Chapter 2 - Inspiration, Perspiration
I didn't waste any time before starting the new project. The story had taken root in my imagination as no other before it, possibly given momentum by the close call with Paige.
"Daniel and Pam," I reminded myself as the ancient, non-networked, desktop reserved for kink writing booted.
Unbidden, my fingers had already typed in the working title 'Bondage Marathon' and waited, hovering over the keyboard.
"That's got to have been used already?" I said to myself. "I'll check later." The story wanted out, now, like a tangible pressure against the inside of my skull.
Words flowed, sometimes too many words. I backtracked often, trying to edit out much of my usual slow build up. In as few words as possible, the characters came to life. Their descriptions, so vivid and complete in my head, flowed through the keyboard. In short order, they were fully described, had encountered each other, discovered their complementary roles in each other's bondage desires, and consented to play. I paused, looking over the description of Pam.
She was an athletic brunette, a taller than average woman with warm hazel eyes and thick, straight, glossy, chestnut brown hair. Finally dressed and waiting, she wore white stockings and white panties with red high heeled pumps. Her naked breasts rose and fell with her deep breathing, and her nipples, puckered and hard, showed Daniel her excitement.
It was time to tie the girl. My brain chose now to freeze in its tracks, replaying the encounter with Paige. I left the room, got a glass of ice water and chugged it. The cold spread through my guts, settling my overheating mind.
Returning to my home office, I stared at the computer screen before sitting. "And now, bondage."
Daniel bound Pam, seated, to a wooden chair. Bright red rope secured her wrists and arms behind the chair back. When Daniel moved in front of Pam, the chair was revealed to have support only for her legs and ass cheeks, leaving her mostly shaved pussy vulnerable, as well as her ass.
Daniel spread her legs wide, pulling her lower legs outside the front corners of the chair.
I paused the word flow again, considering the language. I don't usually go for a lot of graphic terms, such as pussy, cock, tit, or asshole. They feel awkward for me, and vulgar. But now I decided to let fly with them as well, and edit later if it looked too crude.
In moments, Daniel was binding Pam's ankles to a cross brace, loops and coils of red rope contrasting nicely with the white nylons. His fingers teased the inside of her thighs as he bound them to the supports her legs rested on.
"She's getting wet now," I said, narrating the story to myself as I typed. More paragraphs flowed onto the screen. Pam was now thoroughly tied to the chair, wrists, arms, ankles, thighs, waist, and torso, with special attention to her generous tits. Daniel was in the process of sliding his pants down, his stiff erection obvious within his shorts...
"Fuck!" The anger in my outburst startled me. But I had typed the name Paige instead of Pam in the last six paragraphs. Reading more closely, I saw that I had referred to the character's eyes as gray and had described her body as tall and sporty and her breasts as large and firm, also qualities that belonged, or I imagined belonged, to the real Paige Maddux and not her fictional analog, Pam.
I started laughing. The sound was brittle and a bit manic in the small room.
Then I felt sick as I realized that if my Paige read this, as I suspected she occasionally did, I would be instantly busted a million times worse than at the bakery. I immediately highlighted all the text and erased it. Then I exited the word processing app and erased the file that had been autosaved. I erased the folder that had held the work. When that was all done, I emptied the electronic trash bin and started an app that was supposed to make sure all my empty disk space was indeed empty.
I was too personally invested in the story. The encounter with Paige still had my imagination in overdrive. I like her, and the fact the she put the effort into connecting the dots was just hot, and her overt interest in bondage, and the way she felt free to talk about it...
Shivering, and not from a chill, I got up and walked to the kitchen where I poured myself a double shot of bourbon and knocked it back as though I had been drinking the stuff since childhood. I rinsed the glass.
"If only my Paige felt that way." My arms waved as I spoke, and I saw I still held the glass. I was already rinsing it out before I realized it was clean. Disgusted with my pity party forgetfulness, I put the glass in the rack to dry.
"My Paige." Inspiration took hold. "Why not my Paige? She's the one I want anyway."
I returned to the old desktop and started anew.
My Paige, the all around American girl, brown eyes, wavy brown hair, and freckles. Her lean, graceful body hid curves easily under street clothes, then revealed them stunningly in a dress or in nothing at all.
Nothing at all was her favorite outfit, as I had learned over the course of our two years together, and she knew how to turn me inside out with her naked body. The flip side of this wonderful coin was that Paige had no interest in frivolity like lingerie, cosplay, bondage, or really anything that she considered a detour from the end goal of naked, sweaty, orgasmic exhaustion.
She was aware of my own interests in some of those things, but her opinion, actually stated in so many words, was if it wasn't something that turned us both on, why do it?
I stared at the blank screen, mentally revisiting this often plowed ground.
"Daniel and Pam, the newlyweds?" The idea sounded serious and funny at the same time. "No strangers to sex, they had both tiptoed around their deepest fantasies to avoid scaring the other off, only to find out they had many of them in common!"
Could I make the story funny and touching without turning it into a farce? I smiled at the thought, feeling challenged, and scooted the chair toward the desk, flexing my hands as if preparing to play a virtuoso.
When I started typing, again, I realized 'Bondage Marathon' no longer worked as my title. Staring at the words did not provide much inspiration.
"Why not?" I erased the two words at the top of the blank page. I typed slowly, still mulling the idea over, and watched 'The One I Really Want' fill the space at the top of the page. This felt right.
The writing started in earnest.
The One I Really Want
Chapter 1 - Early To Bed
Daniel left work early, arriving home before Pam for a change. The routine had been established early in their relationship, and two months of marriage showed no signs of changing their ingrained pattern. Which was one reason Daniel waited patiently in the little dining area just outside the kitchen. The rumble of the garage door opening alerted him to his wife's arrival.
He met her at the door between the garage and the small utility room.
"Put me down you lunk!" she laughed as he lifted her up and kissed her. When they stopped for air, she was still in his arms, eye to eye with him.
"I can't walk another step in these shoes. At least put me down long enough to get them off," she said.
"Who says you'll be walking anywhere?" Instead of putting her down, Daniel carried her the short distance down the hall to their room, where he placed her on their bed.
Pam arched one eyebrow. "I guess this is why you took off early today? Am I getting undressed or are you just going to keep staring at me?"
"You know you're stunning, right?"
She smiled and wiggled a little. The toe of her right shoe slid behind her left heel,
"Don't. Not yet, at least," he said.
"Developing a little shoe fetish?" she joked.
He waggled his hand. "One tiny part of the whole fetish package." He kept going, not noticing his wife's breath catch, or the strained stillness that followed. "I'm jealous of your clients and coworkers, who get to see you every day in a nice dress, or skirt and blouse, hose and heels. Usually, by the time I get home you're in shorts or sweats, your hair is in a pony tail, and you've gone for a run," he said, pausing a moment before adding, "Not that I mind how well you take care of your lovely physique."
"Let me know when to undress, or are you just going to look at me until dinner time?" Pam said.
Daniel didn't hear the tiny quaver in her voice. He climbed onto the bed and slid under her legs so that they extended across his own. From that vantage point, he slid a hand along her strong calf, feeling her warm skin through the layer of opaque black fabric.
"And they're tights, not pantyhose, and I really want to get out of them," Pam said.
"I guess I'll just tear enough of them away to get started." His hands slid under her skirt and strong fingers sought out a grip in the fabric of her tights. "Maybe then you'll be too busy to worry about how you're dressed."
"No!"
He stopped, frozen. "Are you okay?" He had gone utterly still at her exclamation and now wondered if he had done something wrong.
"Oh! No. Nothing so serious." She grimaced, and Dan realized something in his face had triggered her sudden shift. "I went through two pairs of hose and a pair of tights this morning to get to these, and I don't want them shredded."
Dan relaxed. "I'll buy you every pair of black tights in town." He breathed in, smelling her light perfume, or maybe her shampoo. There was a hint of sweaty heat in the room as well as he ran his fingers lightly over her legs again.
"Oh, right," she said. "What'll you say when some nosy clerk raises an eyebrow at you?"
"I'll tell them I'm going to tie my wife to our bed and spend the whole night loving her," he said. The words sounded cornier out loud than they had in his head, and he immediately regretted them. He noticed the strange look on Pam's face and knew he had stuck his foot deeply into his mouth.
"You really mean that, don't you?" she asked, not at all the sharp reply he expected.
"Well, yeah." His eyes remained focused on her legs, particularly her knees, which had somehow come to rest atop his legs after all their fidgeting and squirming. "I mean, I think it'd be hot, but I know it's not your thing. So, I mean, it's just, you know, me being a smart ass. I'm not asking you! I just think, you know..." Dan's gaze cut to hers and he rolled his eyes, acknowledging that he needed to shut his mouth.
"Don't," she said, as he opened his mouth to apologize. "How would you do it? Tie me to the bed, that is, and spend the whole night loving me."
"Well, I wouldn't actually use tights. I think they'd be pretty uncomfortable on your skin," he said. He thought that might end the conversation and prevent him from saying anything else he'd regret. His head was spinning with a combination of arousal, faint hope, and dread. There was no way Pam was entertaining the ideas she seemed to be suggesting.
"Okay. Then how would you do it?" she asked again, this time emphasizing each word individually.
Dan realized he had completely lost control of the situation. The possibility that his wife was suggesting some sort of bondage play barely entered his mind. He had just hoped for a little time with her still dressed for work, and an even shorter amount of time getting her out of her clothes and into her preferred state of nudity.
He slid around and straddled her waist. Taking each of her wrists in hand, he stretched her arms to the corners of the bed.
"I'd have to go with a classic from movies and TV and spread you out in a lovely X on the bed," he said. Leaving her arms outstretched, he slid to the floor and stepped to the foot of the bed. He slipped her shoes off, dropping them to the floor behind him. Straddling her legs as he climbed back onto the bed, he crawled toward her hips, making certain his own legs stayed in contact with her nylon covered calves.
He reached under her skirt, stretching his arms forward. "Of course, these would have to come off now, gently, so I don't ruin them." He hooked his fingers into the waistband and pulled the tights down and off over her feet. She helped by lifting her hips off the bed.
After tossing the tights in the direction of their closet, where the dirty laundry basket waited, he spread her legs wide, each pointing at a corner of the mattress. Of course, he couldn't actually tie her to anything. The bed was just a simple metal frame holding up the box spring and mattress. For a moment he was lost in thought, pondering what sturdy attach points there might be under the corners of their bed.
The interruption didn't last long. He slid back up onto the bed, straddling her right leg and letting his still clothed thigh push down onto the warm junction of her legs. Dan leaned down for a kiss before she could pull her arms in to undress the rest of the way.
But she didn't move.
By the time they broke for air after their third kiss, Dan's apprehension had grown. Pam smiled up at him, a cat that ate the canary smile, arms and legs still spread wide. She was messing with him, he thought, showing him what a pain in the ass it would be to play the games he wanted.
Or, he dared to wonder for the first time since greeting her at the door, for the first time in their relationship, if she was telling him she wanted to experiment.
"What are you doing?" he asked.
"Wow. You need to ask?"
"Yeah. I do," he returned her smile, though hardly with the same confidence she projected. "I figured I'd ask instead of screwing up something good by guessing wrong." He shifted his weight, certain she could feel the bulge in his pants against her thigh.
"Ooh!" she cooed. "I guess you have a decision to make then. You can release me and I'll probably tackle you, rip your clothes off, and we'll make like rabbits. Or, we can finish playing out the scene you started. I'm good either way."
Questions crowded Daniel's mind, all wanting to be asked at once. The temptation to strip, then release her, as if she couldn't move whenever she wanted right now, was strong. His cock felt as though it might tear his pants off without further discussion. As buff as she was, he could still lift and carry her at will. Though he wondered now if she was holding something back on him there too.
"Let's finish the scene," he said. Then he realized it was practically finished as it was. He wasn't going to tie her with tights, or his small collection of neckties. He might be able to press a bed sheet or two into service, but he would spend most of his time on the floor, ass up in the air as he tried to figure out how to secure a bed sheet to her and their bed.
He thought hard. He had played bedroom bondage games with a few of his college girlfriends, but he had never had an actual discussion of limits and scene setting with any of them. The subject of bondage or some other kink would come up, usually spurred by a movie or book, one time by a blushing friend's story of getting stuck in her boyfriend's handcuffs, and he would ask the question.
Usually. Pam's unexpected offer was the second time in his life that a woman had surprised him by beating him to the punch. He decided to proceed as he always had, with an almost tacit understanding of limits and consent. Almost tacit.
"You'll stop me if I suggest something you don't want to do?"
"Is this where we work out the limits?" she asked.
"Unless you want to get out a pen and paper, we can just wing it this time. I'm absolutely not going to do anything that I think you'd object to, and if I do, you tell me and I'll stop," he said.
"Okay. This time. But if we decide to do this again, I want the whole deal, start to finish."
Dan looked at her for a few seconds. She had either secretly read up on the subject, or she had always possessed the knowledge and just chose now to reveal it. Trying not to grin like an idiot, he reached up and 'untied' her wrists.
"Sit up," he said, helping her. "We'll get you out of those clothes that you love so much."
She grabbed his wrists and he froze again, afraid he had hurt her or overstepped already. "You aren't worried that I'll turn the tables on you?" she said. His gaze shifted back and forth between her normally warm brown eyes. Instead of warm and friendly, now they were hot and piercing. He shifted his legs to take the pressure off his now straining cock. Dan couldn't believe how incredibly hard this unexpected shift in direction made him.
With some effort, because she was not yielding, he moved his right hand to grasp her right wrist, firmly. "First, you scared the shit out of me. I thought I'd hurt you or somehow broken a limit before we even started. Second, I thought this was my scene," he said.
Pam's eyes softened a bit. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to upset you. You need to work on those protective instincts, though. I'm not fragile." Her eyes glittered as her smile spread over her face. "And I'm pretty sure I said 'the scene you started' without assigning ownership."
Dan paused, thinking. "Let go of me and sit back for a second," he said, totally focused on the situation he was in. She let go and sat back quickly, staring at his face.
"And there he is," she said quietly. Nothing moved except his eyes, which cut sharply up to focus on her face. He said nothing, though, letting his thoughts play out in his head.
"I wanted to do something fun and lighthearted today. Playful. Unguarded. When I met you at the door, my intention was just to slow us down a little. I did not expect to discuss bondage scenarios with you. Not today, and really, not ever," he said. "If you want to get undressed and mess up the sheets a little before dinner, that's fine with me. If you want to play out a scene where we pretend you are securely tied to our bed, and you are forced to endure my attention for a while, I will gladly play along. If you are just playing an elaborate joke on me, or trying to teach me how to be your husband, I get it, and you can stop now."
Dan's mouth shut with an audible snap. He knew he had said too much and had certainly drained the moment of any passion or ardor. Yet Pam still eyed him with obvious desire.
"I would like to play out a lighthearted scene that includes some kink," she said. "You start."
"You said you had hose that are garbage now. Where are they?"
"Two pairs of pantyhose and a pair of tights on the floor next to the mirror in the closet," she answered.
He slid off the bed and stepped into the open closet, turning when he heard her move behind him. She gave him another of those knowing smiles and simply stood, waiting a moment before asking, "Should I get undressed while I'm up, or did you want to do that for me?"
"Hang on a minute," he said as he picked up the wad of nylon laying on the floor. He slipped past her and sat down on the edge of the bed. "Undress now. Take your time."
She giggled, then composed herself, straightening her skirt and adjusting her blouse and jacket with a shrug. Pam then struck a pose, turning one leg to the side and twitching her hips. She reached up and gripped the lapels of her jacket, pulling it closed and dropping her gaze to the floor.
When she looked up, her smoldering eyes aroused his already stiff erection even further. In a series of moves straight from burlesque shows the world over, she pulled at the lapels of her jacket, twitching them back and forth, then slid out of it, dropping it to the floor. Turning coquettish again, she looked down as she slowly undid the buttons of her gray blouse. She turned almost completely around and looked over her left shoulder at him as she slid her right arm free. The blouse followed the jacket, puddling on the floor.
Pam dropped her arm and turned, showing Daniel the delicate lace bra and the pale skin of her cleavage. She grinned, and speeding up just a little, pushed her black skirt down over her hips and to the floor. White panties, matching her bra and much more demure than he expected, concealed her most intimate places.
She turned, showing him her well-defined backside. He got an even better view when she leaned forward, pushing her ass toward him with a gentle, hypnotic sway. The moment was punctuated by a loud smack as she delivered one hard slap to her right butt cheek. Daniel might have melted into the bed right there, but his wife surprised him by shimmying out of her panties, pushing them down to the floor and turning to face him.
Seeing Pam with her bra but no panties felt odd. Standing, her crotch was a smooth, lightly fuzzed patch of pale skin revealing little but promising much. Her covered breasts were likewise promised, but not yet revealed.
The moment went from simmering to boiling when she dropped one hand down between her legs and trailed a finger through the wetness that she exposed when she stepped wide. She strutted toward him as she pressed her wet finger to her lips. When she arrived only inches from his widened eyes, her bra was gone. He hadn't even noticed when and how she had removed it.
"Um... Wow," Dan said. He stood and wrapped her in a tight embrace, squeezing her to him. He regretted his fully clothed state as his hands roamed over his wife's trim body.
"Wow, yourself," Pam said, letting her hands rove as well. Through several layers of fabric, she gripped the hard flesh she found below his belt. "If you weren't wearing pants, I doubt we'd make it to the bed."
Dan realized there was only one way to regain control of the scene. He scooped her up in his arms, turned, and placed her gently, but firmly, in the center of their bed. Grabbing one pair of the ruined black pantyhose, he straddled her torso and leaned far over and down toward one corner of the bed. One leg of the hose was fed around one leg of the bed support. He took her right wrist in hand, just as she was unzipping his pants, and stretched her arm to the corner.
"Hold this," he said, pushing the nylon into her hand. "Don't let go. This arm is now inescapably tied with perfect rope work."
"Not chains and shackles?" she said as he repeated the move on her left arm.
"Not a big fan of metal for this. Done right, with the proper fit, or to set a mood, I think it would be okay. Or maybe something custom built to fit just so," he said as her pressed the other nylon into her waiting hand. "Tied, as inescapably as the other one."
Pam squirmed, as though testing actual bonds. Her hard nipples pointed up at the ceiling as her breasts jiggled with the motion of her pretend escape attempt. She held onto the footed ends of the hose, wrapping the excess nylon around her hand.
She looked up at Dan, locking eyes with him. Her expression assured him of her trust, and wordlessly told him to go on. The heat in her eyes also told him she was beyond ready for his embrace.
At the foot of the bed, he spread her legs wide, getting a good look at the wetness glistening on her exposed pussy. He tied a hasty loop around her right ankle with one leg of the tights, then ran the remaining leg under the mattress, box spring, and the metal rail they rested on. The other ankle was tied similarly. She had plenty of slack to move her legs as needed, and Dan didn't think the loops around her ankles would hold for long. She squirmed again, this time with her entire body, acting out the role of barely willing, or maybe bratty, submissive.
Dan stripped as if his clothes were on fire.
He kissed his way up her leg, trying to make the moment last longer than his already throbbing hard-on suggested it would, though he was sure neither of them would stop with one orgasm tonight. He paused at her wet pussy, kissing her and lapping gently at her skin. He placed a deeper kiss, complete with a few flicks of his tongue, between her outer labia, promising more in the future.
Pam's navel received as much attention as her wet sex had garnered before he slid his torso over hers, holding most of his weight off of her with his arms. Each of her incredibly hard nipples received a kiss and a playful nibble as he made his way to her face. There they kissed deeply, tongues probing and exchanging caresses.
The tip of his stiff cock bumped against the outermost flesh of her pussy. He paused just long enough to be certain she knew what was happening. This, at least, was familiar territory. Pam liked just enough foreplay to get wet, and then she liked to be fucked. As his cock slid into the tight wetness of his wife's sex, he felt his body relax and tense at the same time. The comfortable familiarity of the moment eased his mind while the tension arose from the working of his muscles and the concentration expended on trying not to orgasm right away. Somewhere, far, far back in his thoughts, he realized that his understanding of what Pam liked had probably gone out the window.
Chapter 2 Early To Rise
Dan's orgasm exploded deep within her as he pressed his body hard against hers. His partially hard cock slipped wetly from the confines of her pussy. She had not come, but he was far from finished.
...
Chapter 3 - The Bottom Falls Out
I stopped, needing some time to imagine how Dan and Pam would finish their bedroom adventures. I pictured them engaging in a round of oral sex, 69-style, with Pam remaining bound to the bed. Her ankles hadn't even come loose and she still held firmly to the pantyhose.
My main question was whether they'd finish that way, or would Dan release Pam for a more vigorous session of love-making.
I took a quick look at the clock icon on my desktop. Paige was out with her friends from work, something they did every couple weeks, but she'd be home soon. I saved my work in progress and shut down the computer, tidying up before I left the room.
The story had occupied me to the point I had skipped dinner, an oversight that now made itself known, complete with a chorus of stomach growls. A quick sandwich cured this, chased by a glass of soda.
Paige arrived soon after, smiling and feeling frisky. We had a few minutes of small talk which quickly led to the bedroom. I shut the door, even though we were alone in the house.
The rest of the week passed as usual. I had a pile of yard projects I wanted to work on, so I got an early start on Saturday with some buying trips to several hardware stores and nurseries. I returned home with chicken sandwiches and salads for lunch, feeling good about the day.
Paige sat at the kitchen table, staring into space.
"Hey! I tried to text you about lunch. Hope you're hungry," I said.
She turned to face me, as though she had just noticed I was there. Moving as though she had been hit in the head, she stood up, her stance aligning to face me full on.
"Paige? Are you okay?"
"No. No, I'm not." She stopped, staring through me instead of at me. I started toward her. She held up a hand, a clear sign to stop.
"What's wrong?" I was scared now, and the standing list of disasters played out in my head: death in the family, her sister relapsing, legal problems, car problems, a sinkhole opening up in the yard. My imagination went into overdrive.
"I read your story." The weird thing was that she sounded like she was voicing an internal dialogue and not talking to me yet. One thing for sure, she wasn't talking about my latest Martin Howell caper short story, but it's not like she didn't know about my intimate preferences and occasional kink writing.
"Okay?" I said, letting my puzzlement show.
"It's my fault, really," she said, still talking more to herself than to me. She looked up, finally addressing me directly, "I guess it's my fault, really. I'm sorry. I was so foolish."
"Paige?"
"Was I that stupid? Was it too much to hope for, Tom? 'Dan and Pam' like that's not obvious," she said, scorn creeping into her voice. "I thought you'd grow out of it, Tom. I thought if I fucked enough and sucked enough, just hot, sweaty sex, you'd forget about all this bondage bullshit and just be normal!"
I stood, stunned. My world was turning upside down before my eyes.
"Grow up?" was all I managed to say.
"Mom said 'don't try to change your man' and I went right off and did it anyway. I thought it was working too. Two years flushed."
"You told your mom?" I said, still not fully understanding that my life had changed irrevocably while I was out running chores.
"No! Of course not! Don't be stupid."
I don't like being called stupid, but the amount of red in her face told me this was not the time for that discussion. Finally, my brain caught up.
"It's just a dumb story, Paige. Nothing's changed. I love you, and I don't see how this changes anything."
"It's a true story, Tom. It's what you want, just like the title. You're never going to stop wanting to play your perv games, are you? You'll always want to do some weird shit with me, won't you? And when you finally realize it's not happening, you'll cheat on me, or you'll dump me, or both. I pissed away two years on you!"
Now I was 'stupid' and 'perverted' and my own temper started rising. I kept myself in check, but my self-control did not deescalate the situation. Suddenly, she was in my face, screaming.
"Get out. Just get out!"
How many times has this scene unfolded in movies? The man turns and slinks away, or the woman suddenly changes her mind, or violence ensues. None of those happened now.
"It's my house, Paige," I said. If I thought she looked thunderstruck before, she was all in now. Despite all the ugliness that had just poured out of her mouth, I wanted to hold her and make it all better.
She exploded into gales of laughter, even as tears streamed down her face. "Well of course! I couldn't get anything else right, why shouldn't I be the one leaving?" She sat down again, landing hard in the chair, sobbing uncontrollably. I had no idea what to do.
"Listen, Paige," I squatted down so our eyes would be on the same level.
"No. I'll go. We're done. I'll clear out my stuff tomorrow." She stood and then walked out without looking back. She didn't even slam the door. I sat down on the chair she had just vacated. The cushion had a few dark dots on it where her tears had fallen.
I was too stunned to cry, or get mad, or laugh, or do much more than sit there. After a few minutes I remembered I still had a bag of food in my hand.
I didn't feel like eating.
Chapter 4 - One Night In Memphis
Of course it couldn't be that easy. True to her word, Paige packed up her clothes, personal items, some kitchen stuff, and a few odds and ends and left my life.
But not forever. As the weeks and then months passed, her story slowly morphed. I became the villain of the plot. I began to hear versions of the break up through third parties, all of them referring to me as kinky, pervy, or worse. In one version, I was a high pressure S&M enthusiast intending to enlist a number of friends and girlfriends into a cult of perversion.
I didn't know what to believe. What I did know is that it was not a big town, and I had started feeling uncomfortable. I flipped two coins, east or west, and north or south. North and west it was! The house sold in no time, and I moved to Memphis, taking the first job I could find, which was working in a grocery store.
Christmas and New Year came and went. I was wallowing and I knew it, but I didn't want to do anything else. My coworkers all thought I was weird. My one word answers to their friendly overtures had ensured that. I took every shift offered to me and all the overtime I could get.
The day was freezing cold and crystal clear. I punched out at lunch and had the rest of the day to myself, and tomorrow too. Big whoop. I returned to my apartment and made a tuna sandwich. When my phone buzzed, I accepted the call and then hung up so my voice mail wouldn't get used up by telemarketing assholes. It buzzed again, and I hung up again. The third time it buzzed, I looked at the screen.
The number looked familiar, but I didn't recognize it.
"Hello."
"Hey, Tom," a female voice said. I didn't recognize it. "It's Paige, Tom, from the critique group."
"Oh. Hey, Paige." I wondered how she got my number. Maybe Mom. The silence dragged on while I pondered the question.
"Tom? You still there?"
"Oh, yeah."
"I'm in town for a job interview, and I'd like to see you. I have the rest of today and all day tomorrow. I'm heading back Saturday morning," she said.
"Okay."
"Dinner?"
"Okay," I answered again. Was I trying to push her away, or had I just forgotten how to talk to people?
"Great. When and where?"
I had recently eaten at Subway. It was nice. Something about the idea seemed wrong.
"Or," she said, "I could pick something up and bring it over around six?"
I looked at my empty apartment. There was a mattress on the floor in the bedroom, a TV on the floor in the front room, and a lawn chair. I had some clothes in a pile on the floor and stacks of unpacked boxes. "I don't have furniture." My brain slowly spun up. I had not spoken this many words at one time in a while.
"Oh. Well, you could come here, and we could order in? Or walk to a place close by? I'm at the Hilton."
I couldn't think of anything to say. While I was lost in my own head, Paige spoke again.
"Tom? I'd really like to see you."
"Okay. I'll come by."
"Great! Call me from the lobby and I'll meet you there. How's 6:00 for you? Then we can decide what we're doing for dinner," Paige said.
"Okay." I hung up.
I started remembering things that had to be done. I had lived on auto-pilot for months. I slept, worked, ate, and watched TV. My clothes were loose, so I must not have been over-eating. The only exercise I got was walking at work. I usually remembered to shower, shave, and brush my teeth. I walked to the bathroom.
The mirror showed a tired looking young man that I barely recognized. Who the hell was this person staring back at me?
Paige had come to see me. I had a moment's confusion, recalling that I knew more than one Paige. Then I remembered I had come here to erase the past, not bring it with me. How had I forgotten that? I reached for my phone and was about to cancel all plans and resume my slide into hermitdom when I remembered that Paige was not Paige.
Did I just call myself a hermit?
I looked back at the mirror. Despite all the sleeping I had done lately, I had dark circles under my eyes. My hair was a mop about two inches long, thanks to my new hair care regimen of having the cheapest barber I could find buzz it down to my scalp when it got long enough to annoy me. My cheeks were hollow, my skin didn't look all that great, and my muscle tone was mostly gone.
Well, I would understand if Paige turned around and left when she saw me.
I was twenty minutes early. I only waited ten minutes.
She walked right up and hugged me, holding on for what felt like a long time.
"You were always early to the meetings, so I figured I would come check. Were you really going to wait until six to call me?" she said. My whole body tingled from the hug, yet something inside me also ached. My brain or my soul or my spirit, whatever, had awakened, and now I understood that simply turning my life off had not fixed anything.
"Yes," I managed to blurt. I wondered when she would blow me off. She had to be thinking this was a mistake. Instead, she took my hand.
"Let's just order in. It's freezing outside, and I don't want to go back out in it, and we can take all the time we want to catch up," she said. I got a look at her as we walked to the elevator. She had cut her hair, though not much. In the single braid she currently wore, straight down the back of her neck, it reached her shoulders. A red blouse showed beneath her black jacket. Somehow, the combination concealed her figure. Black skirt past the knees, heavy black leggings or tights. I smiled when I saw her shoes, which I hadn't noticed until now. Interview over, she had switched out the heels or boots she must have worn for a pair of tiger striped ballet flats.
She let me into her suite without hesitation. We ate. We talked. I mostly listened. She treated me like a regular person. I recalled our last meeting and that I'd lied to her, trying to deflect her. Even as I felt my frozen life thawing, I felt like shit for not being honest with her. She didn't mention it.
The sun had already set when I arrived, so I did not note the passing time until Paige yawned. By this time, I knew she had gotten my number from Mom, and that she was planning to move just to get away from our hometown. Memphis was only one possibility open to her. She had a number of interviews on the calendar over the next few weeks. The critique group had finally reached its membership goal of five, only to have her be leaving soon. She had also sold a short story. I actually asked her questions about this, bumping my monthly number of spoken words into unknown territory.
I enjoyed listening to her talk about the story. I think I read it once, in a first draft. She asked me if I was writing and my brain shut down.
"Tom? Tom!"
"I, uh... My computers are still in boxes. Almost everything I own is still in boxes."
She looked at me for an uncomfortably long time. "You planning to stay in Memphis?"
"I don't know. I had to leave town. I just picked a direction at random."
"Had to?" she asked.
"The whole Paige thing. The other Paige," I said, feeling dumb. I watched the emotions play over her face. Belatedly, I realized she had been cheerful all evening with a hint of friendly concern, handling me gently. I had been too deep in my own head to notice, or to notice that her smart-ass wit had been absent.
"I know," she said. Reaching across the table, she covered my hand with hers. "That was a dirty, bitchy thing she did, trying to stir up trouble for you."
"It's nothing now," I said.
"It was nothing then," she shot back. "People didn't believe her, or they didn't care. No one faints when they hear the words 'sex' or 'bondage' any more!"
"I lied to you," I said, suddenly needing to put this night out of its misery. "At the last meeting." I remembered that the meeting had only been the two of us. "At the bakery," I added. I felt my face getting hot as I dug the hole deeper.
"No duh," she laughed. "Though your performance was impressive. Really Oscar worthy stuff."
"I'm sorry." I stood up and walked to the door. She followed me, but didn't do anything dramatic like throw herself at me.
"It's okay," she said when we reached the door. "I understand. What are you doing tomorrow? Work?"
"No," I replied, then mentally kicked myself for not telling her yes. Then I kicked myself some more for wishing I had lied when I had just apologized for lying.
"Good. I'll bring lunch. After a good night's sleep, we can talk some more. Maybe you can decide whether to unpack.
I stood in the doorway, holding the door open just slightly. I looked down at the floor, my body at an angle to hers. She was close enough that I could feel her warmth radiating from her. Or maybe I was imagining it. After what felt like a few hours of standing there, I managed a word.
"Okay."
At 11:30 Friday morning, she knocked on my door. I had barely slept and had just gotten cleaned up and dressed. I hurried to the door because it was still bitterly cold outside.
"Brrr," she said as she brushed past me in her hurry to get inside. She carried an insulated bag like the kind you can get at the store where I work.
"Hi," I said, trying to show I wasn't a hermit.
"I hope you like Mexican," she said. "It's the second nearest restaurant to your place. I figured you might eat a lot at the nearest."
"Is the nearest Subway?"
"No. Thai," she answered.
"Oh. I ate at Subway after work one night last week. It was nice." I watched her look around and finally set the food on the breakfast counter. She had on jeans with brown lace up boots and brown boot socks showing on her calves. I took her coat and put it on the lawn chair. She had sensibly dressed in layers under her heavy winter coat. Now I could see the red flannel shirt, unbuttoned, over a dark blue t-shirt from under which the tail of a ribbed tank top showed. Where the coat had succeeded in concealing her shapely figure, the layers failed. I would have to relearn not staring. When had I forgotten how not to stare? I couldn't remember staring last night, and last night she had been wearing a skirt and blouse.
"Tom? Did you want to eat lunch?"
I smiled, feeling some part of being human click into place. "You went to the trouble of bringing it." I walked to the counter. "Stand here or sit on the floor in there," I said, pointing at the carpeted floor a few feet away.
"Standing's fine," she said.
We ate in silence, which was normal for me now. Then I realized it was probably not normal for Paige and I looked at her. She appeared to be deep in thought. I wondered what about, but didn't ask. I guess she got tired of waiting.
"Do you want to unpack?" she asked.
I thought about it. I thought about staying in this cheap apartment, working some minimum wage job, and being alone. I liked the simplicity of it. Somewhere in my head my intuition sparked. Paige was not asking me if I wanted her help putting my place together. She was asking if I wanted to be with her.
I think. Maybe she wasn't? One of the most basic, fundamental aspects of human nature is our ability to utterly screw up anything good that comes our way. It's profound, constant, and unchanging over all the generations of our kind. We got ourselves kicked out of paradise, and we've been making the same mistakes over and over ever since.
The worst part was that, even knowing this, part of me wanted to push her away. She'd be better off without me.
"Are you taking the job here?" I asked, having decided to believe she was here as more than a charity project.
"I have two better offers in places I think are nicer," she said.
"Then I think I'd rather move soon." I threw the dice. I couldn't make my situation worse. She stepped around the counter to my side and wrapped her arms around me in the most sensual hug I had ever received. Her hands slid over my back, up to my neck and down to my belt, stopping just short of running over my butt. I had wrapped my arms around her and was satisfied to leave them there.
"I was wearing stockings last night, and my heels were right by the couch. I don't think you noticed either of them," she whispered in my ear.
"I'm out of practice," I said.
"Ah. We'll have to work on that."
Chapter 5 - Fresh Start
Asheville, North Carolina, turned out to be much nicer than Memphis. We had lived here for almost four months. Paige welcomed me into her life as though we had never been apart. More, our new life started out skipping straight to moving in together, as though we had already been through all the early, uncertain parts of a new relationship.
I guess in a way we had.
We had rented an apartment to give us time for unhurried house hunting. It's layout was exactly like my hermit apartment in Memphis. This didn't bother either of us. It just meant that Paige didn't need to walk far to get from our room to the front room.
Today was still a first for us, our first go at full on bondage play. Having needed every minute of these last few months to get my head back on straight, I was nervous. I watched for her to turn the corner. That was the other part of the plan Paige had decided. She would walk from our room straight to me. Should I wish for a bigger place so I could watch her for longer, or a smaller place so she would arrive sooner?
My head felt light before she had finished her first step out of our bedroom. The black, closed toe high heel was the first thing I saw. It added at least five inches to her height. I wondered for the briefest of moments if the inch of platform made them easier or harder to walk in. As her short step continued, I noted the ankle strap as well. I'm a sucker for ankle straps. I guess it's because I immediately think ankle cuff when I see one.
My gaze had made it as far as her knee before I realized her stocking was pink, not white. Paige had selected her own outfit for our bondage debut as a couple, and she had decided to surprise me with her choices. The stocking was in the middle between sheer and opaque. I could see some of her freckles through it, but the pink color was rich and vibrant.
The lacy top of her stocking came into view, and now I could see the garters holding them up. The garters were wide, like they were meant for everyday wear and not just as a costume. The garter belt, a bright shiny pink band around her waist, looked like satin. Like the garters it held, it looked made to wear all day. I was studying the details of the garter belt, the black trim on the waist and black V on the side when I realized Paige wore no panties. This became glaringly evident when her next step turned her more toward me.
She did wear a top, if you could call it that. The lacy, pink, sort of halter thing left her shoulders bare but her chest covered, barely. It also had some black trim, which made the pink stand out more and emphasized how tightly it held her breasts.
On her face she wore a smile that bordered on a smirk. She knew how hot she was and how enthralled I was by her. Her face was framed by carefully tousled dark brown hair, arranged to emphasize her gray eyes and pale, lightly freckled skin. I noticed her makeup was a little more intense too, but I could not explain how. I just noticed that she was beautiful.
She walked straight to me and put both hands on my chest. I wore much simpler clothes, but with more extensive coverage. Her hands rested on my fitted shirt, a white button up. One of the other things I had been doing for the last few months was getting my poor body back in shape too. So there were actual muscles for her to trace fingers across, and when she slid her hands around my back and down over the seat of my new jeans, she grabbed hold of a much improved ass. Her smile turned less smirky and more genuine.
I did have to come up on my toes to kiss her though. I was barefoot, not that the height of my trainers would have made up for the inches her heels added. Neither of us spoke. We both knew what was going to happen, though Paige didn't know the particulars yet.
That was our plan for this beginning. She chose her wardrobe. I chose the scene. We would both keep our talking to the bare minimum.
Talking can be therapeutic, but I was getting tired of it. After my months of near silence, I felt like the pendulum had swung too far the other way. We had discussed our current limits and done all the necessary steps to stay safe and sane. Today would not come close to a limit. Today was about fun.
I wanted it to always be about fun. We hadn't talked enough about what Paige wants, and now I felt a surge of worry. Would fun be enough for her? Did she want a dom or master? I could barely run my own life, so the thought of exercising that level of control over another daunted me. I took a deep breath and let all that stuff go. Whatever is coming will get here soon enough.
The room was arranged to accommodate my plan. An old solid wood coffee table waited just a step or so away. It was a thrift store find, just the height and sturdiness I needed. I took it to a refinisher and paid to have it cleaned and buffed. The rest of my needed items waited in laundry baskets behind the couch, out of sight.
I touched her firmly on the shoulder, pressing down lightly and hoping she'd understand not to move. She did. From behind the couch I grabbed a stack of black towels, new and fluffy, and a gym bag full of black rope. I had white towels and rope too, but I thought her pink attire would look better against black. The bag went on the table, for now, and I folded two of the towels and placed them at the end of the table, by the legs. I dropped the rest of the towels to the floor, knowing I would need one or two later.
Then I took my biggest gamble. This had not come up in our discussion of limits, and to be honest, I didn't think of it until later, when I recalled her volunteering to model. I set four tripod mounted video cameras around the room, all pointing in toward the table. Their signals went into a box which I connected to our wall mounted television. After powering on, the picture showed Paige, standing still. Then I stepped into the frame as well, holding a remote. The view started cycling between cameras.
She looked pensive, but asked no questions. If needed, I would have explained that the video was recorded only to the camera's removable memory, which was hers to keep or destroy. Also, it would only be on for the binding, not anything more intimate.
I took a long look at her, walking around to take her in from multiple angles. My theme for this session was cinching. Or so I imagined, as though I was some rope expert and not much more than an out of practice well-read novice.
Her arm was warm and just the right balance between soft and muscled. I had a firm grip just below her elbow, and she provided enough resistance to make the motions feel right. I can't explain what I mean by right, except she wasn't flopping around, but I didn't have to brace my legs and use both hands to pull her limbs into place.
When I was done, her arms were beside her and slightly back. I realized I couldn't take this much time on everything, or we'd still be at it Monday morning. Like that would be a bad thing?
I reached into the gym bag and pulled out a tight coil of black rope. I had cut them to various lengths and handled them until I could tell which was which by appearance and weight. Laying the midpoint of the rope on top of her generous bustline, I wrapped three loops around her body, including her upper arms. I snugged the circles up a little, so the loops were parallel and touching. There was a little rope left over when I knotted it behind her back, but I was sure I could find something to do with it.
Three more loops were added below her breasts, which required a little reaching around her and over her. I made sure to press my body against hers and to brush fingers and hands over her lace covered chest. Three short pieces of the black nylon turned into cinches: one between her breasts, and one each around the ropes between her arms and body.
I think I had her attention now. Paige's body is strong and athletic, but she hasn't spent a lot of time on flexibility. I already knew that things like touching elbows and reverse prayer were out of the question. But she could grab her elbows behind her back, and I had planned to use that. I tied a nice, comfortable, single column tie around her right wrist and and tied the trailing rope to the cinch under her left shoulder.
As I repeated the process on her left wrist, she shivered slightly, and I could see she was getting worked up. A quick glance at the screen showed her stiff nipples pressed hard against the lace of her top. Of course, that might have been more from the ropes restraining her tits, but I could also see the flush of her face. Her weight shifted slightly from leg to leg.
I gauged the leftover rope at the center of her back and decided to bring the strands over her shoulders, two on either side, and tie them into the cinch in her cleavage. This gave me an excuse, not that I needed one, to stand directly in front of her, fondling her chest and looking at her face.
It was fun. I'm not sure which of us was having the harder time staying quiet.
Getting a firm grasp on her waist, just to help her down, I looked into those smoldering gray eyes. and spoke. "Kneel." She let me guide her to the floor, right knee easing onto the folded towel first, then the left.
As much as I wanted to remain standing in front of Paige, with her face right at waist level, I needed to move, and to adjust her position. But first, I squatted down and kissed her. A table that she could straddle would be nice, and I filed that thought away for future use.
For now, I scooted and slid the padding on which her knees rested until I had her legs where I wanted them. I grabbed the bag off the table and started. Again, loops of rope encircled my lover's flesh, this time securing her leg to a table leg with neat, pleasing to my eyes, stacks of parallel ropes. A cinch turned the restraint from loose to rigorous. With building confidence, I repeated the process on her other leg. After phase one of her leg bondage was done, I laid a rope across the top of the table for future use. Yes, I said phase one. Did you think I'd leave those ankles untouched?
"Lean down," I said, guiding her upper torso down to lie flat on the table top. I wanted her to feel the firm coolness of the wooden surface, so I didn't put any padding beneath her. I picked out a very long length of rope and wrapped eight turns of it around her and the table top, starting at her waist level. I could sense her curiosity, though she remained silent.
As she might have expected, I used the strand I had left on the table to cinch the coils a little tighter and make everything prettier. I could see that eight loops was too many, but I didn't let this minor imperfection spoil my mood.
Finally, ropes in hand, I sat down on the floor between her still mobile feet. I'd fix that. I crossed her ankles and wondered if I should leave her shoes on. Once, a lifetime ago it seemed now, she had said she liked the stockings and heels in my stories. They stayed on.
Binding her crossed ankles would be different than all the other ties I had used today, but I still wanted to add a cinch, just because. What I ended up doing felt a little clumsy, but Paige didn't complain. I placed the center of a rope atop one ankle, then went in opposite directions, under then over her legs until the ropes met back at the starting point. I crossed the ropes with a change of direction and then did a circuit of overs and unders. None of it was super taut, allowing me to gather the loops in a cinch.
She was so beautiful.
I got up and walked around to the end of the table so she could see me, more or less. She had found a more comfortable position by turning her head to the right. I sat down on the floor, cross-legged and pointed at the TV. She didn't have a lot of wiggle room to see it, but she did a back bend right there on the table and was looking right at it when I clicked the remote and turned the cameras off, one by one.
She held that position, amazing me with her physical strength, and watched as I got up and disconnected the box from the television and then disconnected the cameras from the box, put the lens caps on, and laid them down on the floor where she could see.
Paige relaxed back to the table, but I could see the question on her face. I sat back down. I could see she wasn't going to break the silence.
"Why have the cameras at all, or why turn them off now?"
"Both," she said softly.
"I want you to see how I see you, if you can. I turned them off because some things should stay private."
I watched tension I didn't even realize she held just drain out of her. She relaxed against the ropes, letting them hold her. Was this the transition to sub-space? Sure, I had restrained girlfriends before, and they had trusted me to do so, but none of them had let go like Paige did now.
I kissed her again, and took my shirt off, and kissed her some more. Standing, I let my pants and shorts drop to the floor, and she looked up to see my cock jutting away from my body. She licked her lips and I nearly lost it right there. As much as I wanted to give her something else to lick, her position would have made that difficult and uncomfortable.
Instead, I winked a promise to her and stepped behind her. I stood there for a second, making sure I wasn't going to run afoul of those stunning, dangerous, heels. Then I knelt on a towel of my own, and pressed my naked body against her nearly naked one, letting my hands explore and fingers roam over her, both the exposed skin and the skin barely covered.
This is where I stop sharing. As I had just told my future wife, some things should remain private.