K. Bromberg - Bend

“I’ll gag you next time,” he says. “The cloth will go around the ropes.”

I wet his finger with my tongue. I usually have a ton of dirty talk at my disposal, but I’m so high from this, I can’t even speak.

“You’ll only be able to grunt, but I’ll understand you, kitten. You and I, we’re going to speak without speaking.”

Lightly, so very lightly, his fingers stroke inside my thigh. I feel my spit drying on them.

“I’m going to tie you and fuck you breathless.” He slides my panties aside and runs his finger along the length of my slit. “I’ve never seen a girl so wet. You really want to fuck.”

“I need it.” I whisper the only three words I have at the moment.

He gathers the wetness at my tingling opening and moistens me all over, asshole to clit. His pressure is perfect, delicate, gentle. He’s not trying to get me to come; he’s trying to get me turned on. He slides two fingers in my cunt so slowly, I feel my soul go to heaven.

“You like my fingers?”

I swallow in response. He pulls them out, slowly again, then touches the hood of my clit, shifting it slightly. The effect is hypnotic.

“Look at you,” he says, his face close enough to mine that I can smell his peppermint breath. “You’re a slave to me right now.” He runs his fingers back to my opening, and to my clit, with just the tip, in circles. “Your discomfort is getting crowded out by pleasure. You want to come so bad. This isn’t even pleasure. It’s the expectation of release. Do you know how long I can keep you going like this? Do you know what I can do to your body? As long as you need that release, I can take you to the breaking point. What wouldn’t you do for me?”

He circles a wet finger around my asshole then back to my clit, which feels explosive, engorged, hot to the touch.

“Show me what a kitten you are. Meow for me.”

I mewl, wiggling my hips to get a little more pressure on my cunt when he puts his fingers in me. But he and the ropes have complete control.

“Not like that. Don’t be saucy. Do it like a real kitten.”

“Oh God, just let me—”

He squeezes my clit, and I cry out, because it hurts, and it’s just about as close to an orgasm as possible.

He slaps the inside of my thigh. “Easy, girl. The more you demand, the longer I’ll keep you on the edge.”

I’m sweating, leaking fluid everywhere. I don’t have a brain. I don’t even want to fuck. I just want to come.

“Meow for me,” he says.

A kitten. What does a kitten sound like? A real mewl. No M sound, just a vowel. I make it. I mewl for him as he runs his fingertip over my hood, shifting it just enough. I mewl again. It’s humiliating, to make animal sounds while tied and bent over, but it gives me something to concentrate on. This isn’t the first time I’ve enjoyed being debased.

“Good girl. You’re such a good girl. Do you want to come?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, what?”

“Yes, please. Please. God, let me come for you.”

With his free hand, he grabs the hair on the top of my head, yanking it against the ties to my ankles. “Don’t move. Just meow.”

He slides a finger in my asshole, and my mewl turns to a cry of pleasure. When he presses his thumb to my clit, hard, I lose my breath. He rotates the thumb, and I explode. My asshole pulses around him, my cunt tightens, and the rush of release comes out of my mouth in grunts that I can’t concentrate on enough to make the kitten sounds he likes.

His thumb drifts off me halfway then presses again, and I explode all over, wiggling in the confines of the ropes. The orgasm is eternal, like an electrical pulse arching my back, my fingers gripping my forearms. He does it again, leaning forward and shoving two fingers in my ass. My back arches farther, and the ropes press into my ribs.

Time happens for someone else, but not me. The orgasm goes on and on under this madass bastard’s hands.

I open my eyes, and I see him through my hair as he fucks me with his fingers again. His face is intense, as if he’s reining in a hotblood, and I gear up for another explosion.

I need to breathe. I need to think. It’s almost painful to come this much. But I can’t move. I’m going to die, and live, and crack into a thousand fleshy pieces.

“Stop,” I say. “Please stop.”

“One more, kitten,” he growls. And he gets it.

* * *

I rode the Westonwood sink on the tips of my right toes, sliding my wet pussy against it. I came in four pushes, legs tingling, back arching, mouth open. Knowing less than the sum of what I remembered and forgot, only blank, preciously empty but for pleasure.

Margie, three years out of law school, was already boring. I couldn’t stand her, but I loved her for sitting in the visitation room in a pale green suit, her red hair in a sensible bob.

Before I even had my butt in my chair, she said, “He’s alive.”

“How alive?”

“He’s too weak to talk. You got the hoof knife between two ribs—”

“A hoof knife? My God—” Hoof knives didn’t have a point, though mine was sharp on the tip. How hard had I been at him to get that to even puncture?

“You missed his heart by an eighth of an inch and just scraped a lung. There’ll be a nice scar to show the grandkids.”

“Was it me? I did it? Are you sure?”

“You called the cops and said you did, and you attacked them when they got there.”

“I don’t… There’s no way I could have.” I was utterly baffled. Why would I do that? I’d done crazy shit, but stab Deacon? That was the craziest of crazyfuckshit I’d ever heard. “Where? We weren’t on Maundy Street. Couldn’t have been.”

“The stables. Then you tried to slit your own throat. You really don’t remember?”

“You think I’m putting it on?”

“I wouldn’t put anything past you.” She held her face firm as if daring me to get offended.

“You don’t have to represent me if you don’t want to,” I said. “I know you find me repulsive.”

“I don’t.”

“You do. You’ve never understood me.”

“That’s not the same as finding you repulsive,” Margie said. “Let’s face it. You don’t even understand you. The difference between us is that I happen to love you.”

I had no answer. I just fixed my jaw and felt like more of a recalcitrant child than I ever did in front of Mom.

“Fiona, do you want to talk about this? Should I come back tomorrow? Or not at all? Daddy’s trying to get me pulled off the case.”

“Why?”

“He says I’m not experienced enough. I don’t know the real reason.” She shook her head. “Point is—”

I grabbed her hand over the table. “It has to be you. Don’t leave me.”

“Tell me what happened. I know you don’t remember, but what was with you two? Did he cheat on you? Did he hit you? What would have made you snap?”

I rubbed my eyes with the heels of my hands. She didn’t understand us. No one would.

“Drazen pledge,” I said.

“I’m your lawyer. Anything you say is under attorney-client privilege.”

I held up my hand. “Are you opening pledge or not?”

“Fine.” She held up her hand. “Pledge open.”

I relaxed. Between myself and my seven siblings, six sisters and one brother, opening a pledge meant nothing said could be repeated and only the truth could be spoken.

“This is so hard to explain,” I said.

“It’ll get easier after the first ten times.”

“I don’t know where to start.”

She crossed her arms. “Start by not stalling. Assume I know you use drugs. Assume I know you’ve had more sex in the past three years than I’ve had in my life.”

“We had an open-ish relationship.”

“Okay.”

“The ish part is that…” I swallowed. “Up until a few months ago, my other partners were limited to people we knew, at parties he threw.” I didn’t mention the knottings. I wasn’t ready to tell her I had been a fuckable art object, because I’d have to explain that I’d never been in such control of my sexuality as I was in this open-ish relationship.

“And why did that change?”

There was a relief in her question, because it didn’t judge the excesses, only the switch to normalcy.

“We fell in love.” The blade of those words cut through the dullness of the meds, and snot and tears flooded my face.

“No,” Margie said. “You stop right now.”

I tried to tell her I couldn’t, but I was beyond speaking, beyond using my mouth for anything but breathing thick cry gunk. I could barely breathe without croaking—how could I speak a whole sentence? “I couldn’t have hurt him.”

“Fuck.” Margie had always been impatient with outbursts, yet she always knew what to do about them. She swung her chair to my side of the table as if she was flinging it in a bar fight and sat next to me, putting her arm over my shoulder. I fell into her. She said nothing and stroked my hair.

“He went away, and I couldn’t keep it together,” I croaked. “I have a hard time without sex. I need it. But he understands me. We worked on ways to make it work. Why would I stab him?”

“He’s not saying. Is it possible he came after you, and you stabbed him in self-defense? Maybe he surprised you at the stables?”

“I don’t remember. I swear I don’t. What I was even doing there? I haven’t been to Branwyn in forever.”

“You have a chipped molar. Do you remember when that happened?” she asked.

“No.”

“The exam showed nerve damage in your wrist. Did he ever grab you there?”

I shook my head as if I was emptying change out of the bottom of a piggy bank. Nerve damage to the wrist could be caused by an improper knotting, but Deacon would never, ever make that mistake, and I would have called it out if I’d felt a tingling.

“Margie, I’m so confused. It’s like my brain isn’t working right. I have to see him. I have to talk to him.” I didn’t know how I’d calmed enough to make sentences, but I had. I wiped my nose and smeared my tears over my eyelids with the backs of my hands.

“That’s the least of your worries,” she said. “You have to get released first. Your therapist has seventy-two hours to determine if you’re a danger to yourself or others. So no more lunging over the desk to kill the good doctor. If you do get out, you’ll get taken in for questioning or arrested, depending on what the DA feels he has and, to be honest, whatever Dad decides he wants to do. He’s got every judge in L.A. in his pocket, but the media loves rich girls and violence. If you walk, it’ll look like we’ve gotten away with attempted murder. And just so you know, we’ve got some problems at home.”

“What?”

“Jonathan’s girlfriend disappeared from a party at Sheila’s last night. His car’s gone.”

“He had a girlfriend?” I tapped my fingers against my thumb, counting. When did my baby brother turn sixteen? How long had I been high on flake and fucking? Shit, he was old enough to drive?

“Theresa’s friend Rachel.”

Theresa was my sister, and Rachel was, indeed, her friend. She hung around a lot. I’d never given her a thought.

As if reading my mind, Margie continued. “I didn’t know about her and Jon either. So that’s why I’m here and not Quentin.”

“I just want to talk to Deacon.”

“I know. But maybe what you want isn’t what you need.” She took my hand. “When we’re done here, you’re having your orientation meeting with the hospital admin. Be nice. Be good. Okay?”

“Will being nice get me out?”

“It’ll increase the odds.”

“Then I’m all over it.”

The administrator smiled. She seemed genuine enough, but she was probably genuine with everyone, which made the whole act as fake as shit. Her brown hair was straight, but at the ends, I could see it was naturally curly. A little patch of eyebrow had begun to grow at the top of her nose. She wore a little wreath with a bell hanging from it on her lapel.

“I’m Doctor Frances Ramone, but you can just call me Frances.”

Apparently, we were all on a first-name basis in Westonwood.

“You can call me Miss Drazen.”

My joke had no effect on her that I could see. Being blind with a headache, who knew what was happening in my peripheral vision. On the other side of the glass walls, people played checkers and some asshole grumbled in a wheelchair. More windows decoratively barred against escape. Lightweight plastic chairs, great for throwing but not hurting. A television permanently set to beautiful scenes of nature, flowers, butterflies. And that was how rich kids disappeared into Westonwood. No TV. No internet. No phone.