The Turning of the Earth

Grateful thanks to those who edited, polished, advised, and prodded this story to post.

*

The connecting door from my room to yours is still closed on your side, so I tap my fingertips against the white gloss paint, listening for movement. "Ready?"

Light pours across me as the door swings back. All your curtains are open. Mine are closed against the relentless sun, the air conditioner on its slowest setting, so that I won't walk into a convection oven when we return this evening. "Don't forget to close those before we leave," I say as I step through the doorway. "You'll roast to a turn tonight."

"You think so?"

Bathed in your laugh, I blush a little and look away. You've traveled in this part of the world much more than I have; of course you don't need me to educate you. "Sorry."

"It's all right, I'm only teasing you. Sit down, I'll be ready in a moment."

Instead I go to the window, drawn as I always am by the sight of the sea. Such an impossible tapestry of color, texture, light—-I could really stand here until I starved, never noticing that I was dying.

Your voice in my ear: "Gorgeous."

I start, but only a little, my eyes still full of the ocean. "Yes, it is," I reply.

That laugh again. "I meant you."

My eyes roll before I can stop myself.

I shake my head quickly, shedding my bad manners like a dog shedding bathwater, turning away from the window to grin back at you. "Sorry. Thank you," and I know I should say something back. I should reply in kind. But I can't. Because you look... perfect. You look

exactly

like yourself. The pure pleasure of just looking at you is so overwhelming that the muscles in my face protest, faintly, as my smile tries to wrap itself all the way around my head.

It's hard to speak when my lips are stretched so wide. The heat rising in me sends the smile bubbling over into a laugh. Your elevated eyebrows extend my laughter and draw words from me, finally. "I'm so happy. I am just so thoroughly happy to be here. With you," and I laugh again, feeling exultant and alive and only the slightest bit giddy, as though I've had one single sip of cold champagne on an empty stomach.

"That works out well then," you answer me, and you hold something up between us. It's a pretty little paper bag, dark blue with gold whorls printed on. "Open it up," you say, and so, curious, I take it in my hands and unfold the top, letting the contents slide out into my palm.

It's a pair of silver earrings and a matching pendant.

I gaze at them in wonder even though I know exactly what they are. You described them to me once, a long time ago. A tremor runs through my hand; reflected sunlight winks up at me.

"You don't have to wear them," you tell me gently. "You don't even have to keep them."

I look at you; your eyes are speaking plain truth. This isn't a test. It is precisely what it is, what you've said, and you go on, "It's all right. I just wanted to give them to you, while I have the chance." Your smile broadens. "And now I have."

I nod, once, and look back down at the brightness shining in my fingers. Carefully, you reach down to lift the bit of chain that dangles from the pendant. Drawing it slowly from my palm, you add, "Or you could just wear them for now, while we're here. If you wanted."

My eyes follow the pendant as it turns in the light between us.

The giddiness is gone. There is only the sunlight on my arms, the sure steady turning of the earth, and my heart, beating, beating. Our eyes meet. I nod, again. "For now. While we're here."

* * * * *

His breathing never changed from the heavy rhythms of sleep as his arm tightened around my torso. Without opening his eyes, he muttered, "Don't even think about it."

I laughed, yawning. "You gotta let me up sometime."

"Think so?"

"I think in about five minutes I'm going to wet the bed if you don't."

"Hmmmph." He shifted closer, leaning across me with his elbow disappearing into the covers. My nails began tracing a path over the back of his arm, across the lats, dragging back up around the scapula, over his shoulder. He sighed, deeply, and opened his eyes. "So." And he smiled in that way that goes straight through me. "What do you want to do today?"

"Mmmmm..." my fingers started another lap around his arm and shoulder, "I'd like to get over to that cove the guy was telling us about yesterday, if you think we can find it."

"Snorkeling, wonderful. That's the morning, then. What next?"

"Well, I suppose we should eat lunch someplace."

"Lunch, absolutely. Then what?"

"Then... then... I don't know, man, what's your rush? Do we have to get the itinerary to the sherpas or something in the next forty-five seconds? Can't I have some coffee first?" I tried to roll away from him, but faster than any recently-sleeping person should be able to move, his hands were under my shoulders, his legs on top of the covers on either side of mine, trapping me in. He looked down at me.

"Seriously, you're going to want to rethink putting any pressure on my bladder," I told him.

"What do you want to do this afternoon?"

"I have to pee and I just woke up. Do you really expect me to think coherently at this exact moment?"

"God, no. The last thing I want is for you to

think coherently

." I pushed against his chest, but I couldn't get any leverage. "I want to know what you

want

, and I'm sure that the more you think, the less you know what that is." I tried wriggling out from under him. I'd have made it, if it weren't for the sheets twisted around my calves.

"Dammit, you, I have to go to the bathroom."

"In a minute. Snorkeling, lunch, then what?" I tried rolling my shoulder to get an elbow out from between his arms, but he just pulled me in closer. "What do you want to do this afternoon?"

"I'm not kidding."

"You'd better hurry up and tell me then."

"I don't know! I want to go snorkeling, and eat lunch, someplace small and local and good, and then... I want..." I turned my head but he followed me with his, holding onto my gaze, "... I want..."

"What?" His fingers ran beneath the silver chain he'd fastened around me last night, finding the pendant and bringing it to rest in the hollow of my throat.

"What ... what I want, more than anything..." my voice was getting smaller and smaller. He kissed me then, softly: my lips, my cheek, my temple, and murmured in my ear, very low, "What is it?"

"I want... oh," I breathed.

"Tell me." I looked up at him, straight into his dark brown eyes.

"Coffee," I said.

He snorted, trying and failing not to laugh. He shook his head but didn't loosen his hold on me; lowered his mouth to my neck, kissing my throat, making my breath stop and my heart careen like a runaway rickshaw, and said, "I thought you needed the toilet?"

"Too late," I gasped.

He froze for a moment and then leapt up, horrified guilt all over his sweet face. "I didn't mean to-—I'm sorry! I'm so sorry. Are you all right?"

Kicking out from the covers, I rolled off the bed and raced for the bathroom, calling over my shoulder, "Oh calm down. If I'd known you were that easy, I'd have started with that. Geez." I shut the door on his wordless grumble of exasperation.

Ah, sweet relief. I hoped the low-flow toilet could handle the sheer volume of my evacuating bladder. Wondered if the room deposit covered flood damage. My contemplation of eco-friendly plumbing was interrupted by his voice just outside.

"I still want to know. You're not out of it."

"Stop listening to me pee, you perv. Can we get coffee sent up?"

* * * * *

By the time I'm out of the shower, breakfast has arrived. There are three different kinds of rolls on the tray, so good they don't need anything on them at all. But the local honey tastes like warm buttered sunlight, and we don't waste a bit of it. I consider licking the ramekin, like Winnie-the-Pooh.

I pick up the last croissant and hold it out to you, but you shake your head and return to your coffee cup; I demolish the roll and brush away the flakes that are covering my shirt. "So. After lunch today? I guess the easiest thing would be to just come back here."

You look up at me then. "We can go anyplace you like."

I start piling the breakfast things back onto the tray. "I know that, and we could go somewhere else, but that would take time. And what I want to do is spend the whole afternoon, and the evening and all night, fucking you nonstop. OK?" I look over at you. "It's probably easier to come back here."

Apparently, that's just fine with you.

*****

A fierce gust of ocean wind came through the open window, hurling the map up and off the desk, scattering the pencils and hotel pamphlets to the floor. A split second later, the bathroom door slammed shut so hard I jumped and cringed. Opening my eyes again, I saw he hadn't moved a muscle. The wall was warm behind my back but the wind and the noise brought gooseflesh out on my arms and legs.

I tried to draw warmth from the wall into my body, tried not to shiver, to remember to breathe.

His mouth was set in a firm line, one hand pinning both my wrists hard above my head, his eyes unwavering, holding the rest of me immobile except for the slight trembling beneath my ribcage. Not even the barest suggestion of a grin... but I knew it was there. It was payback time. He was going to make me pay for delaying him, for scamming him into letting me up from the bed, for resisting the softer seduction he offered before breakfast.

I returned his gaze, knowing that even if I could make my face stone like his, my eyes are bitchy little tattletales. It was a bit of perverse rebellion: OK, maybe I can't keep you from seeing every single thing I'm feeling, but you can't make me look away.

The tension stretched out between us. He knows my first impulse is to hide, that I allow myself to be exposed purely to defy him; he also knows that I know how much it pleases him to see me exposed this way. If I could just keep it up long enough, I was betting I could get him to crack a smile. Not much of one, just a little softening of the mouth, a faint twitch and parting of the lips, a relaxing and crinkling around the eyes. He knew I could tell it was there, just beneath the surface.

A fiery itch blossomed in my nipple, hardening even more as his free hand came slowly up. I steeled myself, knowing that when he took that burning point between finger and thumb it would be all I could do not to close my eyes and throw my head back, gasping—-

but his fingers barely grazed the side of my breast as his hand continued up, past my shoulder, to gently caress my throat. I swallowed convulsively as he leaned in closer, the breath from his nostrils stirring the bangs on my forehead, my untouched nipple keening and threatening to tear through the fabric of my blouse.

He's not a tall man, but his hands are huge. It's nothing for him to restrain both of my wrists with one while he torments me with the other. Now he spread that other hand out around my throat and I swallowed, again, feeling my larynx move against his warm palm as the tips of his fingers and thumb came to rest against the wall behind me.

He'd never, ever injure me, never do anything to cause permanent harm; but the throat has its reasons that reason does not know, and the nerve endings screamed a message into my brain: the searing image of a rabbit in the jaws of a wolf. Eyes wide, heart hammering, lungs locked, adrenaline pouring through me.

All I could see now were his dark, dilated eyes. His hand moved away from my neck to my cheek but I was still caught, still trapped there, as though an invisible living band of his will remained behind, laid across my throat, anchoring me to the wall. His thumb began brushing slowly across my lower lip just as it started to tremble.

Back and forth. Slowly. My lip felt swollen, hypersensitive, unbearably vulnerable, unbelievably erotic. Back and forth. The quivering beneath my ribs escalated; my breath coming in ragged scraps, my shoulders and arms, wrists and fingers beginning to vibrate; I poured all of my will, all of my mulish intractability, into keeping my eyes open and focused on his.

I would not drop my gaze. I would not be the first to smile.

I would not be the first to speak.

He may have conquered my body, but I would not surrender to him my words.

The irony almost—-

almost

—-made me laugh.

*****

All that we have ever had, you and I, is words.

E-mails, discussions about writing and speaking and audio production. Instant messages, growing more daring and intimate, leading finally to speaking on the telephone, your voice in my ear. Words.

Two years of words.

Words that revealed me to you, my words, and my response to your words, which told you so much about me, drawing me close to you in ways I never imagined. My body rising and arching at the sound of your voice, even just saying "hello," saying my name, your laughter making me warm and wet and weak and powerfully alive, all at once.

And I am certain I never told you this, not all of this, not all these hidden planes and curves and rippling writhing nerves of me where I am inside, I never said these things to you, never told you even a fraction of all you seem to know, all of the bare defenseless places lying exposed to your tongue, your eyes, your seeking ceaseless fingers, your voice that flows through me like water, opening me from the inside out.

Words.

*****

I hear your deep, barely-audible chuckle, more like a panther's growl or purr. Realize my eyes are closed and I've lost, damn, damn, my eyes flying open, but my resistance scatters like a shattered winestem as your palm comes up between my legs to hold my sex, the heat rising into me through my saturated panties. ohhhhhhh, fuck. oh, dammit, oh, fuck, I've done it, I've lost. Fuck fuck fuck. Oh.

Liquid flooding out, thick and sweet, gushing straight into your palm.

I feel my cervix wrench itself up in furious desire, an aching hollowness howling for you. Your hand. Your cock. You.

As though you heard the creak of straining muscle from within my body, you pull me gently from the wall, somehow supporting me as I stumble, following your lead, feeling you release my hands to take hold of the back of my neck, bringing me with you as you step slowly backward.

Suddenly I know what's coming. Suddenly I recognize the vague shape of what we have been moving toward since morning and I know, even before you find the edge of the bed and sit, pulling me down to lie across your hard thighs.

If you'd told me, ordered me to lie across your lap, it would've taken forever. Not because I don't want to, but because I've never done this and it scares me how much I do want it. Another time, perhaps, you'll set me that challenge, watching desire battle fear as I fight myself to acquiesce to your demand upon my deepest pleasure. But not today. Today, you show me this small mercy-—pulling me, off balance, into this submissive position, before my internal skirmish can commence.

The skirmish does commence, of course, but it's much too late now. I am already face down across your lap, one hand heavy between my shoulders, the other dragging my skirt over my hips, stroking my bottom and my legs. Stroking as if I were some small soft thing and not the knotted bundle of harsh nerve and bone I feel myself to be, soothing and coaxing the vulnerability beneath to rise up, up through every tension, every reason, every wall that stands around this scalding flood, building, spilling over from my core to quiver and flow under your hands.

The skin covering my ass feels like it's expanding, stretching beneath my thin panties as your fingers trace the seams, pulling them down to my thighs. The tenderness of your touch is becoming unendurable. My cunt whines like twisting metal. And still my flesh spreads itself out and out, sweating, lifting.

It drives the breath from my body, this swelling expansion. There's no place for the air to go as I try to gasp some in. Just before the flinted rock of my spasming diaphragm strikes the first spark of true terror within me, your hand disappears and in the next instant explodes against my ass, the sound reporting off the walls like a rifle shot; cold wind tornadoes into me with the force of a newborn's first shrieking breath.

Indescribable heat roars through me. I come. Inundating your pants and my clothes, fabric ripping, body crashing to the floor, volition obliterated as you hurl yourself into me, irresistible force and immovable object annihilating, flying, flung high and hard into dark deep cosmos of coming, no edges, no limits, no stopping or slowing, incandescent.

Your hands gripping me, holding my cells together; your voice containing my mind so it doesn't shatter out into the endless void surrounding.

I had no idea it would be like this.

*****

The fantasies to which I have masturbated, the questions and replies on internet sex forums, all of my endless researching—-nothing has prepared me for this moment. None of the hundreds of self-identified Doms or Dommes or subs has spoken of anything that conveyed the raw and naked force of revelation consuming me.

Because I want it.

Not because I'm "bad," or for some made-up transgression, or because I'm an object to be used for his sadistic pleasure. Not because he has any need to prove his dominance; not because I need to be put in my place or subdued or taught a lesson, or any other excuse that can shield me from the truth.

Just because I want it. Because it turns me on. Because he knows it turns me on, knows that I can't help that it turns me on.

I earn my bare-ass spanking by wanting it.

The exposure of my desire comprises an entire movement in the erotic symphony we create together.

The next movement is the unspeakable confession I make: I give up my power. I give myself up to him.

In the finale he brings me, seething in anguish, heaving, hurtling toward the inevitable crescendo to climax at his hands. He is the conductor.

I am the prodigal musician, made to submit to the demands of my instrument by his unyielding artistry, the pair of us a living channel for this ferocious fearless passion that neither truly understands.

*****

We have made love for hours, or centuries, or minutes. Linear time continues to flow elsewhere; we drift free in echoing empty here/now, interlocked, wet, hearing the sounds of breath and pulse and shifting tide.

Knowing I cannot yet speak, you stretch out one arm, straining, to reach the bottle on the stand beside the bed. Remove the cap and hold the cool plastic against my cheek, saying nothing, giving my hands time to find themselves, to remember how to hold the container. The feel of the water entering my mouth, passing down my throat, is alien, wondrous.

Sated, I hold the bottle against your chest; you take it from me and drink it down to the last drop. Let it fall to the floor. Wrap your arms around me.

Sleep enfolds us, like a mother rocking her child, safe in the warm dark.