Jeremiah Quick

Chapter 6

She.

Her arms are delicate around my neck, and she smells, oh, of fear, and herself, and half-forgotten desperate clutching, of begging me not to leave… and I forget for a little bit of time why I'm even doing this. I should carry her to the house and remember her properly with the sort of love-making we'd never had a chance to accomplish. Slow and sweet; as gentle as her lips… tender and pretty as her skin… as soft and careful as her hair.

Her breath is warm against my throat, and her lips feather across my skin in an erotic dance that feels like my name.

I raise my eyes to the ceiling, second-guessing myself, until I see the remains of the black scarf tied to the rafters, the one I sawed through with a knife.

And it all rushes back into me, then – how important it is to recognize pain for the character-building exercise it can be, and to know I'm the only one unafraid to teach her, and she is afraid, yes, but still she…

…wants this.

I turn her, bend her over the table again, and push her down, face first, my hand cruel against the faint marks on her back. She's really made much too much of her "beating," and the thought of beating her for real makes me smile. But before that can happen, I'll hold her trust in my hands, have her will aligned with my own, dependent, co-dependent, immersed so far in me that she'll never be a thing apart from me, ever again in her life. Mine, for always.

I speak to her."Forty," and watch the line of her back tense and twitch. And then, lowering my voice, infusing it with kindness, I let her off the hook. "Forty bare-hand to bare-ass smacks," I whisper into her ear, and use my feet to kick her legs apart.

She is silent, rigid, and I suspect furious, as she waits for me to hit her, so I set my hands free to roam over her back, decorating the switch marks with pretty red half-moons that I gouge into her flesh with my fingernails.

The line of her back somehow communicates her anger, her pure defiance.

Oh, really? We get to play this way?

The rush of pleasure I get from this thought curls my lips even more.