Playing Knotty (4 page)

Oh, shit, was this what happened at these “events” in which he'd taken part? Emma studied the models in their elaborate suspension riggings, scrolling down the page. Both men and women were suspended in these pictures in various states of undress. What would it feel like to be bound like that, observed by everyone, just a body and a face and nothing more? A vehicle for displaying Ian's handiwork?

Shifting in her chair, Emma felt the slick slide of her arousal and pressed her legs tightly together. It was seriously fucked up that she was getting this turned on in Starbucks. She should close the computer. She should finish her scone and her coffee and leave. Under no circumstances should she click on the last page of the photo gallery.

Even though she was already doing so.

Of course people used bondage for sex. She wasn't naive. Ian wasn't teaching these workshops for theoretical applications. But when clicking through to that last page, she hadn't expected to be confronted with it directly.

The first picture on the page was a woman bound in midair, her legs impossibly spread, her entire body wrapped in intricate loops like a rope harness. A naked man stood between her legs, his hands holding her hips flush against him. The woman's head was tilted backward, lips parted, face contorted in the throes of ecstasy.

Emma felt the air leave her lungs in a sharp exhale, hot all over and more turned on than she'd been in weeks, maybe months, imagining the press of ropes against her skin. She'd never wanted this before, never even thought about it. Staring at that picture, though, she wanted to be that woman, held helpless and bound at the mercy of her partner. Her eyes slid down the page, taking in the same couple in a variety of positions, the man always thrusting deep inside her or fingering her or, for one photo, with his mouth between her legs.

Emma slammed the laptop screen closed so hard she might have damaged it. The noise made two people nearby look up from their work, eyes curious, wondering what had so upset the red-faced woman in the corner. Emma finished her scone in two bites and downed the rest of her mocha. Putting her laptop back in the bag was difficult with her hands trembling so much, and fuck, she needed to get back to her apartment
rightthisveryminute
and get her hands on herself.

Chapter 5

W
hen Brent finally
rolled in to Sulli's bar, Ian was halfway through a glass of Sam Adams, and the bartender was just setting a plate of mozzarella sticks in front of him.

“Oh, mozzarella sticks. Fuck yeah.” Brent slid onto his bar stool and grabbed a cheese stick off Ian's plate, then gestured to the bartender that he'd take the same drink as Ian. “Sorry I'm late.”

“You're always late.” Ian took a cheese stick of his own. “Don't you own a watch?”

“It's the T. The Green Line fucking stopped at every single crossing.” Brent shifted on his stool and took a bite of the mozzarella stick, breathing openmouthed when he realized it was piping hot. How this man kept a wife with manners like that, Ian would never know. To make matters worse, Brent began to talk without closing his mouth all the way, trying to cool off the cheese. The resulting garble was unintelligible.

“Chew first, dude.”

The bartender slid Brent's beer over, and he took a gulp to cool his mouth before trying to speak again. “I said, what's with the sudden ‘Hey, Brent, let's go out for drinks right now' call? You want to talk about your feelings?”

“Fuck you.” Ian smiled into his beer. “I need a sounding board.”

Brent shrugged. “All right.” For all his questionable table manners, Ian knew his longtime friend was a good listener. Maybe that was why Missy had married him. And he wasn't an unattractive guy; yeah, his hair was a little shaggy, but he had a stocky wrestler's build that made him look like he could fuck anyone up if he wanted to, and girls had always seemed to like him, even in high school, when they were both geeky.

Ian swirled the beer in his glass, watching the foam cling to the inside rim and then slide down in long filmy sheets. “So, you remember Emma Green?”

Brent's face was blank as he filed back through his past. Ian knew it wouldn't take him long; Brent's memory was impeccable, Mensa-caliber, probably. That quality could be infuriating in their friendship, since Ian could never win an argument that relied on facts or figures; but it also was comforting to know that whenever he couldn't remember the name of the actor in the movie they were watching, or which T stop was closest to their destination, Brent would. “Emma Green from high school? Sure. You said she runs that bookstore right off Beacon Street.”

“Prologue. Right.” Ian scratched the day's growth of light brown stubble on his chin and jaw. He never shaved on weekends. “Anyway, I went over to her apartment yesterday.”

“Oh. You dating her?” Brent examined his beer glass. “Sam Adams says these glasses are shaped special to release the aroma of the hops, but I'm not sure I believe it.”

Ian ignored the comment, one of Brent's regular pointless factoids. “No, we're not dating. I stop in there every so often when I need a book.”

“Never been in there.” Brent ate another of Ian's mozzarella sticks. “You had the hots for her back in high school, right?”

Brent had a way of cutting right to the point. Ian finished his beer with a long swig. “Yeah. But I had the hots for anybody who'd have me.”

Brent studied him. “I remember it a bit differently. I definitely heard more about Emma than I did about any of the other girls you never asked out. If you'd been the type to draw hearts on your notebooks, you'd have drawn hearts on your notebook.”

Ian rolled his eyes, even though the statement was more accurate than he wanted to admit.

“So why were you at her apartment?”

“I'm going to teach a class in her back room.”

Brent looked sideways at him. “Is that some kind of perverted euphemism?”

Ian laughed. “No. I mean literally. She's got this great back room in her shop, and I'm going to rent it for a workshop in a couple of weeks.”

“That's cool, I guess. Does she know what it's for?”

“Yeah, I told her.”

“And how did she react?” Brent ate the last of Ian's mozzarella sticks and washed it down with some of his beer.

“She . . .” Ian paused, thinking. “I don't know. I'm not sure? Like, I think she was nervous, but I don't know if it was good nervous or bad nervous.”

“So, what. You're wondering if you've got a chance with her?” Brent rested his elbows on the bar and looked up at the television mounted over the shelves of bottles, momentarily distracted by the Red Sox game.

Ian didn't wait for him to look back over. “Maybe.”

“Just ask her.”

“It's not that simple.” Ian rubbed his thumb over the swell of the glass, drawing a path through the condensation. “I guess I want to know if she'd be into it. It's been a while since I dated a girl I didn't meet through FetLife.”

Brent snorted. “It's been a while since you've dated a girl, period.”

“Shut up, asshat, I'm serious. I've been doing these rope classes for so long that I forget it's not normal to most people.”

Brent shrugged. “I don't know, man. I'm not sure what you want me to tell you. If you want her to come, ask her to come. The worst she can say is no, right?”

“Yeah, maybe you're right.” It still seemed strange to take relationship advice from Brent, but the man had a stable marriage, which was a fair accomplishment. Ian gestured for a refill on his beer. “Maybe I'll wait until after this first workshop.”

“Don't be a pussy.”

“Fuck you,” Ian said without malice. “So how's Missy?”

“Good. Craving all kinds of weird shit, though. I guess that's normal.” Brent shrugged. “She told me if I was coming here that I better come back with Sulli's fried pickles and pretzel plate or I shouldn't bother coming back at all.”

“When's she due again?”

“June thirtieth. Ten weeks left. I can't believe I'm gonna be a dad.” Brent smiled, his lips curling only a bit, as he stared down into his empty beer glass.

Ian clapped his friend on the back. “Don't drop the kid when it's born.”

“I know, asshole.” Brent leaned back on the stool, drumming his fingers on the bar top. He seemed to understand Ian's silence. “Just ask her to come to the workshop.”

“Yeah. Maybe.” Ian watched the Red Sox score against Baltimore, knowing there was no way he would listen to Brent's advice. “Maybe.”

Chapter 6

A
s it turned out,
there were entire websites dedicated to recipes you could make with ramen, but this particular concoction was not one of the better ones. Emma poked at the noodles with one chopstick. She should've known better than to trust any recipe that used so much cilantro; in large quantities, the stuff tasted like soap. Resigning herself to the inadequate dinner in front of her, she had just taken a huge mouthful of noodles when the phone rang. She chewed hastily, hot soup splattering her chin and the front of her shirt as the noodle ends flopped back into the bowl. Ugh.

The caller ID told her it was Ian. She felt her stomach twist, and not from the excess of cilantro. They hadn't spoken since he'd visited her apartment a few days earlier. Since she'd looked up his website, gotten all turned on, and masturbated to thoughts of bondage porn. Well, bondage porn and . . . him.

“Hi, Ian.” She set the bowl of noodles down on the coffee table in front of her, then shooed Miranda away from it with one slippered foot while leaning back on the couch. Hopefully she sounded normal and not all fluttery.

“Hi, Emma.” Had his voice always been that deep? She hadn't noticed it before. Hadn't thought of Ian like that at all, actually, until imagining rope and his hands and all sorts of naughty new territory. Now just listening to him say her name on the phone made her skin feel hot and tight. “I was calling to see if the evening of the twenty-fifth would work to host my class.”

Emma walked over to her wall calendar with the chickens on it. “That Sunday? Yeah, I can do that. The store closes at six, and it usually takes me until around six-thirty to close everything up.”

“I'd be starting the workshop at seven. That would give me some time to set up.”

What did setup usually consist of ? “Um . . . do you need supplies?” She sat back down on the couch and reclined, resting her feet on the opposite armrest.

“No, just a place for people to sit. How many chairs do you have, so I know how many to bring?”

Emma counted in her head. “I have six or seven in the back room.”

“Okay, I'll bring the rest. I need fourteen.”

Emma tried to imagine what this whole scenario was like but came up empty. “So how does the whole thing work? How do you advertise?”

“Mostly through FetLife and some kink newsletters.”

Emma filed the name “FetLife” away for future reference. It was probably not something she would want to be searching on the Starbucks Wi-Fi, though. With Ian on the phone and not right in front of her, it was easy to let the next question slip out. “And what . . . happens at one of these workshops?”

The silence that followed her question made her wish she hadn't asked, but she had to know. It was professional curiosity, she told herself. As the owner of the establishment housing the workshop, she needed to be informed and aware of what was going on in her own back room. It had nothing to do with the fact that her body was tingling just from thinking about what Ian might answer.

“Well,” he began, “I usually open the event up to six or seven couples. This is a beginner class, so I don't take things very far. Basic ties and knots. I bring a model with me to demonstrate on, and the guests get to practice on their partners.”

“Oh.” The word came out more breathy than Emma had intended, and her heartbeat was racing as if she'd been trying to catch a bus. “You, um, have a model?”

“A bondage model, yes. I usually ask someone from my local FetLife group. My friend Lizzy helped me out last month and said she'd do this one, too.”

“Oh. That's good. It's nice that she'd do that.” Emma cringed. She sounded completely stupid. When had she started getting nervous talking to Ian? Probably when she'd started masturbating to thoughts of him.

“I pay her. It's not like she has to take her clothes off for these workshops. It's a pretty easy gig. She just sits there and lets me . . . tie her up.”

Emma pressed her lips together to keep from making a noise; the whimper that had risen in the back of her throat at that idea was completely shameless. She realized her hand was resting right inside the waistband of her pajama pants and underwear, fingertips teasing against the soft curls. Oh, fuck, what was she doing? This was . . . out of control. Completely inexcusable. They were having a normal conversation, for crying out loud.

“Oh,” she managed after far too long a period of silence. She could faintly hear him breathing, and she slid her hand down an inch lower, brushing lightly at the V of her thighs, heart positively racing. This was not something she did. It was crossing a line, more than one line, probably, but with a fingertip teasing her clit, she couldn't bring herself to care.

“Now, the advanced classes are different.” Ian's voice might have been lower, or she might have been imagining it. “In those classes, I handle all kinds of elaborate ties. Sometimes my model needs to take some of her clothes off.”

“Yes, I saw. I . . . went to your website.” The sentence slipped out in breathy confession, her finger rubbing more deliberately, and fuck it all if this wasn't the hottest thing she'd done in distant memory. “To see what you do. What to expect. At . . . at my shop.”

She heard him breathe in, a faint inhale that was a touch louder than normal. “And what did you think?”

“I think . . . it seems like . . .” Emma couldn't seem to find the right words; she eased off of her clit, hovering too close to climax, body tensing and searching for release. “The people participating really seem to enjoy it.”

“Yes, they do.”

Was Emma supposed to say something else? She wanted to keep touching herself, but if she did, she was going to come with him on the phone, and there was no way she could hide that. It had been so long since she'd felt like this, her body loose and quivery and sensitized, hips rolling ever so slightly, seeking contact. The silence stretched on, but then Ian broke it, his voice quiet.

“And did
you
enjoy it?”

Emma barely managed not to moan, because that question was in no way innocuous. He was flirting with her. Oh, God, did he know what she was doing, fingers pressed between her legs? She closed her eyes and tried to keep her voice steady while her heart hammered against her ribs. “It was unique.”

It wasn't an answer, and he knew it, but he didn't push her any further. “You can come to the workshop, if you want.”

“Maybe. We'll . . . we'll see.” She rubbed again, barely enough to tease, fingers sliding slick between her folds.

“All right.”

Emma needed him off the phone right then. “I'll see you in a couple of weeks, then. The twenty-fifth.”

Ian didn't say anything for a moment. Had he hung up? Was he not expecting the dismissal? Did he think this conversation was going to continue? “Right. I'll . . . see you then, Emma.”

Emma barely managed to hang up before she was rubbing hard against her clit and coming, a tumbling flood of sensation and pleasure that made her arch her back and cry out into the emptiness of her apartment.

Collapsing back onto the couch, she took a moment to gather herself before the feelings of guilt washed over her. What if he knew?

The embarrassment still fresh, now mixed with sleepy post-orgasmic lassitude, Emma got up to microwave her soup that had gone cold.