Like most men, Joe appreciated nice presentation. Now he stared, transfixed, and glided his hands down the nipped-in curve of my waist. 'Perfect,' he said. With the considering pucker of an artist, he arranged the ends of the scarf along my cleavage.
To my surprise, he turned away then and poured the wine, half a glass each, after which he
recorked
the bottle and set it out of harm's way.
'Just enough to relax you,' he said.
I wondered why he thought I needed relaxing.
He waited to enlighten me until the crimson liquid slid down my throat. He smoothed his palms down the fall of my white scarf, then tugged the ends of his black one.
'May I tie you up?' he asked.
My brows rose. He'd never expressed any interest in playing the dominant before and his request threw me off balance. I didn't want to say 'yes', even though I knew if Sean were asking I'd have complied without batting an eyelid. Then again, Sean might not have
asked.
‘I'd rather not,' I said carefully, unsure which aspect of the situation unnerved me the most. 'It's okay for fantasy, but in real life I prefer holding you,’
His mouth curved in a gentle smile. "That's all right. I want you to feel comfortable.'
His ready acceptance disappointed me - and I couldn't explain that, either.
'I'm sorry,’1 said, suddenly miserable.
'
Shh
.' He gathered me in his arms and kissed my hair. 'Whatever you want, sweetheart. That's what I want.'
But I'm not sure what I want, I almost said.
Dipping me back on the mat, he began to remove his eye-patch. I caught his hand.
His lips twitched. 'You like my disguise, eh?'
I nodded, feeling foolish. He kissed my embarrassment away with sharp, stinging kisses that
travelled
across my jaw and down my neck. The point of his tongue drew a cool trail down my carotid.
'I can smell your blood,' he murmured in an Eastern European accent too authentic to provoke laughter.
In truth, it excited me. I squirmed under his weight and gripped his back. His lips tightened on my throat. The suction of his cheeks drew my vulnerable flesh between his teeth.
'I'm going to mark you,’ he warned, the words a dark rumble against my skin. 'Everyone will know you're mine.'
'I am yours,’ I said, my voice tinged with melancholy.
He pulled back to search my eyes. I touched the stiff canvas eye-patch and wondered, without quite knowing why, which of us was blinder.
'I am yours,’ I repeated.
He seemed to understand this was as close as I could get to saying, 'I love you.'
His breath escaped in a low, longing sigh and his hips surged into the cradle of my loins. He pressed the suede-soft skin of his cock between scallops of lace, its prominent veins a
tantalising
variation in texture. His eyes drifted shut, then opened, molten with hunger.
'Sweetheart.' His pelvis moved in slow, incendiary circles. 'I think I need that quickie now.'
But rather than rush straight in, he unsnapped my suspenders one by one, soothing each tiny welt with a butterfly kiss.
'Lift,' he ordered, and slid my panties down my legs. My
stockinged
feet received their share of kisses, and my knees. He kneaded my thighs like a cat preparing to settle in, then deftly redid my garters. The lace now framed my naked sex, my lips pink with readiness, my clit peeping through the swollen folds. He pressed a single kiss into my honey-brown fleece, right above the rosy target.
'Later,’ he promised, and shifted up to fit his cock to the mouth of my vagina. He rocked back and forth in tiny tormenting surges, not entering, merely testing the snug resilience of my sexual muscles. I lifted my knees.
'Please,’ I said, 'come inside.' But he continued to tease me, adding an upward slide to the motion so that my clit entered into the torture as well.
Frustrated, I hitched my legs higher still, lifting until my calves curved over his hard, broad shoulders. The position opened me so thoroughly the head popped inside at the next slight push. Joe's mouth '
O'd
at my unexpected flexibility. Before he could regroup, I crossed my ankles behind his neck and pulled, swallowing three quarters of his cock at a single stroke. 'Oh, man,’ Joe breathed.
He resettled himself to accommodate this change in posture, shifting his elbows and catching my hands in his. He laced our fingers together, locking them tight.
Determined to press home my advantage, I contracted my leg muscles one last time, forcing him the rest of the way inside. He filled me wonderfully, his cock thick and vital, his breathing harried. I could have stayed that way all night, but the warm, flickering depths of a woman's sex is one place a man has trouble keeping still.
Joe grunted with impatience. 'If you don't ease up, I won't be able to move.' 'Maybe I like you where you are.'
'Please,’ he said, his pout a charming put-on. 'I've been waiting forever.'
I couldn't resist him. After all, I'd been waiting, too.
Once I'd relaxed my grip, he set a single-minded pace. Digging his knees into the mat, he focused his energy on the motion of his lower body. Straight and hard, he plunged. Firm and sure, he withdrew, tugging slightly each time his
glans
caught my brink. As we coupled, he spread my arms wider and wider until his chest weighted mine and a delicious pressure burnt in my thighs.
I guess his need for orgasm robbed him of his usual consideration. I didn't mind the discomfort, though. He hadn't been thrusting a minute before I was sighing at every stroke. I hadn't thought anyone could drive me so high so fast.
Slim as he was, he wasn't too heavy to bear, but he was bigger than me and most of his weight was muscle. With his ribs compressing mine, I couldn't draw more than half a breath. I hoped that was the reason my head was spinning, but I suspected not. The way his arms stretched mine, the way he bore me into the mat made me feel overpowered - trapped even - in a way no bondage aficionado's tricks could equal.
The subtle edge of panic went to my head faster than the burgundy. I both loved and feared the hold he had on me. I knew I'd have to give him up someday, but I no longer knew how I'd bear it. Worst of all, Joe had no idea what he was doing to me, hadn't accessed even half his power to vanquish.
He could feel my response, though. He could feel me clutch his
pistoning
shaft with all my might and hear the growing wetness of our meeting. His rhythm accelerated.
'Ah, God, I needed this,’ he said, shaking sweaty hair out of his face. His cheek caressed my
stockinged
shin where it crooked his shoulder. 'I thought I'd go mad when I couldn't have you right away. I can't stand to be without you, Kate. I could take you a dozen times a day and never have too much.'
'Fuck me then,’ I said, desperate to drown myself in this libidinous sea, desperate not to admit how dearly I wished his words were true. 'Fuck me hard and don't slow down.'
His gaze flew to mine, but he wasn't put off by my language. His cock shimmied inside me and his lungs expanded like a bellows. 'All right, then.' He
regripped
my hands and drew a deep, bracing breath. 'Hold on tight.'
He pumped me smooth as silk, his way slicked by my lubricious enthusiasm. I bit my lip until I tasted blood, throwing myself over the cliff of feeling, sucking him inward so strongly he needed all his strength to withdraw.
'Jesus,’ he moaned, pulling harder. Cursing with impatience, he shoved the eye-patch off with his upper arm. 'Sorry, sweetheart. I can't stand not seeing all of you. You don't know how fantastic you look.'
I laughed and whispered, 'Fuck me, Joe. Fuck me.'
His weight slammed into me, faster, faster, his intrusion increasingly full, increasingly greedy. His face contorted with need. It was
sheened
with perspiration, blotched with
colour
. 'Oh, no,’ he said, starting to shudder. 'Oh, Kate.'
He gulped for air. His hands gripped mine with bruising strength. He drove in one last time, the deepest, thickest yet, and
spasmed
at the extremity of his down-stroke. For a second, I
revelled
in the strength of his convulsions, and then I, too, crashed through the barrier. He cried out when he felt me quiver, coaxing out my orgasm with a swift churning motion of his pelvis until another climax, this one even more forceful,
barrelled
over the first.
I'm not certain, but I think he came again, too. His eyes snapped open and his cock contracted in a second vigorous series of pulses. He stayed that way, breathing hard against my neck, pressed tight inside me, hipbone to hipbone, cock-head to womb, until his softening penis precluded the intimacy.
'Incredible.' He rolled carefully aside and peeled off the condom. "Thank you, Katie.'
With the breath that remained to me, I assured him he was very welcome.
Afterwards, I lay in Joe's arms, sweaty and sated. I stared at the plastic-blurred mirror, at the ghost-shapes inside, and thought about Tom, my ex. I hadn't done that in a long time, not really remembered. Tom was handsome and charming and the kind of liar who never believed he'd done wrong. I think he loved me. I certainly wanted to believe he did. I had a dream - I suppose everyone does - of starting a better, more loving family than the one I grew up in.
Tom wanted people to think he was good, wanted to think it of himself. To that end, he could be sweet as hell - attentive, well-spoken. So I let him bamboozle me.
He cheated on me a month after we were married. I found out, of course. Tom wasn't good at subterfuge. Maybe he didn't want to be. Eventually, I confronted him in a big ugly scene with me screaming and crying and him pleading how it didn't mean anything. It just happened.
'Weather just happens,' I remember shrieking. 'But people choose to be unfaithful.'
In the end, though, I didn't want to admit to my family and friends - and myself - that, at the supposedly mature age of twenty-nine, I'd made the biggest mistake of my life. I didn't want to confess that I'd been a shitty judge of character and my dream of happy home and hearth was truly down the toilet. So I forgave him.
But not completely. Part of me sat back, folded its cynical arms, and waited for him to knock the bottom out again. He knocked it out all right, more than once, but he never broke my heart like the first time - not even when he ran off with my seventeen-year-old niece.
He said my coldness killed our marriage. He may have been right. My only regret was that I hadn't killed it sooner. I wondered why I hadn't. Had I felt comfortable dancing that sick little dance with Tom, knowing all his moves, knowing he'd always live down to my new low image of men? And what about now? Was I over it? More grown-up? Sadder but wiser? Or had I lost a precious seed of faith I ought to be trying to recover?
'You're awfully quiet,' Joe said, stroking my curls as if I were a child.
I snuggled closer to his chest. We'd have to get up soon and dress. The basement wasn't as warm as the rest of the house.
‘I love you,' he said, and kissed the top of my head.
The weight of expectation compressed the chambers of my heart. I knew I should say it back. I did love him. I just couldn't open my mouth. Was I still waiting for the next blow to fall? Did I intend to keep my guard up forever?
‘I love you, too,' I said, to prove I'd escaped my past.
Joe sucked in a breath and hugged me close. 'Kate,' he whispered. 'Oh, Katie.'
I'd made him happy. But I didn't feel any better.
Our days took on a new rhythm once Joe became Captain Blood.
Though he hadn't graduated yet, Sean obtained a part-time accountancy position at a law firm downtown. He loathed the stuffy my-cell-phone's-smaller-than-yours atmosphere, but performed his duties so brilliantly no one dared take him to task for breezing in late - in blue jeans, no less.
Actually, brilliance alone could not protect him. Brilliant people get fired every day. But Sean had an air that said only an idiot would refuse to let him have his way. He believed this in every
fibre
of his being and, as a result, other people believed it, too.
It seemed Sean was top in every arena.
Faced with some new and expensive desires, Joe left his job at the students' union to work for Sean's Uncle Mike, the demolition king. The work was strenuous, but the pay enabled him to hire a vocal coach and buy a second-hand piano - which we installed in our already eclectic gym.
Now that Joe had accompaniment, the extent of his talent grew clear. The first time I heard him play Captain Blood's lush, humorous overture, the first time I heard him sing the catchy tunes he'd dropped into that beautiful net, the hair on the back of my neck stood up. This was no apprentice work. This was the creation of a genuine artist - not as mature as he would be in ten years, or twenty, but far from child's play.
When I stuttered out my amazement, he confessed -bashfully - that he'd been a child prodigy. Only his mother's insistence on a normal home life had kept his Aunt Florence from dragging him on tour.