The rope creaked as he wound it around her, wove it into knots and then pulled it tight. The sound alternated between a swish and that low groan of the jute, and it sounded like some surrogate protestation for her, inserting the reluctance she should have felt into the room, even thought it was entirely absent in her.
Instead she was just calm. Excited, certainly, but overarchingly content, a pervading sense of belonging that was never quite matched apart from on his bed, under his hands, wrapped in his rope. Usually he would be talking, loud enough to mask the sounds that his hands were making. Loud enough to calm the thoughts that were now filling the silence in her head.
It wasn’t so much apprehension that she was feeling, or even anxiety, but nor could it be called pure excitement, no matter how enthusiastic she was feeling. Trepidation went most of the way, but then she knew what he’d said before he’d started, and there was an edge to the emotion that didn’t match all those soft consonants and demure vowels. She needed something with a K, hidden among soft folds of ‘t’s and ‘p’s. Something that would prick your finger if you weren’t careful.
"Not without permission." He’d started. He almost didn’t need to say it, but something about the fact that he’d made a point of it had put her on edge. "You can ask." He’d stated, offering her the opportunity without the promise of reciprocation, that her pleas wouldn’t fall on deaf ears, that he wouldn’t just push forward discounting each and every request that burst from her mouth.
When he was done he lent back on the bed, kneeling on the duvet to her right, and reached up to his neck. His tie came away in one strong pull, a smooth motion that seemed to go on uncomfortably long, until suddenly it burst free in his hand, coiling around it, serpentine.
The silk slotted between her lips without protestation. He wrapped it around her head without difficulty, and she was gagged without fuss. Her eyes were wide, stayed wide, staring up at him from the bed, and she caught the glimmer of a smile flicker across his lips as he saw her like that.
Fingertips first, fluttering across her, all but whispering with a touch that did little more than make her push her hips up into the air. The rope held her back, did what rope does, but it was enough to display her need, to make a performance of her desire. And so he indulged her, his hand suddenly pressing down, cupping her fully, as fingers plunged, running between her, against her, up towards the core of her. The way she squirmed got a rise out of him, made him shift in his seated position, his free hand twitching on his thigh. She caught it out the corner of her eye, and pushed her hips upwards again.
Before he’d started with the rope he’d taunted her. She lay there, fingers quietly folded on her lap, feeling the summer breeze sauntering through the open window, and he’d laid the vibrator on the bed beside her. It wasn’t nonchalant, it was pointed, and he’d looked at her such as he’d done it. But he hadn’t used it, had just left it there, Chekov’s gun, the intent clear and unrealised.
But now he did. Now that she was prone, moaning, reduced and elevated all at the same time, now he pressed that flared latex head against her, and rolled his thumb over the dial.
It was unfair, what he was doing. It was a shortcut to the destination, but when the destination isn’t quite where he was wanting to go, he didn’t feel so bad about using a proxy. Didn’t feel so bad about the sudden electric change in her body language, the way she seemed to simultaneously try to pull away from the toy and press it deeper against her. Didn’t feel so bad about the intense stare she’d fixed him with, request flashing in her eyes, asking for permission before she’d even uttered a single syllable.
He smiled, minutely. He shook his head. She groaned.
And his thumb slid up the dial, making her roll with the shock of it. He felt like he was trying to murder her, that the hilt of this thing in his hand was trying to be buried up between her legs, pushing and pushing until it finally disappeared in a scarlet plume. He wanted to see how she was going to take this, what was going to happen when she realised what he was trying to do. Wanted to watch her break, see that hairline fracture in her perception of the world.
The violence of her spitting the tie clear of her mouth roused him from his thoughts.
"Pleeease." She crooned, cooed, flirted. It was an attempt at seduction, a voice made husky with desire, but cracking with the first signs of desperation.
He reached down, took the tie from her chin and pushed it back between her lips.
Her eyes rolled and her body followed suit, the steadily increasing power of the vibrator between her legs making it increasingly difficult to retain her composure. The tie was expelled more readily this time, conduct be damned.
"Pleasepleaseplease" she blurted out, and he could see her muscles rising as she strained against the rope. He was close, and he could see that she knew they were both aware. His thumb rolled on that dial, and he sank down so that his face was close to hers, let her wallow in that potential release for a moment longer, and then uttered that single syllable again.
"No." Like a judges gavel. Like the reaper’s scythe. Like the final digit of the timer on a bomb, all the definite finality of it coming down on her at once, so that she was condensed, crystalised, turned into something else.
And that’s when she did it. That’s when he saw, in her eyes, in the way she was looking at him, the spark of realisation. And that’s when she cracked, just a tiny bit, enough to allow the deluge to erupt, to flood through her, a burst dam thundering, collapsing, rendered moot.
She came, came despite him, came because of him, came because he’d left her no other option but to come, even when he’d told her explicitly not to, even though he’d explicitly, resolutely, made sure she had no other choice. She came, and in coming, went some place new.
