She was strung tight now from her crown to her heels, every muscle in the strong working body of her drawn taut, her breath coming in those short uneven pulls, her hips rolling slow and helpless against the air, soaking, gone soft in the head the way she gets when she’s all the way down, when the words come loose from her and the careful drains out and there’s only sensation left. I’d watched it happen over my lap a hundred times, the boss going under, the Little coming up—but never likethis, never this far, never this open, because she’d never handed me this much before tonight.
I leaned in and pressed my mouth to her hipbone, just once, just to feel her jolt and gasp and reach blind for me, and then I drew back, and I set the feather down on the nightstand where she could hear the small soft sound of it leaving my hand.
She went very still at the sound. Listening. Waiting in her dark for what came next, fully down, fully open, strung and soaked and gone, exactly where I wanted her, exactly where I’d been bringing her the whole slow time.
“Good girl,” I said. “You did so good. You ready for the next thing?”
“Yes,” she whispered, blind and trusting, her voice gone young and far away. “Yes, Daddy. Please.”
And I reached for the candle.
I struck the match where she could hear it.
The little rasp and flare of it, and I felt her go still all over again at the sound, listening with her whole body. I held it close enough that she’d smell the sulfur and the small honest burn of the candlewick catching.
“That’s the match,” I told her. “That’s the candle lit. I’m going to let it burn a minute, get a little pool of wax going, and then it comes to you. From up high, like I said. Warm by the time it lands. I tell you before every drop. You never get one you didn’t hear coming. You hold onto that.”
She nodded, blind, her lips parted, breathing.
I let it burn. I held the flame high over her, watching the little pool gather gold and liquid at the wick, and I tipped the candle the smallest amount so the light of it played across the bare lace and the soft rise and fall of her, and I lined up the first drop over the swell of her breast, above the dark hard peak the feather had left aching.
“Here,” I said, soft. “Breathe.”
And I let it fall.
The drop came down bright and small and she cried out and arched clean off the bed, the lace pulling taut across her, and the sound that came out of her had the moan braided all the way through it—the same nerve, the exact place the spanking had always found, the sting and the want come up indivisible, pain and pleasure so close together she couldn’t pry them apart. I watched her face under the blindfold, fast, for the line, for any flicker of too much, and what I found instead was a woman flying.
“Good girl,” I breathed, and then I leaned in and put my mouth on it, on the warm wax cooling on her skin, and I chased the heat of it away with my lips and my tongue, hot then cool, and she shuddered under the change of it, the edge of the wax and the care of my mouth one after the other so close she could hardly tell which was which.
“You feel that,” I murmured against her breast. “Sting, then me. Sting, then me. Every time. I never give you the one without the other. I never leave you on the edge of it alone.”
I worked it slow. A drop high on the other breast and my mouth chasing it warm and gone. A drop in the soft hollow below her ribs and her stomach jumping under it and my lips smoothing the place after. I read her the whole time, the catch of her breath, the lift of her hips, the small involuntary sounds, watching for the place I wouldn’t cross and never finding it because she’d opened so far past it tonight, handed me so much off her own page, that there was only the up of it, only higher.
I painted her in points of light.
That’s how it looked in the candle-glow — the cooled wax going pale and matte across her skin in little blooms, up the swell of her breasts, the line of her sternum, the soft of her belly, a scatter of them, every single one soothed after with my mouth so that she was a map of sting-and-care, edge-and-tenderness, and she was shaking under all of it, fine tremors running through the strong working body of her, head tipped back, throat working, gone.
“Daddy—” It came out of her thin and high and broken. “Daddy, I—I can’t—”
“You can,” I told her, and I set the candle down and brought my free hand up to stroke her hair back off her damp forehead, that one tender thing while the warmth still cooled on her skin, and I felt her turn her cheek into my palm blind and desperate. “You can. You’re doing it. You’re so good, you’re taking it so good for me, look at you. You’re not going anywhere I can’t reach. Stay with my voice.”
She was babbling now. The words coming loose the way they only come loose when she’s all the way down, English running into Greek, surfacing the way it does when she’s undone—please and Daddy and then a string of soft Greek I couldn’t follow, agápi mou in there, and parakaló, please, please, her hips rolling helpless and her thighs falling open and the bare slick heat of her gleaming in the gold light, begging in two tongues for a touch I was still keeping just past her reach.
“I know,” I soothed, and I dripped one more, low, on the soft inside of her hip where I knew she’d feel it everywhere, and chased it with my mouth so close to where she ached that she sobbed. “I know what you need. Soon. I’ve got you. You don’t have to ask. You don’t have to do a single thing.”
And then I gave her the one she didn’t see coming.
I waited until the wax across her chest had set pale and cool and hardened, until she’d half-forgotten it was there in the haze of everything else, and then I caught the edge of one of the blooms with my thumbnail and I peeled it off her, slow, a long deliberate pull, the dried wax lifting off her warm skin in one piece — and the feeling of it, the strange tugging cool reverse of the heat, a sensation she had no map for, made her cry out andarch and shudder all over again, fresh, undone by something she’d never felt before.
“There,” I breathed, peeling another, slow, watching her come apart under each one. “One more thing your body’s never done. One more thing you don’t have to understand. Just feel it. Just let me.”
I peeled them all, one by one, slow, and with each one she shook harder and sobbed softer, the words gone out of her entirely now, just sound, just breath, just the high helpless music of a woman taken all the way down and held there—and she was gone. All the way gone.
“Good girl,” I whispered, my forehead against her temple, the blindfold soft under my lips. “So good. You’re all the way down now, aren’t you. All the way gone for me.” I smoothed the last of the cooled wax from her skin and laid my warm hand flat over her racing heart. “I’ve got you. I’ve got every bit of you. And now—” I reached for the knot of the cloth over her eyes. “Now I want you to come back up just enough to see me.”
I pulled the blindfold off before I took her.
I’d thought about it, whether to leave it, but I wanted her to see, to be immersed in me in the end. So I eased the soft cloth up off her eyes and let the lamplight find her, and I watched her come back up out of the dark and her gaze swim and focus and land on my face.
