“Thank you, sir.”
Ellsbeth counted in her head, reaching fifteen and thanking him after each one. He ran his hand along her ass again, and she could feel the warmth radiating from her red and swollen skin. She imagined the outline of his fingers leaving marks.
It felt like swimming in the ocean, that moment you go out far enough that your toes no longer touch the sand, and you float, taken by the current, just working hard enough to keep your head above water. That was what it was like for Ellsbeth to relax into Rawlins’s orders. To obey him. But the ocean was unfeeling and indifferent: Rawlins wantedherspecifically. She was on his lap, her ass in the air and her hands tied behind her back, and knowing how much he wanted her, she felt more powerful than she had ever felt in her life.
“You’ve had your punishment,” Rawlins said. “But by the looks of it, I think you might have enjoyed it.” Ellsbeth had the presence of mind not to respond.
He undid the belt from her wrists. “Thank you, sir,” she said, and smiled back at him.
“Oh, no,” he said, “Don’t thank me yet. The binding is going to stay on. I just wanted to make sure you could get in the right position. Kneel on the bed. Facing away from me.”
She obeyed, and felt the belt cinch itself around her wrists again. And then a shove forward from which she couldn’t catch herself, and she landed with her cheek down on her duvet. Behind her, she sensed Rawlins pull off his T-shirt and unbutton his jeans. The foil of a condom ripping.
“Tell me what you want, Ellsbeth,” he said.
“I want you to fuck me.”
“I just spanked your ass raw and tied your hands behind your back. You want me to fuck you?”
“Yes. God. Please. More than anything.”
He teased her then, the tip of his cock barely touching her. Andthen all at once he was inside of her and the rest of the world disappeared. There was just the sensation of him filling her up completely, the lingering stinging of her ass, and the feeling of him being close to her. She pressed in against him. She wanted more. Deeper. She wanted it to hurt. Rawlins seemed to read her mind; he reached out with one hand and twisted it into her hair, pulling just enough to make Ellsbeth catch her breath. She could feel the orgasm rising in her, but before she could come, he pulled his cock out and flipped her over, her back pressing into the bedspread. She looked up at him, hallowed by the faint glow of a streetlight from outside the window.
“You’re so impossibly fucking beautiful,” he said, drinking her with his eyes. And then he was inside her again, and now that he was close she could see his face, see his thick hair falling onto his forehead, the tendons in his forearms straining while his hands squeezed their way down her body. The crest was rising in her again.
“I’m going to come,” she said. “I’m going to—”
“Ask permission.”
“Please, sir, let me come.”
“Beg.”
“Please. Please.Please.”
He waited just a single, torturous breath before he replied. “Good girl. Come for me.”
She did, and at that same moment Rawlins shut his eyes and shuddered and came, too.
Ellsbeth could see the young man in his face then, the boy he must have been at twenty, an undergraduate, already tall but not yet filled out. Cocky and too sure of his own brilliance and inevitable success. Fucking a teacher, too.
Rawlins collapsed onto the bed beside her. “Here, let me.” He undid the belt, and rubbed at the red marks it had left in Ellsbeth’s wrists. “You have distinctly perfect wrists,” Rawlins said, kissing each one. “I didn’t know until this very moment that someone could havewriststhat turn me on.”
Ellsbeth just lolled her head over and breathed in the smell of him. She wanted to bottle this moment, the perfect pain and pleasure of it, the way she had given Rawlins complete control and had only wanted him to go further.
She kissed him deeply, and he kissed her back, and she wasn’t sure if that was breaking the deal they had made to avoid feelings, but she couldn’t stop herself. She wanted todisappearinto him.
It was another half an hour lying beside each other in bed before they were both stable enough on their feet to get dressed and return to the living room to finish their barely sipped glasses of wine. It felt surreal and a little absurd to see Rawlins in her tiny apartment, in an expensive shirt half buttoned, perched on the couch she had picked up used for fifty dollars.
“I understand what people say about arcane mechanicals being a useless Ivory Tower discipline,” Ellsbeth said, tucking her legs beneath her on the couch. “Because you could have spent forty minutes preparing to bind me with writ magic, when a belt saved us both a lot of time and trouble.”
“Precious metals get expensive.”
“And it’s so hard to get the smell of burning out of upholstery. But alas. The pursuit of scholarship is about ideas, and not practicality.”
“Just don’t mention that to any fellowship committees,” Rawlins said. “Try:A new study that will change the face of the world as we know it.Although—” He took a sip of his wine. “—ironically, your obscuration ritualcouldactually change the world. It was brilliant. The most innovative ritual I’ve read in fifteen years, and it came from a graduate student. And no one will ever be able to see it.”
“But I impressed you,” Ellsbeth said.
