Category: Crimson Writ

Last night I dreamt I owned you.

You were perfect. Your warm throat molded to my fingers and your kisses tasted of fear and desire. Silky straight were the lines I traveled. Your heat rose through you, naked and limber, until your bared intentions shook themselves free. Clothed in flesh, they were your better self.

You were a gift, the spoils of victory, and your tears of joy washed me clean of sin.

These are the moments of decision, the tipping places. On one side is curiosity and hunger, the other safety and sanity. My touch is light, light enough to guide you, light enough to make shadows of your doubts.

And the perfect tears you wept were like flecks of gold against the black satin of your surrender. They melted on your skin like honey, draped in molten drops along your thighs for me to lick clean.

I was a technical team lead at an Internet start-up company when she was hired. She had no background in the work she would be doing, but then, very few us did when we first started there. She wasn’t unintilligent, just more streetsmart than booksmart; it took her some time to ramp up to the job, but she was motivated and persistent. Unfortunately, she was also young and attractive; her supervisors had trouble looking past their own desire to fuck her, which made her less of an employee and more of a target.

I say supervisors, and that included me. But although I found her attractive (it was hard not to), I also had her clearly marked as untouchable. Those who know me, know that my morality is malleable. My ethics, however, are not. She was dating my supervisor (and friend)’s brother. She reported to me. That was the end of it.

Still, I did spend some time with her and when she began studying for certification, I tutored her in the evening. When I moved to another division as a manager, I continued to talk to her over the occasional smoke break (I’d either smoke a clove, or simply keep her company) and my technical mentorship became a more personal one. She trusted and looked up to me.

I knew I could take advantage of her. In the past, I’d done so in similar circumstances. But never at work. And never at the expense of a friend. My lines held.

Eventually the company laid everyone off. By then she was no longer dating my friend’s brother. Within a year, she got married, had a kid, and moved to California. We kept in touch, exchanging IM’s every once in a while, but I didn’t expect to ever see her again.

One evening she IM’d me and asked me to take a look at some pictures she’d sent her husband (who was, at the time, in Maryland); apparently, he hadn’t appreciated them as much as she thought he should have. The pictures were clearly intended for a specific effect.

She was no longer working for me. No longer dating a friend’s brother. I was free to do as I wish. Old habits die hard, and I found myself testing the waters.

Fast-forward a year. She was now living in Maryland again. One night, when her child was being watched by her mother-in-law, she invited me out to dinner. I accepted. We got tipsy and had a great time. A few months later I invited her to come by my place for margaritas.

Half a bottle of Jose Cuervo later found us in my study watching a small video clip of a woman getting off for the first time.

She turned to me, stared straight into my eyes, and said, “This is making me horny.” Her hands went to my belt. A single moment’s hesitation and I decided to go with it.

—

I didn’t see her again for several months, but we continued to keep in touch. Things got worse with her husband, who was addicted to both alcohol and prostitutes. During one of his 72-hour drunken binges, she needed a place to stay and I told her she could come over. Almost inevitably, things progressed to her laying naked on my bed again. This time my hesitation came after the clothes were already off.

It simply didn’t feel right.

Her past, as I put it together, saw everyone in her life blatantly using her for something.

Which brings us to why I started writing this. I write often of using someone. I talk of ownership and possession. I describe the feeling of taking someone, making them into a tool for my personal pleasure.

The difference, to me, is that I want to own someone who understands their worth. The thrill of taking someone apart is because they know the price of their gift. Not to spite it.

And she clearly did not. For most of her life, her body had been a commodity for others – long enough for her to begin to feel the same. No matter how finely tuned my sense of motive, I simply could not tell how much of the reason for her being naked and wet on my bed was out of a desire for me, and how much was for simply letting her stay the night.

I have no illusions. I often use whatever tools I have at my fingertips to capture someone’s attention; sometimes it is wit and cruel empathy. Sometimes it is money and power. But those are the hooks. If I can’t ultimately pull someone into my world through just my words and actions, I have no interest in going further.

It wasn’t that I was taking advantage of her, something I have little problem with. It was that I couldn’t tell if it was mutual.

—

This is where being a gentleman comes in. Because here is where I needed to do the right thing and make it clear to her my intentions. The price of my hospitality may, as part of the game, include a certain sexual edge.

It did not include removing any part of her dignity.

I had a bit of an epiphany at the lake house this year. It was about how I relate to women I want.

Although I am quite comfortable in my appearance, it isn’t my looks that win them over.

Although I am well off, it isn’t my wealth that wins them over.

Although I have some authority where I work and in my life, it isn’t my power that wins them over.

My success is in a different area entirely. It derives from my abilitiy to make certain desires, fantasies, come true.

Fantasies are not like dreams. Dreams are often not meant to be attained (at least, not attained as we imagine them). Dreams are the silken ribbons that unravel, their destinations inspire idle day-dreams. Their paths promise moments of happiness. Their end-results are often not quite as perfect as we imagined.

Fantasies are different. Fantasies are the darker half of dreams; they are the hungers and wishes we barely admit to ourselves (not out of the fear that they may be considered silly, as in the case of dreams, but because they harbor truths about ourselves that may be too hard to look away from once fully embraced).

Fulfilling a fantasy may lead to disappointment – or it may succeed beyond our most twisted expectations. Both results are ones to fear.

And I? I have come to realize that I am adept at bringing these fantasies to the surface. I have enough space within me to acknowledge them without judgment, enough compassion to understand them, and enough steel and cruelty to bring them to life. I can cultivate them, define them. Make them felt. Make them speak. Make them real.

I offer more than the chance of fulfillment.

I promise to lead you there.

Take you apart.

And watch you come back for more.

I can feel the unraveling, the edged fraying of attention caught. The ends are pulled lightly, a gentle tugging at my awareness; the extent of the progress unknown until my peripheral consciousness catches site of the streaming threads that once made whole the fabric of my daily life.

The signs are evident, often external. Antique heirloom rose vines removed, roots and all, from the front of the house and laid to rest upon the ground – an earthy wake to honor the seemingly arbitrary death of an entity nursed into full life over a span of at least ten to fifteen years.

But not all external – there are the small forgets. Keys left in cars, books left behind.

Here, your feet can touch bottom; the deep waters so often cultivated, a density of self-protective confidence and directed attention, are not so deep anymore. Better the dark waters, the mysterious waters filled with undiscovered danger, than the hard metal bottom your feet scrape against when you have sunk too low.

At least – this is what you think. But it is not melancholy that you feel. The water has the iron taste of desperation.

It is your own fault; you invited it in. An old friend, an intimate confidante. Chaos. The bottom you feel is false. The rust you imagine is scrapings your freedom have bought, freedom raked against the choices that make you doubt.

No place for regret, here. The unraveled threads serve other purposes. You weave some into a scene depicting her face first on the floor, hands bound in leather against the small of her back, her bared ass raised. There are hues of humiliation in this scene, the red of violence, the pink of sensitive flesh. You could not have drawn this scene without the freedom that so unbinds you.

You have no fear, just trepidation and excitement, as you wait to see what will unravel next.

Invited or led, you are here now. You will be a witness to my visions. But I require more than a voyeur, I need an exhibitionist. I need a participant.

Close your eyes. Place your hands on your thighs. Spread them slowly for me.

Does it scare you – just a bit? Even as you respond, that act of reaching out for something that tempts you, something right at the edge, can cut deep enough to leave a mark.

And you do respond. Without understanding or knowledge, you feel yourself pulled in, taken by the promise held in what you feel and hear. Each word you listen to is an admission for a hunger that grows increasingly dangerous.

Do you ever think of having your hands pinned over your head, the force of a body holding you still for a moment, forcing you to just be, to just exist in the warmth of lips on your neck, in the teeth biting skin, tasting you from the inside out, driving you to let go and grab onto that feeling harder then you ever have in your life, to ride in the waves of heat as they wash over you. Isn’t that what you want most of all? To have it taken from you? To be placed, held, guided. To give in. To give it up.

Control is a subtle thing.

You give it up when you admit you want more.

When you admit you cross lines.

When you believe.