Amara didn’t bother to look up from her book when the couch cushion next to her sank down. “Afternoon, sweetie,” she said absentmindedly.
“Hi, Amara.”
The nervous tone to boyfriend’s voice pulled her from the adventures on the page. “James?” she asked as she raised her head. “What’s wrong?”
James gave a quiet laugh. “Nothing, nothing’s wrong.” He shifted on the couch and he refused to look at her. His normally pale skin was ruddy and he had a slight sheen of sweat on his face. His brown hair looked like he’d been running his fingers through it for a good hour.
“Uh huh, right, that’s why you’re so nervous you’re sweating.” She set her book on the arm of the chair and turned to sit sideways. She nudged his hip with her foot. “What’s getting to you?”
He took a deep breath and turned to face her more fully. “So you know last month when we were talking about what we might want to in bed? You know any kinks we might have?” he asked with a nervous tremor in his voice.
Amara couldn’t help but chuckle. She remembered the evening quite well. He’d been ridiculously embarrassed about more than a few things they’d discussed. “Mmm hmm. Why? Did you want to try something?”
He shrugged one shoulder and cleared his throat. “Yeah? I-I was looking at some stuff online-“
She interrupted him with a surprised gasp. “You were looking at internet porn?” she asked with over the top shock and horror in her voice.
He gave her a disgusted look. “Stop it, this is hard enough.”
“I’m sorry.” She leaned over and put her head on his shoulder. “Now, tell me what you saw.”
“I wasn’t looking at porn by the way. I was looking at tutorials,” he said defensively.
“Honey, trust me, you don’t need any tutorials on sex. You are awesome at it.” She glanced up at him and snickered at the blush that flowed across his face and down his neck. She knew from experience that it reached at least down to his nipples. He really was one of the most adorable things she’d ever seen.
“Shut up,” he urged. “I was looking at rope bondage tutorials,” he said with a rush, like he was trying to get it all out at once.
She sat up straight and looked at him in amazement. “Rope bondage? Really? Did-did you want to try that?” she asked. She tried to keep the excitement out of her voice but she wasn’t all that successful. Rope bondage was one of her absolutely favorite things in the world to do in the bedroom, or dungeon, or you know, wherever.
“Yeah, I know you mentioned it before and since I didn’t know much about it I figured I’d look some of it up and there was some really cool stuff out there. Like something called Shibari; have you heard of that?” he asked.
She stared at him a few moments before nodding. Had she heard of Shibari? Shibari was one of her specialties. Before they’d started dating she’d taught some classes in Shibari at the local BDSM club. She’d given it up when she fell for the most vanilla white boy she’d ever met and hadn’t wanted to scare him away.
“Well, I thought that since we’d liked the little bit of handcuffs and stuff that we’d tried that we might want to try some of the rope stuff. Nothing as complex as the Shibari because that’s a little beyond us right now, I think.” He picked up a plastic shopping from the floor. “I got some ropes and was wondering if you’d like to maybe practice a bit?”
She gave as nonchalant of a shrug as she could, while inside she was doing a Kermit the frog flail. “Yeah, we could do that. Did you want to do that now?”
He nodded so fast and hard that she had to bite back a laugh. He looked like the bobble head that she’d gotten at the minor league baseball game last year. “If you don’t have anything else you need to do.”
“No, no, I have nothing to do other than finish my book, but it will still be waiting for me.”
“Awesome,” he said with a relieved sigh. “I thought we might wanna practice out here? More space to work with, you know?”
“Yeah, sure, but we really don’t need that much space.”
“I wanna be able to go all the way around you and our bedroom is a little cramped for that.”
“Oh.” She paused not quite knowing what to say. “You wanted to tie me up,” she said.
“Yeah, is that okay?” he asked hesitantly.
“No, no, it’s fine, I just wasn’t expecting it, that’s all.” Everything about James in the bedroom had screamed submissive. It was one of the things that she loved about him. He fit perfectly with her. He got off the best when she was on top telling what to do and how to move.
“So why don’t you show me what you’ve got in that bag,” she said as she rose to her feet.
He opened the bag and pulled out a coil of rope. She looked at it and then looked at him. “Well, looking at that answered the next question I was going to ask,” she said wryly.
“What question was that,” he asked. He stood up and took a step towards her.
“If you wanted me dressed or naked. There is no way I’m going naked with that kind of rope,” she replied, giving the rope a suspicious look. There was no way that was going anywhere close to her bare skin.
He looked down at the coil in his hand. “Did I get the wrong kind of rope?” The rope was the rough nylon kind used on construction sites everywhere.
“Yes, honey, you did. That stuff will cause massive friction burns, but it’ll be okay to go over my clothes. If you decide you like this, I’ll introduce you to the proper kind of rope.”
“I was thinking that this cheap rope would be good to figure out if we liked this and if we did I thought I’d do some research on better rope and get some of that. I know it comes in colors, I was thinking that some golden yellow would look amazing against your skin.”
She looked down at her arms. He wasn’t wrong, the dark yellow ropes would look very nice against her dark brown skin. She had that golden yellow teddy for a reason. “You are a very sweet man, James.”
She pulled the long sleeves of her shirt down from where she’d pushed them up around her elbows. “Okay, what do you want to do first?”
He swallowed hard and glanced down at the rope before looking back at her. “I saw this arm binding thing that I’d like to try.” He tried to shuffle over to her side but ran into the coffee table. “Maybe we should get this thing out of the way first.”
She laughed and agreed. They each took a side and moved it over against the entertainment center. She walked back to the center of the room. “Okay, I’m all yours.”
He walked towards her and stood in front of her. “Yes you are, and I’m yours too.” He cupped the back of her head with his hand and pressed his lips to hers. The kiss was sweet and soft with just a hint of passion.
He pulled back. “Honey, you really need to use the chapstick I bought you more often,” she quipped. He rolled his eyes and lightly smacked her on the top of her head.
“Can you ever be serious?” he asked with a huff.
She gave him a saucy grin. “Serious is boring.” She let the grin drop and she stood up straight. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to derail you. Arm binding it is. How do you want me?”
He cleared his throat. “Um, right there is fine, I guess.” He held on to one of the rope and dropped the rest of the coil to the floor. “This might take a couple of tries.”
He really hadn’t been kidding about the couple of tries, it was at least five before he had the binding done properly enough that it didn’t pinch or pull her shoulders back in such an awkward position that it threatened to dislocate. The constant apologies didn’t help to make the experience any easier or more comfortable.
Her moment of being done with him taking the lead came when he decided that he wanted to try some leg bindings and almost sent her head first into the corner of the couch.
“Okay, okay, enough.” She shook off the rope and walked over to him. She wrapped her arms around him. “James, I love you so very, very much, but this is not for you. You just don’t have the right temperament for it.”
He buried his face into her shoulder. “But you really like this kind of stuff and what I saw on the website was really hot.”
“That is very true, but let’s be honest, you are no more a dom than I am a sub.”
He made a questioning noise against her skin and pulled back to look at her.
“Did it never occur to you that you really, really like it when I tell you what to do in bed? That when we were playing with the handcuffs you were the one locked in them?” She laughed at the dumbstruck look on his face. “Oh, sweetie, I love you so much.” She pulled her to him and cuddled him close.
“Now, do you still want to try out the ropes?” she purred into his ear.
He whimpered and nodded. She pulled away and grabbed his hand. “Okay, but if we do this, we are going to do it right.” She went to her purse to grab her keys and pulled him behind her. She led him down the hallway to a room that he’d never been allowed inside. She’d told him that it was related to her work and it hadn’t been a lie at the time. She had still been working at the club at the time.
She unlocked the door and flipped on the light switch and stepped aside to let James see the room. She smiled as she watched his eyes widen and his jaw drop as he took in the sight of the canes, paddles, and whips on the wall. His breath hitched when he turned his head and saw the padded table with the wrist and ankle cuffs in the middle of the room.
She ran her hand down his back. “Like what you’re seeing?”
He nodded. “How long has this all been in here?”
She stepped into the room and looked at her equipment. “Since before I met you. I used to do this for a living,” She watched a look of shock appear on his face. “No, no, no,” she quickly said. “I wasn’t a prostitute or anything like that, I just used to teach bondage classes at a local club. Strictly platonic and fully clothed, I promise.”
He took a hesitant step further into the room. “And you gave it up when you met me?”
She shrugged one shoulder. “Yeah, well. I loved you more than this. I miss it from time to time, but I’d miss you a whole lot more.”
He walked over to her and wrapped his arms around her. She loved his hugs, he used his whole body to pull her into a warm and protective embrace. “I love you so much, Amara.”
“Ditto, James.”
He stepped back and took another look around the room. “Why didn’t you ever mention this? You have invested a lot of money into this stuff so I know you must really like it.”
“Why do you think I asked you about the handcuffs and stuff last month? I wanted to start you slowly but like always you took off on your own.” She sashayed over to him and patted him on the cheek. “You are always far more curious than you need to be. Trust me, James, I was going to let you in on all of this, but I didn’t want to scare you off.”
He laughed. “Trust me, I’m about as far from scared off as I can.”
She dropped her gaze down to his crotch where a very conspicuous bulge proved his statement. “So I see. Now, are you ready for the ropes?”
“Yeah. Yes, please.” He frowned. “Should I be calling you Mistress or something?”
Her laugh filled the room. “No, James. Not unless you want to. Actually we’ll get into all that later. I have a checklist to go over with you. Discussions about limits and stuff like that.” She walked over to a chest of drawers against the wall and pulled open the second drawer. She ran her fingers over the large coil of dark blue silk rope. She hadn’t intended to buy the rope but she couldn’t resist it when se saw the same shade of blue as James’ eyes.
She lifted the coil out the drawer and turned around. “But for now, we’re going to play with some ropes.”
She looked up and down his body. “I think that you should get out of those clothes. I much prefer to have my lovers naked when I tie them up and I really want to see how this blue shows against your skin and sets off your eyes.”
She flipped one end of the coil around the back of her neck and held each end in her hands, much like a towel. She watched as he quickly divested himself of his clothes. He folded them and piled them onto the chair next to the door. “Very good. Now give me a safeword.”
“Hornets,” he replied immediately.
“You’ve been thinking about that one haven’t you?” She said as she strolled towards him.
“Yeah, when I was looking at the rope bondage sites, they talked about safewords.”
“Very good. Mine is eggplant, by the way. Now why don’t you come over here and we can get started.” She lifted the rope from her neck and let the coil drop to the floor while she knotted the first loop into the end of the rope.
“Yes, Ma’am,” he replied. He stood in front of her, relaxed and ready for whatever she wanted to do with him.
“Oh yes, this is going to be fun.”
By Passion Shorn 