Gagged (23 page)

“I didn’t think that was how it worked.” The words come with another nervous smile. Another flutter. More long, uneasy breaths. More subtle shifting of her feet as her body feels pleasure it’s rarely allowed to feel.
 

“It’s different for everyone. Some people feel powerless all day and relish the idea of controlling another when the sun goes down. Some people don’t feel powerless but crave control anyway. Some people feel the world is upon their shoulders — all these responsibilities, important decisions that only they can make. And for those people, sometimes the intention is the opposite: to submit, and let someone else be in charge for a while.”
 

“Is that how it is for you?”
 

“Does it look like you’re in charge right now?”
 

“But is it — ?”
 

“I’ll ask the questions,” I interrupt.
 

But she disobeys. Quietly she asks, “What are you going to do with me?”

“I won’t do anything you don’t want me to do. I’ll only force you to do as you wish.”
 

I move forward. I touch her lips with one finger. The lips part and slowly exhale. Then I move my finger across her cheek. Down her long neck. To the place where flesh gives way to fabric, where the first button of her white dress shirt gets in my way.

With barely any pressure, the button pops open.
 

“The story,” I say, “starts with a girl.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

A
URORA

I
CAN
’
T
SEE
ANYTHING
. T
HE
tie’s blindfold is complete. There’s light leaking around its bottom and top, but all that tells me is that the lights, in this strange apartment-dungeon, are still on. My arms feel funny as they hang, like the muscles are getting tired or might go numb.
 

My legs feel weak.
 

My heart is beating fast.
 

My lips keep going dry because I can’t stop breathing through my mouth, but I try to lick them only when I think he’s behind me and won’t see. To do otherwise feels like an invitation I’m a little afraid to make, but the problem is I’m never exactly sure where he is. There’s soft carpet on the floor, and Caspian, even in his hard-soled dress shoes, sounds like a shadow.

When he speaks, I find he’s closer than I imagined.

“When I was fourteen, I met Becky Jeffries, a girl down the street. We’d have ridden the same bus to school if I’d taken it, but that’s not the way things worked out. Instead, my mother took me every day. She didn’t drive. That would have felt more dignified. Instead, she walked me. All the way there. Not just onto the grounds but to the building itself. And then to my classroom. Every day. For the entire year.”
 

Caspian is pacing in circles around me. I’m not sure where this is going. I stay silent, and gather that I’m expected to. I feel my shirt’s fabric move, only slightly, in the wake of his passage when he comes too close.
 

“Becky was plain. She didn’t stand out from the other girls waiting for the school bus at all. But still, each day when my mother pulled me out the front door, I’d see her. She’d look right at me. It was like she hated me. But it was also like she knew me, or wanted to. It was the oddest blend of expressions, but every day she looked at me that way and I started to look forward to it. Like I wanted to perform for her, even if the
performance
was just being led away by my overbearing mother, who did her duty because my father was so sure I’d lose something on the bus, or have something stolen by bullies. When summer came and she was no longer waiting for the bus and I was no longer walking to school, I felt this surprising sense of loss. But then she came over one day while I was outside and asked if I wanted to come watch a movie.”
 

Caspian’s hand touches my back. With his lips very near my neck, raising gooseflesh, he says, “Did you used to do that, Aurora? Ask strange boys you didn’t even know over to your house to sit with you in the dark?”
 

It takes a few seconds to find my voice. It leaves in a near stutter: “N-no.”
 

“Ever play spin the bottle?”

“I … ”
 

“How about Seven Minutes in Heaven? Were you ever at a party and ended up shoved into a closet with a boy, knowing you had seven minutes in the dark to do whatever you wanted?”
 

I had. The boy’s name was Alex. He was really cute, and half my friends had crushes on him. I was fifteen. And in the first few seconds, Alex came toward me and tried to kiss me, which surprised me because the two of us had barely shared a dozen words. Our lips barely met, and I pushed him away. For six and a half minutes we sat in awkward silence, my young body tingling with unknown, thrilling sensations I didn’t dare indulge or admit.

“Yes,” I say.
 

“Did you let him kiss you?”
 

“Yes.” Barely.
 

“Did you let him touch your tits? Did you let him put a finger inside your pussy, just to see how it felt? Did he take out his cock, and did you touch it? I had a hair trigger back then. In seven minutes, you could have jerked me off and made me come. Did you do all of that, Aurora?”
 

“No.”
 

“We did. All of it and more, from the very first day. We watched the only movie in Becky’s house, which was empty for the entire afternoon while her parents were out.”
 

I wait for the movie’s title, wondering if it’s important. Maybe something taboo like a movie I saw from my father’s collection:
Wild Orchid
, which I watched end to end one rare night when they were out, then gripped a pillow between my clothed legs and let myself come, conflicted and guilty.
 

“It was
The Matrix.”
 

I turn my head toward the sound of his voice, surprised.
 

“It was only on in the background. While Becky did all sorts of things to me that I’d heard about but never done. And then told me to do things to her that I’d never heard about at all. When we finally got tired of experimenting, I went home, unsure what had happened and why it had happened so fast. I’d been a virgin before that, like you. But now I wasn’t just a little experienced. In the space of one afternoon, I felt like a veteran. But then the strangest thing happened. My friends started talking about a sequel to
The Matrix
that was supposedly in the works. And I realized I hadn’t actually seen the original, not in any way that counted. So a few days later I watched it with one of my friends. But I couldn’t make it through the movie. I had to go to the bathroom and masturbate. Twice.”

“To robots?”
 

“To leather. To Trinity in her tight black suit. To all those shiny lines and sculpted bodies. To all the dark imagery. It’s conditioning, like Pavlov did with his dogs. Two things done together became linked. For me, it was black leather and violence linked to all that new pleasure. And as near as I can figure, that’s how it began.”

The way he says the last part is curious. Like he’s an observer of himself rather than a man in his skin.
 

“Do you understand what I’m saying, Aurora?”
 

“Yes.” It’s barely an exhale. I’m feeling suddenly dizzy. I don’t like having him so close without my senses to tell me where he is. I feel like he could touch or hurt me at any moment. I wish he’d get on with it.
 

“Are you sure? Because I didn’t. I went back to Becky for the whole summer, every day I could get away, by telling my mother I was going to one of my male friends’ houses. And that part, I understood. I was a teenage boy with a dick in need of attention. But the rest of it baffled me. We’d moved so fast that there’d been no time for anticipation. Vanilla sex was immediately … pedestrian. I don’t know what someone did to Becky, but she was broken like a battered doll. She kept wanting to stretch and find new things to try, just to try them. But we’d fucked every way there is within the first week. Things you’d never do, Aurora.”
 

And I say, “Like what?”
 

“She wanted my cock all the way down her throat until she choked. She wanted me to come on her face. Things you’re too much of a good girl to ever do.”
 

But I can hear his tone. He’s messing with me. I want to tell him that he’s already come on my face a little, if by accident. But this isn’t a contest. At least not this part.

“Girls like Becky — and clearly girls like Jasmine — want it up the ass,” Caspian says. “But I’ll bet you’re not even curious.”
 

His fingers run through my hair. All of them, including the thumb, against my scalp like a helmet under my hair. Then they grip, my hair in his fist.

“Good girls like you probably find it disgusting.”

I wait for it to end, but the pulled hair doesn’t bother me. It hurts a bit but feels good in a way as well.

He lets go.

“After the first weeks, it was like she got bored. So we got on the Internet. And the second we found whips and crops and gags and restraints, I practically jumped at the computer. I was a kid; I got off fine when the right parts were rubbed. But seeing all that black leather made me harder than I’d ever been, and I wondered what it’d be like if we embraced what I now realize was a blooming fetish. She saw my reaction, and I told her about it all. We couldn’t afford gear and wouldn’t have known how to order or store it without getting caught, but Becky’s older brother had left behind a black leather jacket which she promptly stripped down and modeled for me. And that time it was different. So we went further down the tunnel. We watched all the videos of men spanking women, and women spanking men. Then we tried what we could. Anything can be a paddle. You can make DIY whips out of all sorts of things. We had candle wax. All that mattered, eventually, was that it hurt.”
 

I’m in Caspian’s penthouse dungeon, I can’t move, and he’s inches from talking about torture.
 

I feel fingers fumbling with the next button on my shirt. Then the one below it. A few seconds later my entire front is exposed, in my bra, with the shirt still hanging from my arms. He won’t be able to take it off unless he lets me go. And if he removes my restraints, then surely I’ll run.
 

Except that I won’t.

I’m wet.
 

I’m breathing too slowly, wanting him to touch me now that I’m partially undressed.
 

Fingers trace the cups of my bra. Over my nipples. And Caspian says, “Did you wear this for me?”
 

Trembling, I say, “No.”

The bra unfastens in the front. His hands go to the clasp on my chest. Caspian’s scent is around my face. Then the bra opens, and he’s cupping my small breasts, his strong hands worshipping them like he’s never touched female skin.

My eyes close beneath the blindfold, and I sigh.

“So do you understand now?”
 

“Yes.”
 

But I’m not actually answering him. I’m responding to the feeling of his hands on me. My pussy craves his touch. Or any touch. I squeeze my thighs, squirming to generate friction.

His hands leave my chest. I almost cry out, my body yearning.
 

“Pain blended with pleasure. We’d take turns, Becky and me. She’d hurt me until I couldn’t take it anymore, and that never took long. Then it’d be my turn, and I’d hurt her. It always took longer for Becky. When her clothes were off, I could see all her cutting marks. Everywhere. Not just her arms, like you hear about. But on her legs, high up. On her chest and stomach. Even a few on her tits. Anywhere clothing could hide and plenty of places it couldn’t. She was immune to pain, it sometimes seemed. I’d hit her harder and harder with one of her paddles, and I’d chicken out way before she’d had enough. Then she’d suck my cock and tell me to come while slapping her. While shoving things into her. After a while, she was so numb that I couldn’t even get her off, and that’s when it ended. I was ready to move on. Even I knew it was fucked up. But the damage had already been done. And even as I look at you right now, part of me wants to hear you scream. How does that make you feel?”
 

It terrifies me. I want my hands back. All the things he just described, he could do, and I wouldn’t be able to stop him.
 

“If you want it to end, just tell me.”
 

For some reason, I shake my head.
 

I hear Caspian circle me. I think he’s come all the way around to my front again, but then all at once his hands are at my waist, lowering the zipper on my skirt. And then the skirt is off with my panties, and I’m standing in front of him with my most private parts exposed. I can feel how wet I am just from the air. And despite it all, the flow of juices from my pussy isn’t stopping.

His hand on my thigh, circling around to the inside.
 

My legs widen. Inviting him in.
 

But the hand stops a few inches short and is gone. The next time I hear him, he’s circled behind me. So close to my neck that his breath moves my hair against my ear.
 

“Are you afraid, Aurora?”

“Yes,”
I whisper.
 

“And it’s new. The fear.”
 

“Yes.”
 

“But it’s not, Aurora. You’ve been afraid for most of your life. That’s what I’m trying to show you.”
 

His hand cups my bare ass then moves away. He speaks from my right.
 

“Afraid of not being the porcelain doll your parents expected you to be.”
 

Fingers playing across my nipples.
 

“Afraid of feeling what your body wants to feel.”
 

His lips on my breast. His warm tongue.