Scarlet

Word Count: 1532

Scarlet curtains billow out toward her like deep red sails, filled with the sudden rush of early evening breeze. She rolls her stiff shoulders a little, testing the bonds on her wrists and ankles. They are snug, but not constrictive. It is getting a little cold though; the fine mist of sweat on her skin has long evaporated. A sprinkling of goose bumps is beginning to crawl down her body in the dimming light. How long had he been gone exactly? Anticipation is always part of their games but it really did seem a bit long to keep her waiting. With a bolt of panic, she remembers reading some story about a guy who ties his lover up and leaves her. Creepy, she thinks. But that is not her life, not her lover. She lifts her head off the bed a little and catches her reflection in the mirror mounted on the closet door. Her pale flesh looks like almond colored cream against the dark sheets. She is bound, spread eagled. The swells of her bare breasts and her shaved sex make her ripple with excitement.

She hears him enter the room. He is standing just outside her rim of vision. He sets down a goblet of white wine and ice on the nightstand by her head. The glass is dripping with condensation, delicious rivulets of water running down the sides. She realizes she is suddenly very thirsty. She licks lips that are hot and slightly swollen. He slips something soft and dark over her eyes. Blindfold, what now? Her body tenses, her stomach muscles tighten. She can feel him, standing over her, looking down. He is breathing heavy and she feels herself become more enticed by his lust. Without a word, he sinks down beside her on the bed. His hands start a slow, soft caress of her curves, starting at her wrists and running down her arms, her shoulders, her breasts. He leans forward, placing warm lips against the inside of her elbow, the hollow of her neck, runs them along her taunt jaw line. He slides his tongue along her collarbone, down her sternum and between her breasts. He reaches under her, cups her ass in both hands and squeezes firmly. Starting at her ankles, he runs his hands up her shaking legs and between her thighs. He kisses her hip bones, puts his mouth on her for only a moment, his flicking tongue setting her insides on fire. They’d been at this so long now; she did not think she could have become aroused again yet she is already panting, already twisting with desire, already moist and aching.

He slips his fingers inside her, moving them with the steady and confident rhythm he has used to bring her to the brink over and over again. She wants desperately to come. She needs that release and has begged him for it, but he has yet not finished her off. It has been hours now and there has been only this teasing, this torment. He has ignored her pleas. He still has not fucked her. He has not even spoken to her since telling her to strip and lie down on their bed when he'd come home that afternoon.

He strokes her and her body moves with him. Faster and faster. The tight, hot coil in her gut furls and unfurls with his rhythm. She is shaking with exertion, starting to feel the familiar twitching in her sex, the heat at the base of her spine. She is so very close to release. He runs his finger over her lips; she can taste her need on his fingertips. He closes his mouth around one of her swollen nipples, bites down with his teeth until she is moaning and muttering incoherently. Her wrists ache, raw from rubbing against the leather restraints. Her hips buck, her body heaves, her back is slick with sweat.

He stops. He pulls away and his fingers slip out of her. First she is moaning in desperation, and then she is yelling. She finds that she can not help it, the stream of frustrated obscenities bubbles out of her. She has bitten her lip and she tastes blood as she hurls insults at him. She is lying on her back, naked and aching, and she curses him. She is losing herself. It has been hours and hours like this and she is breaking.

She stops and listens, thinks maybe he has left her again. She calls his name. She tells him she’s had “enough”, uses their safety word. She yells louder so he will hear her where ever he is in the house. She knows she must sound frantic.

“Olivia.” He says her name suddenly and she is startled to realize he is standing directly above her. His tone is sharp, uncharacteristically so, and she feels the first faint touch of alarm prick her senses.

“This might hurt a bit,” he says. It is all the warning he gives her before the hot wax spatters on her exposed breasts. She arches up, wrenches her body away from what feels like liquid fire raining down on her flesh. She cries out. He moves, the stream of wax migrating down across the flat plain of her stomach then to her thighs. She tries to draw her legs closed but her ankles are securely fastened to the bedposts. Hot wax courses down the tender flesh between her legs in painful rivulets. The skin stings and throbs even as the wax hardens and cools. She is sobbing now, confused and angry.

“How long did you think you could play with me?” His voice is traveling over her, he is moving about the room now. There are new sounds that she recognizes. She hears drawers opening and closing, hears the closet light click on.

He knows…somehow he knows… she is jolted by the sudden realization. Her heart begins to pound with real fear. She is suddenly consumed by the need to close her legs and cover herself. She begins to stutter, her tongue catches and her throat thickens.

“Don’t bother. I’m not interested in more of your lies.” He says. There is a new menace in his voice that chills her.

She starts to speaks again but only manages a few feeble words before he slaps her face, hard enough to make her ears ring. She starts to sob.

“You wasted my time and I won’t forgive you. Forget you ever knew me.”

The finality of this statement makes her weep harder, uncontrollably. She is baffled that she her crimes have been discovered. She has been so careful, so calculating all these months. Her infidelity had become like another skin she wore, another identity so completely removed from the life she lived with him. She believed that she had sanitized and compartmentalize her existence so well that her addiction could not possibly poison their life together. Still, he’d found out. Somewhere, somehow, she’d been careless and he’d found out everything. Now, lying in her own juices vulnerable and exposed with the wax caking and cracking in her most private places, she feels devoured by shame and with dread.

Despite the threat of another blow, she can not stop the confession. It pours from her with a torrid rush of tears. She tells him she is sick, that she can not help herself. She apologizes, begs his forgiveness just as she has begged him for release. She promises she will get professional help. Her words, her pleas and promises are all met with an empty silence. She hears a door open and close somewhere.

She tries to sit up, finding with some amazement, that she easily can. The leather cord that had bound her hands slips free, the end has been neatly sliced. Her wrists are numb and she rubs them a few moments before removing the velvet blindfold from her eyes. She blinks despite the dimness of her surroundings. She fumbles with her ankle cuffs, freeing her legs. Sobbing she struggles to her feet, her stiff muscles protest each movement.

She looks around the room. The candles have all been extinguished. The drawers in his dresser stand open and empty. The closet has been stripped of his belongings as well. The pictures are all gone as are the collector baseball hats, his books and his reading glasses. She stumbles into the bathroom and sees that his colognes and toiletries are missing, their vacancy creating a stark white hole next to the sink. Everything is gone. Her lover has vacated her life. She feels eviscerated.

At last she looks at her reflection in the bathroom mirror. Her eyes are red and puffy. Her black curls flat and plastered to her slick forehead. One earing has torn from ear leaving the lobe a bloody mess. Her mascara has left black rivers on her cheeks; her face is splotchy and too pink. She lowers her eyes and sees it. She moans and it is a sound born of anguish and shame. Running all the way from her breasts down to the middle of her thighs is a flaking and raw looking letter A, written in bright, scarlet wax.