Three and a Half Weeks(143)
It’s hard to keep track of time when your knees are aching from being on a cold, hard floor but it was probably only three or four minutes until I heard the door creak open and his footsteps approaching me. Almost from minute one, I realized that this kink was psychological as much as physical, probably in equal measure. The sounds, the silence, the suspense and anticipation—it all mixed and alchemized into intense sexual excitement. This time was so different, though. Instead of leading me to the bench or restraining me from the hooks suspended from the ceiling, he brought me over to what I called the tilted cross. In actuality, it looks like an X and it’s called a St. Andrew’s cross. Back then, I didn’t know what it was but I could certainly guess what it was used for.
Few words were spoken as he lashed my wrists and ankles to each limb of the cross. I bent my face into my left arm, since there was nothing in the middle for me to lean on.
Rafe gave me no details: it wasn’t until later that I discovered he was greatly pissed off at me for flirting with another man. I hadn’t even realized I was flirting: I called it buying a fucking cup of coffee from some young blond guy who works at Starbucks. Trivial details don’t matter, though, when the punishment is a single tail laid across your bare back, posterior, and thighs in rapid succession. He told me I owed him a thank-you for sparing my calves and ankles. I disagreed: I felt I owed him a bullet in his intestines.
Did he think I would get sexually aroused from a whipping? The answer was apparently yes. Some women—and men—like to be taken to heights so lofty that their bodies can’t distinguish between pain and pleasure. Rafe explained it to me by using hot and cold as an example: two extreme temperatures that the body sometimes has trouble differentiating.
I explained to Rafe that he could go fuck himself—not me—and fled the dungeon as soon as I was untethered from the cross. I ran into one of the many bedrooms of his palatial home, knowing it was my last visit. I counted 190 seconds before he came after and found me.
“Don’t push me away,” he whispered, his voice hoarse, as he lay down beside me. I attempted to ignore him but he was persistent. I could feel the heat radiating off his chest as he pulled me close but I was in pain. I had read sexy stories that included whippings and now I understood firsthand what the descriptions meant by prickly pain. The skin on the back of my body felt tight and hot, with pinpricks of an itchy burn barraging the skin, up and down.
He rolled me onto my stomach and massaged the stripes he inflicted, coating them with some kind of ointment. When he was done, his strong hands kept massaging, areas that weren’t whipped, areas that responded to him readily despite my intentions. My body continually betrayed my mind: they were almost mortal enemies at this point.
What happened to mind over matter? My body refused to care about the bridges it was burning. It flipped over and spread its legs, inviting Rafe to come aboard: he did so quickly, before my mind could regain control. We… well, what’s the vernacular? Made love? Fucked? Did the nasty? Whatever you call it, we did it for the next hour or two. Sated, I lay in wait for him to fall asleep before slipping out of bed, searching out my clothes, and leaving his ass cold. Oh, I did write him a note. Time has erased my exact words from my memory but it went something like this: “Drop dead, asshole.” Yeah. I think that was it.
It took Rafe exactly 17 days, eight hours, and twenty-three minutes to change my mind. That was last year. I’m writing these words on the eve of my wedding day. Rafe, the most gorgeous man who walks the earth, will be my husband by this time tomorrow. He’s promised the next whipping will be something more to my liking. I’m holding him to it.
New York in January can be as bleak as the Siberian Peninsula. The magic of all the Christmas lights and greenery, coupled with the joy on strangers’ faces, are now firmly part of history. If there’s any snow, it’s dirty gray and slushy, piled high at the edges of streets and mixed in with all kinds of urban detritus. Usually, though, the air and streets are dry and the cold seeps into the bone, coming off the rivers on all sides of the island of Manhattan. The best part of January arrives with nightfall, when the multitudes of lights illuminate the city: in shadow, the architecture stands tall, stone monuments that are testaments to the hubris of humankind, while the asphalt shimmers in reflected electric glory. At least then one can get the mind off the winter drab and focus on the emerging nightlife.
Location, however, means nothing to Natasha Yenin right now, other than a means to an end. She sits in Lucien’s loft, speaking with him. Natasha understands a few things that the pathetic Lucien does not: specifically that first, they cannot be a couple… ever. Second, that Natasha needs Lucien’s looks, charm, and money to be utilized to win over Ian’s ladylove, something he’s been yet unable to accomplish. What will it take? Everyone has a weakness and Natasha knows that well. Ian Blackmon is her own but she will put family first and destroy him. Pity because if not for her critical need to avenge the heinous wrong done to her family, she and Ian would have made an excellent team—at least they would have in the past. Since she began her crusade to destroy him, he’s gone soft, weak, and almost unappealing. Almost, she thinks as she remembers his beautiful body and the response he had to seeing her. She would dearly love to fuck him one last time.