Beyond Limits Ch. 03

"My oh my oh my!" she said. "This stuff is very clean! I'm sicker than hell!"

"You want a pot?"

"Maybe. There's a bucket in the closet in the kitchen."

I got up and went into the kitchen and found a green plastic bucket in the broom closet and brought it to her. April looked at me with something like horror in her eyes.

"Is there anything I can do?" she leaned over the pass-through and asked Sandra.

"Oh honey!" Sandra answered, giving a little laugh. "That's some good shit you've got there! That really is. April honey? There's some umeboshi plums in a jar in the fridge, in the door, second shelf. They look like wrinkled red olives. Just grab one with your fingers and bring it to me, would you? They're the sourest and saltiest things in the world and there's nothing better for nausea."

April brought Sandra the plum and Sandra popped it into her mouth, leaning gracefully on the bucket. She dropped her head back against the sofa and hummed in bliss as she sucked on it, stopping once to give a full-body shudder at the taste.

"Works like a charm. A gynecologist friend of mine taught that to me." She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. "Russell, I don't think I can move."

"I told you it was good."

Her eyes were glazed now, glassy. She moved the plum around slowly in her mouth.

"Selfish," she said. "It's such a selfish drug. I wanted to visit with you but now I think I'm just going to nod out. Whew. I can't help it. I didn't take that much but that stuff is incredibly clean! Dangerous. I thought you were bringing your girlfriend, Russell? I had the guest room all set for you. She still giving you shit? Still won't wear the leash for you? Too bad."

I stiffened. She was high now and there was no way to stop her, but I didn't need her saying all this in front of April. I'd told her about Lexi in a phone call, and she'd been fascinated with our problem. Bonnie had been into BDSM a little though Sandra hadn't, and Bonnie'd given it up when she'd moved in some years ago. Sandra knew about me and had always teased me about bringing out Bonnie's whips and chains whenever I came over.

"I think you should forget the bitch, Russell," Sandra said with inebriated sincerity. "If she's not giving you what you want, the hell with her. What's wrong with April here? She's hot enough, and she's got enough money now."

Sandra was teasing, but even so April blushed. Through all this she'd been a perfect guest, polite, unobtrusive, wonderful to look at, and this wasn't the time to spoil it.

"April's a friend. She's a student of mine."

"Since when did that stop you?" Sandra laughed, holding the plum pit in her teeth..

I felt myself color. Sandra reached for the hash pipe and I wondered whether this was the same woman I'd known who'd always shown such amazing self control around drugs. She'd just almost gotten sick from the smack and now she was lighting the hash again.

"Go have a look in the guest room," she said. "Me and Bonnie set it all up for you. Go show April."

"I'll go." I said quickly. I didn't want April walking in on one of Sandra's practical jokes or her perverse tableaus of inflatable love dolls posed in cunnilingual poses. Sandra's sense of humor wasn't for everyone.

I walked down the hallway past Sandra and Bonnie's bedroom, opened the door to the guest room and turned on the light.

I hadn't been here in months, and the room was now done in black and gray with silver and red highlights, the lighting very subdued and tasteful. The furniture was leather and chrome including an unusually high chrome bed that was all made up and turned down with white sheets and black blankets, the pillows sprinkled with red rose petals. There were chains and cuffs hanging from the ceiling and whips and crops and leather cuffs scattered about, more chains attached to the headboard. There was a leather corset and nylons in an open box on the bed, and on the night stands were two bunches of long-stem roses looking thorny and red as blood among all that black and gray and white. It was a regular little dungeon cum bridal suite.

Apparently Sandra hadn't understood a word I'd said about who I was coming into town with and had assumed I was bringing Lexi, and this was her little joke on our situation. We were supposed to sleep here and be overwhelmed with the BDSM vibe.

The bedroom had its own bath and I stepped in. The decorating had stopped there. Not so much as a towel in the bathroom.

"Wow."

It was April, who'd followed me in. "What a cool room." Her eyes were fixed on the chains hanging from the wall and the table nearby that held the whips.

I closed the bedroom door gently. I didn't want Sandra hearing anything that transpired between April and me, and I could imagine what April must be thinking now, seeing all this BDSM paraphernalia and knowing I'd told Sandra she and I were coming to stay here. She'd be thinking I'd told Sandra we were engaged in some sort of relationship and that all the chains and gear were for our use.

The fact was, I told Sandra I'd be coming up with a girl from Belpierre College and we'd need two places to sleep. Or that's what I remembered telling her. My exact words escaped me. But clearly she'd misunderstood in a big way and set things up for a reconciliation between me and Lexi and I didn't know how to explain this to April, so I didn't even try. The drinks had made her loose and she stood close to me, staring around at the room in excited admiration.

"I thought you said they didn't know about us!" she said.

"They don't. It's just Sandra's idea of a joke."

"Some joke, Russell! Where am I sleeping?"

"You're sleeping here and I'm staying with you."

"Be serious!"

"I am serious. I'm tired of fucking around!"

I took her then and a black shadow seemed to come out from the lake and from the depths of the night and embrace me and I kissed her. I turned off the light and pushed the door closed and took her in my arms and kissed her deep and hard, tasting the whiskey on her breath, the taste of her own intoxication, her surrender. I pulled her hard against me, wanting what she had, wanting what was in the pit of her throat and down in her soul, that submission and capitulation.

I had no way of knowing what was going on at Belpierre College at that time, how Lexi Samos was yielding to Cormac Grehen, thrilling to his string of insults and imprecations, bending beneath his orders and commands and giving him exactly what he wanted, spreading her legs for him, offering her body, hissing in fear and acknowledgment as he called her whore and slut and tangled his fingers in her hair and pushed her head down over his prick as she knelt in her gray dress on the floor of his apartment, made her gasp and cry as he pulled her down on the sofa and shoved his cock into her and split her open and entered her. She says she was crying as he rode her to completion and yet she came in great shattering, earth-shaking waves beneath him, beneath his vile domination.

And worse than this—worse than all of this—was that he won her heart by this, that he made her fall in love with him for all his cruelty and the heartless way he treated her—that he took her away from me, gave her something with his wickedness that she couldn't get from me with all my love, something hard and dirty and hateful that she wanted and wanted with shameful greed and avidity, something she needed to feel complete that I couldn't give her as a man. She needed his contempt and there was no way I could give that to her, and so he took her away from me that night, and at the time he didn't even want her.

But I had no way of knowing this, as I say. And so I have nothing with which to excuse myself for what I did. Nor is it a case of being some sort of sexual animal who simply can't control himself at the sight of chains and women. More likely I already knew that Lexi was going or was gone. Maybe it was the sight of the moon over the lake and that lonely red light on the pumping station, all alone in the darkness. Maybe it was my hunger and anguish, the months Lexi had denied me. But more likely it was my simple greed and lust, and April's words from two nights ago ringing in my ears still, that she would do anything for me, anything I wanted.

I stood in that bedroom and kissed her and felt her surprise and then her slow slide into acquiescence as she yielded to me and melted, liquefied in my arms; her breasts, her ribs the hard arch of her pubis and the tight muscles of her ass, all forming against me like a negative mold of my desire, all forming to fit me and accommodate me. Her very skeleton seemed to soften and melt against me and her lips trembled under the onslaught of my sudden need.

The moon was shining into the bedroom through the blinds and we could see the cars like toys cruising up and down the darkened Outer Drive eighteen floors below. I could feel April's soul reaching for me, trying to absorb me, to give herself to me, and the urgent way she sought love from me made me dizzy. I'd never done anything to deserve her love; never hurt for her or agonized over her or worked for her and yet here she was, laying herself at my feet, begging me to take her and bruise her, hurt her and mistreat her. She was for me to use as I wanted and I knew it and the thought made me both strong and weak at the same time.

I broke the kiss and she lowered her eyes, refusing to look at me. She wouldn't let me go, though, just stood there holding me, breathing hard in the dark.

"Sandra left these clothes for me?" she asked, trying to change the subject, nodding at the corset and stockings on the bed.

I couldn't bear to tell her the truth so I nodded. "I guess so. She's got a weird sense of humor, like I said. But look, I want to go talk to her for a minute, okay? I'll get some towels, maybe an extra blanket."

She nodded and I let her go reluctantly; walked out, closing the door behind me.

Sandra was asleep in the living room, totally out but breathing okay.

"What the hell did you do?" I asked her. "You didn't hear a word I said about who I was coming into town with, did you? What if I'd brought Lexi? You know how pissed she would have been, knowing I'd talked to you about her? Sometimes I really just want to slap the shit out of you, you know that?"

She didn't move so I reached over and tugged on her hair. She still didn't move. I got worried and went in the kitchen, found a towel and wet it with cold water and came back in and wiped her face, slapping her gently with the towel but with enough force to wake her up. It worked, and she pushed my hand away and raised her head groggily.

There's nothing as tawdry as the sight of a beautiful woman totally wasted on scag. It's just depressing.

"What the fuck!? Russell! Is that you?"

"You're fucked up, Sandra. You took too much."

"Fuck! I didn't take that much! I don't remember. Where's Bonnie?"

"She's at work. It's Friday night."

She sat up and looked around. "Where's your friend? Where's April?"

"She's enjoying the little still-life you prepared for us in the guest room, honey. It's cute. It doesn't matter to you that we're not sleeping together, does it?"

She seemed to be having some trouble focusing, as if she were trying to stare at her own eyeballs. She snapped herself into focus. "Relax," she said. "What are you so mad about? Was April shocked? Is she some nun or something?"

"No, but I don't need my personal life waved like a flag all over the place. You didn't even know who I was coming into town with, did you, Sandra?"

"Of course I did, honey. But some college friend of yours comes in with a kilo, you expect her to be kind of experienced, you know? I didn't think that stuff would be such a big deal. It's just from Bonnie's old toy box. What's wrong with you Russell? I thought you'd get a kick out of it. That kilo make you nervous?"

That was Sandra, going from apparently dead-out wasted to deadly lucid in a matter of seconds. I had nothing to say.

"Something's wrong with you, Russell. I could tell it on the phone. Why didn't this Lexi come into town with you if you and her are such hot shit? Why'd you come alone with April?"

"I thought it was safer."

"Safer? I'd never let you pull that shit if you were mine Russell, I'll tell you that, staying God-knows-where overnight with a hot piece like April. I mean, no offense and it's none of my business what you do, but this Lexi must be nuts. What's the deal with you and April? She's crazy for you."

"It shows?"

She rolled her eyes. "She hadn't taken her eyes off you. Does your Lexi know about her? Does she know you were coming into town with April?"

"Yeah, she knows. She knows April too." I threw back the dregs of my wine. "She wanted to stay in Belpierre. She had things to do. And I needed to get away."

Sandra had her chin in her hand and she stared at me, waiting. I'd wanted to talk to her too. I'd really wanted to discuss Lexi and Lexi's refusal of me, but now I didn't want to talk because I knew what Sandra would say: Forget her. She's not giving you what you want. It doesn't matter why. Go with April. Forget her.

I didn't want to hear it so I didn't say anything and for a long time we just sat there.

Sandra burped, a shocker, and moaned with relief. She stood up. "Okay, so you don't want to talk about it. You want me to pull it out of you? I'm not really in a pulling mood."

"No."

"Then I'm going to bed. Otherwise I'm going to nod out again right here. You know how to open the pull-out bed in the study? Or you can make a bed up right here on the couch if you want to. You know where the sheets and pillows are. We haven't changed anything. Towels too. Help yourselves."

"Thanks, honey."

"God, am I swacked. Anything else, baby?"

"No. But are you alright?"

"Yeah, Russell, I'm fine. I've been working my ass off for the last couple weeks and low-dosing, so I'm awfully clean. I just wasn't expecting that kind of purity and it knocked the crap out of me. Put me right out. I just really need to sleep."

"Good night, Sandra."

"Night, baby."

I got some towels from her linen closet and went back to the guest room. The door was locked so I knocked and April answered it, cracking the door to make sure it was me.

She had the stockings on, and her panties, and her shirt was on but totally open—the buttons open, the cuffs open—showing a band of naked skin from her collarbone down to as far as I could see in the dark. She had leather cuffs buckled on her wrists, clipped together with a sturdy chrome carabiner from which hung a length of twisted box chain, dense, sinuous stuff, which glinted silver in the moonlight coming in through the blinds.

"I hope this is alright," she whispered. "It didn't seem right to wear the corset, and I didn't think it was my size..."

She was all ready for me. While I'd been talking to Sandra, April had been undressing and taking off her underwear and washing her face, freshening her makeup, putting on these stockings and cuffs and getting herself ready for me, and now here she was, offering herself, and the magnitude and innocence of her gift just overwhelmed me.

"Jesus Christ, April!" I pushed her back into the room. The lights were low. There were chains hanging from the walls and whips, crops and floggers, everywhere. "You don't waste any time, do you?"

She looked alarmed. "Did I do something wrong? Isn't this what you wanted?"

Something happened to me then. Maybe it was the sheer perversion of what was going on there, with Sandra passed out in her dark bedroom and me confronting a student of mine dressed as she was, offering herself to me as a sexual slave, with a kilo of heroin stashed somewhere nearby, the sense of sin and transgression. Or maybe it was just something that had been building between April and me, the tension of the drive, my own frustration.

I looked at her with that strip of skin showing, the shadows of the stockings on her legs, the soft puff of pubic hair at their juncture and her hands bound together by the silver clip and fall of chain and she infected me. I grabbed her hair and bent her head back for my kiss, took her bare breast in my hand as if it belonged to me and forced her body back, forced her back till she fell against the wall and I held her there, my tongue pushing its way into her mouth. She was a brave girl and courageous but she was no match for my desire and I was like a fire on her hills, raging upon her, storming, kissing her and taking her. She was already defeated and waiting to be taken. The chain hanging from her wrists said as much. And now it was as if she only needed me to remind her, or for me to make her body remind her who she belonged to tonight.

I took hold of the chain that fastened her hands and pulled her stumbling away from one wall and over to the wall behind me. There were decorative shackles there just above my head, like towel D-rings but made of sturdy wrought iron and lag-bolted to the studs. I attached her wrists to one of these so her hands were at the height of the top of her head. In all this she was letting me have my way but now she seemed to sense some danger and she pulled on the chains: "Russell! Russell!"

"Don't say anything," I said. "This is what you wanted. This is what you've been asking me for."

"It's not that," she said. "I want you to gag me! Please!"

Gag her? Jesus! I looked around the room. In the dresser I found some handkerchiefs and if I tied two of them together, I could fit them around her head if I needed to, but I didn't see any need to yet. I peeled her panties down, slid her shirt off her shoulders so it hung like a cape from her arms, leaving her breasts naked and exposed.

April stood there too excited to be embarrassed, her skin covered with goose bumps. Power surged through me, potency, a feeling of rightness, that this was how things were supposed to be. This was it, having a girl bound and naked in front of me. This made a kind of primitive, perfect sense. I stood behind her and pulled her against me so her bare skin was pressed against my clothed body and I could feel her softness, her humid warmth in the air of the room.

"Kiss," I insisted, guiding her head back against me. "Kiss."

She turned her head and kissed me as my hands closed on her breasts and squeezed, my cock rising in my pants at the feel of her naked vulnerability. Her tongue was hot and excited and already begging for mercy from the monster she could feel inside me. I could feel it too, and I wasn't sure I wanted to stop it tonight.

I must have known. Thinking back on it now it seems like I must have known what was going on back in Michigan, as if the scene there was somehow bouncing off the moon and beaming down at me, etching me in acid rays. Or more likely my subconscious knew, had gauged the degree of separation between us over the last few days and extrapolated till I somehow knew that Lexi was gone, because I reached for April with a desperation I can't otherwise explain, a frantic longing I hadn't felt in so long it was strange to me, like a maniac's compulsion.

"Oh Russell, Russell..." Her head fell back against my shoulder as we kissed and I slid my hand down her body till it was between her legs. Her wrists were chained together and attached to the D-rings and of no use in protecting her and her body was naked except for the shirt that hung uselessly from her forearms and the gray stockings she wore. The leather cuffs creaked as she swayed in the chain as I kissed her, creaked but held her, unforgiving.

"Anything," I whispered. "That's what you said, isn't it? Anything I want?"

In the moonlit bedroom her blue eyes were dark and shaded. "Anything you want, Master. That's what I said, yes."

Her words were like flame coming from those beautiful, famished lips