Author’s Note:
This is a new departure on a familiar theme, but it will get nicely silly later. It’s a bit ‘fast-talking, high trousers’ for now. Maybe it’ll get a bit less romantic later?
Listening note:
“Every Time I Try” by Spain is pretty good for this. It’s the right vintage as well.
“Born to Bond” by Feist is also perfect, obviously, but good luck finding it.
The Story
“I want you to tie me up,” she said, as if this was an entirely reasonable thing to say to someone.
“That seems a bit cliché,” he responded.
“It is a bit, but today feels a bit like a great time to try out cliche,” she said, with no accent on the final é.
“I was in the Boy Scouts for about twenty minutes,” he said.
“Twenty minutes longer than me,” she said, her responses quiet calm ricochets as if she’d been expecting just this conversation all day. “Yet here we are, camping out.”
“We’re hardly camping out. This is a compact and bijou airbnb. It cost a fucking packet. And anyway, I don’t even know if I can remember any of the knots.”
“Stop making excuses. You have a knife in your backpack, you always do.”
They looked out over the hills and down to the city below; the sunny morning was beginning to heat the cabin to just above the comfort point. Someone would have to open a window soon, if either of them could be bothered getting out of bed.
He protested. “I don’t mean “I’ll not be able to untie them”, I mean “What if I can’t tie them at all”. You don’t think that’s something we should hold off on until we’re back in like a hotel or home or whatever?”
“No. We’re in heaven. Look at that view!”
“You say the nicest things, honey,” he said.
“I do. Tie me up and fuck me like you stole me.”
“Jesus Christ!”
“Crucifixion is a bit advanced but we can try a Mary Magdalene if you like.”
“A Mary Magdalene? What the fuck is that?”
“No idea. Just made it up. I tell you what: whatever we next try that doesn’t have a name already, we’ll call a Mary Magdalene.”
He nodded.
“So…” she said.
“So, you actually want me to tie you up?”
“I do, yes. Tight but not so tight it leaves marks. Loose but not so much that I won’t feel it all the way home.”
“Okay.”
“Okay, good. All the way home. There’s rope in my bag.”
A beat.
He stared at the carpet, then back at her, then back at the carpet again.
“You’ve got a rope in your bag?”
“No, I have ropes in my bag. I felt that was probably better.”
“Better than what?”
“Well, if I get my bag searched and they find a few lengths of rope and a few insertables in my bag, they think I’m a bit kinky, and I don’t give a fuck about some security guy thinking that. But if you try to come through security with a length of rope and the same items, you’re going on a watchlist.”
“Insertables?”
“Yes. Insertables. Would you like to see them? Some of them are very pretty.”
He looked straight ahead. Straight ahead.
“You’re in shock?”
“I am, a bit. How much rope?”
“You’ve never seen insertables before?”
“I didn’t think they needed a generic category. I mean, there are buttplugs and there are dildos.”
“And eggs and balls and beads and Bad Dragons (which I don’t have by the way, they’re a bit scary.”
“That sounds like a very bad dragon indeed.”
“Indeed,” she agreed. “Atrocious altogether. I’m full of admiration for anyone who gets one of those delivered.”
“Delivered they way they deliver a fucking baby.”
“So you’ve heard of them?”
“I’ve seen them. Some things can’t be avoided on the internet.”
She peered at him over her glasses.
“If you say so. So, yeah. Insertables. Things specifically designed to be put inside yourself for sexual pleasure.”
“Or, one supposes, just a simple sense of accomplishment.”
“Indeed.”
“Indeed.”
“Right. Yeah. You’re right. I think the specific problem would actually manifest if they found me insouciantly referring to them as Insertables.”
“You wouldn’t. You didn’t know they were insertables until now.”
“I knew they were insertable. I didn’t know they were ‘insertables’,” he said, with air-quotes.
“Well, they are. And I have some nice ones with me.”
“Grand.”
“But there’s one particular insertable. One particular item I have with me I can’t wait to force you watch as I take it in my hands and cram it inside my…” she leaned towards him. “Tight. Wet. Soaked. Cunt.”
“Really. But I’d need your permission.”
“My permission?”
“Yes, your permission. This particular item is attached to you. And I want it.”
“As I say, you say the nicest things.”
“I do. Shall we get lunch while you think about it?”
After lunch, and after minds had been made up, they returned to the hillside to the cabin and sat in the outside air with the door open, willing the dome to cool down. Bees luxuriated in flowers, grass swayed in the summer breeze and she leaned into him with an ice cold glass of champagne. She was warm and gently fragrant on his shoulder.
“It’s not bad, this,” she said, and he hummed.
“It’s not bad at all,” he agreed. And then, a few seconds later “I’m jealous of the city.”
“Jealous of the city? Jealous of Belfast?”
“Yeah. It gets to see you right now, and at this moment, all I can see is Belfast.”
“Belfast can’t see me. Belfast isn’t looking at me. Belfast is too far away. But you could see me, if you’d turn your head.”
He turned his head and there she was, all silken soft hair, perfect skin and wide, deep eyes, and nothing at all on. The matt texture of her perfectly moisturised skin seemed to gently glow in the afternoon sunlight, and as they looked into each other’s eyes, he was momentarily distracted by a subtle constellation of tiny dark freckles – or were they moles – arranged like Atreides, leading the way to the cleavage between the swelling of her firm, small breasts.
“If that’s true, Belfast is an idiot.”
“I think that’s been proved beyond doubt before now.”
“True. True. And I see you.”
“You always did.”
She took his hand and walked him into the cabin, leaving the door open, and lay down in a single elegant flourish. Despite her slight frame, she seemed either to occupy the bed or to simply render irrelevant everything else in the room. He knelt before her and leaned in, kissing her thighs and nuzzling at the cleft of her lips; she made appreciative noises and gave rapt attention to his efforts; she felt his desire to show how he adored her, and she acknowledged it with her hand, gently stroking his hair, with her soft voice issuing sighs and affirmations. As his jaw began to rebel, she rose to a sitting position to watch him for a few moments more, then ran her nails up his spine.
“You love doing that, don’t you?” She asked.
“More than you know.”
“I know more than you’d think. I can feel it. That’s not just technique. That’s need.”
“Guilty,” he replied.
“Guilty. I should send you down.”
“Give me a long sentence.”
“I hate long sentences. But if I must…:
He prized her legs gently apart and kissed her again, and as she lay back she reminded him of the ropes.
“I want you to tie me up. I want to lose control.”
“You don’t want to lose control,” he said, drawing breath. “You want to have control taken from you. Can do.”