This Is a Love Story

"I'll pull off at the next exit. Can you take some deep breaths? Maybe put your head between your knees?"

"Something's wrong." Amelia pressed her forehead to her thighs. The car was too warm. White bursts on the back of her eyelids. "Pull over. I need to get out. I need some fresh air."

"I'll pull over soon." Even through her growing panic, it struck Amelia that he didn't sound concerned.

"Grant," she whimpered.

"Hush," he said, so quiet it almost got lost in the sound of the road and the rushing in her ears. He reached out to gently pat and rub her back. At first she thought she couldn't have heard him correctly, but it was getting so hard to think, and she was going to pass out, and just before she'd put it all together he said, "You should be thanking me, baby. I'm giving you what you asked for."

- - -

Amelia woke in a twin bed in a room that was small, but not hostile. It had a plain style, reflected with simple furniture: a wood-slat cafe table and folding chair near a window looking out on a patchy field of creeping thyme, wildflowers, and golden brush; a small, square mirror mounted on the wall with a shelf for flowers or toiletries; and a thinning, red wool rug spread over bleached hardwood.

On the table, Grant had propped an envelope against a glass of water, which she ignored in favor of the mirror, jelly-legged and somewhat blurred around the edges of her body. Her groggy face stared back, no different than usual, the circles of her eyes perhaps a little more pronounced. She looked no different than if she'd stayed up too late, or partied a little too hard.

Around her neck a thin, nylon collar, mounted with a black control box. In place of its plastic buckle were two rubber D-rings, locked together with a mechanism she didn't recognize and couldn't manage to disengage with awkward fumbling. Amelia smiled, working a few fingers between the fabric and her neck. Not too tight, nor restrictive of movement nor breath; Grant had sized it to fit.

As she worked out the detail of her new collar -- especially its mounted box with its two nestled, metal contact points -- something twinged deep in her core, a quick weightless tumble. The past months of negotiation and denial and wondering all caught up at once. This was real. This was happening. Head swimming, she sagged into the chair and cradled her head in her hands. She had wanted this, hadn't she? Hadn't she asked for all of this? Set it up, negotiated over it, practically whined every week it didn't happen?

Amelia hadn't known what it would be like to wake locked in a strange room, collared, with an excised memory. There was also the matter of her partner. Grant was the person she trusted most in the world. He had, also, an uncanny ability to push her within an inch of her limits. Her pulse throbbed against the collar, each a thudding reminder of what she'd offered.

The envelope was bare. She shimmied out its two notes after she'd drunk the water down in two throat-aching gulps. Both were in pencil, in Grant's cramped, blocked writing.

Slide this note under the door if you wish to continue, said one.

The other: Slide this note under the door if you wish to stop.

She studied the notes, reading them over and over again, as though doing so might make new words appear on the page. There was a time in her youth when she and her friends had passed notes back and forth in class, coded messages hidden in the first letter of words. No one had ever been good at it, really. Cats often meander effortlessly on vast expanses, roaming to our darling, arid yards. Amelia found herself looking for some hidden tenderness or reassurance and, forced to admit there was none, shoved her answer beneath the door.

From the bed she could stare out the window at the sky, so clear and blue it made her eyes ache. The window might've opened. Were this a real kidnapping, she could try to make it across the field to the distant wire fence. On a different day she might have tried anyway, just to see if Grant would lay chase and what he'd do when he caught her. Instead she stared at the sky; tried to work out the time of day (was it the late afternoon? The next day?); thought about fear, and safety, and the lazy, ever-present ache between her thighs.

The lock of the door clicked, and Grant stepped into the room. They looked at each other for a long, stiff moment. Grant made a show of digging in the front pocket of his jeans. "Hi, baby," he said, and her collar went off, two brief but powerful bursts of vibration against her throat.

It didn't hurt, but she yelped from surprise, anyway. In response he pulled his hand from his pocket, brandishing the little remote for her to see. "Down on the ground, now. On your knees."

He said it the same way he might have told her to check the lights before leaving the house. It was hard to resist him, too. His voice had always done things for her, and mixed with the jolting surprise of the collar, she was starting to feel a dreamy fog start to settle in her head. Still, she didn't move from the bed, instead closing her eyes and bracing.

It wasn't a vibration, this time, but it still didn't hurt. A buzzing tickle against her throat, a shot across the bow. The scent of him, citrus and geranium and pine, and his hand tangled in her hair to drag her off the bed onto the ground.

"Are you going to be good?" He asked, dangling the little remote from between his other thumb and forefinger for her to see.

She loved their warm-ups. "If you make me be."

"Of course, baby. Happily." On her knees, he had to crouch to grip tight at the base of her skull, turning her face up to his, letting the remote drop so he could slap her twice. Before she could process the stinging heat, he'd pushed her down so her cheek was flush against the rug. Amelia struggled, first playfully and then more forcefully, once he'd sat on her back and used his knees to pin her arms. He shocked her again, the current kicking up several notches, feeling like an elastic snapped against her skin. Then the pulses were longer, Grant's finger held down against the trigger, leaving her shaking until she neared a scream. It was a weird way to hurt, a muscle spasm without the cramp, and when he finally released her from the current she could only whine beneath him and catch her breath, already twitching and exhausted.

His hands rummaged around her front, slipping between her and the rug, testing if he could manipulate the button. Amelia's world had gone still and quiet. This was another opportunity to fight back, but she didn't want to, and the thought was halted a moment later by his hand twisting again in her hair, pulling up and back until she whimpered. His other hand, still gently holding the remote, came to her throat and very gently squeezed in warning. "Are you going to be good?"

"Yes," she said. She'd hardly fought at all.

"Yes, what?"

"Yes, Sir. I'll be good."

He got up off her. She rolled over, her movements automatic, undoing her jeans to shift them down her legs, kicking them, tangled, off her feet, slipping off her shirt. She shivered, distantly aware of her own exposure, left in just her panties. Amelia rarely wore bras -- she wasn't endowed in that way -- and he hadn't hesitated to take one of her pebbled nipples between his fingers, tightening his grip until her face screwed up. His hand lifted from her chest and she flinched, but he brought it gently to her cheek, brushing his thumb over her lips and letting her kiss its pad before he drifted it down her body, around her belly button and then further, playing along the waistband of her panties and along their front. It felt so good to be touched, and Amelia instinctively let her legs part wider, lifting her hips to meet his fingers.

His fingers slipped beneath her panties, he leaned forward to speak low in her ear. "My, you are wet. And we're only just getting started."

Amelia whined in response, eager for his touch. It was so easy for him to key her up. What he was doing was hot, and she needed it, she needed him. The words were on her lips, threatening to spill out too soon. Fuck me, she wanted to say. I need you inside me. I need to feel you. But it wasn't time for that. Besides, her relief wasn't really part of the equation, as he'd often liked to remind her. There was a phrase he'd said to her, more than once, when he was edging or tormenting her, when she was deep in fucked-up headspace, floating and aching and unquestionably his. Your arousal is the point. Those were the words she found herself mouthing, then whispering, over and over while he slowly stroked her.

She registered when he stopped: she whined and bit her lip and exhaled a shudder. But she wasn't really registering what was going on around her, or what he was saying from above her. It wasn't until the thing around her neck went off again that her eyes snapped open and found him looking down at her cooly.

"Get up," he said again. He let her amble to her feet, unsteady, and then took her shoulder and led her from the room.

The bedroom led into a hall, which in turn let out into a large, high-ceilinged open-concept. The wall furthest from them was all glass, big sliding doors and transom windows broken up by dark stained moulding, looking out across a deck at the edge of the same field she'd seen from the bedroom, leading into a thicket of oak and maple. The room itself was broken into three, a center dining table flanked by a granite bar to one side and an entertainment area to the other. Grant led her to the latter, sat her on the slate-gray couch, and patted her on the head, wearing a smile that made her blush.

"Stay," he said, gripping her jaw to guide her vision away from the window. Amelia stared forward at the dim shimmer of her reflection in the television screen. There were bookcases to either side, creased spines on some of the paperbacks, chips and worn edges on the dust covers, empty space filled in with knick knacks: a Mancala board with dark, glass stones; a pair of smooth, polished onyx birds; a trio of cross-legged bronze frog figurines, patinated in the creases, with their hands over their eyes and ears and mouth in turn.

It was such a sunny, mild day, and such a beautiful room. The sound of footsteps behind her, a bag unzipping, furniture -- chairs? -- scraping against the floor. On another day, Amelia would have liked to browse the titles of the books, laze in the sun, walk in the woods. She was a city girl, through and through, but there was something peaceful in the seclusion, cutting through the tension of their scene, affording her a moment of stillness. The eye of Grant's storm. Were this a real kidnapping, it might have given her mind time enough to consider escape. The house had clearly been designed and decorated to seem a warm and inviting temporary home. Amelia wondered how much it had seen of brutality.

The brush of fingers on her cheek, a low voice telling her to open her mouth. A mess of leather lowered over her face, a rubber ball popped in her mouth and her head turned so he could fasten it beneath her chin. It wasn't their usual ballgag, the one with the simple strap and the leather ball. This one was bigger and more elaborate, an entire harness, fastened additionally at the back of her head and her crown, with additional lines that ran over her temples and down her forehead and framed her nose, all meeting between her eyes. He played with the tightness, snaking his fingers under the straps to check the pressure; Amelia tested its limits, pushing at the ball with her tongue and lips to see if she could pop it out far enough to swallow.

He adjusted her, moving her from the couch to the floor in front of it, arranging her limbs like a doll. She let him, not quite back in the depths of foggy submission but willing to yield. There was rope, pulled from the unknown where she wasn't allowed to look, wrapped around her body like a packaged present. Her arms straight out and tied behind her back at the wrists and above her elbows, her legs frog tied, a couple of simple double columns all it took to steal her movement.

Reaching between her legs, he gave her clit a cursory rub. It throbbed, already stiff and aching, and she let out a frustrated groan and rocked her hips, squirming a bit from side to side.

"Don't worry, you'll have plenty of stimulation soon," he said, hand stroking at the back of her hair. "You know how tonight is going to end. You're even going to beg for it to happen. But I don't think you're ready yet. I think you might need a little persuading before I offer you the option. What do you think?"

Amelia looked up at him and stared, then very gently nodded.

He disappeared from sight again. Another sound of rustling, and then the hiss of rope being passed through a ring that must have been at the back of the harness, passing between it and her scalp. He was gentle as he passed the length of rope through and knotted it. There was a pressure as he pulled it somewhere and began to gently tighten it, until she let her head go back and looked up to stare at the ceiling and Grant behind her. When he was done adjusting the tension, she could sit straight up without her head back, as long as her body was shifted back against the front of the couch.

He moved two kitchen chairs in front of her, past the coffee table and sideways so they faced each other. From his pocket he pulled two sets of ringed clamps and knelt beside her. His fingers played over her nipples, teasing and tugging them to hardness before he twisted one and then the other, tightening his grip until she gasped. The clamps made her whine and want to pull her head forward to curve her breasts away from him. But she couldn't, impeded both by the rope he'd tied to her harness and the couch behind her. It hurt a lot, stinging giving way to throbbing pain. But she supposed it could have been worse. He could have tied the rope directly to her hair.

Amelia was beginning to drool in strands that worked their way down her chin and dripped onto her chest. The pain in her nipples was intense, growing instead of receding. Grant had produced two lines of twine, which he fished through the rings at the end of each clamp and tied, pulling their lengths away from her and over the seat of the chairs, attaching each to the handle of a small, silver pail. He'd made the lines long enough that the buckets could reach the floor, but once done he shifted the chairs back, away from her and toward the television, so that they lifted up.

"Try to get them back on the ground," he said, his voice soft and dangerous. "Arch your back."

Amelia did. What else was she going to do? She thrust her chest out and her head back, adjusting more and more as he pulled the chairs further from her, until they were almost up to the television and she was fully arched, the rope at her head building pressure in her neck. She thought he might be considering shortening the ropes anyway, to see if she could get further, but the pressure in her neck and shoulders was becoming too much, and she struggled to right herself, lifting the buckets off the ground and increasing the pressure in her nipples. From her mouth, only somewhat muffled by the gag, a dry sob and a whine.

Breathing hard, she found Grant's gaze, steady and inscrutable. Then he turned to study the bookshelf. He ran his fingers over a few of the books, as though he were browsing, and pulled out a worn copy of a fantasy book he'd read a thousand times. Without turning around, he tucked the book under his arm and let his fingers wander, coming to rest at the Mancala board.

"Do you want to play a game?" He asked, gathering up a handful of its glass pieces. Not waiting for a response, he dropped one into the bucket attached to her left nipple with a little tink. She shook her head, a range of motion considerably narrowed by the tensions on her body, and widened her eyes. He smiled, and dropped in a few more each. The sounds she was making reminded her of a kitten -- high-pitched mewls and squeaks.

It was a cyclical predicament -- arching her back until the ground took the horrible weight from her nipples in return for pressure on her shoulder and head and neck. There wasn't a single position she would have called comfortable, it was just trading one exhaustion and pain for another. Every time she straightened up and lifted the buckets from the ground again, Grant dropped another stone in.

Amelia had stopped thinking, except to wonder how long he was going to put her through this, and how much worse it was going to get. The rest of the world had muted -- she didn't think about the windowed wall, or the woods beyond, she wasn't thinking of other guests, or of their car ride. Even the purpose of the collar was forgotten, her existence constricted to the arch and straightening of her back, the little sound the buckets made as they made contact with the ground, the quiet sound the twine made as it scraped back and forth over the edge of the chair.

At some point, Grant had ceased his additions and retired to sit above her on the couch. He was reading the book he'd pulled, not even looking at her. Actually reading, too, the bastard, not just pretending to -- when her head was back she could see his eyes moving over the page, could hear the little rustle of paper at regular intervals. Amelia's body had grown slippery with sweat. The pain in her nipples was becoming more urgent and acute; she realized the bite of one of the clamps was starting to slip. Trying to communicate this fact, she tipped her head back as far as it would go, letting the buckets come to rest on the ground and making a loud, high whine.

In response, Grant stroked his thumb over her forehead and into her hair without looking up. "You're only dragging it out."

Every breath made the pain worse. With the buckets on the ground, the clamps felt secure enough. But, understanding his intention, Amelia tried to steel herself and take a few shuddering breaths, holding it and bracing as she forced herself to straighten back up and lift the buckets from the ground. It happened slowly, the slipping clamp dragging over less and less skin, until it let go all at once and the bucket landed on the ground with a thump.

The pain rebounded, blood rushing back into her abused nipple, and her body jerked forward, putting more pressure on her head. Grant finally put his book down, leaning over her only to tug at the clamp still attached to her other nipple. She whimpered, shaking her head as much she could, making little grunting sounds of disagreements. But she knew him too well to hope he wouldn't. And so as his fingers gripped at the clamp she shut her eyes against his mild smile, jaw tired and aching and clenched as best it could around the rubber ball, her body taut and braced.

None of it helped, much, when he yanked the clamp from her body. But all that escaped her lips was a kittenish whimper, despite the waxing burn and the subsequent ache and the reduction of her nipples to pulsing pinpoints of pain, sensitive even to the still air.

Her bicep hurt, and her knees and hips, and one of her shoulders, fatigued from the position of her arms. Those pains were dull, drowning tides that snared. Endurance pains, growing and throbbing in contrast to the sharp sensitivity of her nipples. His hands came down to her breasts, fingers slowly circling her areolae, gently playing over her tender flesh, more painful than pleasurable.

She was vaguely aware, as his grip began to tighten, pinching until she made a grunting dissent. Thoughts buzzing, she could only stare at him, her gaze far away and somewhat blank, as he picked up the clamps and gave each of her nipples a last, severe twist.

They looked scarier than they felt, really, though they did feel scary. When he snapped one at her, she barely recoiled, resigned as she was to what was coming. And despite the pain, there was a growing coil of tension in her belly, need and heat and desire for him. She wanted to please him. She wanted him to hurt her. She wanted him to make her suffer, and to push her so deep down into subspace she might not ever come out.