Handoff, Part Two

(Part one can be found here.)

Before we got too deep into anything, @doctortease (I will, for the sake of convenience, refer to him herein as ’D’) had me sit down in the armchair in his hotel room so that we could go over limits and, to an extent, expectations. He was across from me on the ottoman, so close our knees were touching. Despite the tightness in my chest that I couldn’t quite attribute to solely nerves or arousal, something about D’s presence set me at ease. At the museum, he was congenial and easy to be around. His voice was gentle. He had kind eyes.

Even so, I could barely meet them. I always withdraw when it comes to saying what I want, and to have someone speaking so casually about tying me up and playing with me – in the sort of nonchalant way one would order a sandwich  – had rendered me taciturn. “I’m really turned on right now,” I admitted, allowing it to serve as a means of voicing my consent. Here and there, I’d chimed in things that had appealed to me, had seconded some of his own preferences. But I’d hoped being this forthcoming would negate, or at least justify, my shyness.

“Good,” D replied, tracing the tips of his fingers over my thigh. His touch was so light it felt like breath on my skin.

I’d expected him to undress when I did. But he didn’t when I rose, unzipped my skirt and let it fall around my ankles. And he didn’t when I removed my t-shirt and tossed it aside. Nor when I unhooked my bra. Nor when I stepped out of my wedges. Instead, he’d advanced towards me until I felt my back press against the wall. He hadn’t even taken off his shoes.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m not going to fuck you.”

I looked up at him. “You can fuck me if you want to.”

He laughed. I felt my ears redden, felt the heat rise on the back of my neck and in my cheeks.

I want to talk for a moment here about power. I think a lot of people conflate power with force because those are the manifestations of power we’re most used to: closed fists, raised voices. To hold power seems to imply being the agent of something. The instigator. The one enacting the violence, the one calling the shots, the one explaining the rules. And I think that’s a valid idea to a point. But I think there’s a greater power in doing nothing. In leading the other person to show their cards while you withhold yours. So, D had gotten me naked without lifting a finger, while he stood there with his clothes on. He’d had me offer myself to him and not even given me the dignity of an acceptance or refusal. I realized what this afternoon was going to look like. And in the face of it, I was fucking dizzy with want.

Soon enough, my wrists were tied in front of me with a length of soft rope, a yard or so of excess trailing down to the floor in front of me. D seized it up and led me over to the foot of the bed, turning me with his hands on my shoulders so I faced it with my back to the duffel bag he’d withdrawn the rope from.

“I’d like to blindfold you, Ivy. Is that all right?” D asked. I appreciated his willingness to obtain my consent, but I was mildly amused by how perfunctory his tone was about the whole thing. As if he’d just checked in with me about turning on the fan or making some other mundane adjustment. Regardless, I nodded.

I didn’t recognize the black elastic bandage right away when I saw the roll out of the corner of my eyes. D wrapped it around my head in three swift, deliberate turns before I felt his fingers against his temple, pressing the loose end flat. The blindfold was snug, the material pressing firmly, though not uncomfortably, into my eyelids. A few attempts to open my eyes proved futile. It felt redundant when he asked if I could see, more like a reinforcement of my status than a request for an update on it.

“It’s fine,” I answered, taken aback by how breathy my voice had become. Were it possible, I felt even more naked than before.

More so, even, when D pulled up on the rope, guiding my bound hands to rest on the back of my neck. My arms were forced up, bent at the elbow and out of the way of my body. He allowed the excess rope to trail down my back before tugging it up between my legs. Even though he hadn’t pulled it very tightly, my breath still hitched. It was enough to remind me of how vulnerable I was. To confirm how much I’d given him.

For a few honey-slow moments, we stayed like that. His breath warmed my neck, his fingers trailing idly over my skin. I tried to imagine what I must have looked like in that moment: bound, nude, blindfolded, forced to stand with my chest pushed out. I was a little light-headed. I could feel myself soaking into the rope between my legs.

“I want to hear you breathe,” D said, his voice giving me something to steady myself against in the darkness as his hands left my body. I heard his footsteps on the rug, the sound of him rummaging through the bag.

Something freezing cold made contact with my back, just between my shoulder blades. I gasped, lurched forward. At first, I thought it was ice. But after a few moments, there were no telltale water droplets running down the slope of my back.

Hear you breathe.

My cheeks burned even more fiercely as I realized what it was. The stark cold of it had drawn a few quick, heaving breaths out of me, but D coaxed them into long, deep draws. He rewarded my even breaths with soft praise, even as I gasped and choked on the first few breaths each time he found another spot on my torso. I couldn’t help it. Aside from the inherent disorientation of having something make contact with your body when you can’t see it coming, it was still cold. Even as it warmed slightly with the heat coming off my skin.

“Are you scared?” D asked.

“You think I’m scared?” I tried to sound cavalier about it. I wanted to serve it up as a bluff. But the words caught in my throat.

His grin was apparent in his voice. “I can hear your heart.”