Page 148 of For Real

“So…I thought you could maybe stand at the bottom of the bed and hold on to the frame?”

He hesitates. Always, he hesitates. And then he nods and obeys, stretching himself between the bedposts like Samson.

He looks…perfect. I spend a minute just kind of climbing him with my eyes, up his calves and thighs, knotty muscles and rough dark hair, over his gorgeous, gorgeous arse, which is kind of this smooth, gleaming curve, and then there’s his back, which is all these stark and powerful, pristine planes…and also sort of towering above me.

Shit. All my walls and pillows have been basically me-height. Shit.

I’m an idiot.

“So…” I try to keep my voice exactly the same as it was the first time. “I thought you could maybe kneel at the bottom of the bed and hold on to the frame.”

I can’t see his face, but somehow I know he’s trying not to smile. Something to do with the pull of his shoulders, I think. And I’m smiling too, even though he can’t see that either.

He goes to his knees in that graceful way of his, like he belongs on them, just while we’re like this, and I crouch next to him, and fasten the cuffs on his wrists. I make a bit of a ceremony of it because I…can, I guess, stroking my thumbs over the skin first, kissing the long vein. It makes him shiver, just these small touches, and the leather closing round him.

I do the other side and clip the cuffs to the hooks set into the bed frame—and there he is with his arms outstretched, all sacrificial and magnificent and so clearly turned on by it. I slip my hand between his legs and idly palm his cock, forcing a little moan out of him.

Then I let him go, and that’s a kind of power too, all the ways—and things—I can make him want. It’s like love, this power—surprising, endless, warm. It makes me dizzy and soft inside. (Not outside, obviously. Outside, it does the exact opposite.)5

Cock first, I head back to the chest of drawers. I don’t know if this is normal, but Laurie keeps his ties in there, all snarled up together with his socks. I thought you were supposed to have a special rack or something, but Laurie’s ties are crap anyway. They’re mainly blue and grey and crumply; ties that say, I’m only wearing this because it’s, like, required by my job or whatever, and given the choice I’d rather be naked at my boyfriend’s feet. Err, well, maybe not the second bit. I’m looking for the one he was wearing the night I forced myself back into his life and he…with his tongue. God, even thinking about it makes me all hot and embarrassed and fucking thrilled.

Anyway, I can’t find it because all his ties suck, so I just grab one and go back to him. He tilts his head back, just a little bit, to help me slip it over his eyes. I like his hesitations and his struggles, but I like this too—this trust that’s effortless sometimes. Surrender that slips through him like light. He gives this soft, soft sigh as the darkness takes him, and he bows his head.6

I put my palm flat against the space between his shoulders, feeling the heat of him, the strength, the way those big muscles are held wide for me. He’s not tense, but he’s not relaxed either—it’s something else, something more like readiness, or openness, as if his body is a door to some deep, lonely part of me, which I guess is whatever it is in me that wants to cause pain to the man I love.

Except with Laurie, I don’t even have to give myself the side-eye. He understands and makes it okay.

He makes what I have to give beautiful.

I pick up the deerskin flogger and dance the tips of the falls over his shoulders. It’s a caress, pure and simple, a kiss from closed lips. I don’t even have to think about it much. I know where the tails are going to go and they do. My hands are a bit sweaty, but they’re steady, and I’m not afraid. He trusts me, so I trust me.

The thing that kind of shakes me a bit is not so much what I’m doing—or the ways I could fuck it up—but all possibilities of it and in it. Like when his body is stretched out over me or under me and the ways of touching each other are…forever. This is the same, except I’ve got a flogger to be my hands and my teeth. I keep my wrist loose and twirl the thing a few times, just getting sure of myself. And then I–I…do it. I hit him. I hit a person. I hit…Laurie. Gently, because we’re warming up, but I’m still hitting him, over and over again with these underarm strokes that fan the tails across his back as they fall.7

And it’s weird because it doesn’t feel wrong at all. It feels…amazing. I kind of live in those strokes, in the rhythms of them, and the soft sound of leather against skin. It’s its own universe somehow, this cycle of reaction, reaction, reaction, him and me, flogger and him, flogger and me, all connected. The best thing, though, is when the falls land, the impact travels all the way from his body to mine, through the leather, then the handle, through my arm and to my heart. We’re so…together.

At first I don’t think I’m really doing anything, but then these pinkish lines rise to the surface of his skin, and then they stop fading away, and then his whole upper back is flushed. And, okay, it’s not a big deal, but I did that. I put myself all over him, and I’m there in all that warmed skin.

And I want…to do it more.

“How… What’s it like?” I ask.

Because I want to know everything. I want to touch him in all the ways.

“Warm.” His voice is rough but intent somehow. “You.”

Not exactly coherent, but it’s all the answer I need.

I switch to figure eights. Even with one hand, I’m not as good as Robert, but there’s still a rhythm here—two firm strikes, one left, one right—and the moment the first one lands with this glorious smack, Laurie chokes out this sound of pure, ragged longing. And fuck, I just love his noises. I think it’s because he’s a quiet man, really. Not like in the obvious way of not speaking much, or speaking softly, but in the way he is. All these still places in his soul that he disturbs for me.

When we’re together, I collect his groans and whimpers, his muffled cries and the ones he can’t muffle. I fucking cherish them. This is all new, though, the way he is beneath my flogger, and that first little noise he makes is like the first time he put his mouth on my cock. Leaves me full of this sweet, shuddery joy and something darker, something that wants to make him struggle and hurt and yield.

I hit him harder, the same spots, over and over again, putting my arm into the blows as well as my wrist, until the flush deepens, gleaming under a patina of gathering sweat. I’m sweating too, and my breath is coming a bit hard. It’s partly excitement and partly that this is…demanding, in the same way sex is demanding: blunt physical effort muddled up with pleasure and intimacy and the closeness of being against and inside someone, of sharing something.

Laurie murmurs a sound like yes.

My confidence is flying with the tails now, so I can sort of vary what I’m doing. I’ve been performing my steps like a dancer—to a pattern—but now I guess I’m free-forming. I nestle my harder blows in with softer ones, claiming all that gorgeous expanse of glowing skin in all the ways I can throw a flogger. I jolt him sometimes with the force behind my strikes, but he doesn’t try to twist away from them. Just gives me some naked sounds—a little bit shocked, a little bit hurt, a little bit blissful—and takes the next one. And the next.

His breathing is edged with groans when I stop and swap to the horsehair thing. Its lightness is kind of a surprise, as I swing my whole arm in a circle above my head, keeping the tails from wrapping round the handle. And then I throw the tips against his back with all my strength and anything gravity can give me.

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