Vanilla
"Boring." The word drops out of Master's mouth and rolls around on the linoleum floor of the kitchen, coming to rest next to my ear.
Aclinkof a spoon against a ceramic bowl, I hear it but don't see it.
Boring. The word was mine, the reaction swift, the result – I tug at the cord of Master's housecoat around my wrist – inescapable. His location for me, head to one side of the island, directly below the overhanging counter top, was no accident. I'm half blind.
With legs and arms pulled taut, lifting my head is uncomfortable but, as I do, he kneels between my spread legs and I see the bowl, then the spoon heaped with a white mound.
Cold! A spoonful of ice cream is slipped into my open pussy. When my hips jolt upward, Master pins them down again using only his eyes focused on mine. His eyes say,Things can always get worse.Another spoonful and another and another, until the heat of my sex can't keep up with the frozen cream. The river of melted stickiness dripping out of me, running down to the crack of my ass and onto the floor, slows to a thin stream. Deep breaths help keep me still.
"Boring," he repeats, in a monotone.
Now it's the fridge door I hear, opening. Bags rustling. Containers bumping against each other. My world, tied down on the floor as I am, is the world of sound.
Master is between my knees again. He shows me a strawberry before shoving it inside me. Some peach slices are next. Blueberries stain his palm as he feeds them between my hungry folds. Cherries, mandarin orange slices, even a few grapes, he pushes each new fruit in a little further and a little harder.
Scrambling to define each new sensation, the walls of my pussy tighten and release. The ice cream, melting fast, begins to flow again. Master's hand is empty. He holds up three fingers, high enough for me to see, then stuffs them inside me and mashes the fruit and ice cream together.
My neck arches at the plunging. I groan and pull against my restraints. His fingers drive in and out. The pulpy mess splatters the insides of my thighs and pools beneath my ass cheeks. I'll come soon if he doesn't stop and I've not been given permission.
"Boring," I hear him mutter at the same instant his fingers stop pounding me.
With his clean hand, he picks up the spoon, slips it inside me, pulls out a helping of milky mush and smiles. I smile back, panting, thinking he's about to enjoy a snack. Stupid me. He carries the dripping spoon over my stomach, up to my chest and drizzles the concoction over my left nipple.
Gasping, my back arches as my always sensitive button sends electric shocks down my spine to the ice cream sundae between my legs.
He gives my right nipple – primed by expectation – the same treatment.
The third spoonful he carries to my mouth.
Eyes wide, lips sealed, I shake my head a fraction. The cold spoon rests against my lips and his eyes order them to open. They do.
Master tips the spoon and I swallow my dessert. When the spoon is clean, he pulls down a napkin from the kitchen table and fastens it snugly around my head, gagging me, making sure I cannot rid myself of the flavour.
He holds the empty spoon up high enough for me to see. The handle is made of plastic, thick and round. Bending the spoon into a crescent shape, he slides the handle into my pussy, jostles it around and pulls it out. I pout into my gag, yearning for more.
I get more.
The tip of the spoon handle presses against the delicate pucker of my ass. I bite down as he slides the handle inside me, working slowly, extending my discomfort. I know he's done when I feel the metal end biting the soft skin of my ass cheeks.
Master stands. I hear a drawer open, the dull rattle of cutlery. Kneeling down, he shows me a fork. My molars clamp down on the back of the napkin sawing at the corners of my mouth.
Same routine. This time, however, he leaves the handle of the fork in my pussy; the tines prod my swollen lips. Once again, he stands.
Another drawer opens. What now?
This time he returns with a roll of plastic wrap, pulling out an arm's length and tearing it off. The wrap he winds around my waist, between my legs, around my waist again, until he's fashioned a cellophane loincloth for me, just tight enough to hold the two pieces of cutlery in place.
Repositioning, he lowers his head until it is over top of mine. I can see him reading my eyes, gauging my discomfort. A smile melts across his face. He licks my top and bottom lips and moves south.
Master's mouth lands next on my nipple, licking and sucking up the mess he left. As he does, and the electrical shocks start in earnest, I start to tense and squirm, feeling the handles inside my ass and pussy fill me with pleasure while their cold counterparts dig into my flesh.
From one nipple to the next, my master works his hot tongue around, cleaning every drop from my body. I buck harder, willing the inanimate objects to fuck me, groaning at their cruelty. My ass slips on the slick liquids seeping out of me and the spoon end digs hard into my left cheek, moving the handle, causing my hips to thrust, driving the fork tines into my clit. I yell into my gag. More slipping, more poking, more sucking and licking, I drive myself to the edge of the cliff.
Master pulls away. He stands yet again and watches me as I writhe on the linoleum. My begging is stifled but I know he hears it. I need release. I need it. Why won't he give it to me?
"So, tell me, my precious whore," he says, looking down at me, tall as a skyscraper, "do you still think vanilla ice cream is boring?"
Mango Sorbet
A day off at last. Even better, a day off and a beach all to myself. It was worth the paddle against the current to get to this quiet motu, this tiny patch of sand and palm trees, surrounded by water more shades of blue than any paint store can invent.
That's what I was thinking whentheycame around the corner.
Tourists. No matter how friendly they may be, I'm tired of the small talk and the same five questions, and the "hot enough for you?"' and the "boy, the mosquitoes are eating me alive". I think I would have liked this island better when the natives were still eating each other.
They were a young couple. Giggling and running, as best they could with a cooler held between them, they barged around the corner and kicked sand in the face of my afternoon alone. About ten feet away from me, they stopped, dropped the cooler to the sand, nodded in my direction with twin smiles and resumed being giddy and stupid.
Why my motu? Why so close? Why couldn't they go where all the other tourists go?
Belly down, on my towel, I tried to read my novel as the love birds stretched out a blanket and rubbed sunblock on each other. Porn stars could have taken writhing-in-ecstasy lessons from those two.
From the snippets of babble and their lean, coltish bodies, I figured they must have been French. Good. At least I could speak English and feign ignorance if they tried to speak to me.
But they didn't speak to me; they were consumed with each other. Not that I cared.
From behind my sunglasses, I saw the man open the cooler and produce a small tub. The woman reached a hand towards the tub and he slapped it away. It was a playful slap and she adopted the kind of sexy pout only the French can pull off.
A trickle of sweat ran down my back, as the man removed the lid from the tub, dipped his fingers inside and offered up something orange to his playmate. She unpouted her lips and spread them wide; I could even see her tongue come out a little. He fed her his fingers and she sucked back the offering, closing her eyes as she did.
The second time, she moaned.
Shifting my legs, an extra rush of heat hit me and between my thighs I felt moisture that wasn't sweat. Looking down at my book, I realized I'd been stuck on the same sentence ever since the couple's arrival.
The woman leaned in and whispered to her playmate. I caught a faint nod. Once again, his fingers dipped into the tub, except this time the man didn't offer his fingers to his lover, he offered them to me.
Had my spying been so obvious? Embarrassment glued me to my towel but then the woman also looked at me. Her smile was as warm as the breeze.
I shook my head. No. I couldn't.
This only made my beach mate's smiles broaden. He tilted his head at an angle that suggested hurt feelings if I didn't partake. She beckoned me with her fingers.
'Just one taste', I thought.
The afternoon heat had melted my muscles, I found myself crawling across the sand, on all fours, as if I were the couple's lazy house cat, coming for a treat. By the time I reached the man's fingers, the orange was dripping off them. I felt bad for taking so long; I opened my mouth and let him feed me.
A tidal wave of mangoes engulfed my brain. Cool and sweet, every tropical memory I owned pulsed through me and I found my eyes closing as I suckled the juice off two slender, male fingers.
The second time, I moaned.
He didn't offer his fingers to me again. Instead, he fed himself, turned his dark eyes to the woman and she leaned in to kiss him. I was close enough to smell their sweat mingling with their coconut scented sunscreen and hear their tongues fighting over the sorbet.
I'd never felt so hungry.
When they pulled apart, a silken string of saliva stretched between their lips for a moment before breaking. Hypnotic.
A gust of wind rustled the palm leaves overhead as the man lowered his fingers into the tub again. I was greedy for those fingers but he gave the treat to the woman instead. Maybe I pouted.
She opened her plump lips just wide enough to show me the sorbet on her tongue. Her face was a flower; the orange on her tongue was her nectar, my tongue was that of a yellow wasp coming to pollinate. I leaned in to drink from her mouth.
Warm lips, cool tongue. I sucked slowly and she sucked back Sweat tickled its way down my stomach and I shivered, lost in a stranger's mouth. The man's fingers were untying the straps of my bikini top; the woman's fingers were painting my nipples with something cool and sticky. I moaned, again.
Mmmmm, mango sorbet.
Licorice
This was definitely not my crowd. For the umpteenth time, I tugged down on the edges of the mini-skirt Master dressed me in. A man in a leather hood was led past me on a leash. Not my crowd, notourcrowd for that matter. We'd never been part of any scene.
I tottered on spiked heels, clinging to Master's side, not physically but with every psychic rope I could wrap around him. He'd told me once already to mingle. Half an hour later, I was still following him, puppy-like, through the party.
No surprise when he turned to me, face a black cloud, and growled, "Go! I don't want to see you for an hour."
I wobbled my way out of the living room as fast as I could, dragging my wounded ego behind me. Where I was going to go? I had no idea.
The party was packed; my direction was determined more by the flow of traffic than by my inclinations. I told myself,These are just nice, normal people, bankers, housewives, everyday folks, just like me,but that didn't stop me from feeling like a penguin wandering through the Serengeti.
I was funneled into a long hallway and a tall woman, with day-glo pink, cropped hair offered me a welcoming smile. Relieved to see a friendly gesture, I smiled back. She stuck out her tongue, displaying a large metal piercing, and waggled it up and down. Maybe I only imagined her laughing at me, as I stumbled and ran past her, wide eyed and trembling, but I doubt it.
Pushing my way through the throng, I spotted a closed door, grabbed the handle and thanked someone's god that it was unlocked. The room I'd escaped into was dark and quiet – perfect.
Dark, yes, but there were lights on. Dark because, as my eyes adjusted and my pulse slowed enough to allow observation, the room was black. Black walls, black stone floor, black ceiling, one long, black table and, seated at the far end of the table, a woman. She wore a white dress, barely discernable against her pale skin, and had hair as light blonde as mine but longer, almost down to her waist. I was rude to stare but the scene was striking, mesmerizing.
"Come here, Pet," she said, in a voice I would describe as white, also.
I did as she asked. Her demeanor was firm but calm; she put me at ease.
My heels clicking on the stone floor made me too aware of my gait. I tried to walk gracefully, I wanted to impress the Snow Queen.
"You look lost," she said, no real concern in her voice but no threat, either.
"I am..." I'd never been out like this before, what was I supposed to call her?
"You may call me Miss Lily, if you like."
"Miss Lily," I liked how her name wiggled out of my mouth.
"Kneel," she said. It wasn't an order, only an instruction, and I was glad for the direction.
Once I was kneeling front of her, she reached out a long, ivory-painted fingernail and lifted up the metal, heart-shaped tag attached to my collar. Her silver eyes were the definition of neutral as she read the inscription.
What did it say? Master had added it to my collar only this evening.
Miss Lily finished reading and nodded, then smoothed a hand over my head. "So soft. Lovely". Her fingers drifted through my hair.
I lowered my gaze, ashamed at my nipples coming alive at her touch, following the laces of her boots down to the tips, and around to a set of heels so high and narrow my toes curled just looking at them.
"Are you hungry, pet?"
"Yes, Miss Lily," I answered.
Her chair didn't make a sound as she turned it out to face me, as if she and everything in the room were made of air. She placed a black bowl on the floor, just beyond my reach. There was no cutlery; I'd have to bend over to eat. My short skirt would show everything. Everything.
No panties, no bra, Master insisted on this when he dressed me for the party. I'm no prude but he knows I'm private, he knows how much I detest the very style of dress he'd chosen.
Shuffling, I tried to move into a position where my head would be facing my hostess but she tapped a fingernail on the table top.
"No, where you were."
Biting my bottom lip, I moved back and dipped my head down to the bowl. My ass was high in the air, facing the lady in white. Could she see the pink folds between my legs, swollen and glistening? I knew the answer and that only increased the temperature in my nethers.
The bowl was empty.
Was she playing a trick on me? I looked again, lowering myself even further. No, there was something there but it was as black as the bowl and impossible to identify. My tongue reached out to explore, it burned with cold. Now I knew.
This time I took a healthy lick but paused when I felt something hard resting on my tailbone.
"Don't you like it?" Miss Lily asked.
Yes and no.
"Yes, Miss Lily," I managed to answer, without breathing.
"Then go on."
My face lowered to the bowl, I licked. The cruel heel of her boot pressed against the opening of my pussy.
I wanted to stop.
I licked again and gasped when the heel dug its way inside me. She was going to fuck me like this and I was going to let her.
I wanted to stop and I didn't.
How could I resist black licorice ice cream?
Bubblegum
Of the four flavours of ice cream displayed beneath the dusty glass of the Sip-n-Go mini mart, why did I choose bubblegum? I shrug, lick the blue mound on top of the cone and wander a little further into the desert.
High noon has eaten my shadow. Vegas seems a universe away. I'd only stopped for gas, a pee and a cold snack, so why am I out here, in the middle of Emptyville, with only hard pack, a few cactus and some rusted car parts for company?
Another tongueful of bubblegum; years start to roll backward. From the outside, no one would notice the change but I'm getting younger with each lick.
Thirty-five, twenty-six, twenty-two, nineteen, seventeen, fifteen. Fifteen. I'm fifteen now. Sweet bubble gum lips. Naïve and curious. I'm still a virgin.Not for long.
My tongue drags its way across the cool blue; my footsteps scare a jackrabbit hiding in the scrub. I stop and watch it bound away in terrified leaps. Poor bunny. Maybe I should be scared, too? After all, I'm just a young girl, alone.
No, not alone.
I wait for moment, a thin trickle of ice cream dribbles onto my hand. His footsteps are getting closer. Not very nice, following a poor, helpless bunny into the wild. When he'd smiled at me, in the Sip-n-Go, he'd had rattlesnake teeth and coyote eyes. Maybe I should be scared?
I resume my walk. Just up ahead, there's a wreck, mostly intact except for the missing tires and the sun burnt paint. Licking and ambling, I make my way to the abandoned car. Once there, I don't turn around. Fifteen year old girls are so clueless. I lean my elbows on the hood, bending over, swaying my hips to the music in my head – some band I'm, like, totally in love with.
Footsteps scratch their way closer and closer until I can smell him, sour from too many hours on the road, in the heat.
"I can't fuck you," I say, turning around, "I'm a virgin."
Coyote eyes narrow.
A stream of blue runs down my hand, my wrist, almost to my elbow, like blood from a wound. Lifting my hand high, I lick up my mess, ending at the cone. I watch the stranger swallow.
"But I can suck you off," I say.
He answers with a grunt, taking a few steps forward and turning so that his back is against the passenger door. I let him undo his own fly. Filthy pervert.
Small rocks chew at my knees, as I kneel in front of the man. He holds his hard cock out to me like a piece of candy he's using to lure me into his car. It's a big cock, a grown up man cock, the kind I've only seen in the dirty magazines my dad keeps hidden under the bed. Working up a little saliva, I coat the tip of his man candy with blue spit and use my free hand to rub it around.
Coyote growl.
At the smell of his crotch, all sweat and danger, I wrinkle my nose. I take a long lick at my cone, which is melting fast now, and then lower my lips to the stranger's cock. He shivers. One coat of bubble gum. Raising my head, I take another lick of cone and go back down on the stranger – now he tastes better.
My sucking is slow, not because I'm inexperienced but because I like the feel of the veins against my tongue and the walls of my mouth. He is big for me, though, so big that sometimes I choke.
The ice cream is running down my arm; I have to stop now and then to suck on my cone instead. When I do this, the strange man makes a noise, kind of an impatient moan. I like his noise, I like teasing him.
I'm starting to like the choking, too. A few times, I try pushing his dick as far into my mouth as I can, until my throat is full and I can't breathe. Then I have to stop. When I pull away, long, gooey, blue strings hang from my mouth. The gooiness isn't gross, though, it helps make his member slippery and each time I can get him down my throat a bit farther.
I feel the man's hand grab my pony tail. Tight. He wraps it around his hand like a cowboy with a set of reins. My hair is cinched so tight in his hand, it tugs on the corners of my eyes. He uses the reins to push my head further onto his cock.
I gag and feel the cone crunch in my hand.
He pulls my head away. I catch my breath. He pushes it back down. Another gag. Tears roll from my taut eyelids. Pull and push and gag and moan, he fucks my throat. Blue cream coats my left arm, another kind of cream is soaking through my pink, flowered panties.
He yanks my head away and grabs his blue cock in his hand. His blue, bubble gum, candy cock. I want to eat his candy. I open my mouth and stick out my matching blue tongue.
A rattlesnake rattle.
His hand pumps hot juice from his cock onto my tongue, my lips, my tear stained cheeks. He lets go of my pony tail, gasping, wipes the jiz from my cheeks and lets me suck it from his fingers. It tastes like bubblegum. Candy for a good girl.
Rocky Road
"Up. Now. Bitch."
The voice shook me out of sleep. Where was I? Hotel, yes. Hotel room. I pulled off my eyeshades.
"Up on all fours, move it and keep your mouth shut," a black, meat bus was parked at the foot of my bed, barking orders at me.
A scream caught in my throat but in the light of the bedside lamp I caught sight of my master, sitting on the couch. Surely he would explain everything. As I thought that, a hand grabbed the bulk of my hair and tugged me up and onto all fours.
"Looks like someone skipped a few obedience classes."
Looking from my attacker to Master, my eyes were question marks.
"What are you looking at him for? What, you think he's here to save your scrawny ass? Dumb ass bitch."
For the first time, I gave the man a good look. He was as black as espresso and every bit as powerful. The dim lamp light made a sculpture of his muscles, every one on display since he was shirtless. I couldn't help myself, I looked back at my master for some reassurance. Instead, I got annoyance.
Then a slap. I whimpered. He'd held back, Mr Espresso, but my face still stung from his hand.
"Now, do I have your undivided?" he asked and I nodded. "Good. You are not to look at that man on the couch, you keep the pretty blues on me at all times. Seems you have a punishment owed and I'm it."
Flipping through my mental rolodex, I tried to remember any outstanding punishments but came up blank. Not that it mattered, not that I could even concentrate under these circumstances.
"Now, I hear you like ice cream, is that true?" his voice became sickly sweet.
I nodded just enough for him to notice.
"Good, because tonight you'll be having some Rocky Road. You know what's in Rocky Road, don't you?"
Mr Espresso didn't allow me time to answer.
"Well, you got your chocolate," he gestured to himself as if he were a game show hostess displaying a prize. "And you got your nuts," as he said the last word, a smile crept over his face. Unzipping his jeans, he pulled out his already hard cock, tilted it skyward to show me his balls, and chuckled.
I felt guilty for staring even though he wanted me to look. His was the most monstrous cock I'd ever seen. In his bear paw hands, it looked big; in mine it would look freakish. My mouth was probably hanging open, because he laughed again.
"That's right, slut, sometimes the stereotypes are true." Mr Espresso paused to stroke the beast and soak in my obvious fear.
"We've got chocolate, we've got nuts, now all we need for Rocky Road is..." he reached over to the bedside table and grabbed a bag I hadn't noticed in all the confusion, "marshmallows."
Marshmallows?
As he tore open a corner of the bag, he kept one eye on me. "Here's what's going down, slave girl, you're going to hold one of these marshmallows between your teeth, you think you can do that?"
I nodded as cautiously as possible.
"Good. Open wide."
He held out the sugary pillow to me as I opened my mouth. With fingers that hinted at restrained power, he placed the marshmallow halfway in my mouth and positioned my jaw so that I was barely holding it.
"We're almost there." He said, moving around the bed, running his hand down the length of my body as he did. "Remember, it's called Rocky Road, not Smooth Road, so you best prepare." His hand stopped on the curve of my ass; I inhaled, quick and sugary.
His one hand remained on my ass while the fingers of his other hand started prying open the lips of my pussy. My mouth may have been dry but those lips were not. I felt my face burn, ashamed.
His voice deepened, "This hole is first."
I couldn't help myself; I turned my head around to size up his cock once more. That was a mistake. When I turned my head back, I snuck a peek at Master, on the couch, slight smile playing at his lips.
Whack! A bear paw came down on my ass and I gasped around the marshmallow in my mouth.
"Don't pull that shit again. I told you not to look at him."
I shivered.
"As I was saying, I'm going to start by fucking this undeserving cunt of yours. When I'm done, I check that marshmallow you're holding all nice and delicate-like. If I find teeth marks, we start over. Maybe I plug up that pussy of yours, maybe..." he rested his thumb on the pucker of my ass, "maybe I move onto another hole. No matter, we're going to keep doing this 'till I pull that treat out of your filthy mouth as clean as it went in."
Had I already bitten down on it? I couldn't remember.
"You ready?"
It felt as if an hour passed before I worked up the courage to nod.
"Good," he said, stretching the word out like a melted marshmallow as he pulled me, by the hips, to edge of the bed.
His cock bullied its way into me as if it were busting through a police barricade. I tried to focus all my thoughts on the marshmallow resting between my teeth but by the second or third thrust my will dissolved.
My pussy was splitting in half. I groaned around the soft treat. Mr Espresso's hands nearly encircled my waist as he pulled and pumped.
"Oh yeah, you can take all of this," he said, driving in harder.
Images of industrial sized pistons filled my mind. He was fucking me like that. Like a machine. Relentless. Compressing my spine. Knocking my teeth together.
Fuck.
Too late. I heard the cluck of my teeth and the cry I make when pain crosses the border into pleasure territory. Mr Espresso heard it, too.
He stopped the pounding, pulled out, picked up the half marshmallow lying on the bed and shook his head. "Shit, and I thought you was some tough-assed bitch or something. I didn't even get into a rhythm yet." He held out his hand beneath my mouth and I let the other half of the marshmallow drop into it.
With the evidence in his hand, he walked over and sat next to Master, on the couch.
"Shame," I heard Master say, not daring to look, "I thought she would have held out longer."
Mr Espresso chuckled, "Don't be silly Tomas; most women would have wet themselves at the sight of such a well endowed and fierce black warrior such as myself. She has a long way to go but you were correct about her guts and determination."
Where had his gansta lingo gone? My punisher suddenly spoke like a Harvard business grad. How does Tomas find these people?
"Mmm, true." Master answered. "Still, she needs challenges. Idle hands and all that."
"I agree wholeheartedly. Speaking of which..." he stood and sauntered back over to where I remained, on the bed, waiting, confused. He picked up the bag of marshmallows. "Young miss, while I applaud your efforts, the fact of your failure remains. Now that the shock and awe segment of your punishment has passed, let us get down to the business of proper training. I believe your ass is next on the agenda. Open your mouth, please."
My jaw dropped from a combination of obedience, fear and surprise.
As he replaced the broken marshmallow with a whole one, he flashed me a brilliant smile, "Rocky Road, you have to admit, it was pretty clever."
Coconut
Sleep was not coming. Walls as thin as cardboard were no defense against the boom, boom, boom from the nightclub next door. The fan over my bed wasn't cooling me, merely moving the hot air back and forth. I dragged myself to the bathroom and showered, for the seventh time that evening, under a dribble of water from a pipe with no shower head attached.
Tossing on a pair of shorts and a tank top, I fought my way out the wood door that was too big for its frame and stumbled onto the 'deck' of my hotel room. The deck consisted of a plastic chair, which may have been green once upon a time, and a metal table, tilted at an angle, both on the sidewalk, facing the parking lot.
"If you ask me, this place is worth all of the seventeen dollars a night," a man said.
My neighbour was sitting on his deck. Earlier that day we'd exchanged hellos and waves. His face was painted in the yellow light of the single, bare bulb between our two motel rooms. Story was etched into the lines around his mouth.
"I'm just here for the free toiletries," I answered.
He let out a soft chuckle. "I know a place not far from here that makes the best coconut ice cream in Costa Rica, maybe the world."
Wandering off with a strange man in the middle of the night? Somehow, as I looked in his eyes, the idea seemed logical. Then again, maybe it was those lines and their promise of tales of intrigue that talked me into it.
As we walked around the corner and along Avenida del Sol a few drunk gringos – kids freshly hatched into the wide world - passed by every so often, but it wasn't long before we left them behind to their boom, boom, boom and their back alley puking.
"Can I guess your name?" I asked my new companion.
He smiled and spread his hands, palms up, as an invitation.
I gave him a once over. Late thirties, blond, blue-grey eyes, pale skin but he wasn't sweating, which meant he'd spent enough time here, or some place as hot as here, to acclimatize. Nordic features hidden beneath layers of jungle grime.
"Eric?" I asked.
He turned his head to me and smiled again. No answer, just lines.
"Well, I'm going to call you Eric, it suits you. You can call me whatever you like. Tit for tat."
"OK then, Miss Marigold Puddingpants."
His look was dead serious; I cracked first. Soon we were both laughing, then a quiet settled over us. The only sound was our footsteps, muted by the heavy air of the night, and the faraway thrum of the disco.
"Have you ever known something you wished you didn't know?" I asked.
Eric's lingering smile vanished. "Too much." When I didn't interrupt, he looked skyward for a moment and sighed. "Once upon a time I was a journalist. Erase all those glamorous images from your mind, I was a nobody. I spent most of my time based in Butt Fuck Indonesia or Butt Fuck Central America, working for Reuters, writing about conflicts too unpopular for more than a paragraph stuffed in the bottom of the World News section of most newspapers. Yeah, there's heaps I'd like to un-know. How about you?"
"Nothing," I lied. As I looked away and across the street, I felt him sizing me up.
"Have you been to Cambodia?" he asked, cupping my elbow with his hand and steering me away from a pothole I was about to walk into.
"Thanks. No. I hear it's beautiful, if you can stand the heat."
"It is. Hot and beautiful." He stopped and gazed up and down the street.
"What?"
"I love places like this at night. Latin countries should only be seen by night."
His words hit me like second hand déjà vu. I looked at the row of shops and restaurants crammed in together, their daytime shabbiness transformed by lights the way an ordinary pine tree becomes a marvel at Christmas.
Eric started walking again.
"In Cambodia, there's a memorial for victims of the Khmer Rouge, I was thinking you should never visit that place. You're a carrier."
"A carrier?" my laugh was uncomfortable. "As in disease?"
"No, I mean as in someone who carries things with them. Always. Most people will walk through this town, take some pictures, look at some monkeys, go home, share their stories and gradually forget. You, you'll absorb it all and carry it with you forever. The stuff you want to un-know but you think is too petty to tell me, it's all part of your cache. Ah, here's the shop. Still open. You have to love the third world."
I had questions but we walked in the open door of the neveria and the bright lights rendered them irrelevant.
"Bueno," an old man, with raisin skin, greeted us.
Eric ordered for us in perfect Spanish, I envied his fluency and felt a tinge of guilt that I hadn't studied the language harder. Singing a tune, the old man scooped out two cones of white ice cream for us. I held them while Eric paid.
Out on the street, I rested my back against a lamp post while I licked at my cone. My new friend gestured to the shop window and we watched the old man sing and clean as if we were watching a movie, a romantic musical about a Costa Rican ice cream vendor.
I was still smiling at the show when Eric turned back to face me. Our eyes had a brief conversation.
I know you. You're the other half of my soul that's been missing.
And we kissed.
No, we blended, merged, melded, made ourselves whole. His lips were so soft and pliable, I lost track of where they ended and where mine began. Our tongues were fearless, tumbling over each other in slow motion. Our eyes were closed and our mouths were pressed together but we still spoke to each other.
I need you.
When we pulled apart, the singing had vanished. I would always hear it, though.
I can hear it now.
He raised his left hand and brushed a strand of hair from my face. The ring I'd tried to ignore was touching my cheek. My eyes asked the question for me.
"It's complicated," Eric answered.
"It always is," I said.
Why am I always drawn to the stories?
"You'd like her. She'd like you," his mouth said, but his eyes were handing me an invitation. A map to a road less traveled.
I took another lick of my cone then leaned forward to meet Eric's mouth. 'He's right,' I thought, as I felt us rejoin, 'this is the best coconut ice cream in the world.'
Neapolitan
Easy. When Master uses that word it is always with the highest sense of irony. The challenge was simple: three flavours of ice cream in one tub, three bowls, three men, one flavour for each man, one spoon, one kitchen timer. Easy.
Strawberry for Jordan. A childish flavour to match his shaggy, surfer boy look and demeanor. For Mr Black, chocolate, dark and slightly bitter. Vanilla for Tomas, my master. Boring vanilla, he would say.
I glance at the timer, why must it move so quickly?
My task: scoop out a bowl for each man, in sixty seconds, without any of the flavours crossing over. Even I thought this was going to be below my abilities. Silly girl. The spoon I was given was a big wooden one and the tub of Neapolitan ice cream was rock hard.
The ticking of the clock is tugging at my nerves.
Fail to complete the task on time and be punished. Each man gets a turn. This is my eighth attempt. After seven rounds of torture, I'm both weak and so aroused I can barely walk straight.
My hand trembles as I try to push aside the melting chocolate and scoop up only the vanilla. It's useless; a brown river is muddying the white plain.
"Twenty seconds, K," Master calls out from the adjoining living room.
The spoon slips from my hand, bounces off the edge of the tub and drops to the floor, splattering ice cream on Black's clean, white tile floor. This is bad.
He is next in line.
"Leave it," Black barks, when I grab a cloth to clean up the mess.
I pick up the spoon, conscious of the welts on my ass as I bend down. I'm never going to succeed, everyone knows it, but Master expects me to try my best. Once I've run it under the tap and wiped it clean, I lower the spoon into to the tub, again. I can do this.
BUZZ.
Fuck. No.
Hanging my head, I listen to the timer buzzing my defeat. One bowl, that's as far as I got and even that bowl has bits of the other two flavours in it.
"Oh boy, K, you're in for a lickin' now," Jordan says. I imagine him bouncing up and down in his chair.
I'm paralyzed, remembering the last two lashings I received by Black's hand.
"K, get over here, now!" Master's voice.
How long have I been standing here?
Hurrying from the kitchen to the living room, I stop and kneel in front of Black as I've been instructed to do. If I had the nerve to look up, I'm sure I'd see his dark eyes boring holes into me and his sharp jaw set in a scowl.
"Clumsy, messy and slow. Why Tomas suffers you, I'll never know." Black speaks as he stands. With two fingers, he lifts my chin until I'm looking up, then he slides his thumb across my lips and forces it into my mouth.
Even as I promise myself I won't, I start sucking. I can't help myself.
"Oh, right, that's why," Black says. Jordan howls and even Master chuckles. "But you'll have to wait. Stick before carrot...so to speak."
He grips my lower jaw with his thumb and fingers and pulls me forward until I'm on all fours, my face almost touching the couch.
"Open wide and wedge that suck tool of yours onto the edge of the couch cushion," Black orders as he removes his digits.
I obey, wincing at the dry rub of the heavy fabric.
Black steps beyond my field of vision but I can feel and hear him. He yanks both my arms out from beneath me and pulls them behind my back. Without their support, my body weight drives my head further into the cushion and I gag against it.
Next I feel rope wrapping around my wrists, binding them behind my back, my heart rate quickens and the Amazon between my thighs begins to flow again.
"Tomas, do you mind if I try my new toy?" Black's voice has an edge of excitement to it. I shiver, not because I'm naked but because excitement for Black means pain for me. He prides himself on his toys and his skill with them.
"Go ahead. I'm curious myself," Master answers.
Every muscle tensing, I strain to decipher what Black's new toy is from the sounds. Not that I need to. He sets a long, slender piece of rattan on the couch, an inch or two away from my nose.
"K, I realize you've never been caned before but let me assure you this..." he picks up the cane and drags the tip of it over my head and down my spine, "is going to hurt. A lot."
Black may be a sadist but he's an honest one.
The first strike catches me on the bottom curve of my butt cheek and stings. Master has shared me with Black enough times for me to realize this is only a warm up, which makes me shiver again.
The second and third strike, each in a different spot, each more intense, send my nerve endings into high alert. On the fourth hit I cry out into the couch cushion. I can feel my body taking over. Just as with Black's thumb, my mind may set itself against him but my body can't help but respond.
I've been lashed before, my pain tolerance is in the stratosphere, but the cane takes me off guard. It isn't the hit that hurts, it's the moment after that hit when the hot pain arrives, as sharp and concentrated as a bullet.
Counting strikes in my head doesn't work, as soon as the sweet pulses of pain start flaring I lose my grip on reality.
Was that eight or nine?
Whack. Fuck. I don't know. Please stop.
Whack. I scream. It's muted. No one can hear.
Whack. Please. More.
Black moves, alters the rhythm, speeds up, slows down, always doing what I least expect, keeping me in a state of high alert.
The strikes come faster, harder, in the same spot. It feels as if someone is lighting sparklers in my brain. Everything is bright lights and burning and sparks. I can hear a noise, guttural, primitive. It takes a moment to realize the sound is coming from me. I'm weeping, salty tears are pooling in the corners of my mouth.
Whack. Time is irrelevant. All thought vanishes. I am pain.
Ten? Twenty? A hundred? How many lashes have I received? The caning goes on until the concept of time seems foolish.
Whack. Pain.
Whack. Pleasure.
Whack. Pain.
Warmth washes its way down the vertebrae of my spine. By the time it reaches the bottom, I'm overwhelmed. The cane comes down, the walls of my sex swell to bursting with heat. The pleasure and pain centers in my brain have touched, setting off an earthquake. In that moment, I feel a hand on my pussy, pressing down on my clit. That's all it takes. Convulsing, the first waves of orgasm hit me like the resultant tsunami.
My whole body surrenders, every nerve ending flooded by sensation. My arms strain upward awkwardly, bound together, my back arches, I howl into the cushion. I travel to a new planet as I come, shaking and twitching until my muscles ache.
Then everything goes dark.
Silence. Where am I? I'm so light. I can feel hands, cool hands, on my flaming skin.
A low whistle calls out. Is a train going by?
"Jesus H, Black, that was in-fucking-tense." Jordan's voice. He sounds so far away.
Eyes open, I try to focus. Hands are untying my wrists. My arms fall free. Hands are on the back of my head, now, smoothing my hair, pulling me away from the edge of the couch. Air. Hands move me until I'm sitting, the sting of the cane still biting me. I look up to thank Black but it's my Master's face looking down at me. He's smiling.
He sits on the couch, right in the spot where my face had been. He motions to me, extending a hand, and lifts me up on his lap. Sinking my head into his chest, I inhale, taking in his smell and letting his warmth bring me back to humanity.
Master pets and soothes me. Happiness radiates from his fingers. I've pleased him.
"K?" Black's voice is gentle.
I lift my head and turn. He's standing next to Jordan, who's holding a huge bowl of chocolate ice cream with a sparkler stuck in it.
"Happy birthday," the two of them say.
Is it? I'd forgotten in all the excitement about today's visit.
"Happy birthday, my pet," Master says, kissing the top of my head. "Your day isn't over but you've earned a treat."
I can think of a thousand sappy things I want to say, about pain, about love, about friendship...but I think I'll wait until I'm finished my ice cream.
