Silver Fox Pt. 02

Her voice still had a soft muted quality and mine was still resonant with that strange depth. "So, how'd you end up with your taste in music?"

She grinned up at me. "Mostly love of finding new music, any new music. I went through phases and obsessions. Alice in Chains and Soundgarden, all the 80's hard rock like Scorpions and Van Halen, the progression of metal, pop music. But there were just a few eras that stuck around in my lists after the obsessions. Anything musical based, along with the 60s and 70s. I could actually talk about Fleetwood Mac as much as Grateful Dead."

I wrapped an arm around her to feel her against me and laughed. "Just natural good tastes, then."

She was laughing and she still had her leash, even if we were out of Sulfur's, which was a thought that aroused the hell out of me. I tugged the chain just to feel it, just as a reminder, and she nestled closer into my arms, kissing my shoulder before she answered. "It depends on who you ask and what day you catch me on. I'll have my rap obsessed days and Sam would say those are torture."

"I don't know about torture, but they're less awesome than Fleetwood Mac days, for sure."

"Well, that's just not a fair comparison when Stevie Nicks was a goddess."

"Was? She still is."

She laughed happily, then cuddled when I tugged her collar. It felt calmer with her in that state, in a way that made me concerned with how much I enjoyed it when my strange proclivity had so far been a personal thing. It wasn't something I imposed on playmates, especially when I wanted them to always come back for more games.

Nothing felt like it was following what I knew with her. Damn that red hair and how sweet she was. Every time I spoke with her only made me fascinated all over again with how we had such strange things in common, even while the differences were just as fascinating.

I stopped with her outside my door, standing in the hallway. "You can take the leash off, but only I touch the collar, understood?"

"Yes, Sir." Her words were breathy and it made me hard so easily.

She shifted away from me and I didn't want her to. She paused and I stood by my door for a moment before I finally broke. "Essie." Her eyes lit up and my heart felt too happy. "Do you want to-"

"Yes."

I laughed, feeling giddy in a weird way for a man in a midlife crisis, but it felt all too good to have her wait for me to open the door, then to watch her when I held the door open, even though my apartment was nothing but a perfect snapshot to being a perpetually single slut. But she liked me. She liked me even though I was fucking weird. She liked me even when my returning that attraction came with pain.

For a long while, she didn't say anything and I didn't either. I just... processed. God, my life had been turning strange and then she gave it the shove to turn it entirely upside down. I didn't know what I felt anymore, besides a lot of attraction and-

That was a lie. I felt that other word, the one I stayed away from.

She cried out when I grabbed her, lifting her up to pin her against the wall, riding her through our clothes. The need from before came back and I'd already ridden out my sadism fire. I should have been craving to give pain again, should have been needing that dominant flood to my system all over again.

But I just wanted her. She growled against my mouth, like a little savage, biting me and I moaned when she stroked those latex gloves down my cheek. I sucked a finger into my mouth before letting go, taken over by the fact that she'd asked me to take her to my edge and leave her wanting, that she'd come to me just for my pain and I hadn't had to end with pleasure. I'd been able to leave it pure and unadulterated, kissing her at the end of all my affection.

I was frantic, but she was, too, so much that she ripped her shirt trying to get it off too fast and then kicked off her jeans. "Jackson..."

I lifted her again, having undone my own suit pants just enough to free my cock. "Horny little sweetheart." She moaned when I fixed myself to her entrance and there wasn't much foreplay but there didn't have to be after that night. She was wet as fuck and I was so hard it hurt. She'd come back to me. I didn't even know what the fuck was going on with me anymore, was turning so bad that I was getting freaked out, and she came back. Jesus fuck.

"Jackson!" I growled to the sound, to the way she went stiff in shock when I filled her up so suddenly, to the way she hissed through her teeth at the rough thrust. I had to cover her mouth to quiet her when her cries were out of her control.

Those soft whining gasps of air tickled my palm in a way that only fueled my arousal and I couldn't keep from the most punishing pace. How dare she be this sweet when I was some strange form of a nightmare. How dare she make me feel that word I didn't do, no matter how much affection I gave.

She closed her eyes about the same time I felt her squeezing on me. "That's it, cum for me. All over my cock, Essie. Show me how fucking good it feels when I fuck you this hard."

The words set her off something fierce and she squealed behind my palm, her pussy pulsing on me, bathing me with her hot arousal.

She whimpered when I pulled away quickly, when I caught her by her hair, shoving her to her knees. "But you didn't-"

"Because I'm not done with you. Open up and suck me clean." No, I for damn certain wasn't done. If I was having this confusing moment of sex without pain, then I was having my fill of it.

Well, without a lot of pain anyway. I twisted her hair to pull it, to hear her moan around my cock, so that the sound vibrated around me. I made her choke on me just to hear it, just to see her eyes water.

Then, I did it again. Because I could. Because it amused me to think of my little sweetheart craving cock down her throat more than she craved air.

————

Essie

Life was getting weirder.

I mean it was already weird. I ended up buying a Sulfur's membership of my own, even though I wasn't sure what was happening with Jackson and I. All I did know was that this newfound need inside of me felt like something that had once been dormant and refused to go back to sleep. After fucking Jackson until the break of dawn, I'd been too much of a coward to sleep with him, but we didn't talk about that together. He was quiet about walking me to the door, his hand soft in mine while he traced the rip in my shirt from how frantic I'd been.

"Good night, Essie."

"Good night, Sir."

That "Sir" fell between us in the air, a word so heavy with how easily I said it and how right it felt. It felt more correct to call him that than it did to say his name and even after his sex spree, his eyes stirred with something dark and dominating and I had to resist the urge to thread my fingers through his silvering hair all over again.

I kept doing scenes with him too, scenes where I started by quietly asking him to not get me off. Each time made me afraid again, but that fear was numbed with the way his eyes lit up in response, the way he nodded and clipped my leash to my collar, tugging me under his arm with a look of adoration.

And the way he sometimes tied me down, but mostly preferred to hold me in one arm while he worked me over with the cane, the paddle, the strap, or some blend of cruel toys. He showed me the short whip, which stung in a different way than the hard cane, then showed me the tawse, which turned out to be pure evil. One night, he used something called a quirt on my tits, so that I got to watch his face when he stood in front of me and swung the sharp, twin tailed whip, so that I got to meet his eyes while he hurt me.

The first time he met my gaze like that, something blazed in his expression. He swung the quirt so hard that I struggled my cuffs and shrieked and then he followed it up with that soft petting of his. There were no words, only a silent conversation where I was incapable of looking away from his hypnotic eyes, where I trembled all over while he stroked my tears away.

And I knew what words were behind a whip stripe that hard. He switched to my pussy, striping it just as hard and I knew it was a repetition of those words.

"Please whip me more!" I begged it, even though my voice was thick with pain, and he made a low growl of a sound before he kissed me in that way that was bruising.

Then he slashed the quirt again, another repetition of those words in a sadist's language, one he'd taught me how to speak and understand. I was well versed in violence, in the way his arm flexed with brutality, and what that meant.

That night we actually did part ways when we got home. I curled up on my love seat with a movie on - A Fistful of Dollars - and I burned too hot after he'd made me promise again to find him if it was too much. I knocked on the door and he answered quickly, then gave a soft laugh, breathing, "Thank God," before he tugged me in and that time, we did at least make it to his bed.

Where I ended up spending the night after he drilled me into his sheets, forcing me spread wide on my hands and knees until I was arching with the force of his thrusts from behind. He was stroking my hair when my phone's alarm went off and my pussy was sore from his attentions and use. He watched me when I stood, smiling in a very satisfied way when I flinched, his eyes going down to study between my legs, where he'd used four sets of clover clamps the night before... spreading my pussy wide by tugging on the chains while I whimpered and shivered in his bed. "A redhead in a Grateful Dead shirt with the symbol tattooed is a sight I could get very used to if you don't watch yourself, sweetheart."

Thrills shot through my body. And fear again, where I wondered what was wrong with me all over again, that my newfound masochism was so damned strong. I burned for pain and with him, with the way he always spanked me in greeting before a date, with the way he pinched when he kissed, it was getting all the more twisted. I was already terrified with how heavily my lust was connected with pain.

It was all the darker when paired with how I was starting to equate it with being loved and adored.

My cheeks were too bright, as well, too reddened with desire and flame. I was becoming jittery. I was pacing when watching movies at home, restless and in love. I wasn't sleeping well and I didn't care because I wasn't tired. I was infatuated and fiendish, antsy and greedy.

I was so fucking confused.

————

Jackson

I was already off my game, but something was throwing me farther off, something about her. And it was pissing me off. I know that's not something that people are used to hearing from a Dom and Sadist. We're supposed to be all robotic or whatever, eternally calm and unaffected, like androids.

I'm breaking the illusion. I get angry. I have a lot of emotions. I just have self control and know when I need to take a step back to calm down before I act on those emotions. The best way to explain is to say that the area of a scene is a bubble of safety. When you enter it, you do not do so with anger and you do not allow anger in once you enter. The practice is surprisingly more natural than you might expect, or so it's always seemed to me. It feels basically wrong to approach a submissive, who bows to a sadist in good faith, with anything like that. Volatility just doesn't have a place in that sanctuary.

What made things strange with her was that she was the first submissive I had who had pulled my domination outside of the bedroom. This wasn't because I didn't want to dominate outside the bedroom, actually. It was just because I hadn't had cause to do so when I kept my games isolated in that bubble, keeping my dates at Sulfur's where I could make them beg as loud as I wanted to hear them and didn't have to worry about neighbors.

Dating her was coming with a lot of new things and I was forced to realize that whatever my strange midlife situation was, I wasn't leaving it exactly the same. Some parts of me were just going to change. I didn't know which parts and I didn't know how much would change, but something was going to.

I did know that I was fond of her and that I loved her company. I did know that whatever changes were happening, she was putting up with my bullshit and I was happy for that.

But still, even though I didn't actually know a lot about the whole dating scene, I had enough perception to tell that something was wrong, as it were. The problem was that I wasn't a mind reader and I didn't know what was wrong. I didn't want to pester her about anything if it was something to do with work, when we were still getting to know each other, for instance. She had a right to that kind of privacy and I was infatuated and didn't want to run her off.

What was more about it all was the timing of the moments when I noticed something was wrong with her. During our scenes, she seemed better than okay. Afterwards, she seemed to drift in happy submission while I soared in unrequited and unreleased sadism. I didn't get either of us off at all anymore during those moments. I let us both burn, let us both slowly come back down together, while she remained soft in her submission and kept me company at the bar, which was something else she'd taken to doing, a routine I was starting to love.

My games were exclusively relegated to her, as well, because she was more than enough for me when I was just a guy who kept busy. When I flirted at the bar, she flirted alongside me, drawing people in.

See, all of that was good. All of that was where it felt like I would see or notice anything that was wrong with her masochism exploration. No, it was when she woke up in the mornings after she started to spend the night with me that I started to see something. It was a sense of stress or strain in her eyes, when she looked at me while I watched her from my bed, feeling like a lazy cat allowing the mouse to leave for a time, knowing it would come back.

But my little fantasy was discordant during those moments, with that wrong sense.

Maybe I'm just saying all that in self defense, though. Maybe I really should have noticed something. I don't know.

I do know that when Alex, of all fucking people, was the one to call me one night, it did throw me off.

————

"Hey, Jackson." He drew out that first word, while I wondered at what the hell would make Alex, the shyest goddamn sadist I'd ever met, call me. The guy didn't even like to text.

I turned off the game I was watching and this was the one night that Sulfur's wasn't open, my night off. My little bartender was at her sports bar, though, and I was having fantasies for when she got off work, wondering how the night would go. Would I feel like pain and power or like sex? It was a gorgeous thing about her, that she went with either during these strange nights of my life. "What's up?"

"So, uh. Did you know your redhead and mine are thick as thieves these days?"

I smiled at that, wondering at his tone. I didn't, but it was comforting. Lily and Deirdre had always supported the hell out of each other and it seemed to work really well for both of their lives and needs. The hard truth was that Doms weren't exactly easily approachable to a lot of submissive types. "I didn't. That's cool, though."

"Yeah. Do you know, I did think it was weird a while ago when she acted shady about going to Cocoa's bar? I mean it's Lily and she's never going to cheat or anything like that, so it wasn't that kind of fear or anything. She loves to go out and I hate most things social, but there was something about it I guess. Anyway, I figured out why it was weird, why she was acting shady."

"Do you want me to talk with her?" I was just spitballing in a guess that Alex really didn't want anything to do with playing the middle man.

He laughed. "Yeah, I do, but she's passed out drunk, so that's not happening. Anyway, your girl is having problems with being 'cursed as a masochist' or some dramatic whatever and I couldn't gather all of it - apparently, Essie makes strong ass drinks, by the fucking way, so much that Lily is blasted from ordering, like, two - because Lily wasn't making a lot of sense. But I caught, 'She said to not tell Jackson'. And it sounded like it'd been going on for weeks, so you know. I don't want to be party to this. Do with it what you will."

See, this is what made me angry about all of that. It was my problem that she'd discovered that masochism in the first place and I was a bartender at a fetish club who had connections to people who could help her. So, for weeks? What the fuck? I'll own the fact that for a few seconds I was ticked off.

Of course, then the sense kicked in. Because she doesn't want to bother you, moron. She's a submissive who would still worry about displeasing you, so much that she'd keep things hidden from you. It was a pitfall of submission, especially new submission, that the fear of bothering a top would keep some players from so much as saying a safeword even when they really needed to. Of course, the older ones ended up a lot like Lily. They were sweethearts who'd apologize while crying out the word, "yellow," and would make sure they charmed you even while letting you know what was up.

Goddammit. Remember when you kept thinking about how you couldn't fucking touch her? This was why. You can't play with new people right now because you're fucked up. Because I was conflicted with how I felt with her, with this newfound desire to have a 24/7 power exchange with her and what that meant for moments like this. How I handled something like this was based in how I wanted my relationship to be with her. Did I want to be her Master, her Dom, her sadistic boyfriend? I'd given her a collar, a gorgeous chain one that was nice and sturdy, one that fit all too well at her throat. What did I want that collar to mean?

Boyfriend. Ugh. I shied away from that word when I felt too freaking old to have it applied to me for a moment.

"Jackson?"

"Yeah, sorry. Thanks. Will you have Lily call me when she's okay tomorrow? I might need help."

He paused, but then did something that made me add him to my annual Christmas present list. See, Alex knew something weird was up with me. There was no way he didn't because Lily knew and Lily told Alex everything, even if she knew he didn't give a shit about it. She just talked to talk to him. So he knew.

And he didn't bring it up. That was Alex. He merely said, "Sure. Whatever you need, man. You know that."

God, the guy was great. He was actually the best sadist ever and it made me smile when I hung up, with the thought that when I made it through whatever was going on with me, I would have my friends to thank for a lot of it. I still remember Lily getting concerned about taking Alex to Sulfur's for a while. At first, it had been because he was just so damned shy, but then she'd had the concern that being around people she'd played with before might make him uncomfortable. Alex flat out told me about it because his response had been, "Lily, baby, are you fucking one of those playmates still, are you pregnant from one of them, or did you get an STD from any? Because if the answer to all of those questions is no, then I literally do not care."

The introspection made me see a little more clearly, made me think straight enough to turn my thoughts to Essie. My initial anger was a misguided thing and I knew that. It made it easier to breathe out that anger and, if human beings are honest with themselves, sometimes it's difficult to release those wild, adrenaline fueled emotions. I should fucking know.

But once I did, I realized something.

I was thinking through ways to correct that misguided notion of hers, thinking through ways to help her without being an asshole about it. I was thinking through approaches to a problem, not because I was dating her and wanted to manipulate or anything, but because if I ever needed to help her find someone else to meet her masochism needs, then I wanted to be sure she could communicate with them.