Craving Flight (11 page)

At the top of the stairs, the attendant helps me into my robe and I go back to the changing room to get dressed and dry my hair. Perhaps it’s my imagination, but when I check my reflection in the mirror, my face isn’t worn and weary, I don’t look enervated from the stresses of the past nearly two weeks. I look radiant.

I take my time getting dressed and ready. As I’m winding my hair up to tuck inside the scarves, I think of Elan unwinding them. How he’ll take his time though surely he’s as eager for my body as I am for his.

*

Blissed out and
dreamy, I practically float up the stairs to our apartment and it takes me a few tries to open the door. When I do, Elan’s big body is in the hallway, blocking the light from the dining room. If I didn’t know it was him, I might be afraid. Especially when he sets upon me and pushes me up against the door I just closed behind me.

My back hits the wood as he grips my neck, tipping up my chin. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

“I’m sorry?”

He shakes his head. “For days, Tzipporah, I’ve been waiting for you.”

His dark eyes seem darker, like if I fall into them I might never be able to crawl out. At this moment, I never want to. I’ve been craving his touch so badly and now I can have it.

“I’ve been waiting for you too.”

He kisses me then—his mouth devouring mine, his hand that’s not at my throat groping me anywhere he can reach, reminding me with every aggressive squeeze, every painful pinch that I belong to him. It’s not long before he’s dragging me toward the bedroom.

“Elan!” I’m laughing because I’m practically tripping over myself as he bundles me down the hall.
This
. This is what I’ve wanted.

“Dangerous,” he mutters, as if he’s just realized there’s no way I can keep up with his long strides and he’s going to make me fall. I think he’s going to slow down, but instead he reaches for me and as if I weigh nothing, hefts me over his shoulder and carries on, barely pausing.

I’m now in full-on delighted giggle fits, which earns me a very firm smack to my behind that makes me yelp.

“Quiet, please.”

His request almost makes me laugh harder, the politeness of the words juxtaposed with the demanding gravelly tone. But I find it somewhere inside me to honor his wish. I can be quiet.

After closing our bedroom door, he sets me down and his eyes rake over me, his gaze so hot he might set my very clothes on flashfire that would burn them clean off my body, leaving my skin unscathed. Instead he pushes me up against this door too and the impact sends a jolt of desire through me. What is it about being handled this way that makes me so hot?

Who cares?

He kisses me again and this time, he doesn’t stop at groping, but strips my clothes as he goes. Soon I’m naked and my hair is flowing down my back. He pulls away and pins me to the door at arm’s length with a hand at my throat, as if he won’t be able to stop devouring me if he doesn’t break contact, but can’t quite bring himself to cease touching me entirely.

“You’re not to speak. I want control of your very voice and you’re going to give it to me. You’re going to make noise, I promise you, but no words after you’ve said yes. Do you understand me?”

No words
. To have something so strongly entwined with my entire personality taken away… Words are who I am. They’re what I do. Without words, I have no livelihood, I have no worth. To have them stolen—panic rises inside me. But no. He wouldn’t
steal
them, wouldn’t take without my permission. He’s asking and I can say yes or no. This will either be insanely hot or a massive struggle. Perhaps a mixture of both and there’s only one way to find out.

“Yes, master.”

His pupils dilate with lust and then he grabs me by the hips and spins me to face the door, then pushes me to my knees. “Stay.”

I wait, trying to be patient while I listen to the sounds of him moving about the room. In time, he’s gathering my hair into a ponytail at the top of my head and cinching it with rope. I think he might braid the strand through as he’s done several times before, but instead it feels like he’s tying knot after knot, a swift wrap followed by a decisive tug. Like he’s fashioning a tube of rope around my hair. When he’s finished, he pulls me to stand and presses me against the door, anchoring me by the trailing strands to the door frame. Then he wraps quick rope cuffs around my wrists and ties them to anchor points above my head.

My cheek is pressed against the cool wood that quickly grows warm from the heat of my body. My shoulders drop. I’m not responsible for my speech and now I’m not responsible for my movements either. They’re his to control.

“Eyes closed.” Now my sight is his, too.

He leaves me again briefly, but then he’s back, crowding me with his bulk though not touching me. I expect some kind of impact because the spanking—oh, how we both enjoy the spanking, but there’s a gentle drift of something across my back. Strands of—suede? I can’t quite tell and I know better than to turn around and look.

“Have you ever been flogged, little bird?”

I open my mouth to answer, but I remember his directive just in time: no words.

So I nod.

“Good girl, remembering your instructions. Did you enjoy it?”

I bite my lip in indecision. Because I hadn’t. Brooks didn’t know what he was doing, and I don’t think the cheap flogger he’d ordered online from some kind of novelty store had helped any. But I think I could enjoy it. It’s frustrating that he’s taken my words so I can’t explain any of this. I’ll answer his question honestly though. I shake my head as well as I can.

The caress of the strands over my skin pauses and I wonder if he’ll stop. I don’t want him to stop. I’d beg him to try because I think it would be different with him. But it’s more of a hiccup than a full stop and the gentle stroking continues.

It lulls me into a trance although something inside me crackles with anticipation. He didn’t string me up like this to be gentle with me. That’s when the strands leave my skin and the first blow falls. Still gentle, I might call it a tease. A taste. I want more. I want to gorge myself on sensation now that I’m allowed to break my fast from touch.

He works up, the strands falling ever harder and it’s not so long before I’d call them blows. Impact. Force. At one particularly hard strike, I gasp. He grips the back of my neck, his thumb rubbing over the juncture with my shoulder.

“Is this better?”

His question is soft but I hear it because I’m straining for any word from him. I nod. Yes, this is what I’d hoped for when I’d asked Brooks, heart in my throat, to try.

“Good.”

And then he hits me harder. And harder. So hard it feels as though he’s beating the air out of my body. I have to suck oxygen into my lungs between impacts and I love it. I’m making noise with every whack of the flogger but never do I use my words. I don’t have to use my words because he knows. When it stops, I want to cry, I want to ask for more but I can’t so I wait, hoping, too, he knows I can take more.

I’m tempted to make an inquisitive noise—as if I think he’d answer me—but I’m stopped by a thin, sharp sting on my shoulder blade.

“Ah!” It’s a wheedling burn that lingers, growing hot after the initial impact and fading too slowly. What the hell was that? Then there’s another and another. He’s making a pattern along the plane of my upper back. I breathe through it, only making small pained whimpers now that I’ve gotten a handle on how to process the sensation. I wouldn’t call it easy, but definitely manageable. I can do this.

But then it changes. He’s struck the lower side of my ribs with the evil little tool and it makes me cry out. He balances it out with a strike on the other side and I try to pull away but I can’t because I’m fixed to the door by my hair and my hands.

“Stop moving or I’ll bind your ankles too.”

The temptation to disobey is real because I think it would be easier to bear if he took that from me as well, but I don’t want to disappoint him. So I still my feet, pretending there are roots from my soles growing into the floor and holding me fast, that the shallow stalks anchoring me could twine with his somewhere in the earth. It makes it the barest bit easier to endure what feel like tiger stripes of pain he’s clawing down my ribs.

It stops again and he presses his front to my back, pushing me into the door, containing me. The force steadies me and I pin my draws and exhales of air to his.

“There you go. I want control over even your breath.” The idea should terrify me but it doesn’t. It lets me sink further into his hold. When I’ve calmed to his satisfaction, he murmurs, “Just a little more for me. You can do it.”

I nod, because for him I can. I want to. The endorphins flooding my system help of course, but he’s the one who’s given that to me, knowing I’d need them for what he wants from me. The care and consideration he lavishes on me during these times makes me ache, swells my heart.

That’s when the first tiny little bolt of lightning falls on my arm.
Shit.
I’ve gotten so good at not swearing—even in my head, for the most part—but he’s driven me to this. He works his way toward my wrist and with every shrill impact, it hurts more. Maybe it’s because he’s getting further away from my core that it feels more dangerous? He stops at the middle of my forearm when I’m just shy of tears but heavy of breath and I feel triumphant. He won’t go any further because I’m positive whatever he’s using on me is going to leave marks.

He praises me in soft, gentle words and I swim in them, soaking in his pleasure. Then he unhooks one of my wrists from above the door. We must be finished if he’s releasing me. But he doesn’t undo any of my other bondage. Instead, he extends my arm away from my body, not touching the wall. Exposed.

“You took ten on your right arm and we can’t have you lopsided. Ten on this side and then we’re done. You don’t need to count but at the end, you’ll thank me.”

I have to earn my voice back. The thought makes me swallow convulsively but I’m up for a challenge so when he asks if I’m ready, I nod.

I didn’t think it was possible but it hurts more on this side. Maybe because I don’t have the comfort of the rope binding me, maybe because I don’t have the support of the wall. Or perhaps it’s just some bizarre mindfucky thing that, unlike with the other arm, which was bound and held fast for him to torture, this is very much my choice, down to my core, and I’m still offering up my body to be hurt.

I count the burning slashes in my head and make it to four before I start to cry. The tears roll hot and fast down my cheeks, but I don’t move my arm. By the time it’s over, my chest is heaving against the door and I’m pressing my face into the wood, seeking comfort, clenching and unclenching my fists, as if anything will help.

But the only thing that helps is when it stops and Elan’s big body is against mine. He circles my wrist in his hand and pulls it toward my shoulder, bending my elbow until it’s folded close against my body like a resting bird’s wing.

He holds me while I wear out my tears, crooning kind things to me in words that are foreign but comforting. I wish my understanding of Yiddish were better because it’s possible he’s speaking poetry in my ear, but all I can glean are fleeting basic words: good, beautiful, mine.

Pinning me to the door with his hard, naked body, he undoes the rest of my bonds. I’m glad he didn’t tie my ankles because I think I might collapse if he had to let me go to untie them. When he’s done, he hefts me up and presses my back to the door, insinuating his hips between my thighs and guiding himself inside.

I sigh. After feeling so much like a disappointment, so lacking on every level, I feel whole now. Wanted. Complete. It’s possible that this feels so good because I’ve felt so very bad, a crest to the emotional trough I’ve been wallowing in. I wouldn’t wish for this level of desperation every month but I hope the pure delight welling inside me as I thread my fingers through his thick hair always remains. It’s a privilege to experience this anew.

He’s not gentle as he thrusts into me. My back and behind hit the door over and over and it brings the marks he’s made alive. It doesn’t quite register as pain though, more like feeling and the intensity is overwhelming. He’s transformed me into pure sensation. I am so, so lucky.

“Thank you,” I say in between thrusts. “Thank you, Elan. Thank you, master.”

As if he’s been cradling me in his hands and is now propelling me into the sky, his words create a current of air that carries me off. “Soar for me, Tzipporah. Take flight.”

So I do.

‡