down and the same for the beams so they have a bit of finish and shine, but other than that, it's pretty much like living in a factory.

It gets better towards the back, towards the living part where the kitchen and bedrooms and bathroom (and El tracks) are, and back there I have a sofa and a few chairs, all my books and my desk and TV and that's where I work, but up in front where you enter, where the windows overlook Carmen, it's just a big, empty space with a kind of industrial grimness, a harshness, maybe even a cruelty. You could play hockey in there. I don't know how much the vases of willow buds and Chinese silk screens and movie posters do to alleviate that emptiness.

I didn't know how a girl from the suburbs would react to it.

Emma stepped into the space I thought of as my living room and looked around. The front windows are big and arched. They look down on Carmen and then out onto the diminishing blocks of the city. The streetlights from outside painted her shadow on the floor behind her and elongated her into the darkness. It was like standing in the mouth of a cave.

"Wow," she laughed. "Conner, this is really cool…"

I smiled. "Yeah. I know."

She raised her hands as if she could feel the space, then she started spinning. All this room usually makes people do things like that. They either spin or they yell.

"Here, I'll show you the kitchen."

I led her towards the back, and as we crossed the front room Emma noticed the chain hoist Jimmy Vu had helped me mount on an eight-foot length of Unistrut industrial-grade I-rail just that morning. I'd bought it from Just-Right Auto Parts and we'd driven it into one of the solid oak beams that spanned the front of the loft just that morning: working capacity 1500 pounds. I told Jimmy I was getting into metal sculpture. The hoist  slid smoothly on its four solid steel ball-bearing-loaded wheels up and down the length of the I-beam with the touch of a finger and stopped with a handheld brake.

I stopped and watched her as she examined it.

She looked at me and then the hoist but I didn't say anything. She didn't say anything either. She looked down and saw the deck shackles I'd installed in the floor. These are like screw eyes but made for floors. They fold flush with the surface when you're not using them. You get them at yachting supply places. I know my hardware.

She looked back up. My ceilings are ten feet high. Even from where I was standing I could see her breathing increase.

Any residual anger I held towards her from that episode in the park faded after that as the spell started working between us again, just like that, with just that look she gave me as she examined the hoist and knew I had something planned for her. I showed her the kitchen with the back door that led out to the fire escape and the roof beyond, the windows that looked out onto the El tracks and past that across city blocks to the wall of high rises by the lakefront and the little squares of lighted apartments where people lived their lives, and yet farther beyond, to the great blue-black immensity of the sky over the lake the moon had vacated. I showed her my bedroom with the four-poster bed freshly made up, the chains already attached, and then the other bedroom, the spare room with the door closed and locked and I saw her sudden curiosity and impatience. Everything had been swept and tidied and cleaned with that bachelor's pitiful attention to a woman's company.

I wanted Emma to hurry in the shower. I even wanted for us to take turns and her to go first to avoid any funny stuff, but it was no use. I have a great shower, a fantastic shower—a room within a room with a marble floor, glass walls, dual shower heads, my one luxury—and of course I had to go in and show it off, and once I decided to get in with her, all thoughts of a quick rinse just disappeared. I peeled off my wet clothes and dropped them on the floor and stepped into the shower and turned it on. I moaned as the water came on and I  just stood there, head into the spray leaning against the wall and letting that blessed warmth soak into my bones.

After a while it occurred to me that I was alone.

"Emma? Aren't you coming in?"

"Did you want me to?"

"Of course I want you to! What do you think?"

Silence.  Through the foggy glass I saw her putting her hair up, then take off her clothes. She seemed uncertain. The bathroom was filling with steam, then the door opened and she stepped into the stall.

"I didn't know whether you wanted me to or not."

I was going to say something smart but she stepped into the shower with her hands held up over her chest like a child, blinking against the spray, looking shy and vulnerable and. I held my tongue.

"Come here under the water. I'll soap you."

Her skin touched mine as she slid past. She was cold and she seemed small. I took the hand piece down and trained it on her and she grimaced as the hot water struck her body. She closed her eyes and I ran the water all over her, washing her front from the neck down—her breasts, her chest, her belly. I gently pushed her hands down till she stood in front of me naked and exposed, trusting, hands at her sides. She was embarrassed, I could tell, and it struck me how she could stand in front of me naked if she were tied and not be embarrassed—she could stand in front of me and take the whip—but to stand here and be washed was something else. I was seized with some powerful feeling I can't explain—some need to both violate her and protect her at the same time. I started getting hard and hating myself for it.

"Turn around," I said. "I'll wash your back."

"Shouldn't I do you—?" She looked at me and then dropped her eyes. The attention made her uneasy. "Sorry."

She turned around and pressed her forehead against the tiles. Her hands crossed over her breasts again. It occurred to me that she still carried my semen inside her. I'd have to leave so she could wash herself.

"I'm sorry I ran from you," she said. "It was a silly thing to do."

It took me a moment to remember what she was talking about, and then I just shrugged. "Don't worry about it," I said.

I didn't ask her why she did it. I really didn't feel like I had to know.

I had honestly meant to wash her off and get out.  I had naughty fun planned, things I wanted to show her, places I wanted to go with her, but none of them seemed very important now. Here we were warm and wet and my hands were moving over her body and she was getting soft  as I touched her.

"Lean against the wall," I said.

I was worried the soap might dry her skin but she was content to let me do what I wanted with her. I soaped my hands and began to rub her down, kneading her  muscles as the water streamed down upon us. She rested her cheek against the tile and she suddenly seemed so small and delicate, fairylike, a sylph in the falling water. I was hard now, hard and red and throbbing, some sort of ogre. I leaned against her and my cock slid against her pussy. She automatically thrust her ass out in invitation, spreading her legs.

I sighed and began to move, dragging my prick against her wet slit, back and forth, holding her hips. Emma gave a little whimper, a kind of questioning sigh, a kind of "Yes? Is this it?" She was ready for whatever I wanted, and once again, that knowledge drove me mad with desire for her.

I began to fuck her, never entering her but pumping, sliding my cock back and forth. The pleasure, the friction was excruciating. I reached up and took her breast in my hand and she covered my hand with hers and told me to squeeze, to take her.

"Emma—"

"ah…?"

Again that little questioning sigh: "Whatever you want…" I reached for her hair and pulled it down and down it came, catching the water and falling wet into my hand where I seized it and pulled her head back, pulled her away from the wall—she leaned back against me and I took her mouth in a bruising kiss and she melted against me, opening her mouth and surrendering, offering herself, giving it all. My fingers slid around and slid up into her pussy and I felt the thick residue of my own earlier ejaculation still incubating in the heat of her body. I grabbed her breast and holding her tight I backed awkwardly into the shower, as she arched against me lost in that hungry, sucking kiss.

God, she just got me again—the way she yielded, like anything I wanted to do to her was fine, anything I wanted to take from her, that's what she wanted to give. She even felt that way in my hands, as if she were swollen with some sort of womanly sweetness, bursting with it —her tits, her hips, the tightness of her thighs—and if I didn't relieve her of it, if I didn't squeeze it out of her of pierce her or make her come—she'd just explode.

"Emma!"

"Oh, Conner!"

It was insane, holding her pressed against me as the water streamed down against us. It ran over her face and down her body, dripped from her eyelashes and chin and nipples. It reminded me of come, like she was being bathed in come.

"Put your hands up around my neck, Emma. Hold on to me!"

"What—?"

I showed her, taking her arms and putting them up around my neck so that she was standing, leaning back against me. I reached up and got the hand piece from the shower.

"Don’t let go, Emma."

"Oh, Conner! No! Don't!"

I spread her pussy apart with my left hand and trained the shower head on her clit with my right, flicking it across her so the spray whipped across her exposed flesh and made her jerk and cry out as if struck. She instinctively closed her legs and brought her arm down to protect herself.

"Don't you dare, Emma!" I warned. "Keep those hands around my neck like I said!"

"Oohhh…" She whined and locked her fingers around the back of my neck, seeing she had no choice but the close her eyes and hang on. I got a better grip on her, pressing her against me with my forearm and spreading her labia apart and pressing them down to expose her turgid clit, my fingers sliding in her swollen and slippery flesh.

I whipped her with the water again and again and each time she jerked spastically, lifting her hips to the spray and crying out without restraint, her voice echoing off the hard, tiled walls. She was coming, coming with each lash of hot water, hardly even struggling, helpless to resist giving herself to me again and again as if this were her only function in the world.

And as weird as it sounds for a while I felt like a master musician must feel, one with his instrument and joined with it, feeling every stab of pleasure and every ounce of her joy and before I knew it Emma was sobbing and shuddering in my arms and I dropped the spray and let her slide from my arms. She fell to her knees and I stood tall over her with my head up and back slightly arched and grabbed her hair and pulled her up and took my prick in my hand and pressed it against her face and with one stroke, then two and then three—I exploded against her, thrusting my hips out, my eyes rolling back in savage release, my cum spurting in copious gouts all over her face as she rubbed her cheeks and mouth all over my erupting dick, moaning, and panting in a transport of bliss.

*****

We were famished after the shower. Emma wanted to stay in because she thought her hair looked awful and felt her clothes were too muddy but in fact her hair looked fine and I found an old boat-necked sweater that worked well enough for her and I knew she really wanted me to get her outside. Already this was taking on the giddy up-all-night feeling of a teen-aged sleepover and she was glowing with excitement.

We skipped down the stairs and out into the street and I wanted to take her across the street to Long Viet which is this tiny hole-in-the-wall place I've always dreamed of taking a girl to, pitch black on the inside and  as wide as a closet with a tiny porthole for window and lit only by the blue neon sign, a ridiculously narrow mirrored bar in the back like a sliver of glass, makes it feel like an aquarium.

Down on the street we ran into Jimmy again, this time he was with Uncle Stanley, a little, round-headed, sloe-eyed guy I didn't know very well, and Ricky Sun, who I did know and liked. Ricky'd been in the poetry course I'd taught at Truman College which was just a few blocks down and was a funny kid with bleached blond hair combed into a sculptural brush that gave him an unfortunate resemblance to Beavis or Butthead. It was unfortunate because I think Ricky did it intentionally out of the mistaken belief that people thought Beavis and Butthead were cool, which they did, but not in the way that Ricky thought.

"Conner, Conner, it's an honor!"

The other thing about Ricky is that he wrote poetry by lifting strings of words out of the rhyming dictionary.

I smiled. "You guys still around?"

"Where we supposed to go, Conner?" Rickey smiled.

Emma stepped out where they could see her and the boys, taken by surprise, stood up a bit taller and gave her polite little bows, I introduced her around and they all shook hands, and I was touched to see this sweet formality and Jimmy's showing off as he told the others, "Oh, we've already met, haven't we Emma?"

I gave her my arm as we crossed the street and she took it. I hadn't felt so fucking proud in years. As I pushed open the door of Long Viet I looked back across the street and saw Jimmy and Uncle Stanley smiling at me, their heads almost touching, and Ricky Sun with eyes wide giving me both thumbs up.

*****

It was time for us to talk and there were things I wanted to tell her, but they were confused things and only half clear and I'd hoped for better than that. At my age and for where I thought I'd be in terms of maturity and knowing my own mind, I'd really hoped for better than that. But sitting there in that dark and intimate place with Emma right across from me and almost waiting for me to say something, it seemed impossible to start, and so we sat and ordered food and talked about this and that and I never did say what I should have said.

But what I should have said was this:

I'm a writer, Emma, and a bad poet, and I'll never have the money your David does. I don't know what I've gotten myself into here. I started an affair with you because I wanted your body. I wanted to fuck you and do terrible things to you and I thought that's all I wanted. Now I seem to have fallen in love with you and I don't understand how and I don't know what to do about it.

I don't even know you very well, and I'm almost afraid to know you better. Maybe I love you because I don't know you. Maybe if I knew what you were really like and what you wanted out of life and what you think is important I wouldn't care for you at all and that would be the end of this. You're a lot younger than me and we see things differently. Things matter a lot more to you—material things—and I gave up on those a long time ago, probably because I know I'll never have them, but also because I think I found something more important in my writing.

I don’t talk about this much because I feel silly when I do, but when I write, I feel like the most important man in the world, because when I write, I give meaning to things. I create significance, and I create meaning, and as hard as that may for you to believe, that's really even more important than life and death.

You're sitting here with me now, and we were just up at my flat and I was holding you and making you come in my arms, and what does all this mean? We're both here now telling ourselves stories, trying to find the one we like best to describe what's going on. Are we just playing with each other sexually? Are we in love? You're wondering if I'm just using you, if I think you're just a whore.  I'm wondering if I'm just some cheap thrill you know you can string along and then dump before you settle down with your boyfriend.  We're writing this story, Emma. Everyone's a writer. We all write our own lives and the lives of those around us. It's just that I do it all the time and I think about  how I do it more than most people. I do it large. I'm aware of it.

There are stories within stories within stories, Emma. We live in a sea of stories and meanings and symbols. When I first fucked you in that cold empty lecture hall, don’t you think I knew what that meant? The echoing emptiness of that auditorium, a place where students gather to learn from a teacher; your aloneness in the dark as I touched you, as you wordlessly begged to be touched? It was cold in there and dark. It was hard. I wasn't kind. Do you know why it had such an effect on you?

When I chased you down in that rainy park and took you in the mud like an animal, do you know what that meant? How you were burning to be free yet needed to be captured and ridden to the ground and fucked in that field in the rain and the grass and the mud with no pretense and no apology and nothing but raw animal passion. I nailed you to the dirt with my cock, Emma. Pulled your hair back till the rain was in your face and rode you like a bitch. It was just what you wanted, wasn't it?

Do you see, Emma? This is what I can give you. This is why I brought you here. Because tomorrow, or the next day, or the next, I'm going to take you around the city and I'm going to show you other stories, magical stories, impossible stories and unbelievable stories, and I'm going to show you how they connect to you and to what you feel and how they reach deep and connect us to unimaginable things. Unimaginable things—the emeralds in the gem room at the Field Museum, the Gods of ancient Egypt, the opium dens of colonial China, the Kabalistic Tree of Life, the gold of the Incas in Pizarro's treasure Ships, the magic of the Italian renaissance, the Italian beef sandwiches of Taylor street and the swaying of the willows by Diversey Harbor. They're all linked by erotic imagination and the power of poetry and that's no small stuff. That's the very fire and chains of love right there, Emma, and I'm offering to give it to you. I'm offering to lay all of this at your feet, to bring it to you,  bathe you in it. We'll live in it, because that's what I can give to you, Emma. Do you understand?

And just where are we in all of this? In all this meaning and talk and all this thinking and explaining. Do I even have to say it? It's the one thing that's obvious, that I've been saying all along.

I've been saying it all along the only way it can be said. Not even a writer can say it with words, because it has to be felt, and it has to be felt because it's not even an idea, it's a sensation, an emotion, a certainty, Emma, that's what it is—that sheer presence of me in you, of me against you, of me with you, melting into you, possessing you, having you, being you. It's that one certainty that's too important for words.

It's where we start, it's where we end.

This is what I need you to understand, Emma, more than anything, and this is what I can't even say.

When I started this I thought it was some naughty fun—a game about D/s, BDSM, whips and chains. I never knew this would happen to me, that you would open up this floodgate of emotion, break down this dam of passion. You think I'm playing games, and I almost wish that were true, but what I'm feeling is real. It's real and now I don't know how to convince you it's real. You think I’m playing games, and I almost wish that was true. What I’m feeling is real. It’s real and now I don’t how to convince you it’s real – and if I can, I’m terrified that I might find out it isn’t real to you.

You devastate me, Emma. You destroy me with what you give me. I'm supposed to be the master, I know, and yet you make me weak and helpless, fill me with rage and strength, turn me into a man like I've never been before. It's sick, insane, maybe pathological, but I don’t know if I can live without it anymore. When you give yourself to me the way you do, you take me apart and put me back together into something new and strong and clean. You empty me of my rage and anguish and take it into yourself and turn it into something beautiful. I don’t know how you do it. I've never known anyone like you.

And yet I know how it must be for you too. Maybe I'm wrong but I swear I can feel what you feel, how you seem to swell with this sweetness as if you're going to burst, your breasts and your pussy and your whole body all filled with this languorous heaviness, and forgive me Emma, but what you want then is not more sweetness and gentility but to have that pleasure pulled from you, beaten from you and taken, your body pierced and punctured, crushed and squeezed by the arms of desire, bruised by fevered kisses and punished by passion. You want to know that a man wants you enough to go mad to have you, will kidnap you and tie you and spend himself upon you and batter you both to pieces in his need to possess you.

That 's how it feels, isn't it? Because that's how it feels to me, and I know that when we're together like that, when it's good like that, we're feeling exactly the same thing. Two people don't get any closer than that, Emma. You don't know how rare and precious that is, for that one brief instant to be you and feel your own love

So that's what I know, Emma. That's all that I know. That all of us live most brightly in our lover's hearts, and in mine right now you have a palace.

I can't even make you an offer yet and I don't know what else to say. Just take what I've told you and think about it, but just know that you're much more to me than what you might think, and that this is much more to me than a game.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

That's what I should have said to her at Long Viet as we ate our bowls of pho and our barbecued pork and pot stickers and drank our tiny cups of tea. That's what I should have said, but I didn't. She looked so beautiful as she sucked up the noodles, the ends whipping around and splattering drops of broth before disappearing between her pursed lips. She laughed at the delicious implications.

I didn't say anything because I was afraid that she really was in it just for the sex, just sowing her wild oats before her marriage to David, and that if I bared my soul to her like that, I'd only make a fool of myself and embarrass us both and lose whatever authority as a Dominant I already had.

But mostly I didn't say anything because I'm such a stupid man.

*****

From Long Viet we went right over to Dee's, one of a chain of weird discount clothing stores scattered around the city and close-in suburbs. I'd discovered Dee's before with a friend but never had an opportunity to shop there myself. They specialized in trendy cut-outs and fashion knock-off stuff that was hot one day and cold the next and ended up selling at Dee's for five dollars for a pair of pants and three for a tee shirt, seven dollars for an entire outfit. They specialized in clothes that were a bit too hip, and had a few too many hanging threads, but every so often my friend said you could find an outrageous bargain, and at those prices you could wear the stuff once and throw it away, which is pretty much what I had in mind.

Dee's was in an over-illuminated over-chromed mini strip mall on Broadway that also contained a blindingly bright fruit market/grocery whose stacks of grapefruits, apples and bananas extended out into the street. Everyone there wore sunglasses. They had to. The mall was frequented by a bunch of pretzel-thin hipless, breastless Asian and Chicano girls who looked faintly green under the powerful fluorescent lights. They made Emma look especially voluptuous, almost meaty.

Thankfully Dee's itself wasn't so bright. Emma had no idea what we were doing there till she rifled through some of the racks and saw the Lurex, velvet, spandex, mesh, vinyl, and then looked at the price tags.

"You've got to be kidding!" she said.

Several of the pretzel girls looked up.

"I know they're kind of flashy, " I said, leaning over a rack of iridescent tops the size of dinner napkins, "But I like flashy. Sue me. I want to buy you some clothes, Emma, my treat. I want to play sugar daddy so you can't say I never got you anything. I know this isn't the highest-end stuff in the world, but still, just for the hell of it. I've got a hundred dollars I don't want to walk out of here with. Okay?"

But Emma's face suddenly got dark and sad, and I realized I'd done something wrong.

"No, Conner. That's okay.  couldn't."

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing. It's just… I'd rather not. Is that all right?"

I'm very stupid when it comes to women. Vaguely I sensed something swimming around between us like a fish in the dark again—that same business about what was real and what was a game.

"No, look, Emma," I said, grasping at straws. "It's not like I'm really buying you something. These aren't really clothes. They're props. That's what they are, get it?"

She smiled and shook her head but I think my earnestness must have gotten to her, or she realized she'd hurt my feelings, or something, because she relented.

"Props," I repeated, "And at these prices, I want you to shock me with your lurid and whorish purchases, understand? And check it out—they have underwear too. Behind you."

She looked at me and then looked behind her at a display of demi-bras (my friend had told me their underwear was especially good, their stockings too), and she surrendered: "Well, these bras aren't bad…"

Who was the poet who wanted to be a pair of his lover's panties?

I walked up to the counter and made a show of giving the cashier two fifties. "Don't give these back to me no matter what. I'm an irresponsible madman and will only spend it all on books. Make sure she spends it all. I'll be right back. I have an urgent need for a grapefruit."

I thought Emma might be more motivated if she knew she could surprise me with her purchases, and I secretly liked the corny domesticity of the idea of the woman surprising her mate, so I walked outside and stood in the parking lot and had a cigarette while she spent my money on sexual enhancements.

It was a gorgeous night and I was right where I wanted to be—both satisfied and aching for more. secure and feeling like I was on the edge of a dangerous precipice, almost feeling like I was loved. My failure to tell her how I felt in the Long Viet came back to me. I should tell her, and yet things were going so well. It would be so easy to ruin everything at this point.

Besides, she knew what was going on. We hadn't really made love yet. She knew I hadn't brought her all the way into the city just for a quick shower and a bowl of noodles. She'd seen the hoist and the locked room and now here I was buying her clothes at Dee's and she knew I had something planned. The main event was still to come. There was time.

I was worried about leaving her alone so I walked back in. The cashier nodded towards the changing booths in the back and I walked back, and I heard her voice coming from one of the stalls, tight, low, urgent, talking on her cell phone.

"…Well see? That's why I didn't want to [I]tell[/I] you! If you didn't [I]know[/I], then you wouldn't [I]have[/I] to lie! You're the worst liar in the world, Angela, and David knows that too! …(pause)…Well— Well— Well, just turn it [I]off![/I]  Just don't answer it anymore! Angela—? Angela—? [I]Angela![/I] Would you listen to me—!?"

I turned and walked out, went outside, face burning, dizzy.

Supposedly no one knew where she was. Her roommates didn't know. Her fiancé didn't know. It was our secret affair, private, our own little game, something we shared. If anyone got hurt it would be just us.  And now here it was—the tone of her voice, tight, pinched, pleading, [I]manipulative[/I].

Strange how my face burned. Throbbed almost—the part of me I show the world. As if I'd been slapped.

I leaned against a car and watched as Emma came out of the dressing room, putting her phone away. She didn't look at me. She looked at the outfits she'd taken in with her. I tried to see her for who she was.

But was it really so weird, I asked myself? What had I heard? I'd heard her having words with Angela her roommate about David's calling her  and that was really all. So Emma had lied to me when she told me her roommates didn't know about us. Was that such a big deal? It kept me from pestering her at home. It kept me from dropping by or trying to make more of this thing than it was. Was that so unreasonable?

Still, the doubt remained. Her tone of voice on the phone wasn't the tone of voice I knew.

She'd stepped out of character and I hated that.

I wasn't sure who she was anymore. The idea that maybe I was playing a part in her game wouldn't leave me, that I was a minor character in the story she was writing featuring her and David wouldn't leave me. The lights in Dee's suddenly seemed too harsh and too flat at the same time, and Emma seemed to pick up some of that green cast to her skin as well.

We paid for her stuff and went back to my place.

"Should I model what I bought or do you just want to—?"

"No, let me see. Let's see it all," I said.

We were back in the bedroom surrounded by the white and black bags from Dee's and I started going through them as if David might be inside. That was my obsession now, that Emma was having this affair with me just to make him jealous and goad him into adopting D/s as if it were nothing more than a lifestyle like yoga or vegetarianism—("Oh, come on, David! You know that Conner Devlin in Chicago did D/s with me and we had a great time! You should really try it!")—that she was making mental notes of what I was doing so she could report to him as if it was a technique he could learn off 3X5 note cards. I felt like my recipes were being stolen.

I started drinking. I was tense and angry and it started to hit me right away.

She'd bought nice things. Fairly conservative, handsome clothes; skirts of fabrics that might not be expensive but still, hung with simplicity, tops of soft and elegant cut. Amidst all the flash and glitter and whorishness at Dee's, Emma had managed to find clothes that remembered a woman's beauty and made me ashamed of the particular kind of hot-pants lust I was looking for, and that  only irritated me more.

"That's it? That's as slutty as you could find?"

She looked at me. "I bought more. I was saving them for later."

I picked up a gray skirt. It was some synthetic I suppose, soft, like cashmere.  Not unusually tight or short. It wasn't what I'd been expecting. It wasn't what I'd been hoping for.

"Fine. Let's go then. Get dressed. One more place I want to take you and then we can come back and get down to business. I've got some stuff to get ready while you change,"

"Do you want me to wear that skirt?"

"Sure, yeah, whatever. Wear the skirt.  No, wait a minute. I got something else you can wear."

I went over to my dresser and opened the top drawer, I'd been saving this for later, but I was a little drunk now and it seemed to me that this was as good a time as ever.

I took a gift-wrapped box and gave it to her and I should have known—I should have seen the look in her eyes that said, "Don't do this to me. Please don't do this to me," and maybe I did. Maybe I saw that look and I gave it to her anyhow because I had the feeling at this point that things were somehow already over and maybe I just wanted to hurt her. But I gave it to her and I made her take it and I stood there while she unwrapped it and tore the paper off and then opened the box.

It was a collar. A silk-lined, leather collar, cushioned with velvet, set with mother-of-pearl studs and tourmaline cabochons and three stainless steel rings. It had a stainless steel buckle and a lock and key and four silver bells that hung free and chimed so I'd always know where she was by the sound it made. I'd had it custom made and it had cost me four hundred and sixty-five dollars.

Her face went pale. She lifted it out of the box and said, "Oh Conner. I can't wear this. You know I can't."

"It's not a fucking ring, Emma. Okay? It's a collar. It's a fucking collar!" I took it from her hands and threw it in the box and threw the box in the drawer.

*****

The Blue Moon is the oldest bar in continuous existence in the city of Chicago. What that means is that they've been drinking there since 1923. Al Capone drank there, actually owned it for a while. The booth he sat at is still there. The basement room he and his flunkies gambled at is still downstairs but stripped now and used for storage only, but there's still a tunnel that runs beneath Broadway and comes up on the other side of the street a block away for use in case of police raids, of which there were none, because Capone owned the police.

The Blue Moon is the quintessential private eye bar, forever stuck in that era of hard booze and fast women, garish green lights and red juke boxes, men in fedoras and women in low-cut dresses. The people who go there know it and they dress the part, so going there is half night-out, half costume party. It's always kind of surreal.

Harvey the bouncer met us outside and we squeezed in through the crowd at the door and made our way down the long bar towards the bandstand in the back where the booths were, already occupied. The place was dark and crowded as usual, but there always seemed to some space you could slide into. It was noisy without being loud, bubbling and alive, crowded without being crushing. It was a perfect bar, exciting and relaxing at the same time, a sense of anticipation always in the air. You walked in and looked around and there were people looking for you. The dim booths, shadowy corners, colored spotlights reflecting in polished brass instruments, rows of bottles standing against cloudy mirrors. It was here that they'd started the poetry slams in the early 80's, opening up the mikes to any poets who wanted to read, and suddenly the word went out and people started crowding in to hear this new, spoken  music and things took off. That's how I found this neighborhood and found this life, and that's why I'd brought Emma down here to this place I'd told her so much about, to meet my other mistress. But now that we were here I was feeling strange and confused, still upset about that phone call and the collar and so many things. And it was early yet, not even midnight

We found a place at the very edge of the bar almost next to the bandstand under a bust of Plato. The band was a Retro big band called Retro Metro– 18 pieces, 3 singers in 40's outfits and camellias in their hair, great brass, all professionals. They suck up a room and spit it out, and for someone who'd never heard live big band, they were a revelation, like discovering music for the first time There was one at the end of the bar right next to the band stand and I slid Emma onto it as the band was playing "Night in Tunisia" and her eyes just went wide. We were so close you could hear the keys on the saxophones slapping and hear the musicians laughing and kidding each other and ordering drinks from the bar. The air smelled of beer and sweat and gardenia and people were dancing in a way you don't see anymore, out of sheer joy. But I was irritated and confused and ordered a double whiskey for myself while Emma had a rum and coke.

I'd made it a point not to really look at her when we left my place, but now I did, when I took off her sweatshirt and threw it on a stool, not caring whether anyone took it or not.

She was wearing the gray skirt, which hung on her without pleat or wrinkle, an exquisite, mistlike curve that showed where space stopped and Emma began. Above the skirt she wore a white top with a square neck and long, tight sleeves that was gathered between the tits in a way that was both innocent and suggestive. It was made of some material that looked very tactile—the urge to touch it was almost overwhelming, and I guess that was the point.

Her entire person was made for holding, I realized—her shape, her scent, the colors she'd chosen, the way she moved, the textures of her clothes. In the mood I was in it was maddening, not just that she was made for holding, but that she had designed herself to appeal this way to me. Why did she do this to me if she didn't want me to hold her? I was trapped now and confused, angry and humiliated about the collar.

The band rushed up to a close, hit the note and held it. The dancers stopped, fell away in happy applause, whistles.

I noticed the clock:  midnight. I turned to her. "Aren't you expecting a call?"

"Who?"

"David. He should have called you by now."

Emma looked at me cautiously. "Sometimes he doesn't call."

I nodded wisely, as if in sympathy. "Good thing he didn't call tonight with us being in a bar and everything, huh?"

The Band started playing and Emma put her drink down. "Conner, what's wrong? Why are you so angry? What have I done?"

"Who says I'm angry? It's just a lucky coincidence that he doesn't call tonight while you're out with your other boyfriend."

I looked at her. It was terrible. I was hurting her and it was like I was cutting my own stomach open but I couldn't stop.

"He doesn't know you're out with me, does he, Emma? No one knows you're out with me, right? That's what you told me, and you wouldn't lie to me."

I saw the fear in her eyes then. She knew I'd found out. She spun so she was facing the room, her back to me.

"No," she said, "No one knows about us."

I took a sip of my drink, as the band started up the next number. I was standing right  behind her. I leaned over, slid my arm over her chest and caressed her breast in the dark.

"You're a terrible liar," I whispered in her ear. "You're even a worse liar than Angela."

I felt her stiffen. I kissed her on the side of the neck. She smelled wonderful. Like flowers.

She pulled away and turned around. "Conner? I think that's enough. I think it's time I went home. I want a cab. You're too drunk to drive."

I looked at her for a moment and then smiled. "Sure, honey. Fair enough. One dance, okay? One dance."

The band was playing a slow, campy version of Fats Domino's "Blueberry Hill", bloated and overdone, a grotesque, rollicking parody of itself. A lissome girl in a black velvet 40's evening gown stepped up to the microphone and started belting out the lyrics with super exaggerated enunciation, wrapping her lips and tongue around each syllable with cock-sucking, clit-licking enthusiasm. I took Emma's hand and dragged her off the stool.

I don't dance and Emma doesn't either, not to a song like this, but she was too shocked to resist, and too frightened. I was frightened myself, with no idea what I was feeling or what I was trying to do. I grabbed her and put my arms around her and held onto to her and she had no choice but to follow. The room was a garish green, the music was swollen and staggering, the singer sounded like she was having sex with the microphone, and in my arms was the girl who was killing me with the love I felt for her. I pressed my face into her neck and crushed her to me like I wanted to kill her.

"I found my thrill…"

"Call me <I>'master'</I>," I whispered.

Emma sighed and I squeezed her against me. It felt good to use my strength. It felt good the way she yielded.

"Master!" Emma whispered.

I twisted her wrist behind her back and pushed it up, up between her shoulder blades—up until she gasped and her breast pressed into me.

"Again!"

"Conner! God! Master! <I>Oh! Master! Conner!</I>"

I pushed her back into a dark little corner, behind a phony column where shadows hid us and only one beam of sickly yellow light could get through and slash across her face and in that light I saw her looking at me fearfully. I kept her arm twisted behind her back.

"You're a liar, Emma. You're a liar but you're going to give me what I want anyway, understand?"

"No, Conner. No, I—"

<I>"Master!"</I>

<I>"—Master! I—"</I>

"Shut up! I'm tired of playing games, Emma. I'm tired of being yanked around. You're not going anywhere tonight. I'm not taking you back to campus, I'm not taking you back to your car. You're staying with me tonight and you're staying for as long as I want you to stay. I'm not playing with you any more, Emma, do you understand? You're coming home with me and you're going to give me what I want. You're going to give it to me if I have to fucking crawl inside your mouth to get it!"

"Conner! Conner! <I>Master!</I>"

I grabbed her face in my hands and I kissed her. I kissed that lying mouth. I kissed her and I bit her lips and I felt the tears spill down her cheeks. I was on fire and my cock was hard, stabbing her like a dagger as I held her face in my hands and leaned my weight against her, pressing her back against the wall.

The band was playing and the singer finished her verse and the trombone player must have stood up because as I kissed her and sucked the air from her lungs I heard the first golden blast of that pure, fat horn on my back and it seemed to drive me harder on top of her, pushing her into the corner till it was like we were in a world of our own, just me and Emma unseen by anyone. I dropped one hand to her leg, her thigh, and slid it up under her skirt, lifting the skirt, and Emma was biting me frantically, and I don't know if she wanted me or she hated me and anyhow I didn't care because it didn't matter anymore either way. Tears were spilling down her face.

I abandoned my assault on her thigh and my hand went around to her behind where I started lifting her skirt, my hand gathering up the soft fabric. I gathered it up till I felt her naked ass. She was wearing some kind of thong and I spread her cheeks apart with my fingers and began to run my finger up and down her crack. Emma moaned and put her hands on my cheeks and now apparently she decided she wanted it because she kissed me, holding my face as if she were trying to hold me steady or make me slow down—

"Don't touch me, slave!" I hissed at her.

She pulled her hands away as if struck and pressed them against her shoulders, clenching them into tight, nervous little fists. I pushed my finger against her asshole and she whimpered.

"Oh God, Conner! I don't know what to do! What do you want me to do? Master! Master! What do you want me to do?"

I didn't answer. Standing in that little alcove with the shadows of the dancers sweeping over us, I pressed her against me and pushed my finger against her asshole while in front my hand slid under her skirt and found her pussy. She had managed to find some naughty things at Dee's after all—a g-string with a gauzy invisibly fine little pantie that clung tight to her little mound like a shadow, no thicker than a piece of cellophane, it felt, and split— split around her pussy so that her labia were revealed to the air and the night. How interesting…

I leaned against hers. I pressed my weight against her and pushed her into the wall as I slid my hand under her skirt and continued to investigate her as if I were learning all this for the first time.

The panties were split, and hanging down over her clit was a little string of beads or pearls, I couldn't tell, but they hung down so that they'd slap against her clit as she walked, as she moved, spanking herself, keeping herself aroused and ready. It didn't matter that I'd made her buy them, that I'd insisted she buy slutty underwear  and that she wore them just for me. They made me nuts for her, filled me with rage and excitement. They must have been spanking her all the time we were walking to the Blue Moon—and now as I fingered and fondled her clit she totally forgot my no-touch order and melted against me, rubbing her hot, open mouth against mine and dissolving into a buttery pool.

"Conner, please! Don't make me… Don't…"

But already she was gone and as soon as my middle finger broke through her tight little sphincter in back she moaned and pushed her pussy at me and I felt a hot little stream when she came, a hot little dollop of her lubricant dripping out into my hand, so utterly filthy. I loved it—all dressed up in her sweet little outfit, yet play with her pussy and stick your finger in her ass and the cum drips out of her like juice from a peach. She'd squirted before when she'd come but never like this, never in this precious little drop, and she shuddered deeply, trembling so violently I thought she might fall, so that when she grabbed onto me I didn't object. She buried her face against my chest, mouth open, gasping for air.

"Master, Master!"

"Again, Emma! Again, damn it!"

"No! Please, no!"

The trombone player was still soloing, the rest of the brass limbering up, preparing to dive back in and see the song home, and I felt Emma's thighs quivering, the wad of come sliding off my finger as I pushed her towards another orgasm.

She was helpless when she got like this. She couldn't stop coming. She dug her nails into my shirt. Opened her mouth and bit me. I shoved my finger up into her ass.

"That's it, slut! Bite me, Emma! Bite me! Fucking make me bleed!"

She snarled like a feral cat and her ass squeezed tight on my finger, her snarl becoming a high squeal of release as she came again. My shirt was wet where she bit me.

"Conner, no more! Please, no more! Not here. Please!"

I looked at her, tiny—helpless, her eyes closed tight . The music washed around us in a river of rich golden sound and Emma was caught like a beautiful little tropical fish on the hook of my fingers. I wanted to crush her in my fist and I wanted to take her in my hands and cherish her next to my heart. It was a place she always put me—paralyzed between boiling sexual rage and weeping tenderness, and in the eye of this testosterone-fueled hurricane, Emma stood and hid against me from my own rage and shivered in constant orgasm. It was more than I could stand.

"Come on!"

I grabbed her hand and led her out through the front of the bar. The band was just getting to its feet and lifting their horns and all standing up and putting their horns to their mouths and blowing—the solid, hard-driving, good-rocking-tonight wide open  final chorus, down the streets of the city and over the roofs of Chicago and out into the darkness over the Lake and I grabbed Emma and led her stumbling with her tear-stained face and shaking legs out through the press of people—some my age, some hers; some who looked at us, some who didn't—out the door and out onto the heat of Broadway in the summer night, across the street dodging cars and down the block, neither of us speaking, neither of us saying a word. In the wake of the rain the air had died and grown stifling and hot and I began to sweat as I led her along by the hand, her having to trot occasionally to keep up, till we came to Carmen and we turned down my street, passed the now-dark windows, came to my door and I opened it and led her into the hot dark inside.

"Come on," I said. "Upstairs."

I remember my mind was unusually sharp as I followed her up, although I'm not quite sure what that means in this context, because I really didn't know what I was doing anymore. Or maybe that was it. I didn't have to worry about sending the wrong message or being misunderstood anymore, so that made things very clear and simple. I didn't have to be careful and try and see things through her eyes and wonder if she'd misinterpret or misunderstand. I didn't have to think about anything at all. I'd taken Emma and she was mine—for the night at least—and at this point there was no tomorrow and no fucking around. I was going to have my way with her.

The front of the loft was totally dark when we entered. There was just enough light coming in from the street so you could make out the chain hoist hanging there from the beam, looking as ominous as a hangman's noose. There was a plain white wooden trunk standing nearby I'd put there earlier while Emma'd been changing. All my gear was in there, things I'd been collecting against this night.

"Go stand over there," I gestured towards the wall near the hoist.

"Conner, what are you going to do?"

"Just shut up and do it!" 

She did as I said,

Despite all the windows being open it was so hot and sweltering in the loft that the place was giving off its ancient smell of musty wood and machine oil, and it was almost enough to make me feel bad for her, seeing her dressed up in those clothes I'd bought for her. Almost. But then what did I care?

It occurred to me how stupid I must have looked to her, taking her to Dee's. She had no sense of irony when it came to things like clothes and material goods. This was David's girl. She probably thought I'd been serious when I'd taken her there, and as I watched her cross the floor now in that skirt and her white top, the foolishness of this entire affair hit me.

I turned to ice inside. I went to the trunk I'd pulled out earlier and dragged it over closer. I got what I needed: a spreader bar and anklets, the suspension cuffs, a metal carabineer. I went to Emma and stood in front of her and began to buckle the cuffs on. They weren't simple, having fours buckles each and it took some time. Her tits were rising and falling with each breath and she kept her eyes closed, waiting. As I worked, I spoke to her.

"You know, this emptiness, it's a female thing. The space in here. It's female."

She said nothing.

"I'm telling you what this means, Emma. I'm telling you what everything means from now on, because I don't think I'm getting through to you."

I finished the one cuff and started on the other. It's funny I hadn't noticed her scent in the bar, or earlier, or ever before in our relationship as far as I could recall, but now I did, very subtle and opulent and sexually arousing, so that I really wanted to bury my face in her neck and inhale her fragrance. And how had she done that? Had she brought perfume in her bag? Had she applied some while I was dragging her down the street? Or was her nervousness making her emit some natural pheromone meant to soothe a male attacker and deflect his wrath into thoughts of sex?

"Darkness is female too," I said. "And silence and quiet and all things that receive and take in and that are passive and horizontal and wet and soft and cool and sweet."

I snugged the last buckle in place and clipped her wrists together with the carabineer.

"And with all this femininity at work, the poet in you asks, where are the masculine influences to counterbalance them? Well, here they come…" 

I grabbed the chain hoist and slid it over and we both looked up as this cast iron demon swept in smoothly above us on its steel wheels like one of the four horseman of the apocalypse and slid smoothly into place. A 1500-pound capacity chain hoist isn't a huge piece of machinery but it's still handsome and menacing, and what male doesn't get off on seeing a nice powerful piece of industrial machinery at work?

I locked the brake on the hoist and pulled down the lifting chain, opened the toggle on the stainless steel hook and clipped it to Emma's wrists. I hauled up on the hauling chain and the chains slid through the block with a smooth, clocklike whirr and Emma's hands lifted up to eye level.

"Conner…!"

I bent down and attached the spreader bar to her ankles, buckled the anklets in places then stood up. Emma stood there and looked at me with her eyes wide in the darkness, her breasts rising and falling. I could feel the emptiness of the loft stretching around us.

The hoist had a thirty-to-one mechanical advantage and as I ran the chain through my hands, Emma's wrists starting rising inexorably, up, up, up over her head.  Up till her hands were extended like the hands of a diver and she was standing straight and reaching up, then on her toes, then reaching. The chain to the spreader bar pulled taut and she started to fall back but the chain caught her and held her, suspending her from her arms and she cried out in alarm.

She stood there rocking slightly, feet apart, arms extended, looking straight ahead, helpless.

She was still dressed though, still wearing her clothes from the bar. I stood behind her. I reached into my pocket. The knife was about three and a half inches long and opened with the smoothness of silk upon silk. I pulled out the hem of the white top she was wearing. It was too bad—it fit her so well,

"Don't move," I said.

In the dim light of the loft it only took a few seconds to cut off the top, running the knife up from the hem to the collar, and then along the arms. Her skin beneath was flawless. I was very careful. As I cut her clothes off her, I talked to her.

"There's something I read that says that this is all a form of worship, Emma, that in a funny way, I'm worshipping you. I think that's kind of right. Because when we worship something, we're trying to get control of it, aren't we? We're trying to tell God or whatever, be nice to me, give me a break. We're trying to say, I adore you, you're fantastic, but take it easy on me too, aren't we? And yeah, I'd say that about sums up what I'm trying to do with you, Emma. That comes pretty close."

I'd cut through the skirt and yanked it off and she cried out. She was scared now, hanging in that chain, and I knew her arms wouldn't take much of this. I had to hurry.

I went up behind her. I whispered in her ear. "I have to take your bra off, baby. Your pretty panties too."

She nodded nervously.

I slid my hands along her skin. She was warm and soft and so ready to be fucked just like this. And I was so on fire for her.

I slid the knife under the straps of the bra and sliced through them, then unhooked it and let it fall. I pulled the sides of her panties out and sliced through those as well, then pulled the garment through her legs.

"Are you ready, Emma?"

"Yes."

I took up the little bit of the slack in the hoist, pulling till her body was bowstring tight and the soles of her shoes started to rise off the floor. She cried out and gasped. Her rib cage lifted and her stomach sucked in and she started to pant like a dog.

"You all right, baby?"

"Yes. Yes!"

I stepped behind her. "I'm afraid I have to gag you."

"All right. Do it. Do I get a safe word? What's my safe word? Three times?"

I moved behind her and slid the ball between her teeth and buckled the gag into place behind her head. I finished and took a moment to just run my hands down her perfect body, over her breasts and her swollen nipples, her ribs, the dramatic in-tuck over her waist and flare of her hips.

I stepped back and tested the balance of the flogger in my hand,

"No, baby," I said. "I'm afraid I can't give you that. This time there is no safe word."

I raised the flogger and brought it down hard on her ass and then again and Emma yelled—a desperate, muffled sound in the loft—and I had to stop myself because I didn't want to end up beating her. That's what I'd been afraid of and I didn't want that, so I backed off and walked in a circle a couple of times just to cool off. I was too hot, too on edge, still pissed about the whole David business.

I started in again, this time just brushing her ass with the flogger, aiming it so the fall just singed her buttocks and tickled them with pain and I saw her flex her ass and arch her back. That's what I wanted. To arouse her. To drive her crazy with it like she drove me crazy. That was how to use my anger. Emma threw her head back and bit into the gag. Her hands gripped at the chains, then she dropped her head again and closed her eyes as the whip fell. I knew she was concentrating on the sensation, that teasing, stinging, driving sensation. Conner's telling you you're a slut, honey. Conner's saying it. Conner and his nasty whip. Is he right? Is he?

I began a steady, rhythmic series of figure eights, bringing her senses alive. The flogger came down in the darkened loft with a  wicked scything sound, and soon I began to hear Emma's muffled moans.

I am right, aren't I, Emma? Yes, I am. You like it, don't you? You love it. Nipples getting hard. Pussy starting to throb. You love it, Emma. You love being whipped.

Her head went back, eyes closed. Starting to feel good now. The pain's starting to buy her something, a certain kind of freedom, a permission to own a part of her sexuality that I can only admire. God, she's fucking beautiful when she gets whipped! Just incredible!

The flogger first stings, then burns, then numbs and raises a deep, throbbing, endorphic hunger, and as I whipped her, I fixated for some reason on her foot in her shoe, on the delicacy of her ankle and the way it moved as the whip came down—the little twitch and surrender, as if eager to get going, the pull against the anklet that held her bound to the spreader bar. Strange how we fix on such little trivial things and find such incredible heat in them.

After a time I stepped in front of her and grabbed her hair, pulled her head back and saw the fear and excitement in her eyes. If she were faking, I couldn't tell—fear and excitement, and she wanted more. I put my hand between her legs and pushed up and my palm came away smeared with wetness. She stared at me and dared me to go on.

I started whipping her chest, her breasts, the same figure eight, upper left to lower right, upper right to lower left. Emma let her head fall back at first and then raised it again, tucking in her chin to look down at her chest as the flogger fell, watching the marks appear on her skin, watching her breasts as they shook and recoiled under the flogger's blows, watching what was happening as if it weren't happening to her, as if it were someone else, as if she could almost believe it till every few strokes I'd have to stop and reach out and caress her breasts and feel how hot they were, and the nipples, feel how swollen.

I switched to her thighs, swinging the flogger back and forth as if I were scything weeds, feeling the leather slap against the firmness of her legs and stick and drag over her sweat-slick skin. It was as if she had something of mine. She had something and I wanted it back. I didn't know what it was, or maybe that wasn't even it. There was just something, something she did to me that I couldn't stand. She just tore me up, this girl, this woman. She tore me up and did things to me and I felt like I was fighting for my life here, fighting for my sanity, pitting my 235 pounds against her maybe 135, and me with my whips and hoists and chains and ropes and I didn't have a chance.

Outside in the street a car had stopped, subs cranked, bass booming through the deck, you could feel it in your chest, the muffled rattling, impotent boom

"Damn it, Emma! Damn it!"

The sizzling hiss of the whip as I flogged her tits, her nipples. She gasped and wailed but there was nothing she could do to escape or avoid the blows, stretched as tight as she was, crucified almost, caught in mid air and suspended between the spreader bar and the hoist, rigid, gagged, exposed, and despite her shuddering and her protests the sheen of her own obscene juices smeared on her thighs by the blows of the whip showed how excited she was.  She was driving me mad, and her own quivering excitement was making me hit her harder, whip her faster, going for the essence of her, reaching for the bone. Emma was shaking. Saliva began to ooze from the corners of her mouth.

<I>Slapp!! Whapp!! Smackk!! Whackk!!</I>

"What the fuck have you done to me, Emma?" I snarled. "I want to know what you've done to me!"

I aimed the flogger at her cunt, bringing it up between her legs so the fall slapped against the flesh of her pussy, the strands slapping against her buttocks from below. She howled behind the gag, her eyes clenched tight.

<I>Whapp!! Whackk!! Slapp!! Smackk!!</I>

"You've taken something from me, bitch! You've fucking taken something from me and I want it back! Understand me? I want it back!!"

She's flying now, her body rigid like a diver's—arms stretched overhead and wrists together, legs flexed and rigid and held apart by the spreader bar, long hair flowing over her tits, her eyes clenched tight in painful endurance as the flogger slaps up against her pussy again and again and Emma's muffled cries of rising excitement get higher and higher and more and more urgent and hysterical, out of control…

<I>Whackk!! Flackkk!!! Smasshh!!! Slasshh!!!</I>

"Come on, Emma ! Come on bitch! Get it, Emma! Get it for me, baby! Give it to me! Get it for me, Emma, damn it!! Get it! Get it!!"

I could see she was starting to come, see she was starting to lose it I could see it in the way she was trembling, her stomach heaving, jerking, her breath rushing in and out of her dilated nostrils like the snorting of a bull, her fingers spreading wide as if they'd break off and then clenching tight into trembling, agonized fists. The muscles on the insides of her thighs quaking with the strain of fighting it off and her eyes were closed tight and clenched in the pain of overwhelming ecstasy…

I dropped the flogger and rushed to her, terrified she'd pass out, yanked the gag from her mouth and tore slack from the hoist to lower her. She started to crumple, falling into my arms like a sack of wheat. She gasped for breath, sucked in a piteous lungful of air and turned to me, eyes still closed—"Conner! Conner—!"

"Emma! Yes, baby, yes! I've got you! I've got you now! I've got you"

"Connerrrrr!!!"

I held her as she jerked and spasmed in convulsive orgasm as if a thousand volts of electricity were ripping through her in total sensory overload and I crushed her to me as if only I could keep her from exploding into pieces out of sheer ecstasy. She hung half in my arms and half in the hoist and jerked and twitched and came and came and came, and it was like heaven, it was glorious, it was like it was me myself who was doing it, who was coming like that, and I actually felt the thrills rip through my own body in waves of concentric bliss, as if there were parts of her that I had somehow internalized or ingested that now responded to the pleasure in her like the ocean responds to the pull of the moon and they rushed to her, feeling what she felt.

—But no, it was better than me myself doing it because it was her, and I'd taken her there. It was the place I'd taken her, the story I'd told her, the heart I'd given her, and I stood there and held her and squeezed her and took everything back from her—anything she'd taken from me and anything I'd given her, anything she'd stolen and anything she'd borrowed, I got it all back from her right then, it all came flooding back in overflowing and I unhooked her from the chains and sank to the floor with her in my arms and sat there holding her and rocking with her and thinking that this was only sex and this was only sex and that's all that this was, only sex.

And I thought: if I took her back tomorrow, we still were even.

*****

"Conner, please—"

"Quiet, Emma"

"Conner—"

She was standing under the hoist, completely naked. The cuffs were gone, the spreader bar and anklets were gone. The gag was lying on the floor. Her wrists were lashed behind her, and I was fastening my collar around her neck.

"It doesn't mean anything, okay? It's just a piece of decoration, a piece of jewelry I happen to like. Can you think of it that way. Does it have to be some big fucking deal? It looks good on you, that's all. It turns me on, Emma, isn't that enough?"

She looked like she was going to cry. It had been a long fucking night.

"Come here."

I pulled her towards me, took her in my arms and kissed her neck, inhaling her scent and the smell of the leather and burying my face in her hair. I couldn't help it, the thing did turn me on. It's a shameful secret of mine—the sight of a collar on a woman is a powerful aphrodisiac to me. It's ridiculous but true, and Emma was still mine for the night.

I took her ass in one hand and massaged her breast carefully in the other. I was cautious in the way I touched her. She was red and hot from whipping and I'd already salved her down, but Emma was Emma—upset or not she melted against me and flowered beneath my touch and my kisses, pressed herself into my hands and began to purr.

"That's better," I said. "That's better, better..."

In all this time I hadn't come, I hadn't had any relief. I'd been up and I'd been down and I was aware of the ache in my groin and the wetness in my shorts but I hadn't even allowed myself to think of relief. And now it was time. Now it was time.

I went to the trunk and pulled out a bunch of things already wrapped in a towel. I was already prepared for this. The last thing I took out was a big blanket which I folded in half and spread over the trunk for a bed.

"Come here, Emma. Come here."

There in the darkness in the middle of the big empty floor I had her sit on the edge of the trunk and I kneeled between her legs. It was late now and there wasn't much noise off the street as I leaned forward and closed my eyes and lost myself in the softness of her tits again, that shy and generous sweetness. Breasts would be fantastic even if they weren't erotic. The fact that women love to have them played with just makes them miraculous, a reason to be glad to be alive. As I nuzzled and kissed her flesh, Emma sighed and her face took on an innocent look of sensual pleasure, She closed her eyes touched my cheek with her fingers as if welcoming me to her boobs, as if I'd been a stranger. I understood. After all this time of being focused on her, it was as if, who was this man? Who's coming to use this body? But it was my turn. It was time.

I stood up and slid off my shorts. I was hard and ready. I kneeled back down on the floor and picked up the silver chain and found the clamp, slid it around her nipple and screwed it on. We both watched. Not too tight. I don't want to distract from the main event. I just want her to be aware. We both watched as I affixed the hardware to her body, the jewelry, putting my mark on her, no matter how temporary. First one, then the other. She winced, then relaxed, moved her shoulders back and forth. For now, these were Conner's. She was letting me use them. Her breathing increased.

We still haven't talked. In all that's happened between us, we still haven't talked, and it's important you know this in light of what happened next. Am I spoiling my story by telling you what an idiot I am? I hope not, because I think you should probably know that by now. At this point, after all that's happened, I still think that Emma's going back to David tomorrow, and so does she. We have a sexual affair so perfect that we can't get past the sex.

I lower her down onto her back on the trunk. I bring her ass to the edge of the trunk and I stand up. I'm rock hard and aching. She's absolutely beautiful lying there wearing my collar, despite the lash marks on her breasts and thighs or perhaps because of them, despite the uncertainty on her face, the trace of sadness and threat of tears.

I touch her knees to spread her legs.

"Please, Conner. I want you so much!"

"Yes."

I bend my knees slightly. I don't even have to touch my cock. He seems to know the way, and she's so swollen and wet and open it's like they're magnetized. He finds her and he touches her and with the slightest move from me he parts her and she opens and he just slips inside, just barely, because I'm holding him back.

Even so, Emma arches as if struck, gasps, her hands seize my forearms and her nails dig into my skin, Her  knees rise. Despite my need, I force myself to stop there just to torture us both.

"Are you ready?"

"Oh yes!"

I slide into her.

Despite all the attention and foreplay and bondage and whipping and orgasms and all the baroque and bizarre sex, Emma's still tight, hot, fresh, and quivering with need for this simple act of love. She spasms when I enter, cries out with painful satisfaction, greets me with animal heat and I plunge all the way into her with a pure, primal hunger of my own, pushing my weight into her.

"God, Emma! Christ, you're good! God, I forget how good you are like this!"

Her face is all sweet and creamy with lust.  She smiles as she squeezes me with her buttery pussy. She makes me groan.

"Fuck me, Conner. Fuck me!"

I pull out of her and plunge back in, my loins whapping against her upturned thighs. Emma arches and squeezes me again.

I start to fuck her now, pumping into her, riding her, my ass rising and falling in steady rhythm, brushing her hair away so I can see my collar on her throat, that beautiful collar against her swanlike throat. She thinks it's a decoration. She doesn't know what it means to me.

It would have been so beautiful, so easy. It fits her so well and she looks so fucking beautiful in it

Anger makes me fuck her faster, knowing it could be the last time. My hands close on her whipped and beaten ass and I dig my fingers in. Emma winces, then squeals and wraps her arms around me, her hips begin to slap up at me.

"It could have been so good, Emma!" I whisper. "It could have been so good. I couldn't give you what he could, but there's other things, Emma. He can't give you this, can he? He doesn't do this for you, any of this—what I showed you in the dark and in the rain, the stories, the secrets between us…"

I get up on my knees and then on my feet. I pick up her ankles and hold them in the air as I fuck her, hold them as if she were a post-hole digger and I'm the mad driller. She feels so good and I want her so much and I begin to fuck her hard, slinging my hips at her, trying to hurt her with my cock, hammering my words home.

I'm not sure what I'm doing, because I'm fucking her and I'm talking to her and I'm watching my prick run in and out of her, entering her and pulling out, over and over, but it's like I can't stop talking to her, can't let her go like this, and so I'm talking and fucking her and fucking and talking:—

"Because I don't think you understand Emma, goddamn it! I don't think you know what we have between us or how special this is, to feel what I feel for you, you bitch! To go crazy for a woman like I go crazy for you, Emma. —Ugh!— To want to whip someone and hurt someone and love someone and die for them and fuck them to death like I do for you, Emma.  (Jesus!!!) Do you understand me? (Fuck!!) Do you know what I'm saying, you bitch! Do you know how much I fucking love you, Emma, (Oh GOD!!) you beautiful goddamned slut!? —CHRIST!!!—Jesus, Emma ! God! I'm close, baby! Emma! Fuck, I'm close!!!"

I'm hanging over her with my cock sunk all the way in her and her legs draped over my arms, absolutely at the point of tears and Emma  gets up on her elbows and stares at me astonished and says, "Oh God, Conner, Conner! What are you saying? God, what are you saying? I don't understand this! I don't understand any of this! All I want is for you to love me! That's all I want. That's all I ever wanted. Just tell me what I have to do for you to love me, Conner! Please! Because I can't stand this anymore. I don't want him! I want you. Oh, Conner!"

And then she did start crying, hard, which made her squeeze me inside with every sob.

"No!" I said. "No crying! Not now! Not now when I'm going to come, damn it! Not now damn it fucking shit fuck ass cock ball cunt dick fart!"

But she wouldn't stop, and so she laid there with her hands over her eyes crying with me with my dick inside her on the edge of orgasm and I'm on the verge of tears too, and what can you do in a situation like that? Well, I'm sorry but like a bastard I went and finished fucking her and had one of the worst orgasms of my life thank you very much and she hardly even noticed, because she was having some kind of emotional orgasm of her own, and she wrapped her arms around me and kissed me like crazy and really started sobbing and I was like suddenly drowning in the sweet salt of her tears.

Things were amazingly messy there for a moment. And then they weren't. Then they were very clean.

And then I hold her and we talk, and talk, and she tells me how afraid and ashamed she's been, certain that I only wanted her because I think she's a sub and a slut and a whore. And that's why she thought I'd offered her that collar and that's why I'd taken her to Dee's, and in fact, that's why I even bothered with her, because I thought all she was good for was tying up and whipping and fucking. She said she'd loved me all along but that she'd been afraid to tell me because she knew I'd never want to have anything to do with a sub and a fuckslut.

And I tell her that I thought all she wanted me for was as a master, someone to tie her up and whip her, that I thought she'd find me too old and weird to have as a real-life lover, and that if I ever told her how I really felt she'd get creeped out and run.

And so there we were, trapped in these ritualized sexual roles of Master and slave, unable to show our genuine feelings, afraid we'd scare the other one off.

Suddenly we're looking at each other without the masks now, and there's me, and there's Emma. She wants to know if this means she can't still be my slut, if I still won't tie her up, and I smile and say, "Don't be ridiculous."

*****

It's really late now, like 3:35 in the morning, and the streets are quiet and empty, the lights are all off. I'm sitting in an arm chair in the living room with my pants on and nothing else, a bottle of tequila about half gone, one end of a rope in my hand.

What's on the other end of this rope is my heart. She's naked, lying face down, hanging from a block and tackle attached to a beam in my ceiling. Her ankles are tied against her thighs, her elbows are tied together behind her back. There are ropes around her waist, her legs, her wrists, her breasts, her arms, her chest. They're placed along her body so as to distribute her weight evenly such that no rope cuts into her skin and causes discomfort, and in this way she can hang suspended for some time facing the floor as she wishes, her hair hanging down obscuring her face, anonymous but unmistakably female. She might be an ornament, or a captive, or a fruit that has grown in my home, a gift of my own imagining, or perhaps just a mystery, suspended between heaven and earth. I sit here and admire her, watching her as she revolves very, very slowly in the darkness, like a dream in the mind of the sleeping city, feeling all sorts of things, my heart and my mind filled with her, not sure what she is, thinking she must be everything to me. I never want to stop looking at her.  In the background, John Coltrane plays, "My One and Only Love." It's a heartbreakingly beautiful song.

In a moment I'll go and untie her and help her down, help her stretch and massage out any cramps she might have. I might make her dance with me because I so love this song and I so love to dance with a woman I love. Moving your body together with someone you love through artistically structured time is one of the more beautiful things human beings do. Dancing is one of the ways we do that. BDSM is another.

I think we live our lives in other people's hearts and minds. Alone by ourselves we're not very much good at all. But when we let someone else in with their stories and all their sights and sounds and songs and smells and sensations, we suddenly start filling our shelves and boxes with books and books of them and building up our libraries.

Some of these books are pretty thin reading with faded ink and hardly any pictures and dull stories. And then others are nice, heavy little volumes filled with stories of whippings and weird, perverse sex, dark Chinese restaurants with weird food and drugs being dealt in the back, hot women coming in your hand in loud bars with brassy music playing.

It's nice when one of these books falls into your hands. It's nice when you read through the first few pages and know it's going to be a good one, and you settle down and know you've got pages and pages to go.

Note: If you like the story, you can buy the book along with two extra chapters from  eXcessica, available here: http://excessica.com/index.php/books/a-good-student-by-elliott-mabeuse/