You let me into the pool. Or rather, what used to be the pool. Now it’s just a basement and we’re forbidden to go down there due to insurance or something, but somehow you worked your magic and you have the key. Is it that you’re buddies with the doorman? I’d bet it is. I ask you and you shrug, reply,
“I have my sources.”
It’s a big pit now, and I would have thought it would be dirtier, but it’s not. It’s smooth, white porcelain tile with a gentle slope. I walk down into the deep end, dragging my hand across the growing walls. Someone must be cleaning it because I’ve seen an abandoned pool once before, in the basement of the theatre at my college. Leave it to an undergrad program to turn a gym space into a performance space instead of spring for a new one. Up-cycling, I suppose. That pool was dirty and full of leaves and had the smell of standing water permeating the air and the floors and the ceiling. This one, though–it looks like we could fill it and use it tomorrow. Hell, a few hours from now, if we wanted.
“Why are we down here?” I ask you.
You shrug again. “You like weird stuff. I thought you might think it was cool.”
I raise my eyebrows. “Really now?” I’m eyeing the ladders that once took occupants of your building into clear, cold water. I round on you. “Let me see inside your backpack.”
A wide grin splits open your face and you laugh. “Suspicious of me?”
“Yes. Now let me see inside your backpack.” And I don’t wait for an answer. I grab the bag you’d dropped in the dip of the drained pool and I pull it open without using the zipper pull. Two things immediately reveal themselves to me: a length of rope and a set of police handcuffs. I display one in each fist and the corners of my mouth twitched up. “Thought I’d like the pool, hm?”
You smile even wider, though I didn’t think that was possible. “Well. At least I know you know me very, very well.”
You stride toward me and I think I’m going to get pinned to the sloping floor. But instead you look at my collar bone and run just one short nail along it. You flip your finger to feel my goosebumps with the ridges on your finger print. I shiver.
“I like collar bones,” you say.
“I know.”
You curl around me and bury your nose in my neck, taking a deep breath. You don’t kiss. You run your lips behind my ear and you breathe again. All five finger tips rove and you trace little circles on my skin. My squeak echoes off all the reflective surfaces and I love the noise and knowing that no one will hear it this far below. You’d never done that to me before, the thing with the circles. I do it to you all the time, when you’re falling asleep. I thought you hadn’t really noticed that, but now I guess you have. I swallow. That’s an affirmation for me, somehow.
And then you swallow my mouth, cocooning my lips while you take my hands in yours. You pull away very quickly and I lunge forward to keep kissing you because I don’t want to break the link, I don’t want to feel the cold air that comes with the white walls. You are warm and electric. But as soon as I reach your mouth, you pull back again. And again. And I feel the incline under my feet and I know you’re leading me back up to the shallow end. I close my eyes and play your game, letting myself be tricked because I know where you are taking me. And I am proven right when I feel my arm brush the cold, round metal. I pull away from you this time and I look at your bright eyes and your wet mouth. Your face is flushed pink and your hands are still touching me, tracing circles on my palms now.
“So,” I say. “You want to tie me to the ladder.”
You cock your head and indulge yourself in your only feminine habit: you reach back and you twirl your hair. “Or handcuffs. I brought options. You know. So you could have…options. Um…”
It is not your suavest moment and I am not helping because you think I am going to refuse. You think I’m going to give you a hard time of it. We haven’t had the customary “what are you into” conversation just yet, mostly because we can’t keep our mouths off each other long enough to have it.I won’t refuse you, no, but I love watching you squirm and I certainly won’t let you have it easy.
“Options.” I state. You look at me, waiting for some kind of explanation of how I feel about the options. I do not offer one up. Instead I kiss you again. I take hold of your twirling finger and place your hand squarely on my ass, cradling the part where I am the roundest. You stiffen at first and I expect you to stop and ask me to give a definitive opinion of the options, but you melt into me instead. You surrender and I feel you push back into me, your mouth becoming more aggressive. Your teeth pinch my lips, but not too hard. Just enough to grab me and hold me.
I push your back against the ladder, the soft “uff” spoke into the echoing air signaling that I’ve met my target. “Stay,” I say. “Be a good girl.”
I retreat to the backpack where I’d dropped your options. I consider them. I was a girl scout when I was little, but my troop was the kind that picked tea parties over camping every time, so I can’t tie any knots. The hand cuffs seem to be the way to go. As I approach you, I see you grinning and shaking your head.
“I wasn’t expecting this,” you say.
I grab your wrist and click the ring around your right wrist. I love the ratcheting sound it makes as I squeeze it tighter. I am about to imprison you when I have a thought.
“You have the keys for these, right?”
“I triple-checked,” you reply.
There is an icy clink of metal on metal and I get to hear the ratcheting sound again. It bounces around the pristine walls and the space between my ears and it makes my entire body reverberate with the sound. I am on you, biting at your collar bone because you aren’t the only one who likes them. You reach with your free hand to grab my hair and I pull back. I overlooked a hand. I guess I’m learning to tie a knot today.
As I back away from you I keep my eyes on your face. You’re smiling. I reach down into the bag and grab the rope. I tie your wrist to the ladder and it is the shittiest knot ever. But you play along. Even though I know (and you know) that you can pull that rope apart in half a second without very much effort at all, you keep your hand glued to the ladder as if I’d nailed it there. I like that you play my game.
Now I can play without interference. I can feel the muscles under your skin flex as I drag my tongue over your stomach. It is flat and I am jealous. But not so much, really, because right now this stomach is mine. I posses it. I feel it ripple, feel the tension build from being unable to touch me and I smile, my mouth against you so you can feel it. You arch your back as I unbutton your shirt, each whisper of the fabric telling secrets to each goose-bump sending electricity to your clit. I can smell that you’re wet for me.
I torture you for a little while, letting my fingers slide along the threshold of your jeans and letting them skip back. Letting them decide for themselves that unbuttoning your pants just now would be too much hard work when my mouth can play with your nipples instead and get just as much of a reaction.
“Please,” you ask. I kiss you to shut you up, my knee laying to rest between your spread and twitching legs. You moan in my mouth and I’m reverberating again. I feel I am strung, tight, and vibrating and I can’t take it anymore. I need to be touched but I do not want to set you free. I break from you, sitting hard and fast on the tile. I undo each button on my jeans and rip them, tossing them to the deep end. I am not wearing anything under the jeans and I am so happy to see your mouth wet and shining, betraying your want and your anticipation.
I start slowly, running my finger up and down my thigh. “Please,” you beg. I like that you’re begging and it’s not even you. So I pause, just a breath above my clit, and then start up on my other thigh. You sag against the ladder. “Aww, come on.”
But I can’t take it anymore. Seeing your eyes wide and gluttonous is fun, but I am buzzing. I lay one hot finger on my clit and moan. I hadn’t realized how wet I’d become, just teasing you, but I slide easy. Up and down. You moan again and I moan with you, the echo deep and pleasing like expensive dark chocolate. I start to pull, one finger on each side and my body ignites. “Fuck,” I scream. I like it hard, pinching, and I throw my head back with every pulse of heat that hits me. In the windows when my eyes are open I see you frown at the rope and frown at me, making a decision. You wriggle from my terrible knot and lunge forward, but I inch back. I am just enough out of reach but I can feel the waves of sound a vibration as your fingers pass close to my opening. The heat from your body and the desperation in your face makes me plunge my fingers in, rolling in the feel of myself. I am soft. I am strong.
I am rolling now, my body touching the floor one vertebrae at a time and then lifting up, snake-like. You are touching yourself as I scream. But I can’t have that for too long. I stand on shaky legs and fall into you, my hand replacing yours. The angle is odd and I rip the buttons wide open. I hear a ripping sound and I don’t care, I’ll buy you new jeans. I peel them from you and replace my fingers with my tongue. You push away from the ladder and grab my hair. This time I let you because I like the feel of being controlled on you, by you. I am attached to strings that you are working, putting my sucking, licking, biting right over your center, over your clit. You taste like fruit that is too good to be allowed. Perhaps I am eating from the tree of knowledge. You are soft. You are strong. And I am on my knees for you because you are wonderful.
You push into me and I feel my mouth stretch, my tongue find a swollen place that makes you gasp. I push, unrelenting, the pressure from the tip of my tongue enough to tip the scales and you come on my face. I want to watch you but my head is being thrown in every direction and all I can see is a small crease where your stomach meets your hips but I don’t care, even that’s sexy.
Your legs relax and your grip relaxes and I roll onto my back, looking up at the too-harsh fluorescents. I hear the rope drop on the ground and the squeak of metal.
“Undo me,” you say, “so I can do you.” It is cheesy and you know it. You smile big and silly. I laugh and go to the bag.
“Where are they?” I ask as I sift through it. I see your books, your journal, your phone.
“Inside pocket,” you say. I unzip and feel there and feel nothing.
“Nope,” I say.
“You’re joking.”
“Nope.”
And as you contemplate the thought of calling Officer Cahill, the man with whom you spend every day in a squad car with and who will never let you live it down, to bring that extra key, I laugh and hold up the key. I had stashed it in my bra.
“I’m going to slap you,” you say.
I grin. “That’s okay. I’m into that.”
