The Pickup

"What an evening we had. First I watched as you played with her with Leonard, her guy, guiding you. You wanted me to try, to touch her soft white flesh with the little razor spiked pinwheel toy and help drip the wax on her shoulders and breasts. That wasn't for me. I hurriedly slipped out of my dress and pulled off my underclothes. I blushed furiously. And you know, you looked at me differently, like I was a thing and your possession. I took your hand and guided it, running the little wheel about my chest. I watched your face as you took it up my breast and then paused, like a dirt biker frustratingly stuck just below the lip of a challenging hill. All it took was a nudge from me and the little razor points raced over my nipple. The expression of joy on your face will last me forever. The sting made me wince and gasp. You'd've stopped but I took your hand and rode the pinwheel down the one hill and up the other. 'It feels lovely,' I lied.

"Before we left we ordered a bunch of stuff over the internet. We also borrowed some clothespins and candles and rope. We didn't even own duct tape.

"The whole next week we called in sick. Then we sent in WAH emails about half the time. I wailed at home far more than I worked. When we were in the office we were in a complete stupor. Unable to do anything, except maybe slip out to the car in the parking lot.

"Now you have to understand that we were both ambitious. I'd planned to work up and be the head of a dynamic marketing organization, to control the creative decisions about a company's products. You wanted to be the VP of engineering then maybe the CEO of a startup. After two months I said, 'This has to stop. You're going to get fired.' and you said, 'yes, do you think we can?' and I said 'no, that's why I've taken a job at ----. I'm moving to Minneapolis."

The man snorted and shook his head.

She held up her hand and then put it back on his thigh. She went on earnestly, "It was the first time in the history of the universe that two people agreed to end an affair that was like a deadly addictive drug. We behaved like rational adults, though you protested bitterly and yelled and in my heart I felt this yawning gulf.

"We didn't communicate for 6 years, then last year my company sent me to this shindig. I was the logical person to go and I thought that I could see you without losing my mind.

"I was mostly right. We met again, had a night of amazing debauchery and then managed to survive the next day and go our respective ways. After a month I no longer felt like weeping. I think that night was worth it and worth repeating. My end of it is mostly pain so the hurt when I get home doesn't matter so much. So, my room or yours?"

Again he sipped his beer. He looked at her consideringly and shook his head. He tapped his iPhone, bringing it to life and with a casual slide of a finger brought up the photo of the 2 girls. He pointed to them, sipped his beer and looked at her questioningly.

"Pretend they're by marriage," she said with irritation.

"There are some things which I will never do," he said, "Pretending they are not mine is one of them. The elder is 9. The younger is 6. Your story doesn't work. How could I father the one and be the other's caring Dad while carrying on with you?"

She frowned in exasperation. From her purse she took a small black plastic object. It looked like the key fob of a car, complete with a little red button with an alarm symbol etched on it. She put it in his hand. "Press the button," she instructed.

He did. A buzzing sound came from the blue flower on the necklace that wrapped tightly around her neck. She gasped and bounced on the stool, and clutched the bar with a convulsive hand. The bartender looked over without much curiosity as she opened her eyes and breathed out to relax herself.

"Shit that hurt," she murmured. She slid off the stool. "All you have to do is drop it in my purse and we can go our separate ways."

He held it in his hand, turning it over as he had his phone earlier.

"No? I guess fiction is weaker than flesh," she smoothed her skirt, "Please keep up, if I get twenty feet away it'll go off on its own."

On the elevator the woman pressed 4. Just as the door started to close, Linda, one of his company's salespeople, jumped in. She looked at the two of them with a slight smile and he pressed 6. "What floor?" he asked.

"3" Linda said.

"Your presentation was just great," Linda told him. "I talked to two of my companies after it. They were so impressed they're upgrading to the enterprise version just so they can have the social networking features. You work for ----?" Linda said to the woman, "You're not in my territory. You should talk to Dave your representative about upgrading."

"We already have the enterprise version," Linda was assured, "It's the iPhone app we're interested in. I'm looking forward to seeing it demoed tomorrow."

"In engineering," he said, "We're excited by all the iPain devices."

The woman yelped and put her hand to her throat then turned her yelp into a laugh. He grinned at her and Linda laughed too though she didn't see what was funny.

Linda got off at 3. When the elevator opened at 4, the woman said to him, "All you need to do is hand me the remote and go on up."

He sighed, "There's no past."

"And no future, there's no story, only tonight," she responded and took his hand.

------------------------------------

All the alarm at 7 did was cause him to jerk and spill the wax in a cascade over her cunt. He paid it no mind. That was its intended destination anyhow. If she noticed the alarm, the pain drove it from her mind and the ball gag would've rendered her unintelligible anyhow.

In her bag of paraphernalia she'd had a little wax heater, candles might've set off the room's smoke alarm. He'd tied her, using instructions found on a website. Her arms were behind her back, her wrists connected to her ankles, the ropes went tightly around her breasts and elsewhere. He'd been lost in her body and the sensations he caused in it since he'd followed her into the room.

He did answer the wakeup call from the hotel desk at 7:30. He did not listen to what they said, but stared at her. After hanging up, he went back to knocking the clothespins off with stiff slaps from a flail.

At 8:30 his cell went off. It took a moment to find it. He'd thrown his pants into one of the narrow closets. "Shit I'm sorry. I overslept," he said. "Go ahead with breakfast, I'll meet you in the conference hall."

"Christ," he said to her bound body. "I was supposed to meet the sales and marketing VPs for breakfast!" He shook his head and dove for the bathroom.

When he got out of the shower 5 minutes later, he found that she'd wormed her way across the carpet and had managed to get a pair of scissors from the medical kit in her bag. She'd gotten her arms and legs loose. He realized suddenly that he hadn't fucked her, not once, all night. He felt a raging need. He took her and leaned her against the wall, her ass to him. He grabbed her waist and lifted her so that she was on the tips of her toes. He still had to bend his knees to get into position to drive into her. He looked over and saw her in a mirror. She looked like she was wearing high heels, everything about her was taut save for her rocking breasts. He came in a wave of sensation.

The rutting had only taken a minute. She took him back into the bathroom and washed off his cock and dried it with a towel. Then she leaned in the bathroom doorjam and watched as he frantically hunted about for clothes.

Dressed, he took a moment to look at her. She looked haggard from lack of sleep, her hair was a wild mess, much of her skin was red as if with a rash, there were countless marks where clamps and clothespins had bitten into her, there were the red lines from his blows with the flail about her thighs, there was his seed dripping from her cunt. She looked such a far cry from the neat little thing that'd walked into the bar just 10 or 11 hours before. She looked at him with the same detached amusement. He felt a desperate need to punish her again.

What he said was, "Let's share a cab to the airport this afternoon."

"That can't be wise," she said, "We both need all the time we can get to calm down."

"I insist," he said and took a step toward her.

"OK," she said, "Look you have to get going. Remember your iPhone demonstration? It's just an hour from now? You also have an important discussion group about your customer's experiences and needs. I'm looking forward to telling you a thing or two at that. Off with you."

An hour later he was standing at the front of the conference room, watching while one of his IT guys got the iPad they were using for the demo to talk to the large flatscreen panel. He saw her walk in, once again prim and neat. She slipped down one aisle and slid in next to one of her compatriots. He felt such a wave of desire. His hand began to shake. Their eyes met and she smiled. He saw her take out her phone and slide her finger over it and somehow he managed to start talking and he was OK.

In the cab he said, "There's a conference on the role of documents in a Web 2.0 world in San Diego next month. I can go to it. How about you?"

"No," she said.

"How about this summer, we have another customer/sales thing in Las Vegas. Can you get to that?"

"No," she said.

"For Christ's sake, please invent some pretext so we can be alone together before next year!"

"No," she said. "It's no use. We agreed to once a year and once a year it is. I thought you did very nicely with your demo."

"Fuck you," he said.

"That would be nice," she said, "In fact, my only complaint is that you didn't do more of that. 10 seconds is hardly enough for a girl. I thought of mentioning it as a customer concern after lunch, but your other users were giving you such a hard time about your performance, they think its slow for some reason, so I took pity on you. It wasn't quite the right forum anyhow perhaps."

At the airport, he waited while she checked her suitcase in at the curb-line and then they headed together for the security line. She paused by a trash barrel and dropped the plastic bag that held the paraphernalia into it. She took off the blue velvet choker she still wore around her throat and threw that away too.

"What a waste," he said sadly.

"Can't have it found," she said. From her purse she took her wedding ring. "Here," she said. She handed it to him.

"Not going to Minneapolis?" he asked.

"Nope," she said and he slipped the ring back on her finger and they walked together, their legs synchronous despite the difference in their heights, to the security line and then to their gate and then onto their plane home.