Friday. Another full moon. His stomach immediately was in knots. His palms started to sweat. He pondered picking up the phone and telling her no. Telling her no right then. After last time, while the closeness afterward was a level he'd never experienced before, true fear of her other self was terrifying him. To Laura, he could endure anything.
Laura stood over him with her arms folded across her chest. The way she surveyed him, this time, was somehow even worse than any of the months before.
“I wish I could pin you like a butterfly,” she said to him, her entire body illuminated from the moonlight pouring in from the open window. “Or place you on a cement slab, like in The Pit and the Pendulum, and make you endure some long, drawn-out torture potentially resulting in your untimely death.”
He shook his head at her, if to communicate nothing else but that she was bothering him. His back was sore from being pinned over their dining room table, his arms stretched out and downward and locked to the wooden legs.
If he could talk, he probably would tell her to stop. Stop, this time, because this time it’s just too much. And like every other time, she took him by the chin and pointed his face to the window. But every time it was harder, and her nails dug in deeper. And every time it was with a little less sympathy and a little more cruel enjoyment.
“You see it out there,” she said. She was talking about the moon.
He fought to make no sound because he knew a muffled response would send her into overdrive, and like a drug addict, he feared overdosing her to the point that she lost all touch with reality. As if that had not happened yet, he pondered.
Then she let go and walked over to the window to just admire it. She outstretched her arms to hold onto the frame, leaning forward, letting the cool February air brush against her face, pushing her hair back. “This one is more beautiful than last month’s,” she said.
Turning to him again, finally, she continued. “Almost as beautiful as you, Calvin, completely helpless right now, mine for the entire night. Mine to use these…on you.”
She opened a folded velvet cloth to reveal several sharp instruments and a single hypodermic needle.
Calvin glanced at them, then away, and he shut his eyes hard and thought back to the time two years ago when she affectionately had him at knifepoint in a parking lot and pushed him to the trunk of her car. “Get in,” she had said, her hot breath hissing into his ear. She held his other hand, pinned, between her legs under her skirt, directing his middle finger inside her. He was breathing hard from fear and apprehension, yet he felt the dull side of the knife was against his flesh and he was in no immediate danger.
“I can’t -” he gasped back, pleading. She pushed him toward the open trunk and he looked inside, at the small cramped space, at the dirty rags, at the dust and grime. He knew it would kill him to be locked inside, alone, and he would be left there and terrified while she drove god knows where.
He was physically shaking. The shaking was more due to the way she guided his finger slowly through her wetness, inside deeper, then out again with an accented gasp into his ear. She was clearly enjoying his fear and hesitation.
And he knew then, even with his mind clouded completely, that she would never make him get into that trunk. She was just scaring him and scaring herself.
So he reached up with one hand to steady himself at the opening, turned his body so carefully to the side to lift one leg and begin his journey to the tiny little tomb.
When his foot went inside the car trunk he heard her gasp, he felt her body literally tighten around his finger and shudder, tiny little earthquakes in her skin that made him feel completely connected to her climax as if he were fully inside her making love on the floor like the night before.
Then she was shaking, trembling so hard that the knife fell from her hand and he had to turn back toward her to support her in his arms.
“You know I could never make you do that,” she trembled, still riding the waves of her orgasm, so much so that her teeth chattered and her fingers dug deep indentations into his arms.
“I know, Laura,” he said. “It’s ok.”
It was always ok, back then, because he knew where she would go. Every time.
And as he peered at the table next to him, watched her eyes as she slipped on latex medical gloves, watched her inventory a set of surgical instruments she probably spend the better part of a month psyching herself up about, he realized how different things were. Regardless of the look he gave her (she’d just turn his head away by the chin), regardless of how close he’d bring her to orgasm, she’d had 30 days to build up her own defenses.
This time, her touch was distant and the scent of latex filled his nostrils. She pointed his face toward the window again. He tried to shut his eyes and think about something else, but all he could do was look at the moon.
Until his vision blurred with tears.
**
It had only been about a year since the moon played this role in their lives.
Prior to that, Calvin dealt with her primal, instinctual urges as they came. Usually unexpected and with no warning, she’d call him up and he could hear it in her voice. She became lust-driven, mad, insane. She would illustrate with words these horrible things she wanted to do to him, then he’d admit he was helpless to resist anything associated with her charm, no matter how unthinkable.
Then that night they’d make passionate love, with his arms pinned above his head or a black silk blindfold over his eyes (she always came hardest when he said three simple words with every thrust –“I — can’t — see.”
Eventually, the handcuffs gave way to leather shackles (for convenience and comfort), and the blindfolds were replaced with a set of old black pillowcases she’d found in his linen closet. The sex was even more intense, and sometimes she’d cum so loud that he feared she’d wake the neighbors.
When the night was over, she’d sleep peacefully in his arms and he could swear she was an angel without the potential to harm him in any way. The next morning she would be content and blissful, and they’d speak nothing of it until the next time the urge came over her.
Her game escalated slowly but significantly, each new torment just diabolical more than the one before to give him no time to adjust and her no time to de-sensitize herself to the sheer cruelty of the act. He’d give himself to her willingly, eagerly, and sometimes it would just take the offering of his wrists to her after she’d explained the latest torture. She’d cum from that alone and then she’d cry, holding his face in her hands and saying, “You are the most amazing creature.”
Not all of her games were sadistic, though. Sometimes they were just about making him feel completely objectified and her having — what she affectionately called ‘quiet time’ — with his body. She’d tie him down and make him bite down on something to keep him quiet, then she’d slowly examine and adore every inch of his flesh with her mouth.
When his breathing turned to moans and the moans turned to whimpers she’d look up at him with these eyes – literally on fire — and she’d wrap her fingers around his neck and mount him, making slow, deliberate love to him while was helpless to do anything but stare into her eyes, his jaw aching. When he shut his eyes she’d cease her movement, and her voice would turn into this hushed, nasty little hiss.
“Open your fucking eyes, Calvin.”
She’d use language and tones that made him shake because they were so foreign. Mostly a very softspoken girl, a gentle creature who would scoop a spider into a cup and put it outside rather than step on it, it was beyond his comprehension sometimes when she’d slowly, deliberately twist her hand in his hair until his eyes watered and his knees shook and he had to choke back what probably would be a sob.
He feared this creature inside of her. But out of love for her, he endured it, when it came around, and when it went away he held her tighter than ever because a part of him was in awe of it, as well. Because she’d be so ruthless, and enchanting, and completely terrifying that he felt like he was in the middle of a dark screenplay of which he had no control but was completely enthralled by.
**
Calvin was an artist at heart, but an architect by trade. He worked in a big office downtown and she worked in the suburbs at a small advertising agency. They’d been living together for about a year the first time her “moods” became a problem.
His phone was ringing and he answered it, a pencil between his teeth, without even looking away from his computer screen.
“Calvin here, ” he said. There was a silence, then he just heard some breathing.
He just continued working, barely even aware that he was holding a phone to his ear. Until he heard her voice.
“Hi, Cal,” she said. And there was a little bit of a sigh in her tone.
“Hi, Laura. What’s up,” he replied, but he was distant and was already literally barely aware she was on the other line. Not because he was rude, but because he was so entrenched in the project that possessed him.
Laura, however, was possessed by something else altogether.
“I need it tonight,” she said. Simply. Plainly. Without emotion.
“You need it tonight,” he repeated. The same tone. Then nothing. He was fixated on a line on the screen that just would not cooperate. Someone walked into his office with a stack of papers and started talking to him. He nodded, acknowledged them, letting the phone drop down below his chin, pencil behind his ear now, reaching for a pen to sign something.
“Calvin, are you listening to me?”
“Yes, Yes Laura I am. I’m listening, ” he said, maneuvering the mouse with one hand and signing a contract with the other. “It’s just that I’m really knee-deep right now in this layout, I have to get it done by 3 or I’m screwed.”
“Ok, but I just wanted you to know, I need it tonight.”
“Yes, you need it tonight. I heard you.”
“What time are you going to be home?” she asked.
He was staring, this time squinting a little, at the figures on his computer screen. He was not aware she had asked a question.
“Calvin, are you listening to me?” she asked, this time a little bit of good old-fashioned female annoyance in her voice.
Finally, he sat back, dropped his pen on the desk, and said, “Yes, Laura, you need it tonight. I said that’s fine. I said ok. What else do you want me to say? I can’t go into this right now, I’m at work. Jesus.”
Silence.
“What time are you going to be home?” she asked.
“I don’t know, around 8,” Calvin replied, and she said goodbye and hung up.
It was probably a good five minutes before he hung up the receiver, already lost in what he was working on again.
And it was quarter after 11 when he walked in the door that night.
**
He had never quite seen her like that. Literally.
She was sitting on the couch in her bathrobe, and he could tell she’d been crying. Her hair was disheveled. But what was especially unnerving were her eyes. They were red from crying but distant, and animal-like. The dinner plates were still at the table, food untouched. The candles had long since been blown out.
“Hey,” he said, in a greeting-like fashion, looking around.
“I’ve been waiting since 8,” she said.
“I hope you didn’t wait for me to eat. You know how it gets,” he went to kiss her on the forehead but she turned away.
“I told you, Calvin, that I needed it tonight. I told you I NEEDED it.”
“My job isn’t on the same schedule as your — your — thing,” he replied, going to the refrigerator. He expected to get into a long drawn-out male/female argument about being late, working too much, not calling and the rest. And in reality, he knew he had no excuse. He knew she could not understand what happens when his face is buried in a PC and the next time he looks up three hours have passed. He knew she could not know what it was like to be so far in another world that reality just goes on, not waiting up for her.
“But I’m home now, and if you just let me get a bite to eat, you can do your thing. But I’m really tired, and I have to be up early tomorrow, so if we could limit it to like — twenty minutes this time — I would appreciate it.”
His words seem to sear her skin like fire. He was aware of her pacing around him, her arms folded. And he could see tears in her eyes again, but they weren’t tears of pain or sadness. They were sheer fury and anger.
And he could tell by her presence, the way her body moved, that she had already apparently been in that state of mind – for some time.
He was chewing on a piece of fruit, just looking at her, and when he went to swallow he found it hard. Something about the way she was glaring at him, emotionless tears streaming down her cheeks, made him extremely uncomfortable.
“I can’t do it now,” she said. “I can’t, because I am angry at you right now, and I’d do something unthinkable, I know. I feel physical pain, Calvin. You don’t know what it is like. It’s one thing to have the desire,”
“Oh, please,” he sighed, shutting the refrigerator door and turning away. “Spare me the melodrama, Laura, please.”
“You don’t know what it is like,'” she said, feeling like she was repeating herself for the twentieth time as he’d asked her many times before, affectionately, what exactly possessed her and what it felt like. “I can deal with not having it, Calvin. Hell, I can wait days. I can wait a week if you tell me to wait a week.”
He sat on the couch and picked up a magazine.
“But I can’t wait three hours thinking it’s coming any minute, only to not get it.”
“I told you, I’m GIVING it to you, Laura, stop making an issue of it.”
“You were supposed to give it to me at 8!” she snapped.
“I said AROUND 8!” he snapped back.
“11:30 is not AROUND 8!”
And with that, Laura stormed out of the room, slammed the bedroom door and the next thing he heard was the stereo. He rubbed his eyes, lowered his head, cursed under his breath and decided to wait before following her to bed.
That night, she would not talk to him or hold him. He tried to kiss her affectionately, speaking softly to her, apologizing more sympathetically. He whispered that he just didn’t understand, and couldn’t help it, and that sometimes his job would have to take priority over all things, including her unpredictable desires to immediately have him unconditionally hand his entire being over to her for a series of painful, often extremely excruciating torments. In reality, he admitted, he emotionally wasn’t really up for it, and perhaps he was using work as a distraction.
And Laura just huddled into her pillows for security and warmth. “Just don’t ever…don’t ever tell me you are going to be there and then not show up. It kills me inside. It’s emotionally and physically painful beyond words for me.”
“I’ll make it up to you,” he said.
“When?” she asked immediately, her voice soft. It was dark, but he could see the outline of her face and she looked angelic.
He peered over at the clock. It read 12:15. “How about tomorrow?”
“I don’t think I will be able to sleep,” she sniffled.
“I’ll help you get to sleep. Roll over, I’ll rub your back.”
And soon he was nodding off, half rubbing her back, half dozing into her hair, and she was staring at the nightlight across the room, eyes wide open. She nudged him and he let out a muffled response, half asleep.
By the time she turned her head to look at him, he was sound asleep. She imagined placing a single strip of duct tape over his lips and a pillow over his face, listening to his muffled protests as she wrapped her legs possessively around his hips. She would settle, she realized, with just having him turn his head and breathe solidly, deeply, passionately into her ear as she masturbated, occasionally whispering her name or pleading for imaginary mercy.
Her vision blurred with tears over the frustration of how little she needed and how little he was willing to do at that moment. She fell asleep much later curled up next to him, listening to him breathe and trying to imagine the most rewarding submission she could take from him the next day.
**
And the next night, indeed, it was probably twice as severe and took twice as long for her to get what she needed. He came home for her promptly at 7pm, and was immediately pushed up against the wall and forced to open his mouth for what looked like a washrag.
He resisted and she pulled his hair until his vision blurred from pain, then finally he opened wide for her and coughed back the urge to gag when she forced the cloth, without an ounce of sympathy, far back into his mouth.
Then she pushed him onto his knees and he caught her eyes for the first time. Dark, dilated, hungry in a way he had never seen them before. She had gloves on and was peeling off a piece of duct tape.
He knew what it was for so he shook his head, groaned at her to get her attention, but her eyes were fixed on the task at hand.
“My precious little fucking artist with not enough time on his hands. I have been thinking about this all day.”
His hands were free so he leaned forward a little, placing them behind her legs to pull her closer. Affection, he had learned, sometimes soothed the beast. If her desires for adoration were equal to or only slightly less than the desires to see him suffer, sometimes he could coax her into one of her sweetly dominant moods, moods where she would be content binding him and bathing him like a prized possession or simply making love right there.
Her eyes moved to him, and he stared at her, at her face, swallowing with visible discomfort and massaging the backs of her thighs eagerly. She held out the duct tape.
“I can’t get a piece off. You do it.”
He shook his head, eyes registering resentment (maybe even slight arrogance) at such a request. If there was one thing he could rarely endure it was having to do something dehumanizing to himself. And because of that, it seemed to be the one thing she was drawn to when her drive was sprinkled with anger for being made to wait.
He could tell, merely from her eyes, that she was about to slap him. He lowered his head, ducked a little out of the way, fumbled with the roll of silver tape in his hands and shut his eyes. He just breathed, and concentrated on breathing, ignored the knots on his stomach and thought about something else.
Watching his own nail pick at the end of the tape, he could hear her slipping out of her panties. They were being slid down past her thighs, to her ankles, then tossed aside. Then he heard her touching herself, touching herself as she watched him fumble with the duct tape. And somehow that made it worse.
Typically he’d consider having her masturbate in his presence enough to make any act somewhat tolerable, but this time it just made it worse.
His hands were shaking, and his vision was blurring because the aching in his jaw was making his eyes water. Finally, he dropped it, let out what was a muffled, “Fuck,” and the minute he looked up to give her an expression of defiance and strength he was met with her open palm.
The slap was hard enough to knock him off balance, and for a moment he felt like his jaw had been dislocated.. But by the time he got his hand up to his face to feel the damage she was on him, pinning him to the floor, the tape in her hand. And she pulled a long strip of it off as she hissed at him, calling him some unthinkable names and slapping him again, this time without provocation.
When the tape was firmly over his mouth, holding the cloth in place, his eyes were watering enough to form tears that slid down his face and started to drip on his open collar shirt. His nose began to get stuffy and he looked at her, this time for sympathy, feeling almost relieved, somewhere, deep down, because generally, the moment tears came to his eyes she would break down herself, hold him tightly, and apologize for hours at the realization of what she did.
But this time, she merely smiled.
**
He learned, that night, that putting her off so callously did more harm than good. He understood, perhaps, how the drive mixed with a sense of abandonment had turned her so cold on him. He understood that by being cold to her it made her capable of being cold back to him, and that to just accept it when it came, or at least make an effort to work with her, put him ahead because she had less capacity for cruelty when he was being so endearing to her.
This time she wrapped that black pillowcase over his head and tied it off at the bottom, leaving him not only uncomfortably gagged but totally alone in the darkness, then she pushed him down onto the ground and used a belt on the backs of his thighs.
She wasn’t usually so outright sadistic, and the intensity of her blows terrified him. Never a big fan of pain, he’d usually only be forced to endure a little bit of hair pulling or an occasionally warning swat of a riding crop at his thighs.
So when she finally let him back up, pulling the pillowcase off his head and bringing it to her lips (as if to taste and savor the sweat and salt from his tears) he looked at her with a sort of desperate glance of hopelessness, as if to say, “I did not deserve that.”
The tape came off his lips more painlessly than he’d thought, luckily, and once the cloth was removed he felt like he’d been eating paste. Then her mouth was on his and it felt good and hurt at the same time. He wasn’t entirely in the mood for kissing of any kind and did not feel close to her at all. But in her kiss he could feel her breathing, breathing so hard it threatened to suck the air out of his lungs.
Her hands were both in his hair, so tight that it made him wince, but the tightness was not from sadism, rather, it was from intensity. When she slid onto his lap he felt the heat between her legs, coating his skin with a sheer film. Her entire body, he noticed, was covered with a light film of sweat. It was as if she was glowing, radiating.
The sex they had that night was painfully intense and lasted a very long time. She kept getting him close and then stopping, making him kiss her fingertips and look at her in certain ways to win her affections. This dominance, he pondered, was similar to the style she had when they first met. When she’d ask him to say a word, just one word, and when he’d say it she’d shudder and blush and show him by guiding his hand between her legs just what the effect was.
It was as if she was in a heightened state of awareness and everything he did was beautiful and magical to her. He’d slowly lick his lips at her and she’d melt from the mere glance. He’d kiss her once, delicately, behind her ear and it would bring her close to orgasm.
“Close your eyes,” she said, and when he gave her one last, brief look, as if one time at each other her eyes, she started to shudder above him. Then, when they were closed, she came. She came without a single movement of her hips, with him full inside of her but not touching her at all otherwise.
And after that night, it was nearly 7 weeks before she showed any signs of dominance. She wasn’t even all that interested in being on top.
**
The next several times were more predictable and tolerable for Calvin. She’d call him up the day she felt it and he’d find some quality time in the next couple of days to appease her, and so long as he made himself available to her when he said he would, he found her torments to be more affectionate, sympathetic and driven by lust.
In fact, he found that he learned how to manipulate her a little, not out of malice but out of self preservation. She was not all that difficult to figure out, and eventually, he knew just how to react if he wanted her to feel too much guilt to continue, or if he wanted her to be so turned on that her concerns were more with achieving orgasm than seeing him wince in discomfort.
He learned to steer her away from the games that fucked with his pride and scared the hell out of him, he learned to distract her so she’d lose that train of thought completely and become more focussed on seeing him wince in pain. He found that physical pain wasn’t all that bad after all, and at least he could measure it and endure it (and once he got used to it, he realized she wasn’t even being that harsh; it was always more the shock that hurt him, and once he got passed that, the pain was completely tangible and acceptable), and he’d do his best to steer her far away from games where she wanted to get into his head and keep her on a level playing field so he could predict, measure, and prepare for her next steps.
And all other aspects of their relationship were perfect. They rarely fought, they made love frequently and passionately, and they shared the same vision in life and passion for creation and art. Unlike any other woman he’d been with before, he felt less complete when she wasn’t there, and felt safest when with her. Even if it was just to share his thoughts with her.
**
It was October when he suggested they do the thing with the moon.
Her mood, that month, had come right in the middle of his deadlines. He was leaving on a business trip the next morning and would be gone for an unprecedented 8 days.
“There is no way I can last 8 days,” she said to him on the phone. “Calvin, that would kill me. You know that. You’re leaving tomorrow…I just need you – tonight – please… it’s been eight weeks.”
He rubbed his eyes, looked at his watch. His head was filled with project deadlines. The 6am flight. He still needed to pack. Three people wanted to give him materials still that night. It was already close to 7pm. Worst of all, he had to be ready for a client meeting right after getting off the plane, so he couldn’t even recover in his hotel room.
“Laura, we both knew I had this trip..you said to me before you can kind of think ahead and get yourself in the mood ahead of time so we don’t get into this situation..”
“I didn’t. I didn’t think that clearly about it. God, Calvin, just give me a half hour tonight. Please.”
“It’s not so much time, Laura, it’s my state of mind. I am so– god, how can I explain this. Laura, I am so focused on my work right now, on my pride in this job, on my self esteem, on the strength of my character. Laura, sometimes it takes me a full day to feel normal again after you do those things to me. I can’t be like that tomorrow. I can’t be a broken man when I get off that plane.”
“You’re killing me,” she sniffled.
“The minute I get back, I swear, Laura, I will be there for you. I just gotta do this with my wits about me. I can’t go into this tired, sore, and ego put through a blender. I’ll fall on my face, and lose the account. We could have done it last night or this morning. I just can’t do it tonight.”
It turned out that he got little done that night anyway, trying to pack with her sulking, curled up in a ball and trying to keep her mind on other things. He felt her watching him and he felt uneasy like she was possibly considering taking him against his will anyway. He could sense she was fighting the urge to bring it up again.
“I was thinking, Laura. On the way home tonight. Maybe we need to..maybe we should have a schedule.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, watching him pack. He watched her watching him, and it was amazing, he thought, how he could read her thoughts when she looked at things like the belt in his hand (to bind him with), the gray tie (she’d gagged him with that once before), his shaving gear.
“You know you get these urges about once a month. Maybe every two weeks, then sometimes every eight weeks, it varies. Once a month on average though. And you know that if you have to plan ahead, you can point those desires – or whatever – to a certain day. Right?”
“I guess so.”
He stopped packing to make a point, holding out his arms. “Three weeks ago, Laura, if we’d looked ahead and saw this coming and we picked a day,” he turned and pointed to the calendar on the wall. “You’d know it was coming. I’d know it was coming. You’d prepare yourself and find yourself focussed on that day, and I’d be able to work my schedule around it and we wouldn’t have problems like this.”
Calvin put his finger on the night before. Thursday, the 23rd. It was a full moon. “That should have been the night. You’d be fine, and I’d be over it by now. We wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
Laura looked at the calendar, at his finger pressed against the gray graphic of the moon. “So, on the nights when it’s a full moon?”
Calvin looked back at the calendar, moving his finger so he could see. “Oh, right. I didn’t see that. Ok, that’s one way to look at it. I was thinking the last Friday of the month or something, but I don’t care. Full moons, that’s about once a month. If we both know when it is, you’ll never feel denied, and I’ll always be able to prepare myself.”
“I like full moons,”
“I’m sure you do. Now, you’ll like them more than ever I assume. Does that sound like a logical way to deal with this?’
“How about I go with you on your trip tomorrow and have my way with you after your meeting.”
“You can’t get the time off from work, Laura.”
“I’ll quit.”
He looked at her and she smiled. It was a real smile, he noticed, but she made the joke to illustrate a point. She’d probably actually consider quitting if she knew it would get her a day closer to what she wanted. That’s how driven she was.
They didn’t talk again about the moon idea, and somehow she made it through that night. When they were in bed in each other’s arms, though, she kept putting her hand over his nose and mouth as if it were an accident in the dark, but her grip was such that he knew she was just wanting to feel him twist away to breathe. But, he let her. He let her do that six, maybe seven times, and the last time he didn’t resist, he just held his breath and accepted it, and he clenched two fists in the bedsheets and held it until it burned inside of him.
When he couldn’t take it anymore he pried her hand away by grabbing her at the wrist and yanking his head to the side, and when he gasped for a breath he heard her cum beside him.
And even though most aspects of her games terrified him, he found himself actually looking forward to that next full moon. If for nothing else, to feel her climax again right beside her just because of the way he reacted to her power.
**
For the next few months, the full moon idea seemed to work wonderfully well. She never even brought it up and neither did he. He had a wall calendar at work that showed the cycles of the moon, so he’d color the dates in red when it was coming, and he’d make sure he was home from work by 8 and make sure he didn’t have any crucial meetings first thing in the morning.
Meanwhile, Laura would start her planning sometimes two or three weeks in advance. Every month, she found, it was like being a kid waiting for Christmas again. She’d look at her desk calendar and sometimes set aside fifteen or twenty minutes to plan.
It would give her time to actually think about what she could do to him. In the past, she would just wake up with the urge and only have a few hours to deal with it, so she had much less time to prepare or plan. With weeks at her disposal, she would get more and more into the idea with each passing day.
More importantly, she found, she would be able to get used to some ideas that were previously too intense to accept. In fact, many fantasies she’d pondered in those previous spontaneous periods were too frightening to ponder long enough to own up to.
But with weeks at her disposal, she could think about them a little at a time. Then become somewhat obsessed with them. Then, become challenged by them.
Then, sometimes she’d even buy the necessary equipment. After that, she’d made a commitment to the idea, she found. The next day, though, she’d be scared and sometimes even take the equipment back. With shorter desire cycles, so to speak, none of this would happen.
But Laura now had time to come up with the fantasy, buy the equipment, and return it maybe two times before buying it for the last time and making a commitment to go through with it.
And that made the waiting more intense than ever.
**
Calvin noticed the fourth month, this change in her capabilities.
He found himself strapped (not bound) to a chair in the kitchen, and was watching her take a large latex hood from a box. It was covered in white tissue paper. The scent of latex filled the entire room.
“Good lord,” he said. “What is that thing?”
“It’s for breath control,” she said, so matter-of-factly, so casually. She was so comfortable with the device. Of course, she’d had three weeks to get comfortable with it. A year before, he remembered, she would just talk to him about such a device and then cum from just fingering herself while observing the look of persecution and fear in his eyes.
So he sat there, knees swaying back and forth a little (what they could, his ankles were strapped to the chair). “Laura, that’s a little too intense for me, I think.”
“I’ll be careful,” she said, and she was coming toward him with the device in her hands. The tone in her voice was so foreign. Even the way she walked was distant.
“Laura, please.”
She lowered herself onto his lap and tilted his chin up to her. First to her face, then to the side a little so he could look out the big kitchen windows at the full moon. It was red that night.
“I was thinking, Calvin. Maybe you should call me Luna.”
He swallowed hard, looked at the moon, then shut his eyes tight when he heard her positioning that — thing — to cover his head with it. The thought of not being able to breathe or see mortified him. He threw his head back, out of the way.
“I won’t put it on you, this time if you promise to beg me in a way more painful than you’ve ever begged.”
Calvin hated to beg. Hated it more than anything. Because he couldn’t fake it; she always saw through that.
Eyes shut tight, biting his tongue. He’d rather take the pain, being slapped, being teased until he wanted to scream. But choosing between that hood (which, based on her tone, would be used on him at some point anyway) and having his pride smashed to bits was gut-wrenching.
“I’ll beg,” he said, opening his eyes. He looked right at her, right into her eyes. “I’ll beg, Laura. Untie me, unstrap me, whatever. I’ll get down on the floor, on my hands and knees if that’s what you need.”
Her eyes – they seemed to glow. She was enraptured from his words, the way he looked at her.
Calvin yanked at the straps, impatient like a man eager to get dental work over with. “Just keep that thing away from me. Let me beg. Let me show you how well I can beg.”
She slowly, deliberately unstrapped him. She watched him, watched how he bit his lip, and he was so distant, she could tell he was struggling with what he was about to do, but he only need to glance at that hood to give him the strength to go through with it. She wanted that moment to last forever.
When he was free he rubbed his wrists for a minute and she stepped back slowly, arms folded. She watched him stand from the chair then kneel down in front of her, and it was so intense- as if she had never, ever seen this man kneel before.
He knelt carefully, slowly, then lowered himself down onto his hands as well, taking a breath. The position seemed painful for him, awkward. Like ice spears were pressed through his back. He started to say something but words got caught, so he cleared his throat.
Laura watched him, intently, transfixed. She put one hand under his chin and made him lift his head, looking into his eyes. They were damp, sparkling just a little like fine crystal.
He choked back a sob, then finally managed, “Please, Laura. I’m so fucking scared right now. Please don’t make me wear that thing.”
And through his pain, his total anguish over what he was saying, Calvin, in the back of his head, was thinking – logically – that she had never seen him this way, and he’d never seen him this way, and based on what he knew about her she’d be collapsing into a ball in his arms within seconds, sobbing, so moved by this act that she’d be unable to continue.
But instead, she just smiled. And this was a creature he had never seen before. She smiled, and with one finger brushed a tear from his cheek, brought it to her lips and licked it off.
Maybe in the past, that would have happened. But Laura had three weeks to prepare for this, and she’d expected he might get down on his hands and knees and plead with her with true tears of fear.
Maybe if she hadn’t had time to prepare she would have been so touched she’d have fallen to pieces before him. But this was exactly what she was hoping for. And she had built up her resistance.
Then something truly unthinkable happened. She took him by the chin, as he knelt there painfully, and with the other hand raised the new mask. “You’ll wear it anyway. I at least want to see how it looks.”
This, he thought painfully, from a woman that a year ago could not get the courage to gag him. Who would burst into tears the moment she saw his lashes get wet.
He was frozen with fear, probably, when she roughly got the thing over his head, not even taking the care she used to with making sure his head was not disheveled and the restraint at least looked pretty. It was on, and he heard his heart pounding in his head, and he felt as if he were in the presence of a total stranger when he heard her cold voice say, “Hmm, what does THIS do,” followed by a hissing, and the total elimination of the air left to breathe.
As his concentration blurred and thoughts swirled around his head, he pondered that this creature, this Luna, was capable of killing him for the sheer passionate thought that he’d walk into it willingly for her.
And, in his delirium of stark terror (although he kept so still, so emotionless, he guessed she might be disappointed at the lack of panic), he mulled over in his mind that he would willingly walk into death for her, for Laura. Without hesitation.
But this was not Laura. This was someone else entirely.
**
The next morning he awoke in her arms, and he saw her eyes were still puffy and tired from the night before. She’d cried pretty hard when he broke before her, clutching with fingers digging into the latex to pull it off, after having broken one of the worn leather straps completely in half.
His sobs had turned to gasps for air, and her impassioned breathing had turned into sobs of regret. They fell asleep in each other’s arms and he felt truly with Laura again, so showered with affection and adoration that he wondered how he could honestly fear such a creature.
They spoke nothing of it the next day, and he’d put the entire experience out of his head until the week came when he turned the page of the calendar and saw it coming.
Friday. Another full moon. His stomach immediately was in knots. His palms started to sweat. He pondered picking up the phone and telling her no. Telling her no right then. After last time, while the closeness afterward was a level he’d never experienced before, true fear of her other self was terrifying him. To Laura, he could endure anything.
To this other creature – the full moon beast — he felt totally unequipped and helpless. He did not know how to communicate with her, understand her, or even slightly manipulate her.
He felt true helplessness.
It terrified him.
**
Maybe it had something to do with the lack of sleep Calvin got during the week leading up to that full moon.
He came down with a terrible cold, one he could not shake. He missed two days of work and found himself sweating out a fever in bed the day before the full moon.
Laura was gone at work that day, and in his delirious dreams, he imagined himself too weak to fight her, how she would come home and open the shutters and there was the moon, so full, illuminating the whole room. It enveloped him and suffocated him, leaving him on the floor, cowering, as she walked over him in malicious spiked patent leather pumps that punctured his skin.
The phone rang, waking him, and he gasped for air.
Grabbing the phone, he knocked the receiver off the nightstand.
“Calvin? Are you ok?”
His teeth were chattering. He didn’t want to be alone. He wanted her there, but he was terrified of her. It was only 4 hours away, he knew, four hours until the full moon. Four hours until Luna.
“Honey, are you ok? Do you need me to come home?”
“No — ” he gasped. “N..no. I’m ok. Just…just cold.”
“I’m coming home, you need to see a doctor.”
He was asleep again, and that night she was there. He felt her pushing the hair back away from his face and he could feel the heat on his own skin. She was being so comforting, but he caught glimpses of the moon shining in from the window.
**
Calvin didn’t have much sense of time. He just knew she was there in the room, and then he felt a cool rag against his face. He could feel the heat from his skin warm the water almost instantly and he realized his fever must be through the roof, but he couldn’t say anything about it.
He sort of saw her there, through blurry eyes, looking at him with an expression of fear and worry on her face. She was moving the damp cloth down over his face, across his cheeks. He saw hunger register in her eyes, almost instantly, and the sympathy melt away into something entirely different.
Total hunger.
He went to sit up but she pushed him back down and said, “You’re too weak.”
“Please don’t hurt me,” he said, and his voice came out in a hoarse crack.
And that rag was again against his skin, this time moving down his face, slowly, slowly, and he saw her eyes register desire again, and without an ounce of regret, she pushed it toward his mouth.
“You need water,” she said.
He was too weak to fight with her and he groaned painfully when she pushed that wet washcloth into his mouth, he coughed on it, trying to shake his head, miserable and drowning. Sweat-tainted water filled his mouth. He gagged on it.
“I’ll take good care of you,” she said, and he heard the rattling of chains.
**
He slept for the entire next day, and when he finally emerged, Saturday morning, he found her in the kitchen washing dishes. She looked up at him when he was in the entranceway, supporting himself with a hand up against the side wall.
“Calvin, you’re up. Are you ok? How do you feel?” she asked, walking over and putting her hand on his forehead.
Even in his weakened state, he could see it in her eyes. She was tired and had not slept. She looked sick, physically sick. But he was not worried that she was catching what he had; she had something entirely different.
He realized the torture with the washcloth had just been a dream. There were no chains the night before, no torture. She had stayed up with him most of the night keeping his fever down, feeding him aspirin and trying to comfort him by rubbing the back of his neck where he was most sore.
So this meant that Laura did not get her fix. And the full moon had passed.
He tried to talk three times before the words came out, only after she handed him a glass of water. “We can do it…you know…as soon as I am better.”
“Don’t worry about that,” she said, turning back to the dishes. “I just want you to be well.”
Calvin watched her silently. There was truth in her words, but still, he could sense it in her. That unfed hunger. She wanted to take him right there, he knew it. He knew if he had the strength she would be ready to push him to the floor, pin him down, and dig her nails right down into his tender flesh until he cried out in pain, only to be silenced with wet fingers filling his mouth and the single command to “suck”.
He shuddered, turned, and went back to the bedroom and climbed into bed.
**
It took about a week for Calvin to fully recover from the flu. He and Laura didn’t talk about their missed night of dominance, but he could tell she was dying for it. But no matter what, she would not accept his offers of submission because it would go against the full moon rule.
He’d catch her masturbating sometimes in the shower, and he’d hear it in her breathing. When they made love she would be gentle and passive for the most part, but sometimes she’d suddenly dig her nails into his skin until he gasped in pain, then she’d back off at once as if not to get herself started.
Once he even tried to coax it out of her, knowing somehow that it would be better dealt with sooner than later because the longer she waited, the most intense it would be. And that terrified him.
But she would not respond to his advances, when he offered his wrists to her suggestively she just forced herself to look away and turn on the television.
He sprawled himself delicately over her lap, staring up at her, opening his arms, exposing his chest. “Don’t you desire me, Laura? Don’t you want to make me submit to you?”
“Stop talking about that. Wait until the 17th.”
The 17th was the next full moon — two weeks away.
He picked up her hand and started kissing her fingers softly, then her palm. He watched her as he did it, watched her breathing pick up the pace. He breathed softly against her palm and saw her blink slowly. It amazed him, when he analyzed it, at how he could differentiate her reactions of sexual arousal from dominant arousal. He saw her clench her jaw, try to focus on the television program.
Calvin delicately opened her palm using his fingers, traced an outline on her skin, watching as he did, then leaned forward slowly and pressed his nose and mouth to her hand, tight enough that it would be obvious he couldn’t really breathe.
As if burned she pulled her hand back, gasping, and glared at him.
“What? I’m sorry, Laura.”
“What are you trying to do to me?” she asked.
“I just want to give you what you need.”
“I need you to stop distracting me. It is hard enough already. The 17th, Calvin. That is my night.”
**
So he didn’t try to seduce her again, and several days was mortified to find her looking through a magazine at some equipment that definitely was beyond his limits. She disappeared two nights during the week to meet with her friend who was in med school, which did not bother him usually, except that this time she insisted she go to her place instead of her coming over.
She asked him one night to let her take measurements, and that terrified him as well. She measured his wrists and ankles, his neck and his arm span.
“You’re scaring me,” he said.
She put a finger on his lips and said simply, “Don’t tease.”
He laughed, a timid kind of laugh. “Laura, I’m not saying that to turn you on. I am really, truly fucking scared of you. I’m scared of what’s going to happen on Friday.”
She wrote down the measurements and said, “You’ll be fine,” then went into the bedroom, closed and locked the door, and got on the telephone.
**
On the 16th he found himself physically shaking on and off throughout the day. He picked up the phone and called her at her office. “Laura, we need to talk.”
“I can’t talk right now, I’m in the middle of a meeting,” she said.
“I just can’t do tonight, I think we are taking this too far, the moon thing. I want to go back to the way things were before. I want you to just do it when you feel like it and not wait. I don’t think waiting is good for you. It isn’t good for me.”
He could still hear breathing on the other end of the line, but she wasn’t saying anything. Finally, she broke the silence with just a few simple words.
“I need it tomorrow.”
**
In the time before the big day, he resigned himself to accept fate, be brave and trust her. This was a hard thing for Calvin to do because she had become increasingly distant and distracted, sometimes staring at him so intensely that he was actually glad he was not able to read her mind. It was the only time he didn’t dare ask playfully, “What are you thinking?” because he didn’t even want to know.
When he walked in the door that night he felt her hands on him at once. He held still, opened his arms, and let her take off his business jacket. It was all happening very quickly.
“Just try to be a little easy on me, please,” he said, softly, seriously, and was met with a rubber ball in his mouth as a result. He started to let out a groan but stopped himself, not wanting to drive her to be any crueler than she already was.
She made him turn around and he saw her in some nasty-looking latex outfit, complete with gloves, and she had a big trunk open in the living room full of items, some of them out on the table.
How he missed the times before. The times when she would timidly pull out a single little instrument and show it to him shyly, asking if he would be brave enough to endure it for her.
This time, she started with the medical fantasies. As she pinned him to the dining room table she told him about how she’d be imagining the most diabolical medical fantasy she could come up with, one that required straps and drugs and sharp instruments. One that required she dress in a nurse outfit, wear latex medical gloves and shine a big light in his face, cutting his clothes off with a scalpel and watching his heart race on a monitor next to the table.
Eyes closed, he listened and nodded, decided to ride it out, not giving her too much reaction but cautiously hanging on her every word.
That is when he saw the medical instruments. Somehow, somewhere, she had obtained medical tools that scared the hell out of him.
She fastened a cord – a length of rubber medical tubing – around his neck, tightening it enough to make it difficult but not impossible to breathe.
“I’m going to mount you,” she told him, “Mount your face, actually, and depending on the job you do with your tongue, I’ll tighten or loosen this cord.”
Pinned over the table as he was, it was convenient that the heels she wore were high enough to position her above his face when his head was pulled back all the way. But the gag in his mouth presented the biggest obstacle and the fact that when he tensed his neck at all it completely cut off his breathing.
Soon the gag was removed and he was immediately enveloped in darkness. Her scent was overpowering, and when she straddled his face he feared he might literally drown in her.
**
That night lasted entirely too long for Calvin. His neck was aching from the awkward position, and he was choking to breathe but she didn’t’ seem to really notice.
After she’d cum for the third time he imagined she must be close to finished with him. She’d left the room and he took that time to try to free himself from the dining room table.
But she returned to the room and he could tell by the look in her eyes that she was not nearly finished with him. This time, when she took him by the chin, it hurt. She turned his head to face the big open windows and look out at the moon.
**
And the rest of the night was a blur.
He took it. He took it all for her, the needles, the scalpel, the violation that was beyond anything he could ever imagine. And afterward, when she cried and told him she was sorry, he looked at her, his eyes sore from his own tears, and said, “We have to rethink this moon thing. It’s destroying you, and it’s killing me.”
Laura agreed. They held each other, then together agreed to get rid of the concept completely. She promised that she would tell him the next time the mood came over her, and he promised he would try to make time for it when the mood hit.
Strangely, the mood did not hit for another 29 days. And when it did, he got that call from her, and he found himself looking at the calendar.
She said to him on the phone, “I woke up this morning after you left, and all I could think about was having you. It’s been on my mind all day. I need it so bad right now. Can you meet me for lunch?”
He had a lump in his throat. He leaned back in his chair and waved someone out of his office, closing his eyes, rubbing his temples.
“Calvin, are you there?”
“Yeah. Ok, Laura. Lunchtime it is. I’ll meet you back at the place.”
He heard her sigh in relief as he said his quiet goodbye and hung up the phone. Leaning over, he turned the pencil over in his hand and wrote her name onto the calendar on his desk, right under the illustration of the moon that filled the present day.
His face in his hands, he sighed, turned on the computer, and wondered if she had any idea that it was a full moon again.
She probably didn’t even know it. It was just part of her now.
And he was terrified to meet her for lunch, but he went anyway.
(c) Copyright 1999, 2022. All rights reserved.
