Close Enough by Raziel Moore

Close Enough

Cool cord and hot skin and already my heart is beating fast. I loop the rope snug around her wrist, she barely moves. But she watches me.

Tying off, her neutral gaze follows my hands as I raise her arm and tie it to the headboard post. No complaint, no encouragement. But she’s breathing deeper.

Why I’d asked, why she said yes, asked and answered two evenings ago, but other questions remained, unanswerable until now.

Her other hand clasps mine briefly before I begin binding it.

She’d said, “I wouldn’t let anyone else,” and I almost wept then and there.

Her second wrist secure, I run my finger around the border of rope and skin. Am I not equally bound at this moment? Constrained by the trust I have somehow earned? Well, no. Of course not. The question makes me chuckle, and she quirks an eyebrow.

Why explain? How about instead, I glide my hand down her arm, across cheek, across breast, pausing, pausing, and then down her sides to hips. Fabric, silk-like between her skin and mine. A blouse, now a skirt that I smooth down over her thigh until reaching the hem, and a stocking lower down.

It’s only on the second ankle, her last free limb, when she tenses. An almost-resistance. I feel it, but she relaxes before I have to tighten my grip. Her expression isn’t quite so detached anymore, but I don’t recognize it. A new, unfamiliar look after a year of knowing each other. I inhale deep, so does she. I finish winding.

Stretching her leg to tie off the rope to the fourth post on the bed, I encounter the limits of her skirt. Keeping the tension in the rope and the room, I push the hem up one thigh, then the other until I have enough space. When I’m done, I sit back and watch her test, stockinged feet flexing, arms and legs tightening and pulling in turn and together. She’s not going anywhere. Her breath comes just faster than mine.

Her skirt is just above the tops of her thigh-highs; the little band of exposed skin makes me growl inside, and I don’t restrain myself from running a finger across it.

“Mine.”

“Yes,” she says.

I smile. As if her agreement meant anything right now. As if now she could grant or forbid me anything.

She is too clothed.

Her blouse unbuttons smoothly and opens like a present. Underneath, lace-covered breasts, soft against my palms. Hardening nipples draw a hiss from her when I pinch them gently, then less gently. Enough to get her attention. Enough to make her gasp. My first unfairness. I hold the stiffened nubs trapped, captive between my fingers, simply because I can.

It’s not that we don’t play rough sometimes. But there’s a difference now. This isn’t give and take. This isn’t partnership. It is inescapability.

I could… If I were that kind of man, I could. Do you, love, know I’m not that kind of man? Do I?

One little last squeeze and I relax my pinch, sliding my palms down ribs and stomach to the waist of her skirt. Buttons to unfasten along one side as I kiss below her navel.

I press my lips down against the rise and fall of her diaphragm as I open and spread the skirt to either side. More lace – a pretty gift I got her in the spring that she gifts back to me sometimes. She’s quiet. So quiet. But tense now. Taut muscles beneath the skin under my kiss.

“Mine,” I whisper just above her womb.

Watching her; tracing the lines of her arms and legs with my eyes. They flex as she pulls. She’s squirming, just a little. How often do I just watch her, after all – when she knows I’m watching her.

Still too much in the way.

In the bedside table drawer, in the sewing kit, there are fabric shears.

“Hey,” she says. She knows me, probably guessed what I’m going for as soon as I opened the drawer. I smile at her reproach. Not because she’s wrong – but she’s not exactly right, either. She scowls in turn, and our reactions feed on each other. As if I might be enjoying this too much. Maybe I am.

“We’ll get you new,” I say as I pull the blade out of the kit box. Her scowl vanishes, into widened eyes. It’s not the shears, rather the knife I bought yesterday and put there. Premeditation. Not a kitchen implement; a small, wicked looking point, glass-sharp on the interior curve.

With exaggerated care, I position it, on her stomach before putting away the kit, artfully pointing the tip up at her heart, and bring out the last few pieces of rope. This part is gratuitous, the very reason the need is so compelling. I start the loop above her knee, wind and pull to the side, tying to one foot of the bed.

Now she resists. The blade resting on her moves as she pulls against me. Is it uncertainty? Doubt? I try to read her mind, and fail, just as she fails to keep me from doing what I want, and in a couple minutes more she is splayed for me on our bed. Presented. It’s not she wasn’t already open, accessible. It’s that now, there’s not even the tiniest sliver of doubt about why. I’m constructing an elaborate, obvious chain of prurient inevitability. It’s obscene.

Not quite obscene enough. The handle of the blade is half warm now from resting on her. It’s smooth like her, but not soft. The blade is sharp, like her, but both only cut when the edge is placed against something. I place the blunt side against her stomach, and slide it upward. She raises her head, looking down her body at the approaching point, inhaling only shallowly, as if to keep her skin as far from it as she can. The blade passes between her ribs, and how close is this to gutting? I stop, almost flinging the knife away.

A dozen heartbeats of mental excavation, unearthing my desire, the true form of its buried layers. The angle of the blade, mere tool, remains unchanged. But while I dally and brood, her breath has stopped, held during my internal inquisition until I start moving again as before.

The tip slides between her breasts, blade biting and cutting the fabric like it was a spider web, springing open. I don’t stop, don’t lift away. Solar plexus, point almost to her chin, and pause there. Will she turn away, bare her neck? No. She looks at me and I can’t know what she’s thinking, only what I wish her to.

If there were ever a moment for me to be uncertain what I could do, would do, this is it. She gave me this chance to reach it. I want her just for this shared instant not to be certain it was the wisest gift to give.

I turn the blade; slide it along under her collarbone until it slices through the shoulder strap, then down, under her armpit for the unnecessary cut of the side strap. I have to hold the cup to let the blade catch the fabric, and toss it away once it’s completely free.

Another circle of the knife rids the other cup the same way, until I’ve exposed both lovely breasts. I drag the dull edge and face of the blade slowly across, pressing each nipple down in turn. The metal could scratch, cut, but can’t feel her, so aside it goes in favor of fingers, tongue, teeth and savory, sloppy indulgence. She barely makes a sound, even when I nip, but she’s flushed when I raise my head, soft skin slick under my hands. Light red marks under my fingers where my teeth had been less gentle but could have done more. Could have, could still.

I slide a hand down her sweat-damp skin, to the hollow between hipbone and stomach. Insinuating fingers under the waistband of her panties and lower until they curl into the wetness between her spread legs. I smile at her, but she’s not smiling back. Close my eyes and sigh, curling a finger into her, squeezing the breast in my other hand. She draws air sharply and squeezes my finger but presses her hips down into the bed, as if to get away. Not happening. But I growl anyway and push deeper, rubbing against her clit, just so.

The blade is in my other hand, sharp end dipping, cutting through lace as my finger fucks. Three slices, slow so that the give of the lace’s texture translates up the handle. The proximity of the edge to that sweet softness is a contrast sharp enough to cut me inside. Literary and psychoanalytic metaphors and imagery rise and mock me as I discard the destroyed undergarment. And so I toss the blade, too, the question it posed answered.

Did she even know there had been a question? Would she have still said yes if she had? I could ask her. I don’t. Our silence has the air of challenge and ritual both.

Here she is, my offering. Blushing, hips moving now with the rhythm of my finger. We’ve done this before, unbound, slow and teasing, smiling and sweating and mutual. Ritual, yes, but this is different. Perhaps only to me, but I don’t think so. But, she pulls against the ropes and grits her teeth, panting through them; a harsher sound of forced air. This isn’t fair exchange; it’s me, taking. Heady disequilibrium.

Two fingers, pushing deep, curling, dragging along he roof of her cunt until the slippery texture changes subtly against the pads of my fingers, thumb swiping over her soft-hard clit. It’s one of the magic formulas. Coupled with the teasing and pulling at one nipple, then the other, the conclusion is foregone. She pulls the ropes, challenging the impossibility of being able to stop me, or change anything. She moans a plaintive, wordless sound as she flexes her hips, trying to withdraw her mound from my relentless fingers, and then shuddering and rising to them, pushing against me.

Her breath falters, inner walls fluttering against my fingers. Harbingers of the first tight, tight squeeze of her orgasm. She closes her eyes, starting to buck, turning her head away, but I grab her hair and twist her back to me, crushing my lips against hers as she comes. Her cry explodes into my mouth, and I muffle her sounds, devour them. Her tensing muscles press against me everywhere I can touch her. Cunt around fingers, abdomen against forearm, lips against lips.

When the shuddering slows, I slip my fingers from her slowly, letting the last contractions push them out. Sitting up, dragging wet fingertips up her belly before raising them to my lips, I make a display of tasting her on me, but my pleasure at her taste, and at tasting her that way, is not a show.

Mine. Unspoken now. Implicit, the word permeates the negative space between us, binding her to me surely as the ropes tie her to the bed.

She’s slack as I undress, but her eyes follow me. I’m neither making a show of it, nor hiding my arousal from her. If there had been any doubt whether I was done, it is dispelled now. I ache, I want her so. But that’s still annoyingly nebulous. What do I want, exactly, truly? Do I still not know?

Her brow and cheeks are damp against the backs of my fingers. I smooth away tousled hair. Turning towards her, stroking, rubbing down the sides of her neck, to shoulders, up her arms, kneading, pressing to wrists wrapped in rope. I kneel between her splayed legs and arch over her. I know what my body wants, cock pointing down at her as I intertwine my fingers in hers and hold them as I kiss her again until her fingers squeeze mine and she kisses back. Part of me wants her to mean it. Part of me wants her to not. Not being able to tell fulfills and frustrates both parts, and I stop, pull back, and drag my fingers down her arms, to her sides.

My nails are short because I bite them, a habit she doesn’t care for, but one that serves her well now because I don’t scratch her too hard, even though scratching is my intent. Eight red lines from her wrists to her hips as she hisses. My palms settle on her hip bones and grip, then I raise and slap them down below, on the fleshy part, just to hear the sound. I like it.

I like it a lot.

Her soft inner thighs beckon, and I have to feel them against my palms, creating pink handprints against them one next to the other, one side than the other, until her skin glows, even hotter to the touch than before. She’s so stoic; letting out only little gasps when I sting a particularly sensitive spot. I don’t know if she thinks she’s keeping something from me. I don’t care. I’m not looking for her to scream, or to protest, or to give in. None of those things really matter to me.The pain I might be giving from the slaps is incidental – it didn’t even occur to me at first that pain might be involved with that sound and sensation against my hand.

What do I need? I need her to not know what’s next, just as I don’t. As the marks of my hands bloom on her, I need her to know I hadn’t planned to do it, and that I’m a little bit afraid, so she should be, too. What do I want? I want synchronicity. I want us to be in the same place, thinking the same thing. Thinning the membrane between us until it’s so tenuous we can imagine it doesn’t exist. Because that’s the closest we can ever be.

When I stop, her legs and thighs are splotchy red, hot to my cheek when I lay it on her skin. My nose is inches from her slit. She glistens there. Drops of her wetness telling me what her voice won’t or can’t. I’m salivating.

I rub my cheek against her thigh, scratching it, turning to rest my lips and teeth against the softness before I bite. Until she inhales through her teeth. Until I feel the muscle beneath tense, then strain. Until her scream snaps me out of it and I rear back, inspecting to see if I’ve broken skin while she curses and pulls ineffectively.

It’s going to be a hell of a bruise later. Fuck this. I’m just playing games. I want her. I’ve always wanted her, even before I knew her. And she has never been more mine than right now. I roll to a kneel between her legs and then lean forward, palms pressing down on the mattress on either side of her. Lean forward until my head is right above hers.

“That fucking hurt.”

Her watering eyes are not quite accusing, but they’re not soft.

“I know. I’m sorry.”

She snorted.

“You’re not sorry.”

“I’m not sorry.” My words are uninflected. I’m busy feeling the air between us, illuminated by her glare.

“Basta-“

The tip of my cock nudges her slit. The barest contact, but I feel it all up and down my spine. And perhaps she does too. I don’t think I’ve ever been this hard. This channeled. This howling to be inside her. Moving my hips fraction by fraction to push her plump lips open. Splitting in two because I simultaneously want to plunge to the root in her in one savage thrust and, at the same time, loiter and wallow in every millimeter of penetrating her.

My arms and legs are shaking like I’ve just finished a hundred push-ups, but it isn’t fatigue. I feel strong, like a coiled spring, a firecracker with the fuse long lit. She parts around me, silky wet. Always a beautiful snug fit, her cunt is tighter, harder going if she’s already come first. The resistance – and its inevitable defeat – is so delicious.

Her breath catches as my cockhead stretches her. Hips twitching under me, as if she’s unsure whether to shy away or buck up toward me. As if either could change anything. That’s different. We’ve fucked sloth slow before, but not like this. Every movement is intent made manifest, every slick slip of me into her is me taking, what I want, how I want. And I want to feel every little bit of it.

The head of my cock disappears into her with the tiniest wet sound, and she squirms. Tests the ropes again, flutters beneath me. Pushes her hips up, and I move with her, just sinking a little more into her.

“Bastard.”

“Yes.”

“Fuck me.”

“Yes.”

But slow. How I want to. My heart is co-conspirator; every beat pushing more than just blood. Pushing me in just the least bit more. The give of her. The opening of her. Every fluttering bit of her inner muscles against my shaft. Every squeeze. How many times have we fucked, and yet this feels like the first. The falling-into-her feeling of two bodies seeking to occupy the same space. Well, one body seeking, the other sought.

Staring, blind, I’m aware of her face, her eyes, but don’t see them. All attention focuses without irony between our legs and clutching heat. My capacity for similes evaporates as each new nerve ending touching her tells me its own story. Until her exhalation against my face makes me blink. I’m rooted in her, my pelvis pushing her hard down into the bed, as if mashing ourselves together would get me any deeper, any more inside. As if it would break that last impossible barrier between us.

Close enough, but only because it has to be.

She squeezes me hard, with the only free muscles she has, and they are captive in their own way. I lean down to kiss her. Mash my lips against her and weigh my body on her. I’ve made her into a thing to fuck, to take, to possess. But always more than that, because it’s her.

She bites my lip. Hard. I think it’s my automatic recoil that opens the skin. Bringing my hand to it to see the red bead and then look at her, wide eyed. Satisfaction on her face? Defiance? I can’t read it, and I start laughing. Tied, pinned and fucked and she draws my blood. I laugh full, loud. Pressed against her, a drop running down my chin. And there, maybe, her first unambiguous uncertain look. A tiny shiver through her body. I don’t know what I’m about to do because of this, and neither does she.

Now. Now when all my control theatrics, all my elaborate play, is given the lie; just in that moment, she gives me what I want.

I love her.

And I’m fucking her. Hard. Body jarring hard. Pushing her body against the ropes’ restraint with each stab into her, the noises of wet skin plunging and slapping. My fists grip the sheets to either side of her, reddening them where my fingers had explored my lip.

My language is  the ineloquence of snarls and grunts. Hers is in sharp exhalations, as if my fucking is forcing the air from her lungs. Flecks of red from my lip appear on her chest, and she squeezes me every time I bury myself in her. The head of my cock bumps hard against her cervix and we both jolt. Not from pleasure – the sensation is other. Her sound changes, this low, wounded grunt. I feel like a battering ram. And I don’t stop. I won’t ever stop.

My hand is on her chest, smearing red against her skin, feeling the rocking of her body in reaction to me. Sliding upward until my fingers are at her throat, curved just so, to the perfect grip, if I wanted to use it. My other hand at her wrist, wrapped around the rope that holds her, as if she could still get away from me, as if she might want to. As if I could stop her.

Her eyes are soft. Wet and soft and open, and looking at me. Right there, fucking and falling into her. Then she’s looking past me, arching in her captivity, coming with desperate noise. She squeezes me inside. Like a fist and I fuck her through it, beyond pleasure and beyond the two of us. I’m just the thing fucking her right now, the thing driving into her, overwhelming, about to be lost myself, about to lose her to the moment when everything goes away.

She becomes the thing I come into. What I fill, what I am bared to. I’m filling her, mashed hard against, bruising us both. Trying to break something. She’s there and not there, and I see her and I don’t see her. But I feel. Heat wrapped around my cock. Pulse and cord against my fingers. The moment of pure sensation where there are no barriers, but we still can’t cross into each other, because at that perfect receptive instant, we’re turned inward instead of out.

She comes into focus again, though I’ve been staring at her the whole time. The huff of respiration emerges through the sound of blood in my ears. A drop of my sweat falls to get lost in her hair.

I can’t read her. I couldn’t if I tried. I don’t need to. I move my hands from her, to either side, sphinx like, but still rooted, our muscles still twitching against each other invisibly.

“Yours.”

It’s a hoarse whisper from her, and I’m kissing her again, ignoring the sting of my lip, a sob threatening to escape me into her. Her lips are soft, so soft. I nuzzle into her neck and let my weight settle over her, draining out. Just for a short while. I don’t want to squish her, after all.

She turns her lips to my ear.

“And, Mine.”

I hum into her neck and nod.