We both fell forward onto her bed. I thought she was cursing. I didn’t know if she came or not. When I pushed up off her, I was breathing hard. She was writhing, still pumping, moaning fuck fuck fuck.
I was kneeling on the floor beside her bed. It smelled like food, like scrambled eggs or something. I thought it was the sheets. She pushed up off her stomach and turned around. Then she climbed on me and started showering my neck with these soft kitten kisses. I felt like an animal. My stomach churned.
‘Look,’ she whispered, holding my shoulders. ‘I want to talk for a while. Stay. Will you stay?’
‘Okay.’ I stared up at the ceiling. There was a long silence where I knew that she knew that I didn’t really want to.
The girl motioned me back up beside her. She pulled up the huge heap of covers at the foot of the bed. I got in and we lay down on our backs as she covered us with a bunch of the smelly sheets and also a plaid woollen blanket. She grabbed my hand tightly and laid it on her stomach. We were lying close enough together that her breast was touching my side.
‘Look … Look, I just … ’
She started to speak a few times like that, but nothing would come out. I lay there and stared at the ceiling. I noticed a hook for a painting coming out of the wall. She was trying and trying to speak but she kept swallowing her words.
‘Just tell me,’ I finally said. ‘It’s okay.’
‘Okay. Okay. I had this friend, he did it to me once … ’
‘What, like I just did?’
‘No, no. Not like that.’
‘Like what?’
‘I wanted to feel like that again … ’
‘Like what? Tell me.’
‘Do you really want to know?’
‘Yeah. I’m right here.’
I was stroking the back of her hand and playing with her fingers. Then I turned on my side and put my thigh over hers. She had gotten so worked up about something that she was shivering, even under all the covers.
‘I like being tied up,’ she said quickly. ‘He tied me up.’
‘How?’
‘How did the guy tie me up?’
‘Sure.’
‘I was looking at some pictures of girls like that. I found this magazine, it was pictures of these girls hanging from the wall by hooks, from the ceiling by hooks, with their ankles up and their wrists knotted together. Girls with ropes between their legs, I mean, rope tied in knots all over their naked bodies and then the biggest knot was between their legs. Their knees were bent underneath them. Their elbows were stuck together. Those girls’ eyes were open, they couldn’t move, they were being watched! Someone was taking these pictures!’
‘Yeah, I’ve seen those kinds of things.’
‘So I bought myself some rope, because, I guess, I wanted to see, you know … ’
‘By yourself?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why by yourself? I thought it was with a guy.’
‘Wait. I just wanted to try it first and see how it was. Listen: it didn’t stay that way, being alone.’
‘Okay.’
‘I was lying on the floor in front of the mirror in my bedroom, actually just right over there, and I tied one of my wrists to my ankles and I put the rope – this miniature brown hairy ball of twine that people probably bought for their little cats – I put it underneath me. I mean, I put it under my ass. And I had to touch myself, it was the feeling, that fraying twine on my skin, how I couldn’t move normally. I was locked like that with that texture all over me … ’
‘Yeah?’
‘I wrapped my whole chest. I did it so my tits pushed nearly back to my chin. I pulled up the twine up between my legs … My back was arching, these sounds were coming out of my lips and I held the ends of the rope down on either side of me and I started thrusting my chest in the air, feeling the rope go up into my pussy and my breasts fucking jiggling and I couldn’t move my legs, all right?’
‘Yeah?’
‘And he walked in on me!’
‘Who?’
‘The guy I was seeing.’
‘Who was it?’
‘I’m not going to tell you his name … ’
‘That’s not what I meant.’
‘I was in love in with him.’
‘Oh.’
‘And he started yelling at me: What the fuck are you doing? What the fuck are you doing? I saw his face. He looked like he was going to hit me.’
‘He did?’
‘My eyes squeezed shut.’
‘He hit you?’
‘He was so mad at me.’
‘I could never hit a woman. Never. Absolutely fucking never. I don’t care what she was doing.’
‘I felt his breath over me, these rapid huffs. And I thought for sure he was gonna hit me and I just stayed there, god, I couldn’t move away. I was trying to stop from even breathing … But when I opened my eyes, I just opened them in a blurry slit, I saw that he was in my underwear drawer looking for something. Then he came back to me, down at my legs, he was crouching right at me, where the biggest knot was. He had my camera, my clit was pulsing so fast … ’
‘So he didn’t hit you. Thank god.’
‘He took pictures of me. He took all these pictures while freaking out and sweating and unwinding the rope and throwing it twisted all over my body!’ She was shaking. Her arms were strangled so tight around her chest that her tits came up near her chin. She ripped the plaid blanket off herself.
‘I hated him right then. I told him: Fucking tie me tie me tie me back up! I tried to relax my eyes, look him straight in his face, but I couldn’t, I couldn’t.’
‘He sounds like a violent asshole! I’m not surprised. Why were you in love with him?’
‘No, you don’t understand. I crunched my teeth together until tears came down my cheeks … I wanted that feeling, I wanted that strangling … And it was like he finally heard me, like he was finally paying attention to me the way that I wanted. It was amazing, I swear, he started doing it. He was taking the rope from my stomach and winding at my ankles. He lifted my legs up and wrapped my thighs tight. He coiled my stomach with the rope and it burned. Then he yanked up my wrists and slapped my face.’
‘Holy fuck. Who raised this guy?’
‘He was the kind of guy who never said what he meant.’
‘But he’d hit you before, hadn’t he?’
‘No … No, he only did that once, the last time. Fuck, I don’t want to tell you any more.’
‘Why?’
‘Because you hate him. It’s clear. And I get it. But, I mean,