"Happy birthday, Ken!"
He smiled, knowing that whatever his best friend gave him as a gift, he would love it and cherish it. The gift-wrapped box was large, but the contents within barely made any noise as he gently shook it, so he could not even venture a guess as to what she had bought him.
"Consider this both a birthday present and a bit of decoration for your new place in Chicago," Fiona said. Her eyes sparkled more than usual as she clearly awaited his reaction to the contents of the wrapped box.
Without further ado, Ken began the unwrapping. As he unwrapped the box, however, deep in the recesses of his mind envisioned himself unwrapping Fiona.
At last, he took off the lid of the box to reveal... packing peanuts. Ken could only laugh, Fiona's laughter joining his in a sweet duet.
"You just want to extend my anticipation just a little longer, don't you?" Ken challenged, to which his best friend nodded emphatically with a big grin on her face.
Dipping his hand into the sea of Styrofoam, he felt something: a hard plastic, somewhat rigid. Moments later, he was extracting the gift from the box and his eyes befell something he had not expected:
His gift was a statuette.
The craftsmanship was exquisite. The statuette depicted a young woman with flowing blood-red hair bound by several chains to a gothic-style cross. The woman's white dress was torn repeatedly, practically decimated, with rips strategically placed to demonstrate that she wore no undergarments and that her nipples were prominently hard despite the myriad of reddened lines blemishing her flawless pale skin. What was most striking, however, were the eyes: sparkling orbs which demonstrated both pain and trust.
As Ken looked up from the statuette in the plastic casing to the young woman who had instantly captivated his heart when they had first met in college, he saw those same sparkling orbs beaming at him, further augmenting the glow emanating from his best friend.
Ken's expression immediately transformed from jovial to respectful. "This was you," he said softly, the background music suddenly as silent as the vacuum of space.
"I know," Fiona replied, leaning across the table to gently stroke his forearm. "I saw that online a few months ago and was stunned that such a statuette existed, as if someone had taken a picture of a truly significant moment we had shared and then turned it into a three-dimensional memory. I immediately bought it, because I knew you'd definitely like it."
"I do," Ken acknowledged solemnly. "I definitely do. Thank you."
"When you look at it, you'll always remember the times I submitted to you," she said. "I wish I could submit to you again, but..."
"I know." Scott's name did not need to be mentioned. "I accept that."
The rest of the evening passed with much more laughter, and ended with a long, heartfelt hug, a hug which threatened to never end. Even the next morning, as he packed his few remaining belongings and prepared to go to the airport, Ken could still feel the soft warmth of Fiona's breasts pressing against him, he could still smell the faint fragrance of her favorite strawberry-scented shampoo, he could still hear her whispered promise of coming to visit him as often as she could with her hectic work schedule. And as the plane flew northward, his thoughts were focused upon the statuette in the bin above his head, and the night of kinkiness it represented.
*****
It took several weeks to finally turn the apartment into a home. To Ken, it did not feel complete until he had at last found a suitable means to display the statuette: atop a narrow, waist-high, dark oak bookcase.
For perhaps an hour, he sat and simply gazed upon the statuette, a seven-inch reincarnation of that wonderful night. Granted, Fiona had submitted to him plenty of times before that, suffering his well-checked wrath as he guided her in the pleasure of pain. Yet that night in particular, she had connected with him in a powerful, heartfelt manner that he suspected he would never achieve again with anyone else. Even as he looked fondly and wistfully upon the three-dimensional trigger, his ears were filled with the slicing of the air, Fiona's cries of pain, the rattling of the chains. His arousal was unmistakable within his jeans, yet this time, she was not there to witness the power her pain had upon him, and that saddened him even as he accepted that fact.
Weeks passed. Daily, he would sit and gaze upon the statuette and remember. In his mind, he traced the long red welts upon her flawless skin, heady in the knowledge that she had suffered willingly for him and yet begged for more with her sparkling eyes. He recalled how she had tried to arch toward him, against him, as his fingertips reignited the pain he had inflicted upon her body. He could still feel her silken hair in his fists as he savagely kissed her in a prelude to still other acts which should never take place in a graveyard...
As day turned to night and the light of the sun was replaced by the curtain-diffused glow of the streetlights, the statuette stood tall and proud before him. At her full five feet, Fiona was again chained to an old iron gothic-style cross before him, her jaw quivering, her eyes filling yet pleading.