Might Have Been Ch. 06

“Your cock. I need your cock inside me.”

“Why?”

“Oh please, I'm burning. My pussy is burning again. It needs...”

“Yes, it needs my cock. What does it need my cock to do?”

“It needs for you to fuck my pussy.”

“Your pussy needs it, or you need it?”

“I need it. I need you to fuck me.”

“Have you earned it yet?”

“I was a good girl, I sucked your cock. Was it good?”

“Yes, Crystal, it felt wonderful, but are you really a good girl?”

“You said it felt good.”

“I was talking about you. What kind of girl likes having a man punish her to get excited?”

“This kind of girl.”

“What kind of girl is that?”

I was expecting her to say “a bad girl”, or “a naughty girl”, but Crystal surprised me yet again. “I'm a dirty whore. I'm a twisted, perverted girl. I'm a shameful, unworthy bitch. I'm a kinky little slut. I'm your kinky little slut.”

Her torrent of self-deprecations was one of the more erotic things I had ever heard a woman say, and I felt ashamed of how I responded to such degradation – but she had earned herself a fucking. I brushed her clit once more with the ice cube, and then knelt between her legs. I lifted her hips until they were resting on my thighs, as I wanted the use of my hands.

The ice was wearing off again – she was starting to whimper and squirm. I placed myself at her entrance, and teased her clit with the ice, while I pushed my way inside her.

I felt the familiar sensation of hot velvet walls closing around me, but I felt something else as well – a slight burning along the base of my shaft.

Fuck, the skin of my cock had touched her chilied vulva, and I was going to pay the price.

Crystal could tell from the expression on my face, and she gave me a saucy smile. “It burns, doesn't it?”

“You knew this would happen.”

“Big man can dish it out but can't take it?”

I had intended to use the ice to keep her clit cool while I fucked her, but when she taunted me, I threw it to the side. “Let's see who can take it.”

Her eyes widened and her mouth opened.

I placed my hands on her hips for leverage and thrust my flaming cock inside her. The electric sensation of sex competed with the burning of fire, but as long as I was moving inside her, sex was winning.

Crystal wrapped her hands around the scarves. Her eyes slammed closed and tears seeped from the corners. Her neck was arched back into her pillow, and her mouth opened in a wide, soundless “O”.

I reached one hand forward to tug on one of her nipple hoops, and Crystal gasped and opened her eyes in pained lust, telling me all I needed to know. She loved this. The pain for me was a distraction from the pleasure, but for her pleasure and pain were boon companions.

The flames that licked me grew higher as I thrust into her. The balance between pleasure and pain was tilting in favor of the latter. The only way to keep the anguish at bay was to fuck her harder, which I did.

Crystal threw her head back and howled, “Oh God! I'm on fire!” Tears streamed down her face.

The same fire engulfed me. Withdrawing would have admitted weakness. If she could take the pain, so could I. I slammed into her harder. I felt a bolt of pleasure rising inside me, as I prepared my own release.

Crystal hadn't stopped coming. Her mouth emitted a low keening sound that was half orgasm/half tortured cry. She knew the fire would only stop with my own climax, and decided to encourage it. “Yes, screw your whore with that hot cock of yours. Fuck your little slut. I love it. I'm such a slut that I love it!”

With her pussy walls blazing around me, I rammed deep and exploded within her. My hands grabbed the hoops in her breasts to give them one final tweak, which sent Crystal over the edge once more. Her squeal pierced the air with such force it almost caused more pain than the fire on my cock.

As my climax subsided, all that was left was pain.

Ice. I needed ice.

The orgasmic tone to Crystal's cries stopped, and all I could hear from her were gasps and whimpers.

I withdrew from Crystal, and grabbed two fistfuls of ice, applying one to her loins and the other to mine. This was just a temporary solution. Capsaicin was fat-soluble, so I needed some sort of oil to make it go away. This being a woman's apartment, I searched for a bottle of lotion, and saw a dispenser of skin cream on the bookcase. I grabbed it, and noticed it had been partially concealing her digital video camera.

More specifically, it had been concealing the red blinking light on her digital video camera, which was aimed at the bed.

“What the fuck is this?” I yelled, pointing at the camera.

“Oh God. It hurts!”

I slathered a handful of lotion on my cock, and felt blessed relief. I quickly untied the knots to Crystal's wrists and threw the lotion on the bed next to her. She began using it to soothe her own pain, working the lotion around her loins.

“What the fuck is this?” I repeated.

“Nothing.”

“Like fuck it's nothing. You were recording us.” I remembered her going over to the bookshelf when we first got here. She must have turned it on.

“It's a keepsake. I just want to remember you.”

She was lying. “I don't think you will be forgetting me. So you won't mind if I delete it.” I picked up the camera.

“No!” She shouted. “He will–” She cut herself off.

“Who will what?”

She didn't answer.

I started fiddling with the buttons.

Crystal was undoing the knots in her ankles, but proved less adept than me. She gave up. “My boyfriend. He will be so angry at me if you delete it.”

Boyfriend? “I thought you left him.”

“Yes, I left him back in Michigan.”

(“Left” was more ambiguous than I thought.) “He wants you to record yourself having sex with me?”

“Oh God, this is so embarrassing.” She grabbed a blanket and covered herself with it, suddenly discovering modesty.

“This is what you were ashamed of, isn't it.”

She nodded. “We're kind of into the whole dominant/submissive thing. With me being away all summer this was his idea of trying to keep me obedient.”

“How?”

“Have someone else discipline me, but record it so he could watch, and I would know I was following his orders. He was getting pissed I hadn't found anyone all summer, and he will make me punish myself if I don't have something to show him. Please don't delete it.”

I had no idea whether I was going to be famous someday, but damned if I would ever be Kardashianed. I punched the buttons and deleted the video.

“No!” she wailed, and fell on the bed in tears.

I was too pissed to offer comfort or words of understanding, and went to the bathroom to clean myself up. I rinsed my groin with soap and water in the bathtub until the burning finally stopped, then dried myself off and went into the main room. I had calmed down enough to talk more. “What kind of sick boyfriend wants to watch his girl get tied up and used?”

Maybe I wasn't that calm.

Crystal just looked at me, face red with shame and accusation. She didn't need to say it. What's more sick – watching or doing it?

I couldn't meet her gaze. “We all have our kinks, but that goes beyond healthy, and getting video of me without asking is a different level of wrong altogether.”

She nodded, guilty. “I'm sorry.”

“You knew it was wrong.”

She nodded.

“You did it anyway.”

Her expression said, Duh.

“Why?”

“He's my... my... I do what he says.”

“What happens if you don't do what he says.”

“He punishes me.”

I recalled her request for me to hit her harder. I peered closer at Crystal's exposed legs and arms, extending from beneath the blanket, and noticed things I should have noticed earlier – the pink sheen of scar tissue from oil or wax burns, and little white scar lines on her wrists and ankles. I felt sick.

“He shouldn't punish you like that.”

“You did.”

“You wanted it.”

“That's what he says.”

“No, I mean, you could have asked to stop any time you wanted. I would have untied you, and we would have been done.”

Crystal's face contorted in disbelief, as if I were crazy. My stomach churned and I feared I would vomit from disgust at myself. I hadn't known.

“Do you like doing what he says?” I asked.

“Sometimes. That's how it started. I like control, I told you that. It doesn't matter if I don't like it.”

I always wondered how relationships like hers drew the line between kink and abuse. I suspected her boyfriend had crossed it.

“It does matter. You're beautiful, smart, and capable. You can have any guy you want, and most of them would love to tie you up and discipline you if that is your thing. But you get to set the limits.”

“No, he needs me to set no limits.”

“Why do his needs trump yours?”

“You wouldn't understand.”

“Try me.”

“I love him, and he needs to do this to me more than I need to stop him.”

“That's no excuse for him making you do something you know is wrong.”

“No one understands. Sometimes you have to make sacrifices for love.”

Sometimes you have to make sacrifices for love.

Her words hit me like a bullet between the eyes. My head reeled and I collapsed onto Crystal's sofa.

I had used similar words talking to Sarah, justifying why she should have accepted Dave's offer to give up his dreams and follow her. I hadn't really been thinking of Dave and Sarah when I said those words, but of me and Tasha.

Thomas Kuhn described how science progressed through paradigm shifts, where scientists stick with a given model until it becomes unwieldy, and they suddenly switch to a new one. The canonical example was the shift in thinking from geocentric orbits to heliocentric orbits that followed the Copernican Revolution.

Love isn't science, but I had my own paradigm shift at that moment in Crystal's apartment. Crystal had submitted so deeply to her boyfriend, that she had lost herself, and she justified and exalted that loss in the name of love. She saw herself as the hero, but to anyone else she was clearly the victim.

I was no different.

It was as if I were standing outside of myself, looking in, seeing the truth of my life for the first time in six years. I wasn't the romantic man making sacrifices for the woman he loved. I was the emotionally-abused victim, rationalizing and romanticizing my own co-dependence and emasculation.

I hated Tasha more than I ever had – almost as much as I hated what I had done to myself. “I understand more than you think. Let me guess,” I said. “He can be wonderful and kind, and you sometimes catch glimpses of the man you fell in love with, when you do the things you know are wrong. You have given so much of yourself, that the idea he isn't worth it is inconceivable. No one understands, not your friends, not your family. They don't get how important you are to him – how much he needs you. You sacrifice everything, and the only thing he's willing to sacrifice is you.”

Crystal shrank from my words, finally curling up in a ball as tears flowed from clenched eyes.

Silk scarves, domination, and control games were not my area of expertise.

This was.

I gently climbed into bed next to Crystal, and lay down beside her under the blanket – holding her – planning to hold her for as long as it took to convince her she deserved it.

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

“You need to use that wonderful noggin of yours for something better than self-deception.”

A snake rolled by, curled up in a circle and holding its own tail in its mouth.

“Was that a hoopsnake?” I asked. They were supposed to be legendary creatures, not real ones.

“They're poisonous,” she said.

“I'll protect you.”

She laughed, and her hand shot out, seizing a snake. She kept the venomous, fanged mouth at bay until she snapped its neck with a quick flick of her wrist. The snake's tail fell from its mouth as it died, and when it hit the ground, it lay straight, like a proper snake. “It's sweet you want to rescue me,” she said. “You're a romantic. I loved that about you, but it can be a trap.”

“Trap?” I asked.

“Fairy tales. The knight saving the princess from the dragon. Love conquering all. You live in a fantasy world. Girls fall into that trap all the time. They wait for Prince Charming to bail them out of bad life decisions, but if he does ever arrive, they find he just wanted a laundress he could fuck a few times a week, or he's an abusive, cheating bastard.”

“I wasn't waiting for a Prince Charming. I don't swing that way.”

“You were waiting for a Snow White, and some girl suckered you into being her hero.”

“Not all Snow Whites need rescuing.”

“That's true.”

“If only I knew where to find such a creature.”

Her ruby red lips curled in an enigmatic half-smile, and she brushed her raven-black hair away from her porcelain skin.

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

Crystal had nestled in my arms for most of the night, but when she awoke, she nudged me, and asked me to leave. She needed help, but I wasn't the right person to walk her through it.

“Crystal, does Laurie know about the nature of your relationship with your boyfriend?”

“No, I couldn't...”

“You can, and you will.” Laurie was sharp and practical, and would know how to help Crystal. I would drop Laurie a note to make sure Crystal followed through.

I stopped at the door. “I'm sorry, Crystal, When we were having sex, I thought you were into it. The games we were playing aren’t normally my thing.”

She released a slight smile. “No, that felt good. You never let it get out of hand.” She paused. “You should consider doing that more. You're good at it.”

No, I really shouldn't. The sick feeling in my stomach returned, as I closed the door on Crystal's flat. As intoxicating as the feeling of power had been, for me this had just been a playful fantasy. Crystal's subservience in bed was a nice diversion from the ordinary, but there was a reason why I pursued spirited, aggressive women. Crystal was just another form of temptation, not salvation.

I had fallen once, and I would not fall again. I knew what I had to do, but wanted to make one stop first.

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

August 6, 2005

Her body was a violin in the hands of a concert master, stepping, leaping, stretching and spinning in precise coordination with the needs of the music and the dance. Four other dancers flanked her as they moved through the routine she had composed – mirroring, withdrawing, freezing, or shadowing according to the dictates of the dance.

I had never really seen Sarah dance before, at least not like this. I had seen her star turn as Lola in our senior year musical – Damn Yankees, and I had been dragged by Dave to see one or two of her recitals for her dance troupe in Rochester, but she had progressed far beyond that.

Most of what I knew of dancing came from some ballroom lessons and watching old MGM musicals, but it seemed an unusual song choice – Push It. Sarah had always been a fan of Garbage. Most choreographers seemed to prefer a neutral song that wouldn't overpower the dance. At least that was why I presumed so many dance numbers were set to musically-static bubble-gum pop. In contrast, this song was dynamic.

I thought I understood the themes of Sarah's composition. Each dancer was given a moment to shine, while the others arranged their bodies to draw attention to the featured performer. The next dancer would then build on the previous movements, and elaborate or improve on them. The leaps were higher or faster, or the movements more technically complex or physically difficult. It was a fugue of motion.

After the last dancer had their moment in the spotlight, the dance shifted from a sequence of individual movements to an ensemble performance – each dancer using their skills to make the others shine. Bodies became platforms for aerial leaps, positions were impossibly held, and dancers carried each other over their heads to soar through the air.

Sarah whirled her way through a kinetic explosion of music and form. The floor of the Julliard dance studio was her canvas – her base block of marble – her blank score sheet – upon which she would create.

When the dance stopped, I applauded. Sarah's eyes turned to see who had interrupted her rehearsal, and her eyes opened wide in recognition and surprise.

Then her eyes narrowed, and she returned to her rehearsal, ignoring me. Sarah had never been much for grudges, but the contents of my excoriating letter from three years ago must have angered her beyond precedent – deservedly so.

The scales had fallen from my eyes, and I had realized Sarah had been right all along. I had been the fool. I knew the dream of Sarah from last night meant nothing, but I had hoped for commiseration, or a pep talk, before the next step on my journey. I wasn't going to get it.

I nodded. It was just.

I would face Tasha as I should – alone.

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

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