I wanted to be sadistic. I wanted to use him, to bind him up so tight that he whimpered with every attempted move. I wanted his eyes to glisten because they were wet with tears, and I wanted to still hold up and push him down even more, because I had the strength and the will and wanted to have him so vulnerable that he would crawl to me, shaking, and wrap his arms around my ankles, sobbing.
Twenty-One Days
Twenty-one days led up to the moment I had him kneeling, head down, and saw that familiar slight twisting of the shoulders that marked discomfort.
“You were the one that told me it was ok to wait.”
Hesitation. His breathing shallow.
His chin felt warm in my hand. I lifted his head but he still wouldn’t open his eyes. His mouth was shut tight, teeth clenched. Everything in his face showed tension.
I kneeled down level with him and put my lips so close to his. “You wanted me to wait, and now you have to deal with the results. Do you understand?”
Nothing.
Twenty-one days. Perhaps several years ago that would not mean much, but this time, it did hit me hard. It hit me hard because I was used to something, even minor physical flirtation, about every 5 to 7 days.
Certainly, I had little fixes in between. But I purposely kept them tame.
The boy in the club, bangs down in his eyes. Body pressed up against a full-length mirror and I could see his fingers spread apart slowly. Palms against the glass. Breath fogging it. That song, beating, pounding. My hand was in his hair. “I want to take you home with me,” I hissed at him. “But I won’t.”
Twenty-one days.
One night about ten days ago I woke up and three in the morning and couldn’t go back to sleep. I saw what looked like the moon outside my door, and it illuminated the phone next to my bed. One call. One call and my prince would be at my doorsteps. I could hear his voice in my head, Jesus Christ Akasha, why in the middle of the night, why? And he would come. Weary, like the times he submits with his eyes still closed in sleepiness, the only disturbance of his angelic gaze that slight little wince when the rubber slides between his teeth.
But, no. I rolled over. Put my head under my pillow. Let my hands roam. Thought of him some eleven days later in my clutches. It would be so sweet, his sacrifice. Bravery. Letting the beast grow her desire to the point of insatiability just to feed it for her.
Or was it just pure foolishness?
Twenty-one days.
Sitting in the club with my feet hanging over a ledge. Watching the little shadow crawler do his thing, thinking, hmm, yeah, maybe he would fit. Sideways. In an X-bar. But how long could he breathe in there?
Around day nineteen I almost drove into a bus stop when I saw a high school senior kneeling down to pick up a book for a girl. He was half balancing but just gave up and kneeled down all the way. What I would’ve done for a taste of that.
Around day ten I probably could have feasted upon some prey and still had markable energy and desire by day twenty-one again, but once that mark passed, it was too close to the date to risk it. I wouldn’t dare risk dampening just one bit of passion set aside.
I guess it was about day eighteen when I started getting sick. Predictable, I know. I had forgotten though, since I have been so spoiled in the last few years, that not playing makes me sick. It’s the combined result of lack of sleep and not eating right, both results of distraction in general. Unbelievable, I was able to work pretty well, staying quite focused on the job at hand, but unusually totally unable to write anything but dark, frustrated images of a victim at my feet.
Twenty-one days.
“Do you know how long it’s been?” I whispered. It was the question, I suppose. The question that would start it, lead me off. Slide me into where I needed to be. To hear him say it, acknowledge it. To hear that voice, as if saying, “Guilty as charged.”
I tightened my grip. He flinched. The flinch brought little shivers to my bones. Flinches didn’t use to affect me that way, I had gotten used to those. It was like being a schoolgirl again. I shuddered, and I believe he could feel it in my hands as they were on his skin. I shuddered, and I thought, damn, if a mere flinch does that to me…
The flinch dissipated, and his eyes fluttered open. Finally. His eyes on mine, he just stared. I could see sparkles. Distance. Fear. Confusion. Boyish charm.
It all intoxicated me, infuriated me. “This would be much, much easier,” I hissed as I leaned into him, “If I didn’t adore you so much.”
With a few swift, careful movements, I slid around him and found the blindfold. It went over his eyes with ease, and he didn’t like that one bit. I was dehumanizing him. Not in a cruel way, not in a demeaning way. But he knew what I was doing; I was making him less real to me, so I could go through with it. Because I had to be removed from the side of me that still just wanted to cuddle.
“How LONG has it been?” I snapped again, coming around the front and having a much better time at it, taking his chin and whipping it up until his teeth chattered a little, fear and shock and dread perhaps.
“A few weeks -“
How dare he. Oh, I suppose it was perfect. It was what I needed to go where I had to be, it pushed me right into that dark, little evil space where I could torture him mercilessly and thrive on his struggling.
Because he patronized my wait. The word “few” did it to me. Few sounds so trivial. As if it was a short time. No. It was a long time. It was twenty-one days, twenty-one nights of sleepless restless slumber and twenty-one days of buying toys and nearly running into bus stops.
My fingers dug into his skin. I remember something strange about that moment, and it was that everything felt dangerous. It felt like there were so many things he could say that would enrage me, and it scared me that I wanted to be enraged.
I wanted to be sadistic. I wanted to use him, to bind him up so tight that he whimpered with every attempted move. I wanted his eyes to glisten because they were wet with tears, and I wanted to still hold up and push him down even more, because I had the strength and the will and wanted to have him so vulnerable that he would crawl to me, shaking, and wrap his arms around my ankles, sobbing.
It was like being a drug addict, and being off it for three years (yes it felt like years!) and deciding that the night I went back, I was going to get whacked to the point of oblivion.
Only, he was the one that was going to be oblivious.
But the only way I can describe the urges themselves is that they were very meticulous. I wasn’t craving wide, overall domination. I was obsessed with his little movements and his every single breath. It thrilled me when one breath got caught on another, and I saw every move – even his rubbing two fingers together inadvertently – as a passionate little dance for me.
For the first time in play, I felt as if I was stronger than him, stronger than anyone. Physically. I didn’t test it, but it made me want to snicker uncontrollably. Is that the same chemical in your body that makes it so that in moments of stress people have superhuman strength? Perhaps. As I said, I didn’t test it. I felt though that I could wrap my hand around his throat and pin him up against the wall, his feet off the ground. Dragging him off his knees to the bed would have been easy, I’m sure. And he’s much stronger than I am.
Twenty-one days – those three words – I promised myself would be forever on his lips when I was done with him. They would come across on command at once, and every time he’d know something was coming.
And what made it all so different — so beautifully different – was that the mindspace was so easy, so attainable, and so unshakable. I went there, and I stayed there. I stayed there because I was feasting on every little bit of him, from his lashes the way they fluttered to the way he bit his lip when he saw the gag – another one – and tried some other desperate way to get out of it. And failed every time.
He tried every trick in the book. And I can tell you, every one of them would have worked, any night but that night. Any one of them would have brought a little tear to my eye or made me shiver with lust and distracted me right out of that domspace and right into a safe haven for him, and he’d have succeeded.
The words, once he caught my ear by his lips when I was bending down, and he said them so earnestly, his words got caught on his breath and his whisper cracked, “Please, stop hurting me, please.”
Yes, looking back, in most cases that would have left me shivering and I would have had to struggle back into a mind frame remotely capable of doing harm to such an angel. Because his words were so real. So completely real.
But this time, I hesitated only briefly, then looked into eyes. Right into his eyes. And he hit me hard, he gave me everything he had. And for what seemed like a very long time we just looked at each other. I think he believed he had me, that he was chipping away at that dominant exterior and finding the real me down there. Chipping eagerly, innocently. Reaching for me. Wanting to be held. Wanting it to be done with so he could be taken care of.
And I will admit, I held his gaze to lead him on. I slid in close. I think I even felt that familiar gasp of relief, he thought I was coming to save him. The kiss that marked release. But instead, I slid in close to his body and put my nose against his.
“But,” I said softly, “I’m enjoying hurting you…”
There was the time that he had his back arched just right, and I felt his hips press against mine because I was straddling him to keep him still for the clamps. And he let out his breath, caught my gaze, and wet his lips. His eyes were dark, strangely dark, and he tilted his head. Seduction. He’d even managed to get his hair just right in his eyes. Must have done that when I wasn’t looking, by tossing his head this way and that way.
And I smiled and rubbed my body back at him. I slid down close to him and paused from my project with the clamps, letting him hold them between his teeth while I went away, down his body, and he looked at me eagerly thinking, again, that maybe he’d reached a part of me hidden down beyond that dark side and I was coming back, coming back to make love, or hold him, or to be showered with sweet kisses.
But I just smiled, moving my mouth down his stomach and sliding my hands down his crotch. I teased him. I touched him, I pressed my body against his crotch and I said, staring at him with a smile, “I’m not even close to done yet.”
No, nothing worked. But he was noble, and he tried. At times it infuriated me even more, once time bringing me to slap him so hard across the face that he fell over and cowered. And I’d never done such a thing – so sudden, so harsh. Usually…usually, at other times, that would have shaken me enough to snap me out of it for the moment.
But instead, I straddled him and pulled him up by the shirt collar, shaking him like a rag doll, and hissing into his eyes, “Don’t you EVEN fuck with me!”
And he whimpered, eyes shut hard, and that’s when the tears came.
I just held him there, my knuckles turning white, and neither of us moved. It must have been a few minutes, and I don’t know where I got the strength to hold him up that long by the collar, but soon his tears were dripping down my fingers.
When I let go, he fell back with a thud and tried to curl up and hide, but the spreader bar locked his ankles to his wrists from behind and allowed no such freedom.
I paced. Weird, strange numbness in my veins. I looked into the only mirror in his place and I looked into my own eyes. I didn’t even look the same to me. Time really had lost any meaning, and I checked the clock, realizing it had been three hours since we started. I knew, even in that detached mind frame, that he must’ve been completely exhausted.
But I wasn’t fed. It wasn’t over. And I could hear him, behind me. What sounded like little muffled sobs, his head down against his shoulder. I knew I was supposed to stop. I was supposed to stop at that point.
Twenty-one days. I clenched my fists. I shut my eyes. “I’m not done,” I said to myself. I wasn’t ready to hold him, or cry, or curl up and sleep.
I started shaking all over and it took me a minute to identify the emotion.
Fear.
I was afraid of myself.
Oh my god, I thought. What if I never go back?
“Please,” he cried. It was a blur in the background.
I looked at my hands, my fingers. Who was I, anyway? What if I never went back? What if I was never finished? My ears were buzzing.
Somehow, I don’t know how, he’d slid over to where I was, and his cheek was resting against my ankle.
I looked down at him, hands avoiding him, his hair. Holding them up out of the way, for some reason uneasy about touching him. I felt dampness around my feet, his tears.
I kneeled down and took his face in my hands and he flinched, tried to get away, but I held him. I looked at him. “Make me stop,” I whispered, “You need to make me stop.”
He looked at me, and he was desperate. He was desperate because he knew what I meant. He knew it had been too long, and that I had used him for three hours, brought him to tears, been able to withstand his tugging at my guilt strings and seducing me from his bonds. Nothing was shaking me, and I wasn’t wearing down. I was still deep in it. And he could tell I was scared.
I think he was trying to think of what to do, what to say, but he was flustered and scared. “Let..let me go, first..” he sniffed, struggling. “And I’ll help you to stop, ok… ok Akasha?”
I shook my head. Trance-like. I wasn’t going to let him go, not on his life.
He sobbed, half sobbed, his eyes were red. “Please, Akasha, please.”
This was so foreign to me. Never had I seen someone so beautiful, someone I cared for so much, so broken down for me. He was so weary, he was tattered and weak, he was aching all over. I could feel it, I could sense just pain. Pain from his body and his soul was trampled on.
I moved my hand down his cheek and he turned to kiss it, kissing my palm and then my wrist, then nuzzled his cheek against my skin. So affectionately. So affectionately to this person who’d been torturing him for the past three hours.
But in my head were these images. Images of things I still wanted to do to him. I didn’t want to stop. I didn’t want a break. I wanted him even more vulnerable, weaker, more helpless.
He was still nuzzling me with his cheek, now down against my thigh, as if a replacement for being able to massage me with my hands had I let them go, to try to settle me down, make me sleepy, make me stop thinking about hurting him.
My hand was in his hair, and it was starting to tighten a little. And I think he knew what this meant. That was always a sign. A sign that I was starting again, starting to do something to him.
“Akasha–” he looked up, painfully, pulling against my hand.
I looked at him, waiting to hear what he had to say. In my mind, it was all set. Hogtie. Ballgag. Riding crop.
“What,” I asked. It was more a statement, not even a question. Because what it was didn’t really matter, but I was content to be amused with what he had to say.
The tears were starting to dry, but his eyes were stinging, red. “If..” he hesitated, then forced himself to look at me. “If I used the safeword, would you stop?” I could tell how hard it was for him to ask that.
Weird. Tremors. My body shook a little. I stared at him, expressionless. Weird. I could feel how firm my exterior was, how together I looked, but inside everything was melting. I felt actually melting like my body was collapsing on itself inside of me.
But I stared right into his eyes. “Why,” I said, cooly. “Are you about to use it?”
And I could hear the way my tone was. It was that dominant I-don’t-give-a-fuck-about-you tone. And I was scaring the hell out of myself for using that tone on such a subject, but at the same time I was asking myself the same question he was, and at the same time I was trying to figure out what that feeling was, the body collapsing feeling, and I was starting to wonder if I was having a fatal attack of some sort that required a doctor. My body felt sick inside.
He was shaking again, in my arms, and his words came across quite perfectly even though his voice was quivering a little, “I’m afraid to use it,” he said.
“Why.” I said. Still detached. I felt like I was outside of my own body, maybe trying to get away from it because it was melting down on the inside. I felt like I hadn’t eaten in five days and something was chewing me from the inside.
“I’m afraid you still won’t stop,” he said, and then he lowered his head and I think he started to cry again, I don’t know. I just know that I let go of him, and I think he fell back down with a thud. I let go and I stumbled, tried to get up, and half walked, half crawled to the bathroom because I felt like I was going to be sick.
It was a weird, wretched feeling. My body was cold, I was sweating really hard, and I felt my teeth rattling so hard that I thought I was going to bite off my own tongue. It was sudden though, and indefinable. Food poisoning.
I knocked things off the counter in the bathroom and kneeled shaking over the toilet. I couldn’t see, even though my eyes were open, I saw a lot of stars and sparkles and shapes.
He was calling my name, I heard him. Some rattling of chains. I knew he couldn’t get to me, or at least it would take a long time. Sweat was dripping down off me from everywhere.
The shaking turned to sobs, and I never did get sick.
I just sat there on the floor for a few minutes, quivering all over, until his voice made me turn and look out the door where he was half laying, trying to peer into where I was and see if I was ok.
Of course, at that point I couldn’t really talk, it all came out in half sobs and schoolgirl whimpers. He was saying, “Come here! C’mere! Get over here, Akasha!” and I was just looking at him.
Finally, I crawled out to him and curled up into a little ball next to his chest. He rattled when he moved and found my ear, “let me go, you have to let me go now…”
I think I was too weak to do anything, but when I finally wrapped my arms around him I pinned him the wrong way and he squealed in pain, a sound that felt like it shot physical knives into my soul and made me sob. It was the most awful, sickening sound I had ever heard. And my head was throbbing because I remembered just minutes before when I had done anything to elicit that same sound.
Getting him out of the shackles was hard because my eyes were blurred with tears and I had no memory. He had to tell me where the keys were, and I was too weak to move quickly. The sight of the marks on his wrists and ankles devastated me. I was mortified.
He had to carry me to the bed. I had a fever, I could tell, I felt like I had a temperature of 105. I was shaking so hard that I couldn’t hear anything but my teeth rattling, and he was looking at me with a mixture of concern and need.
I could see the need in his eyes. He needed to be taken care of. It made me cry harder. I couldn’t do anything, I felt helpless, because I was too sick and weird and screwed up to do anything but lay in a little ball. I imagined us both deteriorating into nothing because I couldn’t help him, and without giving him back the strength he couldn’t fix me either, and we both died laying together in the bed holding each other but unable to heal.
“I’m really screwed up,” I managed to choke out.
“Do you have food poisoning?” he asked me, concerned but weak. I guess he noticed the similarity too.
I shook my head and slid closer to him, as close as I could physically get because his warmth felt like the only thing that was real to me.
It all happened slowly, terribly slowly. I think it took me an hour to come back to normal, and all night long I would not let go of him, even when he’d try to roll over I would hold him tighter. It was as if I wanted to heal him more than anything.
When we talked the next morning, it was apparent to me that I had forgotten many parts of what we’d done. He told me, and it made me shiver, and I didn’t believe him a lot of the time. But I knew he wouldn’t make it up.
We were both scared, I know it. He was terrified because he didn’t think I would’ve stopped at many of the points. I was scared because I didn’t think I was capable of going so strong for so long, and I saw what the result was, and what it did to my body and my emotions. And how unfair it was to him, how dangerous and ungracious.
“How can I make it up to you,” I said to him. My eyes still hurt. I looked at him with painful eyes. But I kept looking.
He turned and looked at me and thought for a second. “Never wait twenty-one days again.”
I held him, and promised.
