Mark is open.
He is spread-eagle on the landing, his wrists bound by silk ropes to the curling balusters of the staircase. Two dozen candles of every shape, size, length and breadth flicker in the dark. A sheen of sweat begins to dot his skin. Diagonal shadow lines criss-cross his torso like the bars of a jail cell. He is naked, cock lying small and innocent against his thigh. He looks foreign to her.
Sydney stands over him, hovering like a transient specter of the night. He doesn't look at her. She imagines herself a goddess, glowing. He'll burn up if he looks, spontaneously combust into a cinder of sooty ashes, breaking apart and floating away. She wants it this way. She wants him to feel like he's about to shatter.
"I can't believe you're trusting me this much," Sydney thinks out loud. Mark has always told her that she should think out loud, and she does, even when it's not appropriate.
"Me neither."
She laughs, and then stops abruptly. She's always laughing. She laughs when something's funny, of course. But she also laughs when she's scared, when she's so angry she can't cry, when she's lonely and when something is so weird and wild and out of control she doesn't know how to react, a common occurrence when she's with Mark. Defense mechanism. She's not sure which kind of laugh that was.
"You know you can back out at any point."
"I know, but I want to do this."
She could have tied him to the four-poster bed. In her fantasies, he's lying in that bed, sinking into the softness of her feather duvet and percale sheets. But that was too nice, too neat, too comfortable for what she really wants. She wants him at attention, hyper-aware of everything around him. She wants him sliding across the hardwood floor on his back, the cutting pull of silk on his wrists.
The candles have been burning for a couple of hours now. Pools of melted wax surround the half-black wicks and the cylindrical sides have collapsed in on themselves. She'd lit them in preparation. The match head had danced around each wick because her hands shook.
She takes a long look at Mark and can't quite believe the vision is real and not part of a waking dream. She's held off long enough. She takes a deep breath and fills her lungs with a little courage. Teetering on the edge between wish and fulfillment, she realizes the danger of one over the other.
"Are you sure this is okay?" she asks one last time.
Mark nods with finality.
She arranges herself over him, her thighs tangled in his, her rump resting on her heels. She takes pleasure in watching Mark's cock respond, awakening when she hasn't even touched it yet.
With the candle poised over his chest, Sydney stops. He is watching her. His gaze is too palpable to ignore and she can't will her hand to tilt that extra inch. She rises, retreats to her bedroom and returns with a blindfold. Mark frowns as she secures it behind his head, but he doesn't say a word.
She doesn't hesitate this time. When she tilts the candle, the wax flows. He squirms with this first contact, jolting with first pain. She continues, spacing the pain at capricious intervals. As Mark writhes beneath her, Sydney realizes that he is not making a sound, not a whimper, a squeal. Even his breath is quiet.
