I whimpered, wanting it. Wanting him. He moved his mouth to the other nipple. I tried to squeeze him with my thighs but that was pretty much all I could do besides whimper.
Or beg. “Please, oh please, oh please,” is what came out.
He reared up, holding himself on his arms, and thrust himself against the knot, pushing the glass phallus into me. His voice was as deep as I’d ever heard it. “Is that what you want?”
“Fuck, yes, no, I mean…yes.”
He chuckled. “It was a simple question,” he teased, thrusting again. “Was such a complicated answer necessary?”
“Well, it depends what you mean by
that
,” I whined. “I…oh…why won’t you fuck me, James?”
“Mmm, when you beg like that, it nearly makes me give in and do it,” he said.
He pushed in a rhythm that felt so much like sex, and yet not like the mediocre, sometimes painful intercourse I’d had before. It felt like what I’d imagined sex would be like when I was younger. Being overwhelmed, filled up, and ready to burst with my own pleasure. That it took a pound of glass, a hundred feet of rope, and this eccentric man to feel that way? I tried not to think about that. Instead, I pushed back, my hips moving in time with his.
My clit felt raw and exposed against the denim ridge of his fly, but suddenly that was exactly what I wanted, and I sped up a little, rubbing myself against him.
“Uh-uh,” he warned, and pulled back. “Did I give you permission to come?”
“I didn’t come,” I said. “I only wanted to get closer to you.”
He leaned over and kissed my neck, then breathed in my ear. “I’m going to make you wait for it, Karina.”
“Oh!”
“Unless you can come from the thrusts inside you. Turn over, ass in the air.” He pulled back quickly, all the way off the bed to watch me reposition myself. “Move back until your feet are over the edge of the bed.”
He came up behind me and I heard the sound of cloth rustling. He was taking off his shirt. I felt his warm hands on my hips. “Here we go.”
He rubbed himself against the knot, thrusting slowly at first, dragging his bulge up and down. But he quickly moved to a sharper push, one that drove the head of his cock against the base of the dildo, pushing the glass into me again and again.
Deep and heavy and sparking something on every motion. I couldn’t help but push back against it, wanting more, needing that feeling so deep inside me. As he picked up the pace, I could feel my arousal sharpening, focusing, even though my clit was rocking against nothing but the empty air.
“Oh my God,” I heard myself say. “Oh my God, I’m…almost there.”
“Only if you get there before me,” he said through gritted teeth. Then he cried out, an animal bellow, thrusting wildly and his hands jerking me toward him even as he spasmed hard. A second cry followed the first as he held still, pressing hard against me, and then finally one last groan, and the tension left his body limp.
I listened to his rough breathing for long seconds, the music in the background having changed again to something with spacey violins. Then he patted me on the rump and said, “Thank you. I’ll take the glass out now.”
“Must you?” I asked.
“Will you feel terribly unfulfilled without it?”
“Maybe. If I can’t have
you
…”
“I promise you, dear Karina, that if you let me, I’ll place many more things into your body that will bring you pleasure in the future. My cock included.” He tugged a bit on the ropes, moving them aside, and drew the dildo out of me.
I let out a long sound as he did, a cry of longing. He kissed me on the hair, patted my back, and told me to turn over again. I shifted, the ropes still tethering my wrists to my ankles, as I moved onto my back.
He lay beside me, and I turned my head to take in the sight of his bare chest, glowing with a slight sheen of sweat from his exertions. I wanted to lick the sweat from the sculpted planes of his torso. There was a sodden spot on his jeans, but he ignored it. He held up a few feet of the silky black rope. “Your clit seemed to like the friction of cloth. Let’s see how it does with this.”
I let my legs fall all the way open, the bottoms of my feet touching and my wrists at my sides. He suckled one of my nipples and I pressed toward him, eager for more.
He drew back to watch my reaction as he tossed the rope down by my feet and then began to drag it slowly upward, touching my clit the entire time. So slowly, a fraction of an inch every second, his hand climbing up my body and then past my lips, my forehead. I kissed the rope as it went by, and it was damp from my juices.
Then the knot on the end jolted me as it grazed over my clit. He kissed me and it felt like a reward. His lips looked as deliciously swollen as mine felt.
And then he repeated the traverse of the rope again, the length traveling up the center of my body, a constant source of friction right where I was most sensitive. He massaged my clit a little with his knuckle and I ground against him, groaning with need, until he quieted me with a look and began another slow, upward journey of the rope over my nerve endings. By the time it had gone all the way up my body a third time, I was panting and short of breath, which made the kiss at the end heady and dizzying.
“I have something even better than rope for this,” he murmured, and climbed off the bed. When he returned, he held whatever it was where I couldn’t see it. He nestled close, his body touching mine along my side. I felt something cold and smooth touch my thigh lightly; then he laid something long and cool along my clit and down the center of my labia where the rope had been. What was it?
He drew it up my body like he had the rope, and I felt smooth nub after smooth nub bump over my clit. I thrust my hips up, trying to get more friction, but instead of friction this new toy tweaked my nerve endings in an even more delicious way.
His hand slid low again, one finger massaging my clit for a moment before he once again dragged whatever it was—a string of beads?—upward.
I was trembling by the time he had finished. “What is that?” I asked, breathless. “Can I see?”
“Can you guess what it is?”
“It feels like a string of beads,” I said. “Glass beads?”
“A good guess,” he said with a pleased smirk. “You know me well, but no, sweetness, it’s a string of pearls. A very long string of pearls.” He began the next pass, dragging them through my juices and over the center of my pleasure.
And again. And again. After the seventh or eighth time I lost count, and by then I was letting out a series of whimpers and moans as the pearls climbed. It was too much and not enough at the same time. I tried to close my legs reflexively and he trapped one knee under his own and spanked me on the cunt, making me squeal.
“Lie still,” he whispered. “You seem to enjoy a very light touch, Karina. Would you like me to try something even lighter?”
“Yes, please,” I whispered, forcing myself to relax.
He kissed my cheek, climbed off the bed, and came back with something I didn’t expect. A paint brush, the artist’s kind, not the kind you paint a house with.
He settled at the foot of the bed, and I felt the bristles tickle at the opening of my vagina. He wet the brush with my juices and then, very gently, painted a swipe on my clit.
I made a noise of surprise. I barely felt it and yet the sensation made my arousal jump.
He did it again, lightly brushing around my vagina, and then crisscrossing my clit with the barely there bristles. “What do you suppose went through the painter’s mind when he painted King Cophetua?” he asked casually, as if he were painting my toenails and not my most intimate place.
“I…well…” I couldn’t form a coherent sentence.
“You and Martindale both believe the painting borders on the pornographic. Do you suppose Burne-Jones was aroused while painting?”
“I…I’m sure he was.”
“Indeed? What do you suppose turned him on so much that he created such a masterpiece?”
“The…the idea…” He was flicking the brush back and forth now, up and down, a moth wing making me so very, very close and yet still not enough. “The idea that the beggar maid was so available to him. Naked, the king falls for her.”
“Helplessly in love, one might say?”
“Yes.”
“But then he exalts her?”
“Yes. He has to. Because if he truly loves her and doesn’t view her as gutter trash that he can fuck and discard, he has to.”
“Fascinating. And you think Burne-Jones was aroused by this idea? The idea that a highborn man could pick a naked peon from the gutter and not just fuck her but also have such feelings for her that he puts her on a pedestal? Do you suppose the artist fucked the model he had sit for the portrait of the beggar maid?”
“Maybe.” The idea was a heady one, that Burne-Jones might have been embodying his own lusts and perversions into that piece of great art. “One of his models was his mistress. But not that one. I wonder…?” Was the woman in King Cophetua someone he lusted after but could never have?
“Yes, one has to wonder,” he said, and I felt his other hand tug at the ropes, spreading me even wider. “Come for me now, Karina.”
“Now?”
“Now, before I rescind the offer.”
I cried out then as he switched the flutter of the brush from up and down to side to side, and it was somehow, inexplicably, just enough to trigger my climax. That should have been even less stimulation, but maybe that was the secret, as my body seemed to reach for the orgasm, needing it so much after the entire long afternoon of the teasing, the shaving, the glass, the conversation, and the bondage. I started screaming before I was even there, and it was as if I willed myself over the edge, screaming even more as I took the plunge into a long, slow-motion explosion. I felt it all the way to my fingers and toes, the sensation taking its time to flood me so fully that it reached my extremities.
And then, as it was tapering off, he slid the glass inside of me, and this time the explosion came in real time, another orgasm blasting through me, and then a third as he jiggled the glass inside me with his hand in a wholly unfamiliar but incredible sensation.
When he pulled the glass free, I was too spent to protest. He pressed a gentle kiss against my ravaged clit. “I’ll free you in a moment,” he said, then draped the pearls across my body and climbed off the bed.
H
e returned with a warm, wet cloth and a dry towel and tended to me gently, without removing the ropes. Then he began to let them go, loosening the ones around my hips first. That allowed him to wipe me down completely between my legs, and then he kissed my shaven mound reverently before folding one of my knees over to touch the other, like closing the covers of a book.
“You are a gorgeous tangle of rope and limbs,” he said, framing the imaginary shot with finger Ls.
“Take a picture,” I said, too spent to do anything but smirk.
“Are you serious?”
“I am. I mean, not a dirty one. You know.”
He chuckled and retrieved his phone from the parlor. His fingers brushed softly at my hair, hiding my face, and then he snapped the photo. “There. And I’ve texted it to you.”
I heard the chime of the new phone. “Is that for me to keep?”
“The photograph?” he asked as he sat on the edge of the bed.
“The phone, silly.”
“Ah. Didn’t you say you wanted to get rid of your piece-of-junk phone?” He grinned. “It’s all yours…if you’ll answer it when I call.”
I raised my head to look at him, shaking the hair from my eyes. “Why wouldn’t I answer it?”
He picked up the pearls and set them aside, then rubbed my calf tenderly. “I didn’t say it would be a difficult price to pay, necessarily.”
“We have a deal, then.” I giggled suddenly as he touched a ticklish place on my leg.
He grinned but laid his hand, firm and warm, over the spot. “Did you enjoy your shopping trip?”
“Yes, definitely,” I said, lots of questions fluttering up in my mind, about Mandinka, Stefan, money, and nicknames. “Why did you leave the envelope made out to ‘Ashley’ instead of ‘Karina’? Even Mandinka had ‘Ashley’ in her appointment book.”
His other hand joined the first, kneading and massaging my leg. “I wasn’t sure if you would want your real name being used.”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“In case you were embarrassed about something, or changed your mind, or some other privacy concern came up,” he said, very nonchalant. “You never know. Maybe you have a cousin I don’t know about who works at that store, and if she saw your name you’d have to answer a lot of nosy questions. Using a name that only you and I know protects you from anything like that. It makes it your choice whether to tell people or not.”
“You did it to protect me.” I suddenly wondered what name he had made the reservation at the restaurant in. Did he use an alias for that? He must have.
“Yes. Now tell me about this dress you bought. I admit I wasn’t expecting that.” He moved his hands to my wrist, massaging it gently where the ropes had been.
“What were you expecting? Wasn’t the whole point that you’d find out what I picked?”
He chuckled. “True. You’re right.”
“And you said in the note to get something I wouldn’t usually buy for myself.”
“But you like the dress? You didn’t buy it because you thought I would like it?”
I raised my head to look at his face. “I don’t know what came over me. I just fell in love as soon as I saw it.”
He smiled. “Good. I was going to ask why you picked it, but it sounds like you didn’t think it over very much.”
I rested my head again as he switched to my other wrist. “No, I didn’t think at all. Though thinking about it now, I guess I kind of had Cinderella on my mind.”
“Did you?”
“Yes. My roommate was telling me the horror story of her high school prom, plus I told you my fantasy, and talking about that painting, which keeps coming up.” Even after I’d bought the dress. “Hmm, I just thought of something—there’s a bit about anonymity and names in Cinderella, too. In the story, she knows who the prince is, but he doesn’t know who she is.”
“Yet he falls for her anyway,” James said, lifting my hand to his mouth and kissing the underside of my wrist. “The version of the story I know is it’s something like her pureness of heart that captivates him.”
“Well, of course, she wasn’t part of his world of royalty, which you figure was all politics and the backbiting of the court, right? It was the kind of place where the wicked stepmother would cut off her own daughters’ feet for a chance at it. And she came from outside all that.”
“You have a point,” he said. I hadn’t been intending it as a big metaphor for him and me, but, well, I was the one from outside his world. He drew a deep breath and said, “Let me ask you something.”
My ears pricked up at that. Anyone else saying it wouldn’t have caught my attention so much, but as I was learning, he took issues of permission and boundaries quite seriously. “What is it?”
“Would you say you have an exhibitionist streak?”
“Come up here if you’re going to ask me questions like that.” I have no idea where I got the guts to be that sassy. When a man tells you you’re gorgeous and looks at you all misty-eyed, though, it’s probably a help.
“All right.” He shifted to sit closer to the headboard, where he could comb the hair back from my face with his fingertips. “Well?”
“Well, what?”
He grinned as his hand slid behind my neck and gripped not forcefully but firmly. “Would you say you have an exhibitionist streak?”
“If you asked me that a few weeks ago, I would have said no. Now I’m not so sure.”
His thumb caressed the soft spot under my ear as he listened. In the dim light, his eyes looked dark amber.
“There’s something very exciting about the possibility of being seen. Or heard. Doesn’t everyone feel that way?”
“Perhaps.”
“And then there’s being seen, but people not knowing what they’re seeing.” Like in the restaurant. “When people say
exhibitionism
, don’t they usually mean being seen?”
He bent a little closer. “How would you feel about that? Actually being seen?”
I felt a thrill run through me, and the spot between my legs began to warm, even though I was spent. “It might depend,” I said. “I wouldn’t want people on the street to recognize me, you know?”
He nodded slowly. “You wouldn’t want someone who saw you exhibit yourself to walk into the bar and leer at you when you were at work, for example.”
“Exactly.”
“So, imagine this, exhibiting your body but not your face.”
“It might depend on who was doing the looking but…well, if there’s really no chance of anyone seeing my face, then maybe it doesn’t depend on who’s looking.” I caught hold of his hand with mine suddenly. “You’d be there, right?”
“Of course.” He touched his forehead to mine lovingly. “You’re leaping ahead a bit, but I would never put you on display without watching you carefully. Besides, I wouldn’t want to miss a moment.”
“Then the answer to your question is yes, I have developed an exhibitionist streak, but only for you. I have no interest in doing it for the general thrill.” I turned one finger in a sarcastic “whoop whoop” gesture.
He kissed the spot where our foreheads had touched. “You’re excellent. And I’m a mess. I’m going to get in the shower.”
He drew away as if to leave me lying there, but I kept hold of his hand. “Am I excellent enough to, um…to…”
There was that eyebrow again, exhorting me to finish my damn sentence.
“To wash you the way you washed me?” I finished with a slight squeak.
He took my other hand and pulled me to my feet, coils of loose ropes pooling around my ankles. “Yes,” he said simply. He fastened the pearls around my neck, the long strand hanging low between my breasts, and led me into the bathroom.
The bathroom attached to the suite wasn’t huge, but it was lavish, with marble everywhere. The shower was a large, glassed-in stall with ample room for two.
I faced him, standing on the soft, thick bath mat, and had an idea. I put my hands at the button of his jeans. “If the king would allow this beggar maid?” I said as I sank to my knees.
His voice came out a bit breathless. “Of course.”
I wasn’t quite as deft at getting his fly open as I would have liked, but it was good enough. As I eased his jeans off his sharp hips, I could see the tremendous wet spot in his shorts. He wore dark blue briefs, somewhat silky. I lowered the briefs to his ankles, keeping my eyes down as I helped him step out of his clothes. His feet were more slender than I expected, and on a whim I bent down and kissed them.
His breath caught. I kissed one, planting a short line of kisses from his toes toward his ankle, and then went down the other instep from ankle to toes.
I raised my head slowly then, letting my eyes travel up his legs to his…and then
my
breath caught. He was rampant, his cock jutting out from his pubic hair. Having his feet kissed aroused him that much? I looked up at him as I pressed one almost-chaste peck on the tip of it and saw that he was biting his lip.
“Stay here,” I said, and went to the sink to soak a washcloth with warm water. I watched him in the mirror as I did, and he watched me the same way.
When I returned to kneel at his feet again, he was no longer chewing his lip, but his eyes were dark with lust.
I bent to my task, sopping and wiping the come from his pubic hair and gently washing his balls before turning my attention to the shaft. I got a second cloth to do the shaft and head.
His entire body was long and muscled like a dancer’s, matching the impressive length of his cock, every inch of him sculpted and firm. I squeezed the washcloth, dribbling warm water over the shaft, then set to trying to scrub it gently. I worried I was being too rough, but every time I glanced up, he was looking down intently.
Until the time I looked up and saw he had closed his eyes. He reached out a hand and steadied himself against the tiled wall. I took that as a sign to keep going.
You’ve heard that expression “to have someone by the short and curlies”? I’d always pictured it as one person having grabbed a fistful. But now I wondered. I was the one on my knees. I was the one who had been tied up. He was the one in charge.
Yet right now, I had him, literally, by the short and curlies. He was clean now, and my attentions continued for the sheer pleasure of it. I loved seeing him so captured.
I had a feeling that if I sucked him into my mouth right now, I might get him to give in. And then I thought about what Stefan had said and wondered if that was what I actually wanted. Would that be the final move? I wasn’t ready for this game to end.
I patted him dry with a towel and kissed his balls the way he had kissed me when he’d untied me. Then I sat back on my heels. “I hope the king is pleased with his maid.”
His eyes fluttered open and he took a deep breath, but didn’t seem ready to speak.
I decided I had to let him make the next move, if there was going to be one. That was how this dance went, how this game was played. “Is there anything else I can do for…” What were the right words? Your Majesty? Your Highness? It turned out I couldn’t say either with a straight face and I had to try to hide a laugh, which of course failed completely and made him laugh, too.
He pulled me up into a kiss, chuckling against my mouth. “Ha, Your
Majesty
.” He released me with a light swat upon my shoulder. “Isn’t it about time for your check-in?”
“Is it?”
“I think so. And I have another appointment.”
“On a Saturday night?” I squeaked out before I realized I sounded jealous.
“I assure you, sweetness, it will be a far more tiresome meeting than ours was.” He pulled me close again and planted a kiss on the top of my hair. “Now, enough. Go tell your friend all is well.”
As I went back into the bedroom, I heard the sound of the shower turning on.
I found my old phone and sure enough, it was almost eight-thirty. I called Becky.
“Wow, you were serious about calling me,” she said. I could hear music in the background, one of the Lord Lightning songs she played often.
“Are you at home?”
“Yeah. How was it?”
“Awesome. Oh my God, I really mean that.”
“Really?”
“Really. And now he’s in the shower and I guess I’m about to head back downtown.”
“Well, good, then you can tell me all about it when you get home.”
“What’s to tell?”
“You just said it was awesome! Are you really going to leave me hanging with no details at all? Rina, that’s so unfair.”
“Well, you know, the details are kind of intimate.”
She made an exasperated noise. “Seriously, Karina, how am I supposed to live vicariously through you if you won’t give me the details?”
That made me laugh, but then I said, “Wait. Are you joking or serious?”
“Both. See you at home.”
She was crazy, but I was really starting to like her as a friend, not just a roommate.
I looked up to see him toweling his hair in the doorway of the bathroom. He was wearing a bathrobe with the hotel’s crest embroidered on it.
“That was quick,” I said.
“Years of practice. I might be close to the Guinness World Record for fastest shower, in fact,” he joked. He hung the towel over his neck and gestured toward the shower. “Your turn?”
“Probably a good idea.” I went up to him and ran my hands up and down the softness of the luxurious robe covering his chest. “You’ll be gone by the time I get out, won’t you,” I said, making my guess a statement, not a question.
“You’re learning my ways,” he said, and pressed a kiss to my head. “Feel free to order room service if you’re hungry.”
“I doubt I will. No matter how good the food is, it’s not much fun to eat alone.”
“Well, the offer is there, in case you get hungry. Oh, and here’s the number to summon Stefan to take you back downtown.” He moved past me and picked up his phone, which was the twin of the one he had given me. A few moments later I heard it chime.
“Thank you,” I said. “Stefan won’t be busy with you?”
“He’ll be available shortly.” He pulled open the closet door and I saw he had a clean shirt and a suit hanging there.
I turned to go into the bathroom, but he stopped me with my name.
“Karina. One more thing. What are you doing Friday?”
“Nothing right now, why?”
“There is…a private gallery show. Modern art. Your presence would enliven things considerably.”