The Siren

She waited.

While she waited for him to arrive, she began the deep, slow breathing he had taught her long ago. She took the air in through her nose and pulled it into her stomach before exhaling out through her mouth. The breaths weren’t simply to relax her although they did take the edge off her nervousness. The hypnotic breathing lulled her and helped her slip closer into subspace, that safe place where the mind went while the body was elsewhere being tortured. There was a third reason for the breathing he had never told her, but she knew was true—he’d ordered her to do it. Even the very air that went into her lungs did so at his command.

She exhaled when she heard the door quietly open. Straining her ears, she tried to hear everything he did. He didn’t speak. He rarely spoke at these moments. She listened and heard with some relief the sound of only one set of feet. Sometimes he didn’t come alone. She heard him strike a match and light the candles; she sensed the room brighten.

Five minutes or more passed in silence before he came to the bed. A shiver ran through her body as he placed his fingertips on the small of her back. The pleasure of the shockingly gentle touch was so intense it felt like something had pierced her back all the way through to her stomach. She sighed as he kissed her naked shoulder. She stiffened when he locked her collar around her neck.

He rarely used the leash in their private interludes. He reserved the leash to humiliate her when he paraded her through the club. When alone he simply slipped two fingers under her collar and dragged her like a dog to where he wanted her. The collar tightened when his fingers gripped the leather band. He pulled and she came with him as he brought her carefully off the bed. He was always so cautious with her when she was blindfolded, careful to never let her trip or hurt herself in any way. Hurting her was his privilege alone.

He pushed her forward and she felt the bedpost against her shoulder. Taking her arms one by one, he pulled them behind her back. She leaned her weight into the wood as he buckled the leather bondage cuffs on each wrist. He raised her arms over her head and secured them high to the top of the bedpost.

She stiffened as she felt his hands cover her face. They did nothing but rest there a moment before they moved over her head. Slowly, they ran over her neck and across her shoulders, up her arms and down them again. His arms encircled her and slid over her chest, breasts, and stomach and up her sides before gliding up and down the expanse of her back. One hand slipped between her legs as the other passed over hips and buttocks, down one leg and up again, then down the other. Finally, he ran his hands over the tops of her feet and then lightly passed them over the sensitive soles. She tried not to smile at the exquisitely gentle sensation of his hands touching every part of her body. She knew what he was doing. If more than three days passed without him taking her, he would perform this ritual of re-marking his territory. Her body was his territory, his hands were saying. Every inch of it.

She sensed him step away from her. She began her slow deep breathing again. When the first blow landed between her shoulders, she flinched but did not cry out. The second one came harder and this time she did flinch. By the tenth her back was on fire. After twenty she lost count.

Behind her blindfold, time ceased to pass in its customary manner. Five minutes of flogging lasted an hour. One night in his arms passed in minutes. An hour-long beating was something to be grateful for. The beating would seem to last forever. Even eternity in Hell was no Hell if he was there.

The flogging finally ceased. He pressed in close to her. She felt his strong, bare chest against her burning back. She breathed in and inhaled his scent. Even warm from exertion and arousal he still smelled like a deep winter night.

He placed his hands on her fluttering stomach and brought them slowly up to her breasts. A night with him always meant waning pleasure and waxing pain, waxing pleasure and waning pain. He brought her through the cycle over and over again. The pain brought her body to life. The pleasure was always most acute when it followed the pain.

Now it was pleasure alone she felt as he caressed her breasts and teased her nipples. His mouth found the spot between her shoulder blades that when touched sent a thrill straight into her stomach. One hand slid between her legs and touched her clitoris. With his finger and thumb he massaged it until she was so close to coming she felt the first muscle contraction.

He pulled away from her, leaving her panting and desperate for him. She prayed he’d let her down now, let her down and finally take her.

When she heard the whistling sound of something slicing through the air, she knew he wasn’t done hurting her yet.

After so many years together she’d learned how to prepare herself for a flogging, for the whip and the strap. She knew tricks, ways to breathe, ways to hold herself, to alleviate the pain even as she received it. But when it came to the cane, nothing helped. And when the first strike landed on her lower thighs, she could do nothing but cry out. The second came on the heels of the first, a little harder and one inch higher. On the fourth strike she screamed and felt the blindfold turn wet with tears. The fifth was lighter only because the sixth and final strike was always the worst. The sixth landed in a diagonal across all five previous welts. She sagged in her bonds and cried. He didn’t always beat her until she cried. She learned to love and fear those nights he did. He saved up her pain, counted it like currency and the more pain she endured, the more pleasure she could buy with it.

When he untied her from the bedpost, her arms fell like dead weight to her sides and her knees buckled. He caught her before she collapsed and laid her tenderly on the center of the bed.

His mouth was at her ear now. With words intimate and secret he whispered his love for her, his pride that she was his property, his possession, his heart. She was always his, would forever be his. New tears flowed now but they were ones wrenched from her by love and not torture. This was her favorite pain.

He kissed her now on the mouth for the first time. He kissed her like he owned her, as he owned her. He kissed her like her mouth was his mouth, her lips were his lips, her tongue was his tongue. They were one flesh. They needed no wedding ring, no ceremony to know that was true. She had the collar around her neck. She did not envy married women what they had. She would take his collar over a blood diamond and a cheap gold band any day and for all time.

He moved away from her again. She waited on her aching back and relished the absence of pain. When he returned to her he pulled the coverlet down underneath her so she lay on the sheets. He took her by the knees and wrapped a soft cotton rope around them. She relaxed and let him tie her to the bed. Her knees were up and pulled wide. She lay completely open now. No matter how hard she could try to close her legs, she couldn’t. She never tried.

The bed shifted. She knew he knelt between her wide-open thighs. She inhaled sharply when she felt his fingers slowly enter her. He opened his fingers to widen her, to prepare her for his penetration. He pushed into the back wall of her vagina and pressed down until she flinched hard around his hand. Her passage was slick and wet for him. But he was large enough that he could tear her or bruise her if he didn’t ready her for him first. There were times he took her so roughly she bled. Those were the nights he was lost to himself, lost in the darkness that hid beneath the shadow of his heart. But tonight he wasn’t lost. He was with her.

She felt the wet tip of him poised at the entrance to her body. He pushed in slowly. She whimpered as she stretched and opened to take all of him. If she could have taken his whole being inside her she would. If she could disappear inside him and live in his skin she would.

He moved in her with long meticulous thrusts that filled and emptied her. His pace did not quicken. He gripped her wrists and pressed them into the bed. Many nights he would secure her wrists with rope, as well. But some nights he needed to hold her down with his own hands.

She lay beneath him and panted. Tied as she was she could do little more than take him. She wanted to beg but he hadn’t given her permission to speak. She tilted her hips up as much as she could to take even more of him in her. With one hand still on her wrists, his other hand reached between them and caressed her where their bodies joined. The pressure built in her hips. A knot tightened in her stomach and she felt an invisible rope pull her toward the ceiling. She came hard and spasmed around him. He didn’t stop.

The second climax came not long after the first one. He could manipulate her body as if he knew it better than his own. It terrified her at times how in control of himself he was even when inside her.

He thrust harder. He pushed in deeper, moved faster. She gasped as his grip on her wrists tightened to the point of pain. With one final push he poured into her. When he came at last it was in complete silence.

Still inside her he reached behind her head and untied the blindfold. She looked to the side and didn’t meet his eyes.

“Look at me,” he ordered and she did so gratefully. His steel-gray eyes glowed with his love for her.

“I love you, sir,” she whispered.

The slap came so sudden and fierce that her whole body shuddered in shock.

“Did I give you permission to speak?”

This time she didn’t answer. She shook her head. The movement dislodged a tear that had been lurking at the corner of her eye.

He smiled at her and dipped his lips to hers. He kissed her again and she relaxed into his mouth. His lips moved to her neck and up to her ear.

“I love you, too.”

Still buried deep inside her, he began to thrust into her once again. She closed her eyes and leaned her head back as he wrapped his hand around her neck. Her collar bit into her throat.

She swallowed hard against his hand and breathed and breathed.

He’d only just begun to hurt her tonight.

“Hey, Nor, I’m home. Want some dinner?”

Nora blinked and rubbed her eyes, which had gone dry from staring at her computer screen for so long.

Wesley stood just inside her office and at first she could barely focus on him. She saw him but saw through him and past him at the same time.

“Sounds good.” She glanced at the words on her screen. “I’m starving.”

“Pasta?”

“Too many carbs.”

Wesley rolled his eyes. “Fine. Salad and fish?”

“Fish? But it’s not Friday.”

“You’re the Catholic. I’m Methodist. We eat fish whenever we want. Give me twenty minutes.”

Wesley left her alone again. She printed out the pages she’d been typing and read through them.

The phone rang at seven and the call itself consisted of only seven words…

She read to the end and pressed the pages, still warm from the printer, briefly to her chest. Reluctantly, she slid the pages under her desk and fed them one by one through the shredder. She highlighted the text on her computer screen and hit Delete, flinching as the text disappeared. She closed the document and let the words disappear into the ether. She hated to do it. But she knew The Rule. She obeyed the Ruler.

Nora stood up for the first time in an hour and left her office. When she saw Wesley standing at the kitchen counter she actually could see him now. He smiled at her. She smiled back.

“So what did you write today?” he asked as he expertly sliced through the skin of a ripe red tomato.