This time of the year (3): Still, for me

Continued from here.

"On the bed. On your front. Still for me. No talking."

-----

You obey, as I expect you to. In the low light your body spreads pale gold against the hotel bed's white, your arms loosely around your head, not quite protective, your face sideways and down, averted from the side I am now approaching; still. For me.

I wonder if you can hear me breathe, if my breathing crossed the line from just loud to panting. I take the few steps that separate my chair from the bed, sit down on the edge, around your thigh level, lean down. Just a little. Not necessary, but I want to. 

My left hand in the small of your back. The scratch marks fading pink now, but still visible, and, when I touch them with the fingers of my right hand, warmer than the surrounding skin.

Fuck.

''Fuck," I say. Stroking, featherlight, then pressing. 

You take a deep breath, then exhale, but don't move and don't say anything. Everything feels slow motion but fluid, like an underwater trance. I don't remember ever being as focused as I am now, but I am not thinking of any plan or a task or an objective: things happen as if through me. 

I press harder, then release, retracing the marks with my fingertips, then lean lower, touching your skin with my lips. 

The lips open, my breath damp, my lips moistened too, feeling the texture of the graze, the minute changes in temperature indicating where my nails went a little deeper, a little shallower. Tongue, along the graze, repeated sideways flicks, feeling the tiny area of less than a square inch, tasting. Teeth, closing over a fold of skin crested with the scratch, for the tongue to explore more thoroughly. Released, for a long lick, sliding freely into a moan; muffled; my consciousness expanding beyond my mouth, desire spreading all over my skin.

I shuffle higher on the bed and stroke the nape of your neck, my hand moving into your hair, playing with it, pushing your head into the pillow, my face next to you, a laugh that somehow manages not to be a giggle, a whispered 'Good boy' before I bite your earlobe, starting slow and gentle, closing harder before I straighten up, switch hands, the left one in your hair now, holding your head in place, my knees firm on the bed. The right hand takes a lazy swing, landing with a splat on your ass. 

Not a hard one; quickly followed with another, then another, a series of playful swats with a relaxed palm and fingers. So the twelfth comes as a shock: my swing is wider, the impact much heavier, almost all of it from the palm. Unexpected. You flinch visibly, yelp, tense up. 

I laugh and this laughter surprises even me; it feels like it doesn't belong to this particular story; yet I can't help it, and don't really want to help it either. It is what it is. I am what I am, so be it. 

I add another heavy smack, followed by a few faster, lighter, sharper ones, off the fingers mostly, my hand smarting now, leaving visible pink imprints on your butt. You tense and relax into each smack, reflected in changes in your breathing, now heavier, partially muffled by the pillow.

''Getting pretty red now, slutboy,'' I stop and place both my hands on your ass, lightly, feeling the heat, wanting to dig my nails in and drag them down the inflamed skin, stopping myself, for now, listening to your body, sliding my hands lower, between your legs, pushing them apart, gently, more of an indication of how I want you to move than a forceful pressure.

"Bend your knees, lift your ass up, keep your head down, try to keep relaxed or the next bit will really hurt,'' I say. I'm panting a little. 

You obey. I stand up and look at you for a while.

Such a classic pose. I had a plan. A sequence of steps. Items I thought I'd use. Things I knew you'd like me to do, maybe even beg me to do if I did it right. Ideas, even. Huh.

But just now the ideas don't matter and what you might like matters even less. 

I take a bigger breath and reach to my belt, undo it. You can probably hear the slight clang of the buckle against the metal button of the denim skirt. I pull it out, the leather worn and familiar in my fingers. Fold it in half and stretch using both hands. 

There is a sound, half way between a light thwack and a click. I do it for effect, I do it so you can hear the sound that not-quite-precisely foretells that other sound that I am already anticipating.

I wrap the buckle end around my right hand and get near to you, run the edge of the other end along your back, all the way from the nape of your neck down to your reddened ass, let it slide lower between your legs, leave it there for a split second longer, then slowly drag it back up in a meandering line as if tracing yet invisible patterns on your skin. 

Now I lift it free off your body and take a swing.

The first one is light, as is the second, but I'm getting impatient now, impatient with lust and with my own need, one that refuses to be analysed or even understood, one that, in this moment, simply is, demanding satisfaction, filling my airways, making my skin hot, my cunt wet and my pupils dilate.  

I want; want so much that it's not even clearly the I that's wanting, the want and the I have become identical.

Want to hit you harder. 
Want to see the welts come up. 
Want to feel you squirm. 
Want to hear you moan.

I stand with my feet further apart, and swing again, the leather splatting hard across your right buttock.

Fuck.

Faster and harder. 

Maybe I should have tied you up after all. But you are holding up to the impact and the pain; holding up to the desire that covers my skin fluid and viscous.

I use the time between strikes to breathe. Deeper, louder, more elaborate. The streams of exhaled and inhaled air a caress on my lips, the lips dry, flushed swollen, now ajar. 

Your ass is covered in marks, a nearly uniform dark pink background to a chaotic hash of raised welts, some of them skirted with narrower, darker, graze-like lines made by the edge of the belt. I strike lower, on the more sensitive skin of your upper thighs and this makes you yelp, flinch, nearly flail, yet you stay in position. I make the belt shorter and smack your butt again, sharp and forceful stings, the slightly curved end imprinting red crescents on your inflamed skin.

You are panting now, loud, hissing breaths, your muscles flexing and hips moving as if to adjust, balancing the avoidance and the seeking of pain, the obedience and the desire to escape.

I laugh again. The laughter contains the sheer, exuberant joy of the physical act, the joy I can't understand and for now, don't want to understand, letting it be whatever it is, letting myself be whatever I am. The joy that's rising higher, spreading wider, penetrating deeper with my not-quite-conscious awareness of your essential role in it. The joy that's made possible by your holding up to my desire to hurt you and to mark you. The joy that's made flesh in your giving in to the want that's me. 

The belt, now longer again, comes down in a big, flat whack across your buttocks. Your loud moan, an inarticulate groan at first, morphs into a clear ohhhhh, followed by my name. I inhale this moan and I respond with my own.

Fuck.

My knees almost buckle in a breathless wave of bodily lust. 

Want to touch you again. 

I unwind and drop the belt and step closer, my palms on your ass, the heat of red skin and the raised marks under my fingers.

Fuck fuck fuck.

Rubbing, stroking, mapping the remade surface of your body, fingertips and then, after a second's hesitation, my lips. Barely touching. Then my cheek, hot against the heat of the marks I've made. 

I slide my hand under your belly and find your cock, rigid and warm, slick with precum, grab harder, stroke, my other hand pressing, then lightly slapping your butt down, making it thrust into the vice-like grip, your panting faster, in wincing pleasure.


----Continued here.

This time of the year (1): Catch and see

It's cold, colder even than the date on the calendar and the early nightfall would prepare me for. The time before the high Christmas rush of expectation but long after the last vestiges of the summer get swept away with the rotting leaves, the time just before the first snow, the time of wet pavements and damp air seeping into your bones with a permanent drizzle. 

I'm slouching with my back to the wall, few metres from the door to the pub inside which I was supposed to be fifteen minutes ago; the energy spelled out by the fast footsteps of my rushing here suddenly gone, the focus dissolved into a suffocating cloud of anxiety.

I take a deep breath, counting to ten seconds on the exhale and to eight on the inhale. Two more, my heartbeat still fast. I can't do it, can I? I'm not actually going to do it, am I? 

And even if I am, even if I do take those last few steps and walk into the warm interior filled with tangled voices and a smell of coffee and booze, what is the chance that I won't be walking away after half an hour's empty wait? 

More deep breaths, glancing from the corner of my eye at the pub door just in case you are there, waiting, after all. Searching for the lost thrill in the fear that's now got merely clammy.

I dig a packet of cigarettes from my pocket, manage to pull one out, my fingers shaking; stick it between my lips that feel dry and cardboard-numb; can't find a lighter; mumble a ''fucking hell'', under my breath, but loud enough to attract a glance from a passer by; that gives me a narrower focus I actually need; I start going through my pockets more methodically.

The lighter's flame appears suddenly. In all my funk I didn't notice anybody's approach but I am grateful for the kind gesture. I lean down to the light, instinctively protecting it from a gust with a cupped hand. Only when I suck in then quickly exhale the first drag, I notice that the hand holding the lighter is shaking. Only when I raise my eyes to say "thank you" I see, and realise, just before I hear. 

''Hi, M.'' 

The shock of it is not any lesser for the fact that this is what I came here for. All the words I had in such oversupply are stuck tight in my throat; all I can do is smile stupid and giddy; until I catch your eyes and my smile disappears slowly; I drop my cigarette and reach out with my hand.

I have to describe it here, don't I? The private gesture, so overused that it's turned cliche now; my palm on your cheek, my thumb tracing your mouth ajar, sliding in, probing, penetrating, a not-so-subtle hint of what might come later, your tongue soft and slippery and searching, your lips closing gently just as mine open over teeth nearly-clenched in a hint of a snarly smile.

I'm panting, all the anxious expectation and suspense and anticipation of before spilling out, coating my skin with a glow that I can hardly believe isn't visible, coating my mind with a flickering forest of bluewhite flames; I'm letting it take me higher; now, suddenly, I don't even know how or when, I'm not leaning with my back against the damp wall of a late November street but pinning you against it; my left hand in your hair, clutching, pulling your head slightly back and to the side, probably uncomfortably; I don't give a slightest fuck, in fact it's better this way; my right hand around your left wrist, pushed onto the bricks fast and harsh until you ''ouch'' in pain; then pushed along the brick, grazed some more; my mouth on your neck vaguely in the region of your ear, ''Hello, boy,'' I whispershiss; get my face even closer; smelling you; fucking hell; how much I wanted this, all those years, all those years until I was sure; sure that neither of us needed or wanted it; until it was safe to arrange a meeting, as per widely publicised recommendations, public place, not too long, we'll have a coffee or a drink, chat and laugh; sentimental melancholy of things impossible and others that could have been; shared nostalgia for a long-gone virtual adventure never made flesh; and yet I am here; my breath damp on your skin; my tongue tracing your carotid, sliding all the way down to the clavicle; tasting you dizzy; my left knee pushed between your legs; my eyes closed; forgetting to breathe then remembering again in a frantic gulp; then stepping back, looking at you from a foot away.

''Coffee? Whisky? Herbal infusion?'', I say, giggling, my right hand now on your chest, as if I had to keep touching you, as if it was physically impossible not to.

You nod a yes, I lick my upper lip, the air is damp and cold but feels like cinders sliding down my throat, ''Actually, I booked a room,'' I smile, a normal, playful smile now, a little challenging, eyes darting to yours, almost-but-not-quite-locking, shifting away, defusing; 

''Actually, I booked a room too,'' you offer, also not quite looking at me at first, then we both do, laughter bubbling up, I'm shaking my head, 

''Once a slut always a slut,'' you shrug a yes, as if it was an obviously shared understanding, comfortable now, we go to get that drink.

--- continued here.