Craving Flight (9 page)

“Pick a number between one and twenty.”

Oh, I hate this game. Forcing me to choose. He’s so very wicked. I won’t pick a low number because I don’t want to disappoint him but I can’t pick too high because I’m afraid. Before I can entirely psych myself out, I blurt, “Twelve.”

“Mmm.” His noise of acknowledgement doesn’t give me much to work with, but I don’t have long to think about it because the first stripe is landing across my behind, a defined line of pain. And I know by now that he wants me to count for him, thank him.

“One. Thank you, master.”

And on it goes, line after line, hurt after hurt, tallying the strikes and expressing my gratitude. The strange thing is, I really am grateful. Thankful for him allowing me to be this way without disdain, for giving this to me freely and even joyfully. I thank Hashem, too, for sending me this man with whom I can share this. With whom I’m able to create these moments of wholeness and abandon in a life otherwise fraught with fear that I’ll never be good enough for anyone.

I choke out eleven and he leans into me. Talks low in my ear. “Beg me for it, Tzipporah. Ask me to hurt you. Plead with me to hit you harder, make you suffer.”

I’m so wet between my legs I can barely stand it, the pain ratcheting up my desire and making me crave him. The clamps have been jolted with every strike, reminding me anew of their presence and I’m practically out of my mind. So it’s no surprise I do as he asks and babble the words frantically.

“Please, master. I need more. Hit me, bruise me. I want to feel this for days. Leave your marks on me. Make it hurt. I want to hurt for you. Please.”

The cane falls across my flesh for the last time, this strike crossing the ones he’s already made. He’s hit me so hard I cry out without wanting to. There’s nothing to do but scream. And cry. The tears I’ve been choking back finally spill and I start to bawl, the sobs racking my body.

It’s such a relief. It’s over, but I’ve done it. I’ve made him happy and in return, he’s set me free, given me permission to fall completely and utterly apart.

He murmurs small, gruff words while he holds me, the sounds of the Yiddish soothing precisely because I can’t understand and for the moment I give up trying. I haven’t made much of an effort to learn because not so many people in my community speak it, not like in the Hasidic neighborhoods. In fact, it might be only the Kleins and a couple of the other more conservative families who use it and then not often. I’ve heard Elan speak it with his family, especially his brothers, but he doesn’t usually use it around me. I’m glad he’s chosen to now.

After I’ve calmed, he starts to untie me. It takes a long time because he’s doing most of it single-handedly, keeping my slumped body against him so there’s not too much weight on my scalp or my shoulders. When I’m finally free, he picks me up and lays me on the bed.

I find the lace edges of the bedspread easily though my eyes are closed. Curling my fingers around the side, I stroke weakly at them, needing to touch, needing to hold something solid.

“Are you with me, Tzipporah? Can you tell me?”

“Mmm.”

“I need more than that.”

Demanding man. I don’t think I can open my eyes and talk at the same time, so I choose speech. “Still here. Want more.”

Of course he laughs at me. I don’t mind. He spreads my legs wide and then his fingers are inside me. I sigh because the penetration feels so good. It makes me want more. But instead of stripping and pressing inside of me, he releases the clamps and holy—

“Sugar!”

My modified curse makes him laugh again. This time I open my eyes to see his face, the streak of white teeth surrounded by his beard, the way wrinkles form at the sides of his eyes. “That hurts, does it?”

“You know it does.”

My brain must be scrambled indeed, because that is not an appropriate response. Nor does he think so; I get a slap to the side of my breast for my insolence. “Try again.”

“Yes, master.”

“Better.”

And then he’s pulling the clamps from my nipples, licking and suckling away the pain from the rush of blood. It hurts, but it feels good and everything is starting to register as just
feeling
. I want him to make me feel more.

“Elan, I want you inside me. Please.”

He could slap me again, perhaps a pinch. It’s not my place to make demands. Instead, he stands, strips off his clothes and folds them. I watch him, the flex of his muscles as he performs this simple task and I suddenly want to see him at work so very badly. How ruthless and brutal would he seem hacking and tearing at huge pieces of meat? My great bear of a husband, who can be so gentle as he settles himself between my legs and leans over to ease inside of me.

When he’s sure I can take him easily, the momentary gentleness is over and he ravages me, pounding inside, the motion slamming my abused behind into the bed. With every thrust it hurts anew, the fire set all over again as if he’s striking match after match and using my flesh as tinder.

I clutch at his back, my fingers digging into him. I need so badly to hold onto something and he’s my only shelter in the storm. Soon I’m whimpering because I need yet another release. I believe he’ll fulfill his responsibility and give it to me, urging me with his words.

“Yes, little bird. I want to see you fly.”

I do, my whole body pure sensation as I come apart underneath him. My nails dig into him as he drives his way to his own release, my cries sending him higher until he goes rigid above me and I feel the pulse of his orgasm inside me.

After our breathing returns to an approximation of normal, he rolls off me, nudging my shoulder so he can lie alongside me. He lifts an arm to look at the side of his ribcage and snorts.

“Look what you’ve done to me, you little brute.”

The streaky red marks my nails have left on his skin make me giggle. “It only seems fair after what you’ve done to me, you hulking savage.”

I roll onto my stomach so he can see the marks he made, knowing they’ll darken into bruises over the next few days. For now the livid red welts will please him. I expect him to stroke them, perhaps pinch or tweak them, but instead I hear the grind of a drawer opening and then he’s rubbing a cream onto the marks.

“Arnica,” he replies to my startled noise. I settle into his caretaking, relishing the kindness of the act, soaking up affection where I can get it.

‡

W
e’ve been married
for almost a month so it shouldn’t have surprised me when I woke up eleven days ago to my period starting. But somehow, it had.

I’d stood in the bathroom, wondering what exactly I should say. I had to tell him and the idea was mortifying—
I barely know this man and I have to tell him it’s that time of the month? Ugh
. But not telling him would’ve been so much worse. Then he wouldn’t know to treat me as niddah: no touching, no passing things between us, no seeing those private parts only he’s entitled to.

So I’d done it when we’d passed in the kitchen, him loading his breakfast dishes in the dishwasher before heading off to the shul for morning services and me putting on the kettle for my tea. After our arms nearly brushed, I’d worked up the nerve. “I’m bleeding. You can’t—”

He’d taken a step back from me and I’d felt the disconnect right away. The one bond we’d solidified over the past two weeks broken. And as if the symbolism hadn’t been enough, when I’d come home that night it had been to the one large bed separated into two, divided by our nightstands in the middle.

When I’d been married to Brooks, I’d romanticized the idea of being niddah. A time when husband and wife aren’t permitted to each other. To live with one another, passing by, watching, talking, wanting but not being able to touch. How inflammatory would sex be after you’ve been kept from it for twelve days?

But as some things do, being niddah has turned out to be far less enjoyable than I’d imagined. For me, the past eleven days have been miserable. I hadn’t realized exactly how dependent my relationship with Elan is on kink and sex. Apparently it’s all we have.

Not that he was particularly talkative or affectionate before, but there were always moments of kindness, of intimacy, of connection. Flirtation. Now I don’t have even those to sustain me. Our physical closeness had apparently been greasing the wheels of our otherwise stiff and awkward interactions.

I don’t think it’s my imagination that he’s avoiding me more than usual. Or that I’ve been scolded far more frequently and in a way that’s far from fun. And here we go again.

“You can’t hand me that, Tzipporah.”

My eyes water at the fatigued censure in his voice. Right, yes. I have to put it down before he can pick it up.

“Sorry,” I mutter as I set the glass down on the counter, color high in my cheeks. How long is this going to take me to learn?

“Don’t be sorry. You’ll learn.”

But I am sorry, I’m sorry about all of it. I’m frustrated with myself for not being able to remember all of these things and his annoyance at having to remind me of the rules is clear, which only serves to make me feel worse. I feel like a child. A badly behaved, stupid child. I’ve been on the verge of tears for days and I don’t think I can hold them in for another minute. But I have to. I don’t want him to see me cry, not if he hasn’t beaten the tears out of me.

After a dinner we eat in silence with an empty glass in between our places to remind us of my status, and during which I begin to fear that I’ve made an enormous and humiliating mistake, I excuse myself to my office and take up my phone.

“Bina, can I come over?”

*

When she greets
me at the door, her face folds into deep sympathy. “Oh, Tzipporah, come in, come in.”

She shows me to a small sitting room at the back of the house away from where her husband and half a dozen other men are arguing some finer point of gemora in the living room. When we sit on a small couch together, I start to cry.

Face in my hands, the tears gather in my palms.

“I’m so lonely, Bina. He won’t talk to me. And I screw up all the time. I feel so stupid and he’s so angry at me.”

She pets me as I sob and I bury my head into her shoulder. She smells of blown out candles and cosmetics and it’s so very comforting.

“There,” she says, drawing away to hand me a tissue. “It can’t be as bad as all that.”

“It is,” I insist petulantly. But her steady gaze tells me she’s not entirely buying my story. It is possible I’m being a titch dramatic. “Fine. But it’s pretty bad.”

“Tell me then, now that you’re not in hysterics.”

“He barely says a word to me.”

“Well, Elan’s never been much with words. He can give an excellent dvar torah if he’s called upon but he’s not like them.” She gestures with her chin down the hall, indicating the men’s voices rising over one another, an argumentative mash of Hebrew and English.

“I know but without the—” My mouth snaps shut and my cheeks heat. Bina’s old enough to be my mother and I would
not
talk about this with my mother.

“You can say sex to me. I have eight children and I used to be a kallah teacher you know.” Yes, I know. Her children all live in the neighborhood with children of their own and I know she used to lead the classes for brides-to-be. Regardless, I have to tone down the words.

“Without being together in the bedroom, we don’t have conversation. Except for transactions.
I’ll be home at six. We’re having a meat dinner.
You know. And then he yells at me.”

She raises an eyebrow. “He yells at you?”

I purse my lips, because technically no. Truth be told, I can’t imagine Elan yelling. It would probably shake the earth if he ever really lost his temper. All of Brooklyn would know. “Well, no. But it
feels
like yelling.”

“Is he cruel to you?” The silk trail of her scarves shift as she tips her head, the ends drifting over her shoulder.

Cruel? He doesn’t ridicule me, doesn’t call me names and I can’t let her think anything remotely like that about Elan. He’s a good man, he just—

“No, of course not. It just makes me feel terrible that I can’t please him. And he gets frustrated with me.”