Edge Play X (5 page)

The driver pulled to the side of the
house, turned off the engine, and opened the door, careful to not make any eye
contact as X exited.

A man was waiting for X at the side
door. This was David Steinberg, the man with whom Simeon had, through whatever
channels he used, arranged to get X in. From what Simeon had told X, Steinberg
made all of Compton’s ideas into reality, whether business or pleasure. Simeon
had told her that Steinberg and no one else in the house had any knowledge of
the real reason she was there. As far as they were concerned, it was all about
money. Everything was about money.

Steinberg was well-dressed, prim, and
polite. A dark leather folder was tucked under his arm. He was the kind of man
who only ever said
rubbish
and never
trash
or
garbage
. The word that came to X’s mind when she looked at him was
tailored
, a meaning that extended beyond
his impeccable clothing and bled over into his whole personality and demeanor.
He was a man who had been tailored to do another man’s bidding, a man fitted to
obtain another man’s needs and wants. X thought that this was pathetic.

He gave her a gentle looking smile
that X guessed was entirely fake. And she was right—David Steinberg had refined
this smile over the past 17 years of working with Terry Compton. Now, with that
smile, he could make even the most arrogant business associates and
Botox
-zombie gold-diggers feel like he might actually care
about them. But his politeness made X even more uncomfortable. A man with fake
smiles was dangerous and manipulative, a man who was hiding something.

X didn’t return his smile. Why
pretend? They both knew the reason she was there.

Steinberg told X to follow him and he
led her down a flight of highly polished marble steps and into a long hallway
before finally stopping in front of a heavy Spanish-style wooden door. The man
took out the folder from under his arm and removed a paper from it, placing it
gently on top of the folder and handing it to X along with a pen.

“I’m certain that you can understand
that you will need to sign a confidentiality agreement.”

X had already begun to read it over,
noting how the contract stated that all the activities she and Compton would be
involved in, ones that would include role playing and physical interactions of
a sexual nature, were completely consensual. Any danger in their activities was
an accepted risk and that X (her full name listed once at the beginning of the
contract and after that all references named her as Party X) would release Mr.
Terry Compton from any resulting damages, whether physical or emotional, in
perpetuity. It went on to say that in the case of a breach of confidentiality,
legal options would be pursued to their fullest extent.

X knew that she didn’t have a choice
but to sign the contract. She put her signature to it quickly and then handed
everything back to Steinberg. The man smiled at her, pleased at the sealed
deal, aware that his superior would be happy that he had ensured their safety
legally.

He removed a ring of keys from a clip
on his belt, flipped through them, found the one he wanted, and unlocked it.

“When you are finished,” he said,
“press the intercom inside the room and I will come get you. Our driver will be
outside, ready to take you home.” Then Steinberg was gone.

X waited until the sound of his
footsteps disappeared, reached out to grab the doorknob, and slowly, she opened
the door.

3.

It isn’t just about the sex, of course.
For Mr. Terry Compton, sex was never more than a phone call away, and more
often than not, with reliable regularity, much closer than that. No, if it were
just about the sex, Terry Compton would not have been sitting in his dungeon
nearly naked, eagerly awaiting abuse from a dominatrix named X, a specific
creature that he had until recently only ever fantasized about.

What Terry Compton wanted more than
anything was that which he could not have. His desire for whatever that thing
or person happened to be at the time became all-encompassing, completely
consuming. Where at first, the vision of it in his mind was little more than a
fond thought to which he would escape, his longing grew exponentially almost,
it spread throughout him like dye permeating water, coloring his being
entirely.
 

What Terry
Compton wanted was to experience an authentic erotic thrill, and the longing
for such had become his predominant desire. The man already had all the money
he could ever have hoped for, more of it in fact than he could have ever
imagined. His mother would have been proud: he could, if he had wanted, buy the
shoe factory where she had worked (shut down by then for many years, the
equipment shipped off to China) ten thousand times over. What he wanted now was
a woman who did not throw herself at him, happy to be in the resplendent aura
of a billionaire, but instead one who detested him, loathed him,
deplored
him.

Along with that, he simply, quite
simply, enjoyed being whipped, pinched, poked, prodded, spit on, tied up,
talked down to, humiliated, spanked, blindfolded, teased, tickled, led around
on leashes, cuffed, collared, walked-on, plugged, purloined from, urinated
upon, and told that he was worthless, these things mixing with the seductive
ideas of being blackmailed, kidnapped, and publicly embarrassed. He took
particular pleasure in knowing that he was not chained into desiring only what
was sensible, took pleasure in knowing that he was not a piano key without the
choice of how it is played.

He didn’t know why he liked the things
he did, and the truth of the matter was that he didn’t really care. Probably
some high-priced shrink would have him pay $400 an hour to have him describe
all of his fantasies and fetishes (ones becoming increasingly more necessary
for his arousal), more than what most professional
Dommes
charge for their services and not nearly as fun. Then maybe Mr. Compton would
be told how this particular oddity of his being could be linked back to this or
that event that happened to him long ago, to his upbringing somehow, to
religious practices, or to punishments he had received as a child.
 

What the shrink would not be able to
do, successfully at least, would be to tell Mr. Compton how to change this part
of him. You see, he didn’t want to change, didn’t see a need to. What was he
hurting, really? There were terrible things that happened in the world, oh, the
true cruelty that people were capable of was mind-blowing, literally
mind-blowing in some cases.
 

Terry Compton was certain of this
much: that the duration of this life was all he could be sure of, and he had
every intention of living it to the full depth and breadth in whatever way he
decided. He wanted to taste every pleasure of the world, to procure any
gratuitous sin he desired. He had been to ashrams and cathedrals where he was
told that there would be a reckoning, an after-life, a reincarnation, and by
the way please give us some money and well, if there is nothing afterwards, no
guarantees, no refunds, sorry buddy, you’re shit out of luck.

Now, inside his dungeon on a simple
wooden chair, Terry Compton sat, blissfully happy, waiting.
 

4.

When X opened the heavy door, she went
into a large, windowless, and dimly lit room, a space simultaneously modern and
gothic and filled with every manner of bondage equipment imaginable
. Beyond her and unnoticed, Terry Compton
watched as she entered, the cool backlight of the hallway behind her creating
an aura of light around her murky silhouette, the door jamb acting as a frame,
making it appear as if she were a painting coming into life, a figure walking
out from a two-dimensional canvas into the three-dimensional world in which Mr.
Compton lived, a fantasy come to life.

From the back of the room, X heard a
voice.

“Come here,” it said, and she tried to
locate the sound.
 

Upon hearing the man’s voice, the
woman wondered if perhaps she had made a mistake by not running, made a mistake
to come to this place instead of taking the money and disappearing,
consequences be damned. But it was too late now to dwell on such things. Now,
there was no turning back.

X scanned
the room. It looked as if the man had ordered one of everything from an S&M
store. A large steel canopy bed sat in the center of the expansive dungeon, a piece
which was ornamented with restraint hoops welded on every corner and rail.
 
Nearby was a metal bondage chair, similar to
her own but less ornate. On one side of the room was a stand-up jail cell, a
puppy cage, joy-rider chair, and four-point sling on a large metal stand. On
the other side was a latex vacuum bed, sex cushions of varied shapes, and a
stockade next to a sex machine. The giant X-shape of a large bondage cross was
adhered to the wall to her left. Above, heavy metal piping ran throughout the
room, dangling suspension hooks or chains or shiny clips. Rings and hooks
extended from walls, making the room ready for play at any area.
A small, intricately carved bar sat along the
wall. It was a perfect dungeon.

X walked toward the back of the room and
spotted Compton on his simple wooden chair. Costumes tell people how to behave,
what to expect and anticipate, and X understood the importance of costume, how
it was a doorway through which the mind and personality entered a different
state. Compton understood its importance as well and had dressed suitably for
the occasion by wearing only bondage cuffs on his wrists and ankles and a black
studded codpiece over his privates. X knew that costumes could also be
disguises, another understanding that she shared with Compton: the child
molester in the religious cloak; the policeman on the take; the
money-laundering businessman.
 

Now, as she stood just a few feet away
from Compton, he spoke to her. “I was told that you were attractive, but they
were wrong.” There was gentility in his voice, a hint of refinement in the
kinetics of his sentences. He paused, making X feel momentarily insecure about
his impending judgment. Finally, his assessment came, “Attractive? No.
Beautiful is the word. Tell me, what is your name?”

“My name is
X.
”

Compton already knew that the woman in
front of him was called X, and he had already considered the multitude of
meanings and associations behind the letter (one afternoon in his office he had
listed out everything that he could think of related to the letter).

X: the 24
^th
letter of the
modern Latin alphabet; the female chromosome; the cross tilted over on itself
for crucifixion, better known as Saint Andrew’s Cross; the X-rating; the
accepted signature for illiterates; the symbol marking the spot where treasure
could be found; the shape similar to the man’s figure in
Da
Vinci’s
Vitruvian
Man
; the shape of the bondage cross;
the Roman numeral for ten; the shortened form of “extra,” “cross” and “Christ,”
as in extra large, railroad crossing, or Christmas (the Greek word for Christ
being Chi, its symbol similar to the letter X); a mysterious quality, as in the
“X” factor; a common variable in mathematic equations; the phonetic sound of
the middle vowel and final consonant of the word sex; the mathematical symbol
for multiplication; street slang for the drug ecstasy; the letter representing
the kiss, as in
XOXO
, and likewise, when combined with O, the letter
used to play tic-tac-toe.

X: seek it and ye shall find.

The woman before him expressed no need
to explain her name, (some things are best with an air of mystery behind them),
and anyway, let him figure it out.
 

She dropped her bag onto the floor and
then took off her fur coat and let into fall into itself in luxurious folds,
revealing her red silk corset. The fabric clung to her curves, accentuating
them. Her patent leather boots, ones that extended over her knees and glistened
with an oily, synthetic shine, emitted a squeak anytime she moved. A chrome
neckband circled the woman’s throat, smooth as mercury.

Compton felt a rush of stinging,
tingling excitement jolt through his body, so lovely was her radiance.

Compton was more handsome than X had
anticipated, was more attractive in person than in his photographs. She was
grateful that at least he wasn’t physically repulsive. He was 24 years older
than X. He had made his first million before she was out of diapers, his first
billion before she was out of elementary school.

Time had carved and refined him. The
lines on his face made him look rugged and well-lived, deepened his character,
amplified it. Even when he was not smiling it seemed that some kind of subtle
smirk remained. His hair, once dark brown and now mostly white, was cropped
close and tight to his head. His body, lean, tan, and toned, was the physique
of a wealthy man with enough time and money for personal trainers, private
chefs, and tailored work-outs.

His face seemed so gentle and cheery
that X had a difficult time imagining him as a killer. She reminded herself of
the possibility that he had not committed the murder, that maybe he had nothing
to do with it at all, but the thought brought her no comfort. After all, Ted
Bundy had been a very attractive, gentle looking man, a wolf in sheep’s
clothing. She suddenly felt certain that over the course of her life that she
had probably passed many murderers on the street and never even had the
slightest idea. How could a person tell? How could a person really know? And
either way, she knew, whatever the truth was, the best thing was to be cautious
with such a man, to remember to never let her guard down.