A Good Student Ch. 05

It was a collar. A silk-lined, leather collar, cushioned with velvet, set with mother-of-pearl studs and tourmaline cabochons and three stainless steel rings. It had a stainless steel buckle and a lock and key and four silver bells that hung free and chimed so I'd always know where she was by the sound it made. I'd had it custom made and it had cost me four hundred and sixty-five dollars.

Her face went pale. She lifted it out of the box and said, "Oh Conner. I can't wear this. You know I can't."

"It's not a fucking ring, Emma. Okay? It's a collar. It's a fucking collar!" I took it from her hands and threw it in the box and threw the box in the drawer.

*****

The Blue Moon is the oldest bar in continuous existence in the city of Chicago. What that means is that they've been drinking there since 1923. Al Capone drank there, actually owned it for a while. The booth he sat at is still there. The basement room he and his flunkies gambled at is still downstairs but stripped now and used for storage only, but there's still a tunnel that runs beneath Broadway and comes up on the other side of the street a block away for use in case of police raids, of which there were none, because Capone owned the police.

The Blue Moon is the quintessential private eye bar, forever stuck in that era of hard booze and fast women, garish green lights and red juke boxes, men in fedoras and women in low-cut dresses. The people who go there know it and they dress the part, so going there is half night-out, half costume party. It's always kind of surreal.

Harvey the bouncer met us outside and we squeezed in through the crowd at the door and made our way down the long bar towards the bandstand in the back where the booths were, already occupied. The place was dark and crowded as usual, but there always seemed to some space you could slide into. It was noisy without being loud, bubbling and alive, crowded without being crushing. It was a perfect bar, exciting and relaxing at the same time, a sense of anticipation always in the air. You walked in and looked around and there were people looking for you. The dim booths, shadowy corners, colored spotlights reflecting in polished brass instruments, rows of bottles standing against cloudy mirrors. It was here that they'd started the poetry slams in the early 80's, opening up the mikes to any poets who wanted to read, and suddenly the word went out and people started crowding in to hear this new, spoken music and things took off. That's how I found this neighborhood and found this life, and that's why I'd brought Emma down here to this place I'd told her so much about, to meet my other mistress. But now that we were here I was feeling strange and confused, still upset about that phone call and the collar and so many things. And it was early yet, not even midnight

We found a place at the very edge of the bar almost next to the bandstand under a bust of Plato. The band was a Retro big band called Retro Metro-- 18 pieces, 3 singers in 40's outfits and camellias in their hair, great brass, all professionals. They suck up a room and spit it out, and for someone like Emma who'd never heard live big band, they were a revelation, like discovering music for the first time There was one stool at the end of the bar right next to the band stand and I slid Emma onto it as the band was playing "Night in Tunisia" and her eyes just went wide. We were so close you could almost feel the blast from the trumpets and hear the keys on the saxophones slapping and hear the musicians laughing and kidding each other and ordering drinks from the bar. The air smelled of beer and sweat and gardenia and people were dancing in a way you don't see anymore—jitterbugging, foxtrot, tango, really good dancers, dancing out of sheer joy. But I was irritated and confused and ordered a double whiskey for myself while Emma had a rum and coke.

I'd made it a point not to really look at her when we left my place, but now I did, when I took off her sweatshirt and threw it on a stool, not caring whether anyone took it or not.

She was wearing the gray skirt, which hung on her without pleat or wrinkle, an exquisite, mistlike curve that showed where space stopped and Emma began. Above the skirt she wore a white top with a square neck and long, tight sleeves that was gathered between the tits in a way that was both innocent and suggestive. It was made of some material that looked very tactile—the urge to touch it was almost overwhelming, and I guess that was the point.

Her entire person was made for holding, I realized—her shape, her scent, the colors she'd chosen, the way she moved, the textures of her clothes. In the mood I was in it was maddening, not just that she was made for holding, but that she had designed herself to appeal this way to me. Why did she do this to me if she didn't want me to hold her? I was trapped now and confused, angry and humiliated about the collar.

The band rushed up to a close, hit the note and held it. The dancers stopped, fell away in happy applause, whistles.

I noticed the clock: midnight. I turned to her. "Aren't you expecting a call?"

"Who?"

"David. He should have called you by now."

Emma looked at me cautiously. "Sometimes he doesn't call."

I nodded wisely, as if in sympathy. "Good thing he didn't call tonight with us being in a bar and everything, huh?"

The Band started playing and Emma put her drink down. "Conner, what's wrong? Why are you so angry? What have I done?"

"Who says I'm angry? It's just a lucky coincidence that he doesn't call tonight while you're out with your other boyfriend."

I looked at her. It was terrible. I was hurting her and it was like I was cutting my own stomach open but I couldn't stop.

"He doesn't know you're out with me, does he, Emma? No one knows you're out with me, right? That's what you told me, and you wouldn't lie to me."

I saw the fear in her eyes then. She knew I'd found out. She spun so she was facing the room, sideways to me. She was so incredibly beauiful. Even with what she was doing to me she was beautiful

"No," she said, "No one knows about us."

I took a sip of my drink, as the band started up the next number. I was leaning against the bar so I was a little behind her. I put my drink down and leaned over her, slid my arm over her chest and caressed her breast.

"You're a terrible liar," I whispered in her ear. "You must even be a worse liar than Angela."

I felt her stiffen. I kissed her on the side of the neck. She smelled wonderful. Like flowers.

She pulled away and turned around. "Conner? I think that's enough. I think it's time I went home. I want a cab. You're too drunk to drive."

I looked at her for a moment and then smiled. "Sure, honey. Fair enough. One dance, okay? One dance."

The band was playing a slow, campy version of Fats Domino's "Blueberry Hill", bloated and overdone, a grotesque, rollicking parody of itself. A lissome girl in a black velvet 40's evening gown stepped up to the microphone and started belting out the lyrics with super exaggerated enunciation, wrapping her lips and tongue around each syllable with cock-sucking, clit-licking enthusiasm. I took Emma's hand and dragged her off the stool.

I don't dance and Emma doesn't either, not to a song like this, but she was too shocked to resist, and too frightened. I was frightened myself, with no idea what I was feeling or what I was trying to do. I grabbed her and put my arms around her and held onto to her and she had no choice but to follow. The room was a garish green, the music was swollen and staggering, the singer sounded like she was having sex with the microphone, and in my arms was the girl who was killing me with the love I felt for her. I pressed my face into her neck and crushed her to me like I wanted to kill her.

"I found my thrill..."

I held her in my arms and she was already a million miles away, she was already a memory, a ghost, and this would be all I'd have of her, this stiffness I held in my arms.

"Call me'master'," I whispered.

Emma sighed and I squeezed her against me. It felt good to use my strength. It felt good the way she yielded.

"Master!" Emma whispered.

I twisted her wrist behind her back and pushed it up, up between her shoulder blades—up until she gasped and her breast pressed into me.

"Again!"

"Conner! God! Master!Oh! Master! Conner!"

I pushed her back into a dark little corner, behind a phony column where shadows hid us and only one beam of sickly yellow light could get through and slash across her face and in that light I saw her looking at me fearfully. I kept her arm twisted behind her back.

"You're a liar, Emma. You're a liar but you're going to give me what I want anyway, understand?"

"No, Conner. No, I—"

"Master!"

"—Master! I—"

"Shut up! I'm tired of playing games, Emma. I'm tired of being yanked around. You're not going anywhere tonight. I'm not taking you back to campus, I'm not taking you back to your car. You're staying with me tonight and you're staying for as long as I want you to stay. I'm not playing with you any more, Emma, do you understand? You're coming home with me and you're going to give me what I want. You're going to give it to me if I have to fucking crawl inside your mouth to get it!"

"Conner! Conner!Master!"

I grabbed her face in my hands and I kissed her. I kissed that lying mouth. I kissed her and I bit her lips and I felt the tears spill down her cheeks. I was on fire and my cock was hard, stabbing her like a dagger as I held her face in my hands and leaned my weight against her, pressing her back against the wall.

The band was playing and the singer finished her verse and the trombone player must have stood up because as I kissed her and sucked the air from her lungs I heard the first golden blast of that pure, fat horn on my back and it seemed to drive me harder on top of her, pushing her into the corner till it was like we were in a world of our own, just me and Emma unseen by anyone. I dropped one hand to her leg, her thigh, and slid it up under her skirt, lifting the skirt, and Emma was biting me frantically, and I don't know if she wanted me or she hated me and anyhow I didn't care because it didn't matter anymore either way. Tears were spilling down her face.

I abandoned my assault on her thigh and my hand went around to her behind where I started lifting her skirt, my hand gathering up the soft fabric. I gathered it up till I felt her naked ass. She was wearing some kind of thong and I spread her cheeks apart with my fingers and began to run my finger up and down her crack. Emma moaned and put her hands on my cheeks and now apparently she decided she wanted it because she kissed me, holding my face as if she were trying to hold me steady or make me slow down—

"Don't touch me, slave!" I hissed at her.

She pulled her hands away as if struck and pressed them against her shoulders, clenching them into tight, nervous little fists. I pushed my finger against her asshole and she whimpered.

"Oh God, Conner! I don't know what to do! What do you want me to do? Master! Master! What do you want me to do?"

I didn't answer. Standing in that little alcove with the shadows of the dancers sweeping over us, I pressed her against me and pushed my finger against her asshole while in front my hand slid under her skirt and found her pussy. She had managed to find some naughty things at Dee's after all—a g-string with a gauzy invisibly fine little pantie that clung tight to her little mound like a shadow, no thicker than a piece of cellophane—and split around her pussy so that her labia were revealed to the air and the night. How interesting...

I leaned against hers. I pressed my weight against her and pushed her into the wall as I slid my hand under her skirt and continued to investigate her as if I were learning all this for the first time.

The panties were split, and hanging down over her clit was a little string of beads or pearls, I couldn't tell, but they hung down so that they'd slap against her clit as she walked, as she moved, spanking herself, keeping herself aroused and ready. It didn't matter that I'd made her buy them, that I'd insisted she buy slutty underwear and that she wore them just for me. They made me nuts for her, filled me with rage and excitement. They must have been spanking her all the time we were walking to the Blue Moon—and now as I fingered and fondled her clit she totally forgot my no-touch order and totally forgot my rage and anger and she turned on and lit up like a little flare as I touched her, igniting and melting against me, rubbing her hot, open mouth against mine and dissolving into a buttery pool.

"Conner, please! Don't make me... Don't..."

"Come, Emma! You're going to come for me right here you little slut! You're going to come for your Master to show him how much you love him! To show him you love him more than anyone!"

Her face was screwed up into a tight litle mask of shame and denial and her body was trembling as she fought me but I wouldn't let her win. I refused to let her win. I needed her more than she needed herself, much more than she needed herself and I played with her clit and pressed against her anus and felt her shudder and sob.

"Conner! Please! Master! Oh God! Master! I can't!I can't!"

But already she was gone and as soon as my middle finger broke through her tight little sphincter in back she sobbed and pushed her pussy at me and I felt a hot little stream when she came, a hot little dollop of her lubricant dripping out into my hand, so utterly filthy. I loved it—all dressed up in her sweet little outfit, yet play with her pussy and stick your finger in her ass and the cum drips out of her like juice from a peach. She'd squirted before when she'd come but never like this, never in this precious little drop, and she shuddered deeply, trembling so violently I thought she might fall, so that when she grabbed onto me I didn't object. She buried her face against my chest, mouth open, gasping for air.

"Master, Master!"

"Again, Emma! Again, damn it!"

"No! Please, no!"

The trombone player was still soloing, the rest of the brass limbering up, preparing to dive back in and see the song home, and I felt Emma's thighs quivering, the wad of come sliding off my finger as I pushed her towards another orgasm.

She was helpless when she got like this. She couldn't stop coming. She dug her nails into my shirt. Opened her mouth and bit me. I shoved my finger up into her ass.

"That's it, slut! Bite me, Emma! Bite me! Fucking make me bleed!"

She snarled like a feral cat and her ass squeezed tight on my finger, her snarl becoming a high squeal of release as she came again. My shirt was wet where she bit me.

"Conner, no more! Please, no more! Not here. Please!"

I looked at her, tiny—helpless, her eyes closed tight . The music washed around us in a river of rich golden sound and Emma was caught like a beautiful little tropical fish on the hook of my fingers. I wanted to crush her in my fist and I wanted to take her in my hands and cherish her next to my heart. It was a place she always put me—paralyzed between boiling sexual rage and weeping tenderness, and in the eye of this testosterone-fueled hurricane, Emma stood and hid against me from my own rage and shivered in constant orgasm. It was more than I could stand.

"Come on!"

I grabbed her hand and led her out through the front of the bar. The band was just getting to its feet and lifting their horns and all standing up and putting their horns to their mouths and blowing—the solid, hard-driving, good-rocking-tonight wide open final chorus, down the streets of the city and over the roofs of Chicago and out into the darkness over the Lake and I grabbed Emma and led her stumbling with her tear-stained face and shaking legs out through the press of people—some my age, some hers; some who looked at us, some who didn't—out the door and out onto the heat of Broadway in the summer night, across the street dodging cars and down the block, neither of us speaking, neither of us saying a word. In the wake of the rain the air had died and grown stifling and hot and I began to sweat as I led her along by the hand, her having to trot occasionally to keep up, till we came to Carmen and we turned down my street, passed the now-dark windows, came to my door and I opened it and led her into the hot dark inside.

"Come on," I said. "Upstairs."

I remember my mind was unusually sharp as I followed her up, although I'm not quite sure what that means in this context, because I really didn't know what I was doing anymore. Or maybe that was it. I didn't have to worry about sending the wrong message or being misunderstood anymore, so that made things very clear and simple. I didn't have to be careful and try and see things through her eyes and wonder if she'd misinterpret or misunderstand. I didn't have to think about anything at all. I'd taken Emma and she was mine—for the night at least—and at this point there was no tomorrow and no fucking around. I was going to have my way with her.

The front of the loft was totally dark when we entered. There was just enough light coming in from the street so you could make out the chain hoist hanging there from the beam, looking as ominous as a hangman's noose. There was a plain white wooden trunk standing nearby I'd put there earlier while Emma'd been changing. All my gear was in there, things I'd been collecting against this night.

"Go stand over there," I gestured towards the wall near the hoist.

"Conner, what are you going to do?"

"Just shut up and do it!"

She did as I said,

Despite all the windows being open it was so hot and sweltering in the loft that the place was giving off its ancient smell of musty wood and machine oil, and it was almost enough to make me feel bad for her, seeing her dressed up in those clothes I'd bought for her. Almost. But then what did I care?

It occurred to me how stupid I must have looked to her, taking her to Dee's. She had no sense of irony when it came to things like clothes and material goods. This was David's girl. She probably thought I'd been serious when I'd taken her there, and as I watched her cross the floor now in that skirt and her white top, the foolishness of this entire affair hit me.

I turned to ice inside. I went to the trunk I'd pulled out earlier and dragged it over closer. I got what I needed: a spreader bar and anklets, the suspension cuffs, a metal carabineer. I went to Emma and stood in front of her and began to buckle the cuffs on. They weren't simple, having fours buckles each and it took some time. Her tits were rising and falling with each breath and she kept her eyes closed, waiting. As I worked, I spoke to her.

"You know, this emptiness, it's a female thing. The space in here. It's female."

She said nothing.

"I'm telling you what this means, Emma. I'm telling you what everything means from now on, because I don't think I'm getting through to you."

I finished the one cuff and started on the other. It's funny I hadn't noticed her scent in the bar, or earlier, or ever before in our relationship as far as I could recall, but now I did, very subtle and opulent and sexually arousing, so that I really wanted to bury my face in her neck and inhale her fragrance. And how had she done that? Had she brought perfume in her bag? Had she applied some while I was dragging her down the street? Or was her nervousness making her emit some natural pheromone meant to soothe a male attacker and deflect his wrath into thoughts of sex?

"Darkness is female too," I said. "And silence and quiet and all things that receive and take in and that are passive and horizontal and wet and soft and cool and sweet."

I snugged the last buckle in place and clipped her wrists together with the carabineer.