Best S&M, Volume 3 (7 page)

“Do your students like Poe?” asked my department head, Dr. Dorothy Kipperwell. She generally discouraged modern informality in the English Department, but she had asked me to call her Kip. “Do they understand the language?”

“They do when I explain it to them,” I told her. “A lot of first-year students are still teenagers, Kip. They understand extreme emotions. Adolescence is a gothic period. Remember how it felt to be that age?”

I knew that I was peeking through the keyhole of a locked door. Kip was almost butch enough to pass for a man (suave, witty, and middle-aged, but with plenty of controlled aggression) and she had told me enough about her life to let me know that her youth had been hell. The classic teenage whine that “nobody understands me” had been very true for her. Her lonely coming-of-age had made her tough, discreet, and determined to survive on her own terms. Beyond all reason, I wanted to be the one person on earth who could pierce her armor and learn her secrets.

Kip smiled in a way that raised the fine hair on the back of my neck. I hoped my nipples weren’t poking up shamelessly under my low-cut red silk top, and I didn’t dare look down.

Kip looked coolly professorial in a navy-blue sweater and pants. She also looked amused. “You like to revisit that period, don’t you, Athena?”

I felt my face grow hot. I reminded myself that Kip wasn’t much older than I was (thirty-something), or much taller. She was slim and muscular, but I was slim too. She had read a lot, of course, but that went with the territory; the same could be said about me. Like me, she had dark brown hair and eyes, although her eyes were smaller and looked more knowing than mine. Her hair looked short enough for the military, while mine flowed halfway down my back on occasions like this when it wasn’t pinned up.

When we first met, Kip already knew that I had been a faculty brat all my life. She had heard of my parents: the historian Abraham Chalkdust and the linguist Anna Parle Chalkdust. If my pedigree impressed her, she didn’t show it.

The quality in Kip that made me weak in the knees (even though I was not a weak person, as I reminded myself) seemed beyond my power to analyze. Telling myself that she was just an academic dyke like me didn’t help me at all.

I ignored her last comment and plunged on with a discussion of my students, as though I were being interviewed for a job.

“They get the irony of the host’s concern for his friend’s health as the two men go deeper and deeper into the crypt of the family castle. Each time the host asks, ‘Are you sure you don’t want to go back?’ the guest tells him to lead on. The guest ignores the cold, damp air of the place because he’s drunk and trusting and curious. And he’s dressed as a fool or jester, in a cap with bells. Students get it.”

“It’s one of your favorite stories, isn’t it, Athena?” asked Kip, my boss. She was almost openly laughing at me. “This is interesting. What’s your favorite part?”

I felt as if the answer must be written on my face, or maybe in the modest cleavage that showed above my neckline, the little valley that led directly to my heart. I knew that I couldn’t ignore her question this time.

I nervously brushed the long hair out of my eyes and tossed it behind my shoulders before I realized how flirtatious this must look.

“That moment when the host chains his friend to the wall,” I told her. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Kip’s gaze dropped to my small, perky breasts, and her smile widened. “It’s so intimate. He fastens his victim’s wrists to bolts in the wall that have been used to secure captured enemies for centuries. Then the host chains his victim’s waist. They must be physically close for that, and the fool doesn’t fight back at first because he trusts his friend. It’s only when he realizes that he’s not going to be released that he struggles. ‘For the love of God, Montresor!’ he begs, but he gets no mercy.”

I shifted my butt on Kip’s sofa, and she looked down at my hips in sleek black pants.

“It’s horrifying, of course,” I said, “but think about it: Montresor wants to keep his old friend there forever, with the bones of his own ancestors. No one makes commitments like that anymore.” I was trying to lighten the mood. I thought I sounded young and foolish.

“So you think the story has a homosexual subtext?”

“Yes,” I told her, forcing myself to look into her shrewd chocolate-colored eyes. “No one names it, but it’s there.”

“And the act of chaining someone up seems erotic to you?” she demanded. “Or would you rather be the helpless victim? The one who gets shackled or fettered in a dungeon by one who lured you down there by offering you something special?”

For the love of God!
She had led me to this point in the conversation, and I had willingly followed. And now I couldn’t find a graceful way to go back or get away. “Uh,” I answered. “I’d like to be chained up.” There. I had said it. “Not permanently, of course! Just for awhile. By someone with better intentions than any of the maniacs in Poe’s stories! I’d like to be locked up or tied up by someone who wants me. Alive. Not someone who wants me dead.”

“Gotcha,” grinned Kip. She didn’t seem shocked at all.

Oh yes,
I thought.
You get me, you read me, and now you know you can have me any time you want
. I was tempted to resign right then.

Kip had more to say. “You tend to run away if you’re not tied down, don’t you, babe? I bet you’d like me to chase you into a corner and wrestle you to the floor. You can get what you want, my dear, but you have to ask for it. That’s the rule.”

I really hadn’t seen this coming. Two weeks before, Kip had seemed unusually friendly when I was the last guest to leave her house after a department party that she had put on as an icebreaker at the beginning of the fall semester. Once we were alone, her strong, graceful hands punctuated her comments with taps on my shoulders. While I was making a point about the transvestite heroines in Shakespeare’s plays, she distracted me by stroking my hair. While showing me through her house, she led me by the hand. I secretly hoped that she was planning to throw me onto her vintage brass bed, but I couldn’t be sure I was reading the signs clearly.

In any case, my common sense told me that getting sexual with my boss would be a really bad career move. My moist cunt was telling me other things.

Kip offered me a brandy and I accepted, but nothing she said or did was a clear proposition. Finally, I thanked her for a lovely evening and stood up to leave. She followed me to her front hallway, where she calmly pulled me into her arms as though she wanted to dance. Before I could react, she tipped my head back slightly and pressed her lips to mine. When I didn’t resist, she slid her tongue into my mouth.
Yes!
I felt faint, but I didn’t mind.

I could taste the wine she had drunk and the salty peanuts she had eaten. I could feel her heart beating beneath her small, hot breasts. I could feel my panties growing wetter, and I wondered if she could smell me. I breathed in her own clean but earthy smell as I moved my hips, hoping she found me irresistible.

Kip pulled her mouth away from mine, and smoothly pushed me away from her. “I’ll see you at school on Monday, Athena,” she smiled. I felt as if she had just poured icewater over me.

“Goodnight. See ya,” I muttered. I grabbed my jacket and pulled it on while opening the front door, and rushed out to the darkness. I didn’t want Kip to know how disappointed I was.

In the following weeks, I told myself that she had done the right thing, and that I should be glad to be working for someone who was ethical enough to protect me from my own reckless desire.

But my dreams were so lurid and drastic that I remembered them clearly while showering, dressing, and preparing myself for my audience of students. A few scenes even jumped into my mind’s eye when I was driving to work or grading essays or exchanging small talk with a colleague: Kip beckoning me to kneel at her feet. Kip, dressed in black leather, pinching my bare nipples while discussing literature. Kip taking an old-fashioned wooden paddle off the wall of her office to use on my naked ass as I waited obediently on all fours. Kip approaching me with a scary grin that said that she wasn’t violating my rights, she was giving us both what we wanted.

The best and worst scenes from the cinema of my imagination were full of restraining devices: Kip as a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (and very handsome in the red serge uniform), pulling my hands behind my back (not gently this time) and securing them in metal handcuffs before pushing me into the backseat of a police cruiser to await further attention. Kip as a vaguely Shakespearian guard locking me, a mischievous and disheveled maid, into wooden stocks in a public square. Kip as a kidnapper, tying me up with rope before covering my eyes with a blindfold and my mouth with a gag, the better to spirit me away to her secret lair.

When the real Kip had invited me back to her house for a drink and a private conversation, I had ignored my common sense and said yes.

But now she had really gone too far. “I don’t
run away
, Kip,” I told her. “Jesus. I can take a hint. You told me you would see me later, at school. What was that about? I don’t stay where I’m not welcome, and you almost pushed me out the door.”

Kip’s smile never wavered. “I did no such thing, Athena,” she told me. “You assume far too much. You need to be taught a lesson. You haven’t seen my basement yet, have you?”

“No,” I sneered. “Is that where you keep the bodies?”

“Not yet,” she replied calmly. “I’ve only lived here for a few months. But the house has a history. One of the previous owners was charged with cruelty to animals for keeping his dogs chained up in the basement. It’s an easy thing to do, not only to animals.”

Now here was the rub, so to speak: bondage could be abandonment and neglect based on contempt. It wasn’t always loving entrapment, delicious conquest, security, and clear limits.

“The foundation of the house is made of limestone, very picturesque. Do you want to see it?”

“Yes, Kip,” I told her, trying to breathe normally.

“I think you’d better call me Ma’am while you’re here, my girl. That seems fitting, don’t you think so?”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“Speaking of what fits, I want you to take off all your clothes before we go downstairs. I want to see you all over, and I want you to be in the proper frame of mind.”

“Here?” I asked, somehow feeling hot and cold at the same time. “K-Ma’am?”

“Right here, baby,” she smiled. “Take your time.”

Trying not to blush, I raised my top up over my head, revealing my lacy black bra. “Nice contrast,” she told me. “Your skin is so pale.”

I managed to unhook my bra and drop it casually on my top. “Ahh,” she told my hard red nipples.

I stood up to unzip my pants, and pulled down my panties at the same time, to get it over with. She licked her lips while looking at the dark triangle of my pubic hair. “You’ve never been shaved there, have you, girl?” she smirked.

“No, Ma’am.”

Kip seemed to be imagining the slit between my legs surrounded by smooth pink skin, completely exposed to her gaze.

After taking off my socks and shoes, I stood naked for her inspection.

Kip walked around me as I stood still, trying not to shake or twitch. She gathered up my hair in one hand and lifted it off my shoulders and back, giving my sweaty skin a chance to breathe. “Stand straighter,” she told me, trailing a hand down my back and leaving gooseflesh in her wake. “No, don’t be stiff.” She tweaked one of my nipples and ran a hand lovingly over my butt. She released my hair. “There’s so much that could be done with you. Wait here.” She disappeared into another room. I heard cupboard doors opening, and the clink of glass on wood.

Kip returned holding a glowing hurricane lamp. “This will help set the scene. Stone looks better in this light,” she told me. “So does skin. You will look luminous as a damsel in distress.” She turned off the electric light, plunging the room into darkness except for a circle of light around her lamp. “Follow me and watch your step,” she ordered, pulling me by the hand.

The steps leading down to the basement were rough grey wood, and they creaked even under my bare feet. The basement in lamplight looked so large and ominous that the square shapes of a washer and a dryer in a laundry room suggested torture devices waiting to be used.

The grey stone of the foundation was only waist-high, with gyprock above it. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I gasped when I saw two thick metal rings set into the wall, screwed into the wooden posts behind the gyprock. Kip was obviously a more experienced player than I had ever guessed. With a pang of jealousy, I wondered whether she had invited other members of the department down here for an unusual interview or meeting or retreat. How unprofessional!
If she does this often
, I thought,
someone should report her to the administration
. My own hypocrisy stared me in the face, and I almost laughed aloud.

Kip set her lamp on the concrete floor. “Arms up, maiden,” she told me. The thought of being at her mercy sent tingles straight to my clit, in spite of my common sense. I raised my arms, but my wrists didn’t reach the iron rings until I stood on tiptoe.

“You’re such a little thing,” said Kip, making it sound like a compliment. “You need something to stand on.” She pulled a sturdy wooden stand along the wall until it was directly under the rings. “Stand up,” she told me. As I placed one foot on the stand, she helped by possessively grabbing my nearest butt-cheek and giving me a hoist.

Standing on a wooden platform made me feel like a statue, and it brought my crotch closer to Kip’s eye-level. I raised my arms for her, and she secured my wrists to the rings in the wall by fastening them with velvet-lined cuffs that were surprisingly comfortable.
This isn’t very medieval at all
, I thought before I could stop myself. Was I actually disappointed? My common sense was in despair.

Kip seemed to read my mind. “Life in my dungeon can get a lot worse, girl,” she warned. “I’m going easy on you because you’re new here and I’m unreasonably fond of you. Best not to annoy me, eh?”