I tear down Maya’s small, black bra. Her small breasts pop out like they’ve just been waiting this whole time for someone to let them out, and her delicate nipples are erect.
“Good God,” I whisper. I can’t help myself. It’s the first time I’ve had a long look at her completely naked body.
“What?”
“Your body.”
“What about it?” I can hear the concern, the fear, and the anticipation in her voice.
“Nothing. I’m just imagining all the things I’m going to do to it.” I lean back over and pull her into a longer, deeper kiss. One of those full, wet ones that only she can give me.
“Are you still rubbing yourself?”
“I never stopped.”
“Good. Put one finger inside. Kirill’t touch your clit.”
I can see below me that she’s obeying. Her breaths become deeper. Her eyelashes flutter. But she hasn’t experienced anything yet.
“Do you like that? Do you like what I’m doing to you?”
She doesn’t say anything back. I determine that’s a good sign. It’s about time we started.
“Whatever I do next,” I say, “you must obey me. Everything I say. If you can do that for me, I will put my cock inside of you. Do you understand?”
“Par-fait.”
“Good.”
I unbuckle the collar and slip it over her throat, making sure it’s tight. Maya’s breathing gets faster.
“Two fingers.”
I squeeze her left nipple like it’s a pea and dangle it between my fingers. I touch the tip with my tongue and envelop the whole thing with my mouth.
“Harder.”
“It’s about to be.”
I size the nipple up with the clamp and lock it into place, the rubber ends pinching the delicate skin beneath. Maya gasps and lifts her back from the bed. She’s still moving her fingers. When I put the second clamp around her, she doesn’t make a sound.
“Good girl,” I congratulate her. “Have you touched your clit?”
“No, Quinn.”
“Not once? Does it feel good?”
“It’s alright. But I’ve been waiting for you. I want you.”
“Kirill’t worry. Kirill’t worry about anything, my angel. I’m coming. But don’t stop. Keep going until I get there.”
I’ve still got my cock against her thigh, and it’s in pain from grinding up against her skin, but I still don’t put it inside her. Flicking the chains I put pressure on the clamps while teasing her with my tip, hovering just over the threshold between her and I. We’re almost there. So close. I pull the chain harder and Maya cries and the cry curls upwards and is almost a scream.
And then, suddenly it’s too much. I can’t just stay watching her any longer. I need to experience her physically. I want to experience all of her, learn all of her.
I yank the tights bunched around her waist down, past her knees and tear her arm away. She immediately puts it on her nipples but I growl for her to leave it at her side and she obeys. I’m positioned just below her, and as gently as I can, I open her vagina and slip one curled finger inside her, cradling her.
“Give it to me, Quinn,” Maya says, over and over again. “I’m ready. I’m yours. Give it to me.”
And I do. Slowly at first, the way she moved slowly on me when she was sucking me off. The way we moved when we were in the shower, and I opened her up, and we explored each other for the first time.
My tip presses against the slick, damp folds and I feel the pressure thundering from my cock to my heart to my head. And I can feel from Maya’s body shaking below me and from the mad beating of her heart that her sensations are a mirror of my own. Even in this small connection, we’re already becoming one person. I slip in and immediately go in deeper than when we were in the shower. Three inches. Four inches. It’s such an easy fit. It’s like it was made for me. The folds pull me down, and it’s so easy to let go and ride with it, down with her, down so deep inside I can feel her getting larger with me.
Maya gasps with the fullness of my cock, and I’m worried it’s too much so I slip out a little.
“No!” she wraps her arm around my back and pushes me in another inch. And now I know something else about Maya. There are two Maya’s I’ve been guarding when I thought there was only one. And only one of those is the cute, small and fragile Maya who walks through exhibits of Estonian photography, almost walks off docks, buys a coffee and makes sure at least half of it is made of whipped cream, and who wants me to make love with her in the shower but not too hard because she’s afraid of getting hurt. But what I was missing was that there was this Maya as well. The one buried by her father and desperate to get out, who looked at me with a dangerous gleam in her eye the night I picked her up from the club. The one I’ve got beneath me now, rotating her thighs back and forth in order to work me deeper inside of me. The one who pulls on the chain connecting the thong around her throat to her nipple and cries with the mix of pain and pleasure.
And then I understand. I understand why she’s thrusting herself upwards to meet my thrust, and why she’s tugging the chains around and around, pulling this second, caged Maya out of her prison. I know why she won’t let me sacrifice even one inch. Because I am her freedom. I’m the one who has opened her cages. I’m the only one who can keep her free.
So I plunge in, all seven inches. The end of my cock rides just below the surface of her belly.
“You want all of this?” I grunt. “You want it again?”
“Yes.” Her eyes fill with tears, and I don’t know if it’s from the pleasure or the pain or both.
“Say it again.”
“Yes!”
“Who do you belong to?”
“You.”
“Say my name,” I whisper. My core goes tight holding in my load, but I’m not going to take myself out of her until I’ve heard what I need to hear.
“Quinn!” she cries.
Her body goes electric beneath mine. The spasms of pleasure riding through her pass through me and through my cock and up into my brain, numbing me like some kind of delicious punch to the skull. For a second nothing in me can move, like whatever passed through Maya and into me has frozen every muscle in my body. And then I’m aware of a single thought that everything Maya’s been saying is wrong; that everything I’ve told her to say is wrong. Because I don’t own her. I am still her slave. Just as she is mine.
I snap forward, my body rigid, and push everything into Maya. Her hand tugs me forward, begging me to release. To seal together what we’ve just fought for. And push up inside her all I can. Commit to her with everything I have. Release.
And I do.
***
Maya gets up from the bed and gets something out of the black bag: a small, white box. She snaps a pill through the plastic sheath and pops it down.
“Easy peasy,” she smiles. I smile back and pat the sheets, motioning for her to return. Christ—here we are like a married couple in their honeymoon suite. The worst thing is, I’ve got no problem with it. Nothing on my mind whatsoever—not even mobsters with big guns and deadly fucking tempers. Not even the Stitches. Not even myself. Everything’s on Maya.
She floats back to the bed with that smell like flowers and bubblegum. And now, knowing this second uncaged Maya, I like everything about her.
She nestles herself in the crook of my arm. Her fingers draw patterns on my arms.
“You have an incredible body,” she whispers to me. This is how we’ve been communicating for the past few hours, as though anything louder would break something valuable but invisible that only we two knew was there.
“So do you,” I say. It’s absolutely honest. I find her nipple and begin to stroke it with my thumb. She doesn’t flinch.
“Have you ever done anything like that before?” I ask.
“Nipple clamps you mean?”
“Sure.”
“Just when I masturbate. Never with someone else.”
“Why me?”
“What do you mean, honey cakes?”
“Kirill’t call me that.” I apply a little bit more pressure on her nipple until I see her wince. She knows I’m expecting it and doesn’t.
“Then you’ll just stay Quinn. How about that? My Quinn?”
She buries her head into my neck. I hold her there, running my fingers through the tendrils of her hair.
“It’s funny, you know.”
“What’s funny?”
She unlocks herself from my embrace and looks at me seriously. “That we can do all of that—you can force me to surrender to you and do whatever you want, but I still don’t feel like I know anything about you.”
I stiffen. “I’m not interesting.”
“I’d disagree.”
“Then you’d be wrong.”
She touches my arm. The simple pressure sends shivers through me. What is this girl doing to me?
“Quinn,” her voice is soft and tender. “Why is it that I have the feeling you’re trying to keep something from me?”
“I don’t know. That’s not a fair question to ask.”
“You haven’t given me any fair answers.” She frowns. And so here we go. We’ve spent all of thirty minutes being nice to each other and now she’s going to go on asking questions and ruin it.
“You don’t trust me.”
“It’s not that. It’s definitely not that. I wouldn’t have let you put pinchers on my nipples if I didn’t trust you.”
“Then what is it?”
“What I’ve already said. I don’t know anything about you. Only that Daddy hired you over a bunch of other toughs, that you like rough sex, and that you’ve got weird tastes in music, and that’s everything. It’s like for two months all I’ve known about is what I could have learned on your Facebook. You’re still a stranger to me.”
I realize that this can only go one way. Better to meet the road at half point than make her go the whole way by yourself.
“Alright.” I shift the blanket off my shoulder and lean over on one elbow, facing her. “Then ask. But we’re going to do this fairly: anything you ask me I can turn around and ask you back. Deal?”
“Deal.” She hops closer to me, still in her Indian position squat and kisses me on the eye. “What’s your favorite color?”
“Really?”
“Answer.”
I think for a moment. No one’s asked me this since my Kindergarten teacher.
“Black,” I decide.
“That’s honestly the best you can do? You’re such a tool.”
“What’s yours then?” I ignore her witty insult. Pink, I think. Or something springtime, bright, and super-girly, like yellow.
“Green.” She has to think about it for a second, too. “Because it’s the color of the sky before a big thunderstorm. Okay, favorite TV show?”
“Kirill’t watch TV.”
“Movie, then.”
“Lawrence of Arabia.”
“Casablanca.” She lifts an eyebrow at me. “That’s not half bad. Favorite song?”
“Ask me something else.”
“Favorite musician?”
“Miles Davis,” I say, remembering Palmert’s “Kind of Blue” album that night at his house. Christ—seems like forever since I’ve seen those guys.
“I don’t have one. We’ll say in the genre of oldies. Okay.” She snaps her knuckles like it’s time to get down to serious work. “First job?”
“Repair work on a crew. Woodworking, mostly. You?”
“Never had a job. Probably never will.”
“Do you want a job?”
She goes quiet, thinking. “Ye-es,” she says hesitantly. “I think so. Something in design. Clothing design—I live for Chanel, you know.”
“I didn’t know. Have you ever been out of the state?”
“I thought I was asking the questions!”
“Then ask.”
“Have you ever been out of the state?”
“I’ve been everywhere,” I say.
“So have I.” The next question comes hesitantly. She’s moving over to uneven ground, and she knows it. “Do you like your job?”
“Of course.”
“That’s not what I mean. Your other job. Whatever you did before you were with me.”
I tense up, sensing danger. Maya doesn’t know much about the Stitches. Doubt she even knows I’m a part of them.
“I like it well enough,” I say, careful.
“What do you do?”
There’s the problem question. But what can I do now? If I avoid it, Maya will think the worst. But why avoid it? What have I done that she hasn’t seen before?
I take a deep breath. “I hurt people.”
Her eyes go a little wider but most of her remains steady. “Who?”
“Bad people. People who deserve it.”
She nods. Her hand finds mine, and we lace fingers. The next question is hardly more than a whisper.
“Have you killed anyone?”
“Yes.”
Her fingers tighten. “More than one person?”
“Yes.”
“Who was the first?”
I recognize how fast her heart is beating now. The same speed when I was on top of her. Making her mine. The speed it was going when she realized we were tied together, becoming one person. I grip her hand harder, reminding her that no matter what else might happen, I won’t let her go.
“My father.”