Denied (Part 13)

DAY 13

Her:

She surfaced through the dream slowly, not all at once.

The images dissolved as she woke — fragments only, nothing she could hold: his hands, and someone else’s, and a room she didn’t recognise, and the specific sensation of being full and held still and watched by people she couldn’t see. The dream had been doing something to her body that her body had not stopped doing simply because she was now awake.

She lay still and took stock.

Dark still, or nearly. The particular grey of a Sunday morning before the light had decided anything. His breathing beside her, deep and even. The wanting was immediate and specific and had been there before she was conscious enough to manage it — not the protocol wanting, the accumulated twelve-day ache she had learned to carry, but something more urgent than that, something the dream had wound up and left running with nowhere to go.

She lay still for approximately ninety seconds.

Then her hand moved.

She was careful about it. That was the thing — she was careful, which meant she knew exactly what she was doing and was doing it anyway. Small movements, her breathing controlled, her eyes on the ceiling. Just the edge of her fingertips. Just the lightest possible pressure. Just enough to take the edge off the dream without technically — without quite —

“No,” he said.

Not loudly. Conversationally, almost. Still facing away from her.

She went completely still.

“Hand,” he said.

She moved her hand to her side.

The silence that followed had a specific quality. Not angry. Just present. She lay there with her heart going and the wanting still sitting exactly where it had been and thought about the dream and the ceiling and the terms she had agreed to and the fact that he had apparently been awake for some time.

He turned over.

Him:

I’d been awake for a few minutes when her breathing changed.

I knew the difference by now — the specific shift from sleep to waking, and then the further shift from waking to wanting, which in her case followed almost immediately and was visible in the quality of her stillness before she moved at all. She was trying to be quiet about it. She was not quiet about it in any way that mattered.

I let her get further than I should have. That was honest. I wanted to see what she’d do when she thought I was asleep — how far she’d take it, how careful she’d be, whether she’d stop herself before I had to stop her. The answer was: not far enough, reasonably careful, no.

I said no without turning over. Gave her a moment to register it. Then: hand.

She moved it.

I turned over and looked at her in the grey morning light. She was on her back with her hand at her side and her face doing the specific thing it did when she’d been caught at something and was deciding how to receive that — not guilt exactly, more like the recalibration of someone who had miscalculated and was already working out what came next.

I reached across her to the bedside table. The bondage tape was where I’d put it the night before.

“On your front,” I said.

Her:

She turned over.

She heard him tear a strip of tape — the specific sound of it, clean and final — and then his hands were at her hips, positioning her, and she understood what was coming before it arrived. She pressed her face into the pillow and concentrated on breathing.

He was not rough about it. He never was. He moved her knickers aside and pressed the tape directly over her clit with the same two-fingered precision he brought to everything — checking the adhesion, smoothing the edges, entirely matter of fact, as though this were simply the next thing that needed doing and he was doing it correctly.

The tape was warm almost immediately from her skin.

He pressed it once, flat, to make sure it held.

She made a sound into the pillow that she hadn’t planned.

“Good,” he said. “Stay there.”

She heard him get up. The bathroom. Water running. Then downstairs — the kettle, the particular sounds of her kitchen becoming his kitchen again, the morning assembling itself around her while she lay face down on her own bed with her clit taped off and the dream still sitting in her chest with absolutely nowhere to go.

She pressed her hips once against the mattress.

The tape held. That was the point of tape. It went nowhere and stopped nothing and was specifically, precisely there.

She pressed her face back into the pillow.

Him:

I brought coffee up.

She was where I’d left her — face down, hands at her sides, the specific stillness of someone who had tried something and thought better of it and was now simply waiting. I set her cup on the nightstand and sat on the edge of the bed and drank mine.

After a moment: “Roll over.”

She did. She looked up at me with the morning face — hair from sleeping, the dream still somewhere in it, the particular expression of a woman who had woken up desperate and been taped off before she’d managed anything useful about it.

I looked at her for a moment.

“Tell me the dream,” I said.

Her:

She told him the dream.

Not the managed version — there wasn’t one available this early, with the tape warm against her and the coffee untouched and his eyes on her face. The fragments as they’d come: the room she didn’t recognise, the hands that weren’t only his, the specific sensation of being held in place and looked at by people she couldn’t see and couldn’t count, and underneath all of it the knowledge in the dream that this was what she was for, that everyone in the room understood that, that there was no version of the evening where she was anything other than exactly this.

She watched his face while she talked.

He said nothing. He drank his coffee and listened with the quality of attention that meant everything was being filed.

When she finished the room was quiet.

“Good,” he said. He reached forward and pressed the tape once, flat, with two fingers. She arched off the bed. “Drink your coffee.”

Him:

We spent the morning on the sofa.

She was naked — I’d told her before we came downstairs, collar on, nothing else — and she’d come down that way without comment, bare feet on her own kitchen tiles, the collar at her throat, the tape visible if you looked. She moved through her own flat with the particular ease of someone who had stopped thinking about it, which was itself something worth noting.

I worked. She read — or held her book and did whatever she was actually doing, which was not entirely reading. The tape was doing its job. I could tell by the quality of her stillness every twenty minutes or so, the small shift of position that didn’t help, the return to stillness.

At half ten I put my laptop down.

“Come here,” I said.

She came and knelt between my feet and looked up.

I reached into the bag on the floor beside the sofa and took out the jewelled plug. Small, the starter, the one I’d bought knowing it was the beginning of a sequence rather than the destination. I turned it once in my hand and looked at her.

She looked at the plug.

Then up at me.

“Today,” I said, “this comes out when I decide it comes out. You’ll be plugged until I say otherwise. When I want more than the plug you’ll have more than the plug. Is that clear.”

“Yes Sir,” she said.

“Good girl. Turn around. Hands on the sofa.”

Her:

She gripped the sofa cushions and felt him kneel behind her.

He used his fingers first. That was what undid her before anything else arrived — the patience of it, the deliberateness, taking his time working her open with one finger and then two, his other hand flat and warm on her lower back, his mouth occasionally at the back of her neck saying breathe and good girl and stay still. She was already wet from the dream and the tape and the morning and his fingers found that immediately and used it, working it back, his thumb occasionally pressing against her pussy without entering, a reminder of the tape and what it meant and what she wasn’t getting.

“Breathe,” he said.

She breathed.

Three fingers. She gripped the cushion harder. He worked slowly, methodically, opening her with the same precision he brought to everything, watching her face in the mirror on the far wall — she realised he’d positioned her deliberately so he could see her expression while he worked. She looked at herself looking at herself being opened by him and felt the specific, extraordinary quality of that — being watched from two directions simultaneously, from outside and from inside.

“There,” he said quietly. The same word he’d used in the mirror on Sunday morning. Confirming something.

When he pressed the plug in she made a sound that had nothing managed about it — low and long and entirely her own. The jewelled base seated against her and she stayed still on her hands and knees on her own living room carpet and felt it sit there, present and constant and absolutely his.

“Up,” he said. “Go and make more coffee.”

She stood. The plug shifted with the movement and she grabbed the sofa arm and breathed through it, her legs uncertain for a moment.

He watched her compose herself with his arms folded and his expression entirely neutral.

“The sooner you stop noticing it,” he said, “the more I’ll add.”

She went and made the coffee.

The plug did not let her stop noticing it. Every step was a negotiation — the specific weight of it, the fullness, the way it shifted when she moved and seated itself again when she stilled. She stood at the counter and waited for the kettle and concentrated on breathing normally and thought about the word more and what it meant in the context of the bag from the shop and the inventory she’d watched him select.

She brought the coffee back.

He was reading. He took the cup without looking up.

She sat on the sofa beside him and understood immediately that sitting was its own education entirely. The plug pressed differently sitting. More present, more insistent, the base against the cushion transmitting every small shift of her weight directly. She moved twice before she found the position that was least impossible and stayed there and held her book open and read the same paragraph four times.

Him:

At noon I put her over the arm of the sofa.

The plug out first — removed slowly while she gripped the arm and breathed, her knuckles going white as I took my time about it. Then the beads. I’d thought about the order since the night before: plug to establish the day’s terms, beads at noon for the particular sustained quality of them, my cock in the afternoon when she was fully open and had been occupied long enough to understand what that meant.

I worked the first bead in and felt her whole body respond — a small involuntary forward movement she caught and stopped. Good. She was paying attention.

The second. I waited between each one. Let her feel it settle before the next arrived. Let her understand the accumulation of it — not one thing but several, each one distinct and present, the strand between them a constant awareness with every breath.

Third. She made a sound into the sofa cushion.

Fourth. Her hands found the sofa legs and gripped.

“Count,” I said.

“Four,” she said, slightly wrecked.

“And?”

She breathed carefully. “And I can feel all of them every time I move.”

“Good,” I said. “That’s the point. Stay there.”

I left her there and went to make lunch. I could hear her from the kitchen — not sounds exactly, just the quality of her silence, the specific stillness of someone managing something with great deliberateness. The radio on low. The Sunday afternoon doing its ordinary thing.

“Lunch,” I called.

Her:

She straightened slowly.

The beads moved with the movement and she stood still for a moment in her own living room with her hand on the sofa arm and her eyes closed and breathed through the rearrangement of them inside her before she attempted walking.

Walking was a revelation.

She made it to the kitchen and stood at the counter because sitting was not going to be possible, not with four beads and the specific way they shifted when she bent at the hip. He said nothing about this. He set her plate beside his and ate and she ate standing with one hand braced on the counter and her gaze slightly unfocused.

The pasta was very good. She was approximately thirty percent able to appreciate this.

When the plates were cleared he looked at her with the expression he used for assessment.

“How many,” he said.

“Four,” she said. “And I can feel all of them every time I breathe.”

He looked at her for a moment. Then he crossed to her and turned her by the shoulders to face the counter and pressed her forward with one hand flat on her back and removed the beads slowly, one at a time. She gripped the counter edge and breathed through each one — the specific dragging sensation of each bead passing, her body releasing and then clenching again for the next. By the third her forehead was on her forearms on the counter. By the fourth she was making sounds she had given up trying to manage.

He set them aside.

His hand moved to her lower back. Then lower. Two fingers pressing against her again, checking, and she understood from the quality of that checking that this was preparation rather than conclusion.

“Bedroom,” he said.

Him:

I took my time getting her ready.

On her front on the bed, pillow under her hips — I’d positioned that before we came upstairs, which she’d noticed and not commented on. I worked her open again from the beginning, which was the correct approach after the beads — not assuming, just starting where we were and building carefully. My fingers, and the small bottle from the nightstand, and patience.

She had her face in the pillow and her hands gripping the headboard and she was doing the thing she’d learned to do — breathing slowly, staying present, not fighting the opening but not rushing it either. Meeting it.

“You’re doing well,” I said.

“Thank you Sir,” she said into the pillow. Entirely sincere.

I worked a third finger in slowly and felt her breathe through it and adjust and settle. Good. I kept going until I felt the specific quality of ready — not just open but accepting, her body gone from managing to wanting without quite knowing when the shift had happened.

I positioned myself and pressed forward slowly.

The sound she made was nothing she’d made before in my presence. Low and long and coming from somewhere that had nothing to do with performance. I stayed still for a moment, fully seated, my hand flat on her lower back, and felt her breathe.

“Still,” I said.

“I’m still,” she said. Her voice was barely there.

“Good girl.” I ran my thumb slowly up her spine. “You’re going to stay on this cock until I’m finished. However long that takes.”

She gripped the headboard and said yes Sir from somewhere fundamental.

I moved slowly. Not building to anything — just present, deliberate, the particular quality of taking something at exactly the pace I had decided on with no reference to urgency. The afternoon light came through the curtains at a low angle. The room was warm and quiet.

After some time I reached around her hip and pressed the wand against the tape.

Her:

The wand came on and she stopped breathing for a moment.

Not directly against her — against the tape, the vibration transmitting through it in a way that was both everywhere and precisely nowhere useful. She could feel it throughout her whole pelvis — diffuse and insistent and building — and she could feel him inside her at the same time and the two sensations were doing something to each other that she had no framework for.

She grabbed the headboard harder.

“Sir,” she said.

“I know,” he said. He didn’t stop.

He kept moving and kept the wand in place and she felt the edge arrive from a direction she hadn’t expected — not the sharp immediate build of direct stimulation but something slower and deeper and more complicated, rising through the diffuse vibration and the fullness of him and the accumulated thirteen days of nothing, all of it converging somewhere she couldn’t locate precisely.

“Sir, I’m going to—”

“No,” he said pleasantly.

He took the wand away.

The edge receded in a long slow wave and she pressed her face into the pillow and made a sound she would not be describing in detail in the midnight email.

He kept moving. Unhurried.

After a while the wand returned.

Him:

I did this three times.

The wand through the tape was its own specific instrument — not direct enough to give her what she needed but more than enough to build what she couldn’t have. The combination of it with my cock inside her meant she was getting everything and nothing simultaneously, which was precisely the point. She built each time faster than the last. By the third she was shaking before I’d had the wand in place for thirty seconds and when I took it away the sound she made had no dignity in it whatsoever.

I watched her come down from the third one. Breathing, hands loose on the headboard, the specific aftermath of a body that has been taken somewhere extreme and brought back three times consecutively without resolution. She was entirely present. Not managing anything. Just there.

Good.

I resumed. She understood without being told that the wand was not coming back — that this part was mine, for my pace and my finish, and her job now was to hold still and be useful and she did this with the focused attention of someone who understood that being useful was not the lesser thing. Her hips moved with me slightly, small adjustments, meeting the rhythm without taking it over.

When I finished it was with my hand at her hip and the particular stillness of after.

I stayed inside her for a moment.

Then I reached for the plug and seated it again, smoothly, while she was still warm.

She made the sound into the pillow.

I sat back and looked at her for a moment. Then:

“On your back,” I said. “Hold your legs open. Wide.”

Her:

She rolled over slowly and reached for the backs of her thighs and pulled them up and apart and held herself open in the afternoon light without being told twice. Her face was flushed, hair spread across the pillow, the tape still in place, the plug seated between her spread legs visible and present and entirely deliberate.

He picked up her phone from the nightstand. Entered the code — he’d retained it from the night before, which she hadn’t mentioned and he hadn’t addressed.

He took his time with the photograph. Two of them. She lay still and held herself open and let him frame whatever he was framing and felt the specific quality of being documented in this precise state — occupied, denied, held open, his — and the eye she’d developed over eleven years of photographs understood without being asked that he was getting it right.

He set the phone on the nightstand where she could see the screen.

Then he reached for the wand.

She saw herself on the screen and looked away and looked back.

The photograph was accurate. That was the thing about it. Not flattering or unflattering — simply exactly what she was at this precise moment in her own bedroom on a Sunday afternoon: legs held open, taped off, plugged, his cum inside her, her face wearing an expression she had stopped being able to manage sometime around noon.

She was still looking at it when the wand came on.

He pressed it against the base of the plug.

The sensation arrived from a direction she had no name for. Not her clit — that was taped off, unreachable. Not inside her in any way she recognised. Somewhere deeper than that, somewhere the vibration travelled through the plug and into the surrounding tissue and into places she had not previously known were connected to anything, places that were now apparently connected to everything.

She grabbed the backs of her thighs harder.

“Sir—”

“Keep your legs open,” he said.

She kept her legs open.

He moved the wand slightly, finding the angle that made the vibration travel most directly, and she felt it arrive in her spine and her stomach simultaneously and made a sound she had never made before — low and startled and entirely genuine.

“Tell me,” he said. His voice was conversational. “Why are you so wet.”

Him:

I held the wand steady and waited.

She was looking at the photograph on the nightstand screen. I’d left it visible deliberately — the specific detail of her seeing herself in the moment of being asked to account for herself. Two mirrors at once. She was wet enough that it was visible against the tape, against the base of the plug, against the inside of her thighs. The answer to the question was self-evident and also the point.

“I—” She stopped.

I angled the wand fractionally. Her hips lifted.

“The plug,” she said. “The — the day. Everything today.”

“Specifically,” I said.

Her:

The wand moved and she lost the sentence and found it again.

“Being plugged all day,” she said. “Being — occupied. Full.” She gripped her thighs harder. “Knowing you could — that you’d decide when and what and I just—”

“You just,” he said.

“I just had to be ready,” she said. “Whatever you wanted. However you wanted it. I just—”

He angled the wand and her head went back.

“Keep going,” he said.

“I like it,” she said. “I like not being asked. I like that today was just — this is what today is and I’m — I’m the thing today is happening to and I don’t—” She stopped. Started again. “I don’t want a say in it. I don’t want to negotiate it. I just want to be what you’ve decided I am.”

“And what have I decided you are,” he said.

The wand pressed harder against the plug base and she felt it move through her whole body and grabbed her own thighs so hard she’d have marks tomorrow.

“Yours,” she said. “Your — your—”

“Finish it,” he said. Same tone. Entirely patient.

The vibration built and built and the photograph was still on the screen and she could see herself held open and plugged and desperate and the edge was arriving from the deep strange direction the wand-through-plug created and she was going to cum, she was going to cum, she was right there—

“Your desperate denied whore,” she said, loudly, to the ceiling. “I’m your desperate denied whore, Sir, I’m so wet because I’ve been denied for thirteen days and I’m plugged with your cum in me and I’m being held open like a—”

He took the wand away.

The silence was absolute.

She lay there with her legs still held open and her chest heaving and the edge receding in the specific long complicated wave of something that had been right there and was now nowhere and felt the tears arrive before she knew they were coming — not distress, not quite frustration, just the overwhelming specific weight of being thirteen days denied and taken to the edge from a direction she hadn’t known existed and stopped at the exact moment she’d said the truest thing.

“Good girl,” he said quietly.

He set the wand on the nightstand.

He looked at her for a long moment — at the photograph still on the screen and at the real version held open in front of him and at whatever her face was doing, which she had no information about and no capacity to manage.

Then he reached forward and took her hands gently from the backs of her thighs and lowered her legs and held them for a moment, his thumbs at her inner knees, while she breathed.

“Rest,” he said.

Him:

I sat beside her while she came back.

The photograph was still on the screen. I looked at it and at her — the same subject from two angles, real and recorded, the gap between them almost nothing. She was still slightly tearful in the way she got when something landed in the true place rather than the managed one. Not distress. Just arrival.

Your desperate denied whore.

She’d said it at the exact moment I’d have stopped her regardless — not because it wasn’t true but because it was, precisely and completely, and the value of it was in the saying and not in the reward. She’d get the reward when the protocol said she got the reward. What she’d given me just now was something else.

I saved both photographs to her camera roll.

Then I sent them to myself.

I put the phone back on the nightstand screen-down.

She was watching me.

“Rest,” I said. “Sleep if you can.”

Her:

She rested.

Face down on her own bed in the afternoon light with the plug in and his cum inside her and the tape still holding and the edge still sitting somewhere in her chest with nowhere to go. Her body felt occupied still, even after — full and present and his in a way that was now literally, physically true and had been since half ten that morning.

She slept.

When she woke the light had moved. She lay still and took stock of herself: plug, tape, the wanting that had been building since six forty-five this morning and had been given nowhere to go all day. His weight was not beside her. She could hear him downstairs.

She reached for her phone.

Three forty-seven.

She put it back and lay still and thought about tomorrow. The office. The forecasting follow-up. The Monday morning meeting in the glass-walled conference room with thirty people and the tape still on her skin beneath her work clothes and the rope marks fading on her wrists and the protocol ticking forward regardless.

She was going to sit in that meeting and say accurate things about quarterly projections.

She was also, simultaneously, going to be exactly this.

He appeared in the doorway.

“Up,” he said. “Come and edge.”

Him:

I had her on the bed on her back, the plug in place, the tape still holding.

The wand on the setting that built without arriving — the retreating one, going nowhere useful, designed specifically to accumulate pressure without converting it. I held it against the tape rather than directly and watched the two sensations compound each other: the vibration transmitting through the adhesive, the plug seated and present with every inhale, her body with nowhere to direct any of it.

She gripped the sheets.

“Hands at your sides,” I said.

She moved them. The effort of not gripping anything while the wand worked was its own specific challenge — I watched her hands open and close against the sheet and said nothing.

She edged. I took the wand away and let her come down and put it back and watched her go up again. The plug shifted fractionally with every movement of her hips and she was aware of it constantly — I could tell by her face, the way her expression changed each time her body registered it, the way she breathed around it rather than through it.

Second edge. She stopped cleanly. Her breathing was ragged.

“Good,” I said. “Tell me the dream again.”

Her:

She told him the dream again.

Her hand moved under her own direction this time — he’d nodded at it, permission — and she talked and touched herself through the tape and the plug sat in her and she heard her own voice describe the room and the hands and the watching and felt the specific strangeness of narrating a dream about being used while being used, while occupied in two directions simultaneously, while thirteen days of protocol sat in her body like a held note.

Her voice stopped working halfway through.

“Keep going,” he said.

She kept going. Stopped at the edge with her hand flat and her hips lifted and her voice somewhere she couldn’t find it.

“Good girl,” he said. “That’s six today. Enough.”

She lay there and breathed.

Six edges. The morning one wouldn’t count and she knew it wouldn’t count and she was going to write it in the email anyway because the protocol required honesty and because something in her needed it on the record regardless of whether he counted it.

Him:

She made dinner.

I’d told her she could cook — she’d been in the kitchen three times that day under various states of occupation and the kitchen was hers, the cooking was hers, and she wanted to do something useful with her hands after the afternoon. I understood that. I sat at the table and watched her move through the space she knew better than I did and noted what the day had done to how she moved — more deliberate, more careful, entirely aware of the plug with every step but no longer fighting the awareness. Carrying it.

She made pasta. Something good, quick, made from what was in the fridge. She stood at the hob and stirred and occasionally paused with the spoon mid-air and breathed carefully and then continued.

I said nothing.

When she brought the plates over she sat across from me and winced almost imperceptibly and adjusted and sat and ate and didn’t comment and neither did I.

Her:

Her phone buzzed as they were clearing the plates.

She looked at the screen before she thought about whether to.

Babe. Missing you. Cardiff is carnage. You would not believe the state of these idiots.

She set the phone on the table where he could see it without being asked. He read it and said nothing and went back to clearing the plates.

Three minutes later: You awake? I’m proper drunk lol. Been thinking about you.

Then, before she could respond: Send me something nice 😈

She looked at him over the phone.

He set down what he was holding and picked the phone up and read the messages with the same unhurried attention he brought to everything. Then he looked at her.

“How is he after these trips,” he said. “When he gets back. Two days of drinking.”

She considered this. “Usually yes,” she said. “He’ll be hungover Monday. Enthusiastic but—” She stopped.

“But,” he said.

“He tries,” she said carefully. “It just doesn’t always — he can’t always—” She looked at the table. “Nothing ever quite gets there. Not the way I need.”

He held her eyes for a moment. Something moved in his expression that he didn’t share.

“Take your picture,” he said. “I’ll tell you what to send.”

Him:

I thought about it for a moment.

She was sitting across her kitchen table from me — naked except for the collar and the plug, his cum still inside her from the afternoon, the tape still holding, the jewelled base of the plug visible if you knew what you were looking at. The photograph I’d taken earlier was still on her camera roll.

He wouldn’t know what he was looking at.

I had her go to the bedroom and kneel on the floor facing away from the mirror, leaning forward onto the bed with her back arched. I took the photograph myself — her phone, the code I’d retained — finding the angle that showed the jewelled base clearly against the curve of her. A good photograph. She had taught me what a good photograph looked like without meaning to.

I handed her the phone and told her what to write.

Her:

She looked at what he’d told her to send.

Then at him.

Then back at the phone.

Hey you. I’ve been SO horny today. Been thinking about a thick cock in my arse all afternoon. I want you to fuck my arse Monday night. I’ve been getting myself ready for you.

She looked at the photograph. The jewelled plug. His cum still inside her, invisible but present. The arch of her back. The specific state of a woman who had spent Sunday as someone else’s.

She typed it. Attached the photograph.

She looked at him.

He nodded once.

She sent it.

The three dots appeared almost immediately. Disappeared. Appeared again.

FUCK. Who are you and what have you done with my girlfriend

Then: That is the hottest thing you have ever sent me

Then, after a pause: I am absolutely going to fuck your arse Monday night. I will fill you full of thick cum.

She stared at the screen.

He reached over and took the phone and read the exchange and set it face-down on the table and said nothing for a moment.

Then: “He’ll try.”

The specific quality of those two words settled in her chest and sat there.

Him:

He would try. That was the accurate prediction.

He’d come home Monday lunchtime hungover and tender and buoyed by the weekend, the rugby club warmth of a shared trip still on him. He’d remember the photograph and the message and try. And he’d be soft after two days of drinking, or he’d manage and then not manage, or he’d manage entirely and it still wouldn’t be what she’d asked for — because what she’d asked for with those words, a thick cock, I’ve been getting myself ready, was something she’d spent Sunday building toward with a man who’d been methodical and patient and unhurried, and what she’d get Monday night was a hungover man doing his best.

His best would not be sufficient.

She would know that before it started. She would be kind about it. She would perform the right things. And she would lie there afterward and think about Sunday and the protocol and seventeen days remaining and the specific gap between what she’d asked for in that message and what she’d actually received.

I turned a page.

She was sitting across the table very quietly, the phone face-down on the table, working through the same arithmetic.

I didn’t say anything else. I didn’t need to.

Her:

He’ll try.

She sat with that for a long time.

She thought about Monday lunchtime. His kit bag in the hall. The particular smell of a weekend away. The way he’d be affectionate and slightly fragile from the hangover, wanting food and the sofa and her in that order. She thought about the message she’d sent and the photograph she’d sent it with — the jewelled base and the arch of her back and his cum inside her that her boyfriend couldn’t see — and she thought about what Monday night would look like from the inside of it.

She thought about the plug still in her now and the wand through it this afternoon and the edge she’d been stopped at and what she’d said to the ceiling.

He’ll try.

The phone buzzed one more time.

Can’t wait to see you. Miss you babe x

She looked at the message for a moment. Then she put the phone face-down on the table and said nothing.

He was reading.

Outside the window the Sunday evening did its ordinary thing.

After dinner he removed the plug in the kitchen, matter of fact, one hand on her hip and one working slowly while she gripped the counter edge and breathed. She was quieter about it by now than she’d been that morning. Adjusting.

He checked the tape.

Still holding.

“Shower,” he said. “Leave the tape.”

Her:

She stood under the water for a long time.

The plug’s absence was its own presence now — she was aware of the space where it had been, the specific feeling of being empty after a day of not being empty, which was a thought she would not have been able to construct fourteen days ago and could now construct with complete precision.

The tape held in the shower. Of course it did. She pressed it once with her fingertip and felt the diffuse sensation of that and took her hand away and stood under the water and thought about tomorrow. The office. The tape still under her work clothes. The Monday morning meeting.

She thought about Monday night.

When she came out he was in bed. She got in beside him and lay on her back and reached for her phone.

Sir.

Edge 1: I don’t have a time. Before you were awake, or before I knew you were awake. My hand. The dream. I know.

Edge 2: Afternoon. Bedroom. The wand through the tape while you fucked me. First stop.

Edge 3: Afternoon. Bedroom. The wand through the tape while you fucked me. Second stop.

Edge 4: Afternoon. Bedroom. The wand through the tape while you fucked me. Third stop.

Edge 5: Afternoon. Bedroom. The wand against the plug base. You asked me why I was so wet and kept asking until I told you. You know what I said. I’m not writing it again.

Edge 6: Later. Bedroom. The wand through the tape against the plug. First.

Edge 7: Later. Bedroom. The wand through the tape against the plug. Second. My hand. The dream again. My voice stopped working halfway through and I kept going anyway.

49 remaining. 17 days.

The dream: a room I didn’t recognise. Hands that weren’t only yours. The specific sensation of being held still and watched by people I couldn’t see or count. The knowledge — the way you only know things in dreams — that this was what I was for and that everyone in the room understood that and that nobody was going to ask me anything about it.

I woke from that dream and put my hand between my legs before I was fully conscious. I want that noted as information rather than excuse.

Today: taped from approximately six forty-five this morning. Plugged from half ten. Beads at noon for two hours. Your cock in the afternoon, with the wand through the tape while you fucked me, three times. After: plugged again, on my back with my legs held open while you photographed me and pressed the wand against the plug base and asked me why I was so wet.

I told you why. You already know what I said. I said it to the ceiling loud enough that the room still has it in it and I don’t need to write it down for it to be on the record.

You saved the photographs. You sent them to yourself. I watched you do it.

He texted. You told me what to send. The photograph I sent him is one you took. His cum is not the one inside me in that photograph and he has no way of knowing that and I do not know what to do with that fact except write it down.

He said he’ll try.

You said he’ll try.

I’m going to lie here and think about the difference between those two statements until I fall asleep.

49 remaining.

Him:

Good girl.

The dream is noted. We’ll discuss it.

49 becomes 50. The morning edge doesn’t count — you know why.

Sleep. Work tomorrow.

Her:

She read it twice.

The morning edge. Of course.

She’d known when she was doing it and she’d done it anyway and she lay in the dark and breathed through the arithmetic with the tape still warm on her skin.

Fifty remaining. Seventeen days.

Beside her his breathing settled and deepened. Two lines and then sleep, because for him the ruling was consistent and expected and required no elaboration.

She lay still and took stock of herself in the dark: tape, the plug’s absence, the wanting that had been building since six forty-five this morning and had been given nowhere to go all day. Her body felt occupied still, even empty. The day had settled into her the way the afternoon had settled on Day 12 — like weather that had changed something and left the air different.

She thought about the dream.

She thought about Monday night.

She thought about the difference between he’ll try and he’ll try and whether those two statements were the same sentence.

They weren’t.

She lay still in the dark and did not reach for her phone again.