How We Play

Andrew is tall and rangy, with narrow calves and forearms and a slight paunch. His face is beautiful and savage—hooded eyes, high cheekbones, and a sullen mouth. I like him and respect him, though not as much, I suspect, as he likes me. I like his goofy sense of humor and his occasional, surprising flashes of insight. But none of that is important tonight.

His apartment is spacious and sparse. It looks like what he is—a tech entrepreneur with more money than time, someone who lives inside his own head too much. I take off my shoes as I enter and step lightly on the bare wood floorboards. We kiss, say small things about the day. We haven't worked out how best to enter and exit these times yet, and there's a hesitancy to our small talk, an unspoken question— are you ready? Is it time?

"Go take a shower," Andrew says. "Wash yourself thoroughly."

I take my time in the shower. It's important for me to give myself the time to make the transition—from subject to object, from hyper-articulate, self-possessed woman to vessel. I rinse off my hair—curly and boyishly short—and wash my body, beginning to detach myself from it as I touch myself. The legs are long and lean, the belly a bit too generous, the shoulders and rib cage narrow, the breasts very full and lush. I work a soaped finger into my ass, feeling the interior curves enfolding it. Even one finger is a stretch, here at the beginning of things.

After I'm clean I stay there under the water a few moments longer. The habitual grumbling I feel when I think about my body falls away, replaced with serenity. I am not ugly; I am not beautiful. I am useful. I am ready.

When I come out wrapped in a towel, Andrew has placed an ottoman close to the bed, draped in a blanket. I feel his eyes on me, briefly, and then he looks away. He pours himself a glass of something, takes a sip, then pours another and hands it to me. It's a framboise, light and slightly sour and refreshing. Not my usual drink.

"Hello," Andrew says, and now he looks into my eyes deeply. "Hello," I reply. His face is remote, appraising, with none of the friendliness or desire to please me that I'm used to finding there. His eyes are striking: blue, with very long lashes. Now they give nothing away. I am relaxed and excited together, simple in my intentions. We are here. I take a sip of the beer.

"Lose the towel," Andrew says. The command isn't theatrical but casual, as though this is a small thing. As though he held my obedience lightly. "Sit there. I'm going to wash up. I'll be back soon. Try to make yourself comfortable. Don't move."

As he leaves the room he dims the lights and I sit in near-darkness. My skin prickles.

Andrew is a very gentle sadist. There are no floggers or paddles when we play; just the slow dance of situational discomfort, and then the calculated selfishness as he takes his pleasure. I use the time waiting to stretch, as far as I can while remaining seated, gradually asking my body to wake up and be ready for whatever he has in mind for it.

Finally, finally, Andrew returns. He wears a robe and sweatpants. "Stand up," he says, and pulls me in for a kiss. His fingers roam to my nipples, twisting them, massaging the breasts. I feel a deep tug in my pelvis. I make a small sound in my throat and kiss him more hungrily. He pulls away.

"I want you to kneel there," he says, pointing to the ottoman. "Hands and knees. Move back a little—ankles back over the edge. Go down onto your elbows. That's good. How does that feel? Can you stay there for a while? Say yes or no." I flex a muscle or two, find my way into stability. "Yes, sir," I say. I'm poised awkwardly but comfortably, ass in the air, chin resting on my joined hands.

Andrew kneels in front of me, holding several lengths of rope. Gently he places my arms the way he wants them: wrists together, elbows supporting my crouched body. He strokes the inside of my wrists briefly as he lashes them together. I test the knot, making sure it will neither cut off circulation nor stretch enough to slip. Then I test it some more, to feel the way it holds me immobile, to try my strength against it, to feel the gentle bite of the soft cotton into my forearms. Andrew is behind me, doing the same thing to my ankles. Finally, he lashes my elbows to my knees.

I'm trussed now, comfortable but off-kilter, keyed up but relaxed and pliant at the same time. I feel as though I'm melting into myself, held together by the ropes binding me and by the will of the man now kneeling behind me. I feel, suddenly, Andrew's tongue on my labia, soft and sweet as butter. He licks along my cunt, lavishing attention on my clitoris, not in a hurry, a little detached. I begin to make little moans, and he chuckles to himself.

"I almost forgot," he says. "This is for you, and also for our neighbors." And he holds a gag in front of me. It's big and brutal-looking, a slab of black silicone like a horse's bit attached to plain black straps. He buckles it loosely around my neck, goes to fit it into my mouth, and then changes his mind. "Sit up, as best you can," he says. I comply, my arms straining awkwardly. "Open your mouth." Suddenly his cock is in front of my mouth, and his torso is my whole field of vision. I open my mouth and take him inside.

I love to give head, and I'm good at it. Andrew's penis is bigger than most men I've been with, which is a pleasant challenge. I enjoy this first part, before he's fully hard, when I can play him in my mouth. I run my tongue in circles over the smooth head, gently probe the slit at the tip. He starts to moan and thrust into my mouth, but I pull back, taking back control for a moment, focusing on the head, massaging it fiercely between my clever tongue and my hard palate, giving it the occasional electric scrape with my teeth. And then he's hard all the way and he fills my mouth completely, and I focus simply on pulling him as far in as I can.

My brief power play is over and he's fucking my mouth, his hand gripping my short hair remorselessly, thrusting me onto him and pulling me off in a quickening rhythm. There's no artistry to this part, just the feel of his cock squeezing into the back of my throat, trying to breathe and not to gag. I feel a tiny, familiar spark of panic rising—this isn't fun any more! This isn't gentle! I can't breathe! And I ride the fear the way Andrew is riding me. The fear is mine, I brought it into the room, it's for me to use and master and take my pleasure from. I feel a deep squeezing ache in my pelvic muscles and throw myself further into the task set before me, wrapping my lips as far down the base of Andrew's cock as I can manage, feeling tears squeeze out of my eyes as he grinds into me.

With a gasp, he pulls me off. We gaze at one another, breathing hard, like combatants facing off in a ring. His hand is still tangled in my hair; spit drips from the corner of my mouth. I wait. Finally he grins—not kindly—and pulls the gag into my mouth, buckling the straps tightly behind my head.

There's a pause now. I hear the sound of Andrew's feet stepping away from me, and I sink down and rest my head onto my forearms. There is nothing left for me to do now but wait; no task except to accept whatever he wants to give me. I'm not precisely comfortable—the gag pulls my head back and stretches my mouth open—but I'm as relaxed as though I've been drugged, utterly centered and calm. There's nothing in the world now except my body and the things confining it.

I hear the buzz of the vibrator first, and then I feel it between my legs. It's a slow, lazy rumble, not a high setting, and it skates down past my pubic bone and along my labia before coming back up to nestle against my clitoris. It's a distraction, really, a small thing given to occupy me while Andrew takes possession of me. Now I feel the cool trickle of lube running down over my asshole, and I moan and begin to twitch. Andrew's finger runs firmly over my perineum and then, before I'm prepared—as though I could prepare—he's thrusting a finger deeply into my ass. I buck away and cry out against the gag; the feeling is strange and delicious and invasive, utterly different from my own touch. As I shy away, his other hand gives my ass a quick, shocking smack, and the vibrator bears down hard on my clitoris.

"Look back at me," Andrew commands. He holds up a plug for me to see: a fat nugget of glass, big to my eyes and quite simply beautiful. "This is going inside you. You're going to be wearing it for a while. Just relax." And then he's twisting his fingers again, not brutally but insistently, working a second finger inside my ass, and the well-lubed fingers of his other hand into my cunt. As his hands work deeper into me, I begin to lose my composure. My breathing goes ragged against the gag, and my noises grow louder and less coherent. Am I protesting? Am I urging him on? I can't form sentences anymore, and I don't care.

Soon the fingers in my ass withdraw, replaced by the cold sphere of the glass plug. I'm beginning to keen, dreading and also desiring the slow stretch of the muscles to take it in, the shocking way it keeps getting bigger and impossibly bigger. I think, "this is too much; I can't take this," and then it eases. The plug is snugly inside me. I squeeze it tentatively, and fireworks go off deep in my belly.

And now there's more, even more: I feel Andrew stand behind me, feel the broad head of his cock pushing against my cunt. There's a brief moment of pressure, and then he's sliding in, farther and yet farther, stretching me wide at the mouth of my vagina and stroking me deep inside. He begins to fuck me with short, quick strokes, one hand holding the back of my neck, the other braced against my shoulder. I rock into him with the small movements the ropes permit me. I feel him the whole way inside me, the firm contours of his cock sliding past my entrance, massaging the deep interior walls of the vagina. I squeeze him fiercely, and he slams harder into me. His voice is an incoherent growl, telling me I'm beautiful, telling me how good my pussy feels.

There's an anger that comes up for me during sex these days. We're in the middle of #metoo, all of us, talking on Twitter and in the papers about entitlement and coercion and desire and fear. Andrew wants to be a feminist, and he's a safe and respectful sexual partner. Outside the bedroom, though, he's still unpracticed at recognizing and stepping down from the space he takes up as a white man. And in many ways it doesn't matter who he is; he's a man, and it's hard not to hold that against him. No matter how much we both wish it were otherwise, when Andrew takes me to bed, a lifetime of small injustices and wounds comes with me.

Now, though, Andrew is splitting me open with his cock, spitting me like a roasting bird, with my mouth open and gagged, and I almost can't bear how good it feels. I love this. I love the way he works the glass plug even deeper inside me with his fingers while he fucks me, the rush of pure sensation to which I abandon myself, the ferocity of my body straining against the ropes, held, contained, like an explosion in a soundproof room. I let go and wail in rage and pleasure together, riding the verge of orgasm for minute after impossible minute, moving deeper into the world beyond thought or reasoning we've come to together.

He slows, then pulls out, and I whimper in blind protest. Then his fingers find the flared base of the plug and twist it out. "It's time," he says. "Eyes forward. It's time." And now that thick hungry cock is stretching my ass, breaking me open and taking what it wants from me, and I have a brief flare of real panic as Andrew pushes inexorably into me. It's too much, I think wildly. I can't. And I can't stop it. And then I breathe out in a long shudder and simply feel it, all of it, Andrew's body straining over me, the slow smooth length of his cock, the rising discomfort as he pushes deeper into me, and then the relief and pleasure as he bottoms out, impossibly, buried inside me, caressing and being caressed.

There's nothing to act on, nothing to do, nowhere closer to come, nowhere to escape to. Slowly at first, Andrew moves inside me. I rest my head facedown and let myself be shaken, arms and ankles pinioned, my body given over entirely to this strange fierce intimacy. My face has gone slack and remote, though as Andrew fucks me, faster and more forcefully, I let out a grunting moan with each stroke.

Andrew is drawing close to climax now, his former carefulness with my body abandoned, pouring himself into me, straining deeper until his balls slap softly against me. I can feel in him the triumph of overcoming me, and in me the satiety of being overcome; and yet even now I can feel myself somewhere, calm and remote and untouchable, satisfied and unmoved. And I can feel Andrew feeling it too, in the very force with which he takes his pleasure from me. Even here, when he has taken everything I have to give—when I lie tied and gasping, mouth open, eyes beseeching him for more, more—he does not possess me, and we both know it. And as he reaches orgasm, as he attains finally the deep vulnerability with which men come, we seem to me to be both fully entangled and fully separate, known inside and out and yet utterly remote and unknowable. His shout rings in my ears as both triumph and despair, and he collapses onto me for a few moments.

Afterwards we are gentle and giggly together, as he unties me, as we check together for signs of nerve compression, as we stumble together into his waiting bed. We both need the rush of tenderness unleashed, the solemnity dropped. I hide my face in the hollow of his shoulder and am seized by a fit of trembling. He cradles me gently, stroking my back until the shudders pass. I twine my legs into his and rub strong fingers over his close-cropped scalp, and he purrs like a happy cat, the hooded eyes relaxing into softness. We talk a bit about details, postgaming in a relaxed way. I am lavish with my praise, and he's catlike too in lapping it up as his due. Gradually our responses become slower and sleepier.

I don't love him, I think, as I drift off to sleep in his arms. It would be easier if I did. But we're a good team. And I'm helpless to resist this thing that happens between us, this thing that's deeply pleasurable and somehow also deeply sad. This thing that's so close to love.