The meal had been fine, the company pleasant, but he found himself checking his watch quite often, and forced himself to stop.  He tried to get interested in what his old friend was saying, and laughed when the others laughed, but his mind was elsewhere.

He couldn't help thinking about her and how he'd left her.  Was she okay?  Was she enjoying herself?  Or had it been a mistake to leave her, to have even have tried this?

He wished he knew.  A hundred possibilities echoed in his head, and he had to force himself to concentrate on the people around him.

He shouldn't have left her, she was inexperienced.  What if she panicked?  What if she was in pain?  What if she hated it?

He could feel his heart pumping, and the excitement he had known at the start of the evening had long vanished.

He took another sip of his drink, and willed himself to calm down.  She was fine, there was no danger.

He resisted looking at his watch again.

Instead he made small talk, and for a time at least managed to put to the back of his mind what else was going on that evening.  But she was never out of his thoughts, and as time went on he found himself thinking up excuses to cut short his evening out.

He could stand it no longer, the worry, the fear...the excitement.  Not sure of what was driving him now, he made his excuses and gathered his coat.  He made it to his car without running, a major effort in self control, and drummed on the steering wheel for the entire twenty-minute drive.

His street, his house.

He stops at the front door, afraid of what might be beyond it.  He takes a deep breath in an effort to calm himself.  He can't appear in front of her like this, he can't show his worry.  It was more than an image thing, of projecting the image of what he is inside.  It is also a realized need that his visible fear might be transmitted to her.  He has to appear in control; calm and collected at all times.  She depends on him to make her feel safe, but who could HE lean on?

Finally ready, he opens the front door and steps quietly inside.  He listens as he slips off his coat and suit jacket, but finds the house silent...still.

He slips off his shoes and pads in stocking feet down the hall toward their bedroom, pausing at the closed door to listen.  He believes, over the pounding of his heart, that he can hear her moaning, but is not sure.  He takes the door handle in hand and very carefully cracks open the door.  What first greets him is the smell: musk, female musk, the heady scent of a woman aroused.  He takes a deep breath and pushes open the door as quietly as he can.

There she is, lying on a foam mat on the floor, her skin given a golden sheen because of the soft light in the room and the light coating of sweat from her exertions.  She lies with her arms and legs spread wide, ropes from wrist and ankle bound securely to eye-bolts screwed into the walls at ground level.  More rope runs from knees and elbows, from waist and shoulders, all there to anchor her to one spot, one position.  A blindfold under a leather head harness is the only other thing that she wears and to him she looks beautiful...erotic.  He can feel his excitement building, the fears he had melting away as looks at her.

She moans once more, shifting her hips and making him smile.

He smiles because a little experiment of his seems to be working, something he had never been able to try before, until she expressed her curiosity and volunteered.  He had thought it would be too much for her, but her excitement ignited his own and arrangements were made.
As he circles her, examining her and his creation, he slowly undresses.  He sees that she has no idea he is here, and he doesn't want to burst that bubble just yet.

She moans once more, her voice full of frustration as he hears her whisper, "please...please...please...," over and over again.  She moves her hips, pushing her sex against the device between her thighs, a simple wooden stake set perpendicular in a wide flat base.  The stake, round and sanded smooth, pokes upright through a hole in the mat, and only by straining can her engorged sex brush against it.  But strain she does, pushing hard in an obvious effort to find some relief.

He knows she has a real need too, for by now her lips are burning with more than passion.
And yet, by his own design, her need was something she had brought upon herself.  Before leaving, after carefully tying her down and positioning the stake just beyond her bare sex, he had taken just a tiny amount of muscle relaxant cream and dabbed it on her clitoris.  He knew that the cream would quickly begin to burn, creating a false heat that would feel all the stronger on that most delicate nub of flesh.  The urge to reach down, to rub and soothe that tiny area between her legs, would soon grow overwhelming.  But tied as she was there was no way she could do that.  But she had an alternative, the stake.  She knew it was there and how only an inch or so separated her from it.  She knew it would be so easy to just push a little harder, to use it to scratch her increasing itch.  But there was a catch, a price to pay, for the stake itself had been coated in more of the cream, and that the only parts of her body that could touch the stake was her clitoris, and of course her pussy lips.  To touch it meant to spread the burn over a wider area, to ignite the sensitive inner folds her wide-spread legs forced open.  To scratch one itch she would be forced to give herself a greater one.

As he finishes undressing, he wonders how long she resisted, how long she had gone before giving in and attempting to use the stake for some relief.  He wonders how she felt at that point, and how she felt when she realized that instead of giving her relief, the stake only brought her more frustration.

Even now, knowing what she knew, she still reaches for it, still rubbing herself against it in an effort to cool the burn.  She has to be in blissful agony.

He is naked now, and he gently kneels beside her.  His first touch is at her breast, and the sharp intake of her breath tells him that his surprise has been complete.

She calls his name, and when he answers she begins to plead for release, for him to end her suffering.

He asks if she is really suffering, and he lets his fingers drift down into her very wet sex.

Her hips arch upwards as much as the ropes allowed, and she groans once more, almost crying.

He takes his hand away and asks her again, not touching her until she answers him.

Her answer, once it comes, seems like an admission of something bad.  It's as if she is a little girl who has broken something and is finally admitting it to her parents.

He knows her upbringing won't let her talk freely about what they are doing, it won't let her think with any freedom about the pleasures they had found together.  But he also knows that in time that will change if she is willing.  But the answer itself is one he has wanted...no, hoped to hear.  For it speaks of possibilities and pleasures to come.  She isn't suffering, at least not in a way that excludes the possibility of further play.

He smiles and pulls the stake from its base before moving to replace it with himself.  He holds himself over her, not touching her, for just a moment.  He takes in the image of her lying there under him, unable to move, unable to prevent his next action...unable to deny her need for him to do what he's planned.  He lowers himself gently onto her...into her, and soon the fires consume him as well.

It is a good evening.
 

end.