Coda (Songs of Submission #9) (16 page)

I leaned back and looked at my abdomen.

“Is it because you have your doubts?” he asked.

“No. I did it in the mirror.”

He pushed against me until my back was on the wool rug, and he was over me like an unclouded sky.

“Are you happy?” he asked.

I put my hands on his cheeks. “I didn’t think I would be. But I don’t know. I’m just elated. I feel like I’m walking on air.”

He put my hands over my head and kissed me. “I want to say thank you over and over. I find myself at a loss for words otherwise.”

“Don’t speak. Just fuck me.”

“I want you, I love you, you’re mine.” He said it all in a string, as if it was one thought. “Do we need a bigger house?”

“This is plenty of space.”

“We have to ask Sheila what schools to apply to.”

“We can worry about that later.”

“The wait lists for preschools are four years long.”

“That’s obscene.”

“I have to set up a trust and fund it. Tomorrow I’ll call Margie and have it done.”

My face wasn’t supposed to tighten, but I feared it did, so I just spoke my mind. “The Swiss thing. You need to promise me you’re going to fund that. Before the trusts.”

“The trust is easier.”

“I don’t care if the kid grows up poor. I care that it has a father.”

“Hope is deadly.”

“Maybe. But tell me you don’t have a little bit now? Or some reason to hope you’re not taking a bunch of pills just so you can fuck me harder and more often? Don’t you want to try? I mean, look, think of it this way. Maybe you’ll save someone else.”

“Monica, you don’t know what this does to me. The idea of leaving you alone. I’ve been, I think, afraid to make you happy because of what we both know is coming.”

I brushed my finger across the scruff on his cheek, this living man, blood beating through him as he scratched and clawed to be reasonable, sensible, and mature while still living life corner to corner. I’d thought I understood his struggle, but I didn’t. I thought he just wanted to live or die. I thought he just wanted to be in the moment and not worry, but he’d carried the weight of his own life alongside the weight of mine.

“All I want is for you to try,” I said. “Let me and the baby know we’re worth you fighting for your life.”

He smiled ruefully. “You make compelling arguments. When we met, I thought you were studying law.”

“Because I threatened to sue you?”

“It was cute. You were so sexy, the way you tried to back me into a corner. I wanted to bend you over that desk and spank you raw. The minute I laid eyes on you, I wanted to fuck you until you begged.”

“Do it now.”

He kissed the space between my breasts. “You came when you weren’t supposed to. I had plans, but I don’t think I can follow through on them.”

“Don’t you dare.”

He put his ear between
Jonathan’s
and
baby.
“I can’t hear anything. When is he coming?”

“She’s coming in late January. And I’m coming today. I’m still me. Do everything. Don’t make me beg. Or make me beg. Whichever. Just make me.”

He got on his knees and pulled my legs apart. His name was still visible, and Jonathan looked at me everywhere, as if searching for something inside himself, bathing me in the scalding water of his gaze.

He smirked and put his eyes on mine. “I’m thinking. Can I destroy you when you’re carrying my baby?”

“Yes, you can.”

He slapped the inside of my thigh. It stung like hell because it was unexpected. I gasped and bit my lip.

“I’ll decide what I can and can’t do,” he said. “And I’ll decide what you can do. Do you understand?”

“Hurt me,” I whispered.

He slapped the inside of my other thigh, and yes, it hurt. And yes, it was demeaning, and yes, I pulled away. I thought I might come from that alone.

“No more demands, goddess. I have ways to hurt you that aren’t as much fun.” He pulled the red scarf off the arm of the chair. “No talking. No whimpering. No crying. Not a peep out of you. Just yes and no.”

“Yes.” I couldn’t imagine, as he kneeled above me, his knees keeping mine apart, that the word
no
would exit my lips.

“Put your hands over your head and grab the table leg.”

I did it, stretching to reach the leg of the heavy sideboard.

“I haven’t tied you up since the surgery. You’ve noticed?”

“Yes.”

He leaned over me and wrapped the scarf around my wrists, attaching it to the sideboard as he spoke. “I was nervous. I kept dreaming the heart would leave me. Probably all the talk of rejection going to my head. But I worried that it would happen while you were tied up, and you’d be trapped until someone came.” He leaned back and checked his work by pulling me toward him until my arms were completely extended. “I know it wasn’t sensible. But it was there.” He stood and reached for something in the bag he had been about to take on the plane. His blue book. “You got away with a lot in the meantime.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Open your mouth.” I did, and he put the book in it. “Hold this for me.”

I bit down on the leather. He stepped back, and the book blocked my view of him. I heard the clink of his belt and the rustle of clothes, but I couldn’t see him. I could only see the damn book.

“The rules—and you can tell me what you object to when I take the book out of your mouth—the rules are this. I’m going to do what I want to your body. You’re going to have your safe words. If you worry about the baby for one second, you use them. And if I worry, I’m stopping the scene. It doesn’t matter if those worries make sense. And when you start showing, we’re renegotiating.”

He pulled my legs up and bent my knees until my ass was off the rug, then he took the book out of my mouth. He was naked and perfect from his scar to his huge cock. Lithe and strong. Nimble and taut.

“Yes or no, Monica.” He slapped the book on his palm.

“Yes, sir.”

“Good.” The book landed on my ass with a
thwack
. I chirped and held my cry. He paused then smacked me again. Paused, letting me feel the delicious sting. “Yesterday, you forgot that I own your orgasms. That means I say how and when you come.”
Thwack.
“Every time.”
Thwack.

“Sorry.”

“You don’t sound sorry.”

“I’m not.”

“You were getting three. Now you’re getting four for lying. Count with me.”

The book landed between my legs, flat on my engorged clit, and I bit back a scream. It hurt, stung, burned in the opening notes, and the echo was pure pleasure.

“How many is that?” he asked.

“One.”

He smacked it again, and I twisted away at the same time as I wanted it again. He straightened me and spread my legs, exposing me to him.

“Count.”

“Two.”

“You okay?” he asked.

“Yes.”

Thwap
. Harder than the others. I held back a scream.

“Breathe,” he demanded.

“Three!”

“Last one.”

He did it again, and it hurt bad, but it left a rush of warm, pre-orgasm quiver in its wake. How had I ever lived without that? How had I ever had an orgasm without the counterpoint of pain?

“Four,” I said through my teeth.

He put the book aside and slid his fingers in me. “You’re soaked.” He drew his wet fingers over my clit, and it burned. That burn, not his touch on me, nearly put me over the edge into orgasm. “And you’re close. What am I going to do with you?”

Begging him to fuck me might cause an indefinite delay as I was told to think about what it meant to make demands out of turn, so I said nothing. He moved his hand over me, setting my soreness on fire.

He leaned over and slid his dick into me. I gasped from the pain and the rawness, which had brought every nerve ending into high alert. I was sensitive at every range of the spectrum, and he was stretching me open, putting his whole length into me. I strained against the ties from the pain and the pleasure.

I expected him to take me like an animal. But he didn’t. He shifted slowly, making sure I felt every inch. He pushed against my clit, angling himself so he rubbed against it, slowly, slowly, in a tortuous rhythm.

“Please,” I whispered.

“You wanted something?”

“Faster.”

He didn’t go faster. If I’d had a metronome to count by, my bet would be on slower.

“Why?” he asked.

“I want to come.”

“Really?”

“Please.”

He pressed into me, breathing the words into my cheek. “You are so good. But you have to wait.”

“I can’t.”

“Do you know what happens when you rush? Things don’t go right. They’re not full. Not complete. If I let you come now, you’ll be conscious. You’ll say thank you and start thinking about music before you even close your legs.”

He pulled out slowly and pushed back in. I moved my hips into him to speed it up, but he adjusted and made it worse. I groaned.

“If I let you come now,” he continued, “you’ll be satisfied. But you deserve better than that. You deserve to have your mind erased.”

“I have a snappy comeback. But I can’t breathe.”

He moved as if we were underwater. The pressure built, and stayed, and built again, never breaking. What should have taken a second took several. My brain told me I was coming, but I didn’t. I stayed in the netherworld between knowing I was going to come and actually doing it. The ultimate mix of pain and pleasure. A tug-of-war between two matched opponents.

JONATHAN

I
f I’d told her to add two and two, I didn’t think she could have answered. It did occur to me to ask for a little simple math, but we were treading a wire-thin path as it was. If I pulled her back too far, I’d confuse her body and ruin the orgasm. She wouldn’t be able to have a good one until her body came down fully and her over-stimulated nerves recovered, which could take hours. That was never fun. It made everyone cranky.

But I wanted to see how far I could go and how much pain this caused, because there would be a time, soon, when the bruises and contusions wouldn’t wash, and I would derive no pleasure from hurting her. It was one thing to break and push a consenting adult. It was another thing to spank and grab a pregnant woman until she was black and blue. I would have to find other ways to dominate her or we would both wind up unsatisfied and discontented. Controlling her orgasms to the point of pain was a possibility. She was suffering, and she loved it almost as much as I did.

She was giving herself to me in that microcosm of her pleasure, and especially her pain, because in the macrocosm of her love, she was giving me what I wanted most: a family, a home, roots that were mine completely. Nothing borrowed. Nothing temporary. Through all her doubts and legitimate fears, she was taking a leap of faith into the net of my happiness.

I would live for her, for the family she was about to give me, for the home she’d agreed to create. My orbit around her was going to get tighter and tighter until, for better or worse, we fused into a single sun.

A tear dropped from the corner of her left eye, and I kissed it, still shifting with a slow, grinding rhythm. I had to pull her over the edge. It was the perfect time. Another second would be too late. I gave her no permission to come but got up on my knees and thrust deep and hard. Her eyes opened wide and rolled back with the second thrust.

I had complete control over her.

What that did for me, there were no words. Just a peace. A sloughing off of life and its pressures and worries. I existed only in this corner of the world, and it was mine, fully under my purview. The rush of euphoria that followed was submission in itself, to the act, to her, to the power she’d given me.

“May I come?” she whimpered.

“Yes.”

I took her. Made her mine. I saw the tide coming in her, and I encouraged it. When she was midway, I’d slow down to make it last, then I’d let go and fill her with me.

It was a good plan. But I looked down as she started to cry my name.

I didn’t know what I was looking for. Maybe I wanted to see our connection point when I came or see her cunt pulsing around me. But that’s not what I saw.

I shriveled up. Stopped moving.

My name rang in my ears as I looked at my dick, seeing something horrifying, like the death of joy, and I couldn’t hear my name anymore. Maybe she was screaming in her orgasm, or in pain, or in blame, I didn’t know, but I couldn’t form a sentence or command.

The streak of blood on my dick was unmistakable.

I only had one word in my head.

“Tangerine.”

MONICA

“What?”

I
 was pulled so far out of my orgasm that my body went rigid and my mind was soaked in adrenaline. He might as well have screamed
Stop
in my ear. I yanked my hands against the ties with a motion so violent, I heard stuff clatter and clunk as it fell. He got up on his knees, and I saw the fullness of him.

His cock was streaked in red. It wasn’t supposed to be. Not unless something was broken, and we weren’t doing broken. We were doing celebration. This was wrong. Everything was wrong. I pulled again, even as he reached up to get the scarf undone.

“Monica! Stay still. Give me a second.”

But all my yanking and pulling had tightened the knot¸ and he growled as he tried to pick it loose and failed.

“Say it’s from hitting me,” I begged. “Please say it’s from—”

“I don’t know what it’s from. Just stay still.”

I couldn’t. I had no control over my body. I yanked and pulled, trying to slip free, but my husband knew knots like he knew ice cubes and sore bottoms. If he’d set up the knot to keep me from slipping out, I wasn’t slipping out.

“Jonathan,” I said without anything else to say. Him, I just wanted him. I wanted to say his name to gather strength. He got up, and I had a full view of his beautiful, bloodied cock. “Don’t leave me.”

“I’m not.” He walked away.

“Don’t leave me here!”

But he did. He walked away, and I didn’t know why I felt so bereft. Some need to run away, coupled with the inability to even lower my arms, made me panic. I could feel something dripping down my leg. And he wasn’t there. He was going to the fucking kitchen.