The Farewell

I hear him open the door, and I start to shake.

I haven't seen him since he walked away, months ago, with no reason I could understand. Then, out of the blue, a message telling me he would be here tonight. Telling me to dig the embossed leather cuffs out of my bottom drawer and wait for him in my bed wearing them, and nothing else.

I have cheated and spritzed myself with the perfume he always loved, and I hope it doesn't make him angry.

He's climbing the stairs slowly. The house is quiet and I can hear the rustle of fabric that tells me he is pulling his shirt over his head as he ascends. When he appears in my doorway his jeans are unbuttoned, showing off the deep tapers above his hips that he knows drive me crazy. In his hand is the red and black leather flogger I left on his doorstep when it became clear he wasn't coming back, and the sight of it brings tears to my eyes - part trepidation, part grief. I had never expected to see it, or him, again.

"Turn over" he says, his voice throaty and low. I do as he commands, burying my face in the pillow to hide my tears. My cuffed wrists are above my head, and I interlace my fingers, waiting for him to proceed. I hear the sound of his jeans hitting the floor and him kicking them aside, then his fingers are on my skin, tracing patterns over my back and skimming the curve of my ass. "I've missed this" he says, still hoarse and low. "Have you?" I nod my assent, not trusting myself to speak. If only he knew how much. How much our journey together had wrought changes in me that I was powerless to undo, how I could never go back to the girl I was before he led me here. How much his absence has left a void in my life that I am unsure I can ever fill.

His hand moves away, and his trailing fingers are replaced with the light swirling of the strands of the flogger. Tickling ribbons of leather, with interspersed spots of weight, where he has knotted some of the strips for an extra sting. He brushes it tenderly from my shoulders to my mid-thighs, as if kissing me with it. Then it lifts away, and as I tense, I hear his deep intake of breath. Then the blows begin. Striking at diagonals - left, right, left, with no let up, he works his way up and down my body. The knotted strands bite my skin and the splayed strands of leather slap and smart. I feel the heat building as blood rushes to the surface, and can well imagine the rosy hue my usually lily-white flesh is developing. He is waiting for the safe word - I had been building my tolerance but this is further than I have ever let him take me before. But I'm not ready to stop him yet - I had been craving this for so long, and I didn't want it to end. I wanted to show him exactly how brave I could be.

He pauses his onslaught, pushing my knees apart and kneeling between my legs, then starts again, bringing the flogger down on my ass and then alternating between my thighs, the vicious little strips of his beloved weapon curling around my curves as they strike. My eyes are streaming now, soaking the pillowcase, but I don't know if I am crying from pain, or joy, or longing, or something else entirely. I shift my hips slightly, feeling myself growing ever wetter, wanting him to touch me, to fuck me, but unsure if he will.

Without sound or warning, the swings of the flogger stop, and I hear it hit the floor as he throws it aside. I am confused, I had not uttered the safe word, had not asked him to stop, or even made a sound beyond my muffled sobs as the blows had rained down. Have I, for once, broken him, instead of the other way around? He runs his fingers down my back again, and I wince as they drag over skin that is tender and hot. They continue, down the crack of my ass, and around to the lips slick with my arousal. They brush, and pause, and I realise that he is asking for my consent to carry on. I nod again, furiously, and he plunges two fingers inside me, grabbing a hip with his free hand as I buck with pleasure. "Good girl" he breathes softly. "Good girl".

Pulling his fingers away, he grasps my other hip and pulls me upwards, pushing my knees further apart with his own as he does, and pushes his cock inside me. I push back against him, finding his hip bones with my ass cheeks, wondering how I'd not realised how empty I had felt until he he had filled me again. He fucks me furiously, relentlessly, as I press my forehead against my still-cuffed wrists trying to brace against him. His hands strike glancing blows across my hips and thighs, and my breathing quickens as I feel my orgasm building. One final stinging slap across the tattoo on my left thigh tips me over the precipice, and I come for him, crying out his name. I feel him tense, and he grabs a fistful of my hair, snapping my head backwards as he reaches his own climax with his customarily understated "hmmmmm".

Slowly, I flatten myself out on the bed, still face down, still unwilling to turn and meet his gaze. I feel him ease himself off the bed, hear the graze of denim on his bare skin as he pulls his jeans back on. He leans over me, burying his face in my neck, inhaling the scent of my skin and my perfume and the fading shampoo smell of my hair. "I thought you deserved a proper goodbye" he mutters, then plants a kiss on the burning skin between my shoulder blades. "I'm sorry" he whispers, and I cannot move, not until long after I hear the front door close behind him. When I turn over, twisting my wrists to unclip the cuffs and swipe away the mascara-polluted tear tracks from my cheeks, I see that the flogger is still on the floor where he had tossed it. I am not sure whether I am supposed to return it again, or tuck it away and wait for him to come back and need it one more time. I imagine I will just have to wait to be instructed.

He was mine.