Knowing the Ropes (14 page)

She took a deep breath and picked up the phone.

And as soon as she heard Nick’s voice, she knew everything was going to be all right.

The combination of heat, tenderness and command in his voice when he said, “Hello, Selene. Are you naked like I told you to be?” drove all the stupid fears and worries out of her brain.

And replaced them with a different, albeit more fun, one.

In the flurry of getting home, getting her laundry together, finding quarters and her detergent and hauling the first load down to the laundry room in the basement—not to mention angsting about things that now seemed pointless—she’d forgotten the
be naked
part. How could she have been so distracted? So…so dumb?

“I…uh…I’m not wearing a whole lot,” she said, frantically trying to peel off her tank top and running shorts as she talked. “I don’t
have
a whole lot to wear that isn’t in the laundry. Even threw in the bra and underwear I’d worn to work.”

She managed not to drop the phone as she peeled the tank over her head and let it fall, a faded purple blob on her bedroom floor.

“But you were wearing something when you called. Bad Selene.” Nick didn’t sound upset. If anything, his voice was rich with amusement. But it was edged with something: Heat. Erotic cruelty. “I was going to see how many times we could make you come. But maybe I’ll just get you all worked up and get myself off instead, listening to you getting closer and closer, knowing I’m not going to let you get there.” He was practically purring. “Yeah, I like that idea. I’ll tell you stories, tell you what to do, and when you get close to coming, I want you to say ‘edge’. Then I’ll decide if I’ll let you come or not.”

She cursed. After a long day lost in erotic fantasy, that sounded like the most frustrating thing imaginable. But when Selene pulled off her shorts, they were moist with her juices, more so than they had been moments before, as if in perverse response to the idea of not being allowed to come.

Fine, if she was already in trouble, even if it was fun trouble, she might as well make it worthwhile. Make Nick sweat a little bit to come up with an appropriately dominant response over the phone if she was going to be left on the edge. “I could have just lied and told you I was naked.”

“Could you?”

She only had to think about it for a second. “No. I’m still figuring out all the rules here, but that would have been cheating. And I’m a lousy liar anyway.”

She didn’t say that she didn’t think she could lie to him at all, at least not in the context of their erotic games. Maybe to hide what she’d gotten him as a birthday present, assuming they got to the birthday-present stage, but not anything else. “Might have been more fun, though.”

“Really?”

Damn, he could read her way too well, even over the phone where he couldn’t see what she could feel—the straining nipples, the damp thighs, the undoubtedly wide eyes, the flaming cheeks, the actual God-help-her trembling with a combination of arousal, anticipation and nerves. “No, it wouldn’t. It would have been more fun if I’d remembered to take my damn clothes off…but since I didn’t, I’d rather take whatever evil consequences you have in mind. And that doesn’t make sense.”

Nick laughed, but not mockingly—almost caressingly. “Oh, yes it does, beautiful. You like the idea of me controlling your orgasms, just like you like the idea of me tying you up or telling you how to suck my cock. You like the idea of rewards and punishments.”

Did she? The throbbing in her pussy told her the answer. “Yeah, I do—as long as they’re sexy and fun. I wouldn’t like you to actually
punish
me for real, in anger.” Honesty compelled her to add, “I don’t think, anyway. I’ve read some hot stories about it, but they scare me, even when I’m masturbating over them.”

Nick’s voice seemed to drop an octave as he said, “They should scare you, Selene. Serious rules and serious consequences are a whole different thing from what we’re doing. That’s not play so much as a way of shaping your life around someone else’s will completely, or shaping someone else to your will.” He paused, seemed to think for a second. “I bet you just got wetter, didn’t you?”

She managed to let out a pathetic squeak that must have gotten the point across.

“I know because I got harder, thinking about putting you under that kind of control, making you into a slave who lives by my rules and faces my wrath if you don’t. A little naked pleasure slave, just waiting for me to use her and make her come, or to hurt her in exquisite ways.”

She wasn’t touching herself, but the sound of his deep, purring voice and the image of herself as naked, collared, maybe branded like in the ridiculous but arousing Gor novels about barbarians and their slave girls that she’d read as a teenager, made her pussy flutter and clench around nothing. “Edge,” she hissed.

“I didn’t tell you to play with yourself.” There was such a bite of erotic menace to his voice that she saw herself as that pleasure slave, wearing nothing but a collar and maybe some strategically placed jewelry, begging for mercy from her master.

“Please, I wasn’t touching myself, sir.” She added the sir instinctively, although he hadn’t asked for it. “It was just the words…the idea of the pleasure slave…and your voice…and everything.” She hoped he wasn’t secretly scoring her on how much sense she was making, because to her own ears she sounded ridiculous.

And a little pathetic, as if each word were begging.

Again, the image of the poor imaginary pleasure slave—she’d be terrified, knowing she might be whipped bloody or sold to someone horrible, or worse. And yet, in her familiar place at her master’s feet, she’d probably have an idea or two what she might do to get out of her predicament.

That thought gave Selene a few ideas on how to get out of her less serious and far funnier situation.

She tried not to crack up as she said, “Please, sir, you have to believe me. I’ll do anything!”

There was a second’s hesitation at the other end of the line, as if Nick were gauging her mood and/or figuring out what to say next in a script that was evolving as it went along.

Then he chuckled, a warm, liquid, evil chuckle that sent shockwaves into her cunt. “So you say, slave, but you’ve already disobeyed me once. We’ll see how you obey from now on. Get on your knees.”

Selene hesitated. Surely he didn’t expect her to really drop to her knees—all by herself, alone in her undecorated, box-cluttered bedroom? That wasn’t sexy. It was just silly.

The image of the slave girl came back to her mind. Kneeling, wearing nothing but a pretty, jeweled collar, knees spread to show a pussy that was wet and slick despite the panic in her eyes.

Kneeling on an Oriental rug in an exotically decorated room. No, not a room, a tent, but nothing like a common camping tent. Silk hangings and piles of pillows and a low bed covered with furs and embroidered silk covers, and in the corner a whipping post or something. And her master—Nick, of course—but Nick bare-chested, in leather breeches and high boots. All she could really see from her position without raising her head more than she ought to would be a delicious stretch of well-worn black leather encasing calf and thigh. Yum.

With that in mind, she could kneel, shutting out the messy room and the fact that Nick was on the other side of town, not here where she could smell the leather or at least his warm, masculine flesh, feast her eyes on him, hope to feast her mouth and cunt on him.

Yeah, that was more like it. The carpet, a shade of brown she wouldn’t have chosen but hadn’t had time even to think about replacing, vanished. The piles of boxes in the corners, blocking the mirror, vanished. Everything vanished but Nick’s voice and her arousal.

“I’m kneeling, sir.”

“Master. Have you forgotten so quickly you should call me Master?”

But he hadn’t said…

He was playing with her head. It was all part of the game. She breathed a quiet sigh of relief that she hadn’t screwed up for real. Then she realized she was wetter and more open from that second of panic.

When this was over, she was going to have to have a long talk with herself about preserving some basic common sense. Natalie sounded like a nutbar, but already Selene was starting to grasp how easy it would be to fall too far into the fantasy, lose touch with the fact that outside of the unusual relationship with Nick, the world continued to operate on its normal rules, and she still had all her normal rights and responsibilities in it.

“Master,” she said, trying to put a world of yearning and yielding into the one word.

What would come next? Well, ideally, she would ease the throbbing that had spread from between her legs and threatened to take over her entire body, but that was not to be.

She cast her mind back over things she’d read, things she’d fantasized. Things that had made her come even though, at the time, she wasn’t sure she’d ever have the courage to do them. Still wasn’t sure, in some cases. But that was the joy of phone sex, wasn’t it? You could play with your further-out fantasies safely.

“How may this slave earn your forgiveness, Master?” Then she added, in a slightly different tone of voice—the narrator, “Picture me arched over, like the child’s pose in yoga, kissing your boots.”

“My boots?” His voice was amused but throaty, aroused.

“Black thigh-high boots. Very pirate.”

“They’re a bit dirty,” Nick said. “Not nasty dirty but dusty. Maybe a little grass stuck to them.”

“I still lick them. You feel the pressure of my lips through the leather. My tongue licking off the dust. My arms around your legs, clinging to you. And in between kisses and licks, I look up at you as if waiting for instruction.”

This was the corniest thing ever. So how come she was actually leaning forward as she was describing? How come she was imagining the scene so vividly, smelling the leather and Nick’s unique scent layered with it, tasting the leather and the hint of dust?

How come she was grinning like a very turned-on fool?

“Do you like that, slave?”

Selene thought for a second and was surprised by her own reaction. “Yes. I’m dripping, and when my nipples brush against the carpet, it almost hurts, but in a good way.”

“Your nipples are that sensitive?” Damn, from the barely suppressed glee in Nick’s voice, she was in for some nipple pain. Although why that was a
damn
situation, she couldn’t say, because her pussy was clenching at the thought, and she liked it when Nick treated her nipples roughly. “Do you have nipple clips?”

“No, Master.” She’d always meant to order some off the Internet but never had, figuring they wouldn’t be nearly as much fun without an appreciative partner.

A laugh. “That was actually Nick asking Selene, but I like hearing you say
Master
. If you had clamps, I’d tell you put them on. Instead, pinch your nipples, slave. Hard. And don’t stop until I tell you to.”

“Oh yes, Master.” Now that was an order she was glad to obey. She sank her fingernails into the plump, sensitive flesh, imagining jeweled clamps, in keeping with the exotic theme the fantasy was taking. Heat roiled from her nipples outward, sunbursts of pleasurable pain radiating out, filling her body. Experimentally, she rolled and twisted, gasped in pleasure, eased up a bit because some small fragment of pride didn’t want to mewl
edge
again so soon, confess to how hot this silliness was making her.

“Does that feel good, slave?”

“Yes, Master.” Think. He couldn’t see. She needed to describe. “Feels wonderful, even though it hurts. Better than a light touch ever did, Master. I used to think there was something wrong with my nipples because I wasn’t that crazy about having them played with, but I’ve figured it out. I need pain.” She twisted again, letting him hear her sharp intake of breath.

“Good to know. I want you to get some old-fashioned clothes pins as soon as you can for emergencies like this. You’ll need your hands later. And we’ll have to go shopping soon, get you some toys. Would you like that, slave? Some toys of your own?”

For a second, she broke role completely. “Cool! Are there good places in Boston to get stuff like that? My vibrators could use some company.”

“Yes, but I won’t say where. Don’t want you going without me.”

“I wouldn’t. Besides, aren’t I kept in a cage or something when you’re not using me?” She couldn’t keep the sly amusement out of her voice.

Or the arousal out of her body. She could see the fantasy slave’s cage, see herself behind the bars, staring out at her hunky master, aching for his sweet cruelty.

“I never should have mentioned the cage to you, should I? I’ve hit on a fetish.”

She laughed. “Not a fetish. A fantasy. When you made that joke, my logical brain said, ‘Holy shit! He’s crazy!’ and my pussy said, ‘But wouldn’t it be fun?’”

“Very well, then. You have a cage. Quite spacious and comfortable, with furs and pillows, maybe something to read, and definitely sex toys to entertain yourself—and me—with but securely locked. Once you’re in there, you’re trapped. At your master’s whim. Waiting to be let out and used.”

“Maybe I don’t need to be let out to be used. Maybe it’s set up so I could suck you through the bars, or be fucked. Would you like that, Master? Having me locked up and secure but still fuckable? Would you like to fuck me through cold steel bars, knowing I was your prisoner?” Between the nipple-play and the graphic images spinning out of control through her mind, Selene was barely in control, her cunt contracting around empty air in futile hope it could satisfy her.