The Audition(15)

When I’m done with the program, I reach to take the clamps off, and I yelp in agony as blood flows back in my abused nipples. I rub at them, hissing at the pain. Sixty seven minutes was a mistake. They are bruised and tender to the touch, and I wince each time my palm rubs them. Nikolai is going to be so angry with me.

“No instinct for self-preservation,” his voice speaks out of the darkness. Absorbed in the music, I had no idea he was even there.

“How long?” I start, and his eyes flash at me as he moves into the light. He’s just wearing a pair of boxers and nothing else. I feast on his body. I can see his thick erection though the thin cotton fabric, and the ache in my pussy intensifies.

“Long enough,” he responds. “There’s definite improvement in your playing,” he tells me.

The music would have been the second question on my lips. The first? I don’t know exactly what the first question is. It is wound up in the blowjob I gave him earlier, in the throbbing of my nipples, in the wet, slippery feeling in my pussy.

“What time is it?” I ask instead.

“Three thirty,” he responds. “You should be asleep.”

“I couldn’t sleep.”

“Are you too tired to play your program again?”

Damn it, Nikolai. I’m naked. I’m in your dungeon, and all you can think about is the music? But who am I kidding? It is this single minded dedication that had once made him a force to be reckoned with. “I can play.”

He gestures for me to rise, and he sits down on the stool, right in the middle. There’s no room for me on either side, but that’s okay, because he puts his hands on my hips, and pulls me down onto his lap. I can’t hide my reaction, and I don’t want to. I sigh in pleasure, and lean on him, relishing the feeling of my naked skin in contact with his.

Although it takes real effort to tear myself from the warm strength of his body and lean forward to play, I do. His hands rub at my aching nipples while I play, soothing them between his fingertips. I can feel his hard erection underneath me, and I grind down on his lap subtly. But my prime focus is the music. The damn crop is back in Nikolai’s hands, and my legs are spread open on either side of his knees, making my inner thighs and cunt a tempting target.

He doesn’t crop me. He lets me play two pieces, then he stops me and launches into a technical dissertation on finger positions. He’s got insane amounts of self-control, Nikolai. Even if it’s only on a purely physical level, I know he wants me. I can feel it in his erection. But he ignores his desire in favour of the music.

His little lecture on finger positioning technique is actually helpful, and I dismiss the lust in my mind to pay attention to his words. I nod when he’s done, and I play the rest of my program. I’m still sitting on his lap, I can’t forget that. My nipples still ache, though each pass of his hands over them is a balm that soothes them. My pussy is damp. I must be leaving quite the stain on his boxers.

But before all this, before the BDSM, before the leash, before the sexual attraction that shimmers in the air, Nikolai and I had one thing that bound us together, and it was the music. When I play, it is, in a way, a homage to that.





Chapter 7


Sunday, March 3

Another day. A warmer day, though the radio in the kitchen blares out dire warnings for rain. The bits of sky revealed through the windows agree, and are appropriately overcast.

It’s late by the time I head up, but I justify sleeping in by telling myself I didn’t go to sleep until well past five in the morning. I glance at the clock, and I’m not surprised that it is noon. What I am surprised by is that the kitchen is empty. Nikolai is nowhere to be seen. There’s no smell of coffee hanging in the air, no aroma of cooking.

I wonder if he’s still asleep, and I smile at that thought. Nikolai was never a morning person, even back in New York. It appears that he still isn’t. Somehow, the fact that he’s still asleep makes him very human.

I should practice my program again, but I’m useless without coffee. I hunt around his cabinets, until I find coffee grounds. I spoon them into a clean filter, add a potful of water, and turn the machine on. Then, I head upstairs to look in on Nikolai. From memory, I know he can sleep away most of the day, but then he wakes up with a headache and turns grouchy.

Last night, I could have sworn he wanted to touch me. There had been something there, almost within reach, when I’d finished playing my program. But I’d been too timid to reach out for it, because to ask and to be rejected would invite hurt again into my life, and I didn’t want to do that.

But I’ve let the music in, and I sense that I can’t be selective. If I am open to the music, I am truly open to everything else.