The Next Move (16 page)

         
"Chris, I don’t want you doing something you’re not comfortable with."

         
"Isn’t the whole idea to push my limits?" He winked. "I’ll be fine, Kat. It’s just not something I’ve done before."

         
"Okay, you’re calling the shots."

         
"Well, technically you’ll be calling the shots."

         
"True."

         
"So, do you want to?"

         
She seemed to consider it for a moment, then nodded. "I’ll bring my cuffs over tomorrow night."

         
"I have cuffs."

         
She grinned. "How many pairs?"

         
He laughed. "I only have two hands, Kat."

         
She nudged his ankle with the toe of her shoe and grinned again. "How many pairs?"

         
He swallowed hard. "Just one."

         
"I’ll bring mine." She paused, then looked at him with a devilish twinkle in her eye that made his hands shake. "Better yet, why don’t you come over to my place?"

Twenty Three

         
As Chris pulled into Kat’s apartment parking lot, his phone beeped. He flipped it open.

         
The door’s open
, the text message read.
Let yourself in and wait for me in the dining room
.

         
He swallowed nervously and got out of the car. Though he enjoyed this kind of power-exchange, he wasn’t without some apprehension. Part of the thrill for him came from giving up control, letting someone else push his limits, mostly by tapping into the depths of the primal and instinctive: Vulnerability. Pain. Immobility.

For him, this voluntary surrender of control was a way of staring the fight-or-flight instinct down and saying "No, I want this, and I will have it".

         
Though it was entirely consensual and deeply pleasurable, it still unnerved him enough that his hands shook as he held the railing on the way up the stairs to her door.

         
The apartment was eerily quiet, the click of the door echoing down the seemingly empty hall. "Kat?"

         
No answer.

         
He left his shoes and jacket by the door and went into the dining room as her message had ordered. Everything that normally covered the table—candles, tablecloth, a few stacks of books and papers—was gone. The polished mahogany was completely bare except for a black blindfold and a piece of paper.

         
He picked up the paper.

         
Put this on. Take everything else off
.

Swallowing hard, he put the note back on the table

and looked at the blindfold. That was one thing he’d never done, never successfully, anyway. He and his last girlfriend had tried blindfold play, but it just made him too nervous. He was willing to try it with Kat, though. He trusted her.

         
Still, if anything about this pushed the limits of his comfort zone, it was that deceptively benign piece of black satin sitting on the table.

         
As ordered, he stripped, laying his clothes on the table beside the note. There was something oddly disconcerting about disrobing there, in her dining room. The sense of exposure surprised him. No one was there except Kat, wherever she was, yet he hesitated with each item of clothing he removed. Being naked and in someone else’s arms wasn’t nearly as vulnerable as this isolated nudity.

         
Silently reminding himself that he trusted her, he slid the blindfold over his eyes, adjusting the elastic until it was comfortable. As comfortable as a blindfold could be, anyway, and disorientation set in, amplifying his vulnerability.

         
A hollow click followed by a dull tap straightened his spine. Then another. Again, closer this time. His mind scrambled to find the sound in his memory, trying to place it in the realms of familiarity, to still the primal fear of the unknown.

High-heeled shoes on a hard floor
.

Kat’s presence raised the hairs on the back of his neck. A mental picture of the apartment flickered through his mind. The only hard floor nearby was the kitchen. She was in the kitchen. Behind him.

The sound of her footsteps dulled as she moved from hard floor to carpet. Now they were in the same room. Excitement and nervousness tied his stomach into knots and his heart pounded.

He couldn’t see her, he could barely hear her, but he was aware of her. Aware of her coming closer, walking past him. Walking in front of him. Past him again. It had to be his imagination, but he was certain he felt the weight of her stare as she circled him like a shark. He shivered and a quiet but sharp exhalation told him she found it amusing.

She stopped, said nothing, did nothing. Even her breathing was near silent.

Seconds went by. Maybe minutes, he couldn’t be sure.

Metal clanged against something solid, like multiple pieces of—of something falling against a hard surface, the sudden sound strafing his every nerve ending and making him suck in a startled breath.

Find it, find it, I know that sound, what is it?

"You know the rules?" Her voice was calm, even, quiet.

"Yes."
Come on, come on, what was it
?

"What are you not allowed to do unless I specifically say so?"

"Touch you."
Coins
?

"What else?"

He swallowed. "Come."
Silverware
?

"Remember the safe word?"

"Checkmate."
Handcuffs
. Something in his mind settled as the sound went from unknown to familiar, but the realization that it was handcuffs ignited an entirely different kind of nervousness in him. He’d known ahead of time that there would be cuffs, and he’d done it before, but now they weren’t just
going
to be there. They
were
there.

"You okay?"

He nodded.

Something beside him moved, dragging across the carpet towards him. The only thing he could think of that would make that sound was the heel of her shoe, but then something bumped the backs of his knees. It wasn’t enough to knock his legs out from under him, just a nudge to make him aware of a presence behind him.

"Sit."

An image of one of the dining room chairs went through his mind. He reached behind him, finding the back of the chair and easing himself down to it. He half-expected her to make him sit without the guidance of his own hands, but she made no move to stop him. That gave him some reassurance. Though she was more than willing to taunt his senses and give his instincts a run for their money, she must have understood the innate fear of falling backwards. He’d surrendered his sight, she conceded the ability to move back without fear.

The chair was cold against his skin and he sat up straight to keep his back off of its surface. Her hands were suddenly on his shoulders, and before his mind could process that contact, she pushed him against the icy back of the chair.

He grunted. "
Fuck
."

"Cold?" she whispered,

"You could say that."

She laughed, her warm breath fluttering across his cheek and raising goose bumps on every inch of his skin. "Comfortable?"

"Not particularly."

"Good."

He sensed movement, instinctively bracing himself for…whatever was coming.

The presence of her skin near his warmed the side of his thigh a second before her leg touched his. Then the other, the chair creaking as she moved. She was standing over him, he guessed, straddling him. There was something unusual about her skin against his. An odd texture he couldn’t quite place. His fingers wanted to investigate, to see what the subtle coarseness was, but that was against the rules. He gripped the edges of the chair, forcing himself not to touch her.

"Give me your hand."

He hesitated. He knew she was there, right in front of —over him, but he couldn’t be sure exactly where. If he raised his hand, he ran the risk of touching her.

"
Now
." The icy, commanding tone made his breath catch. If he hadn’t already been rock hard, that alone would have done it.

Keeping his hand out to the side, he raised it slowly, cautiously, searching for any telltale heat to let him know he was too close.

Fingers closed around his wrist, her grasp firm but not uncomfortably so. "Relax your hand," she said. "Don’t move your fingers or try to press any harder than I let you, and don’t try to hold onto anything."

Press any harder? Hold on? To what
?

She squeezed his wrist. "Understand?"

He licked his lips. "Yes."

She guided his hand down. His pulse soared as she set his palm against her leg. Now he understood her command. It took every bit of control he had not to press his fingers into her flesh, to stroke her skin. It was about as easy as putting something against his tongue and not tasting it.

Swallowing hard, he kept his arm as relaxed and passive as possible as she drew it down, letting his fingertips drift across her skin, allowing him to touch but not explore. A coarse, alien surface met his touch and he instinctively curled his fingers to examine its surface. Kat immediately jerked his hand away from her skin, the sudden lack of contact tingling against his fingertips.

"What did I say?" she growled.

"Sorry," he said. "I—I’m sorry."

"If you do it again, I won’t let you touch anything else."

The tingling in his skin intensified. "I won’t do it again."

She said nothing. Their hands moved again. He was vaguely aware of the chair creaking, the sound barely drifting into his consciousness. Blindness was a strange thing; every sound, no matter how minute, registered.

A moment later, the coarse surface reentered his senses. Gritting his teeth, he kept his fingers passive, trying to identify the material with nothing more than the vague hints she let him feel. Then the surface changed, giving way to a rippled texture that alternated between what felt like rough fabric and warm skin.

Fishnet stockings
.

The realization made his fingers seek confirmation, but he resisted, instead stiffening his hand to lift off of her leg, hoping she would be more forgiving of that error than a forbidden touch.

She pulled his hand completely away from her skin. "What was that?"

"I was trying not to…" His voice caught when her leg moved, almost imperceptibly, against his, as if she’d shifted her weight slightly. "I was trying to keep…" Their hands were moving again, in the air, not touching anything yet.

"Trying to keep
what
?"

"To keep…" Warmth registered against his fingertips, signaling the tantalizing nearness of skin. Of
her
.

"Say it, Christian."

"From touch…" The faintest sensation of softness whispered across his fingertip, not nearly enough to differentiate between skin, clothing, or imagination. He took a breath. "From touching you the way you told me not to."

She said nothing. Evidently she was pleased with his answer, because she let him touch…something. He was disoriented enough that he couldn’t even tell if he was reaching directly in front of him, to the side, up, down. All he knew was that he was touching her. Somehow, some way, he was touching her, but something still divided her body from his fingertips.

His fingers drifted passively over a strange surface. It was cool and warm at the same time, too slick to be skin, too smooth to be fabric. A solid ridge, its texture much rougher than the other surface, nearly prompted his fingers into pressing against it to understand it, but he resisted. She guided his fingers over the ridge, and cold, abrasive metal met his touch. Now she drew his hand up, following the narrow path of metal.

Zipper
.

Patent leather
.

She flattened his hand against it and led his palm back to the patent leather, over the gentle incline that he immediately recognized as her breast.

Corset
. He shivered. How many times he’d fantasized about seeing her in a corset, he couldn’t count. And now here she was, in a corset, but he couldn’t see her. Gritting his teeth, he let a breath out through his nose.

She moved slightly, the corset squeaking, and he realized that was what he’d heard earlier when he thought the chair had creaked.

Abruptly, his hand was lifted away from the corset and she stepped back, releasing his wrist and breaking all contact with him. "I think that’s enough of that," she said, a grin in her voice. She paused. "You want to touch more, don’t you?"

"Yes."

"Do you want to see what I’m wearing?"

He chuckled. "If you were going to show me, you wouldn’t have blindfolded me." He sensed movement. The corset creaked beside—behind him? Then the warmth of her face was beside his.

"That wasn’t my question." Her tone suggested that he would be wise not to be a smartass again. "Do you want to see it or not?"

He took a breath. "Yes, I do."

Her breath cooled his skin at the same time that the nearness of her face warmed it. "Too bad."

Clenching his jaw, he said nothing.

"You’re imagining it, aren’t you?"

Sarcasm threatened to seep into his voice, but he didn’t dare. Though her tone was playful now, couldn’t be sure what she was trying to do. Finally, he said, "Yes."

"What color?"

He furrowed his brow, a mannerism he’d never thought twice about but suddenly seemed completely absurd with a blindfold on. "What?"

"In your mind," she said, her voice vibrating just below his ear. "What color is the corset?"

This had to be some sort of mind game. Some way of fucking with his head, trapping him into giving a wrong answer so that she could punish him somehow. Punish him by withholding, and she’d already withheld enough to drive him mad.