I'm much too early tonight for what I want; the coffee bar is still filled with customers and friends there for the conversation which could mean that they'll be there until my friend, Jeremiah, kindly kicks them out. What I want, what I need is a trip with Jeremiah to his dungeon below. I need a beating now more than ever!

I sit in my usual spot at the far end of the bar where it curves and hits the north wall. I hug it close looking dour, I'm sure. I figure Jeremiah knew what I wanted the moment I walked in. The sixth sense between us is pretty rare, but I'm grateful that I didn't have to actually tell him what I'm here for. He served me my usual mocha and then took off, not bothering with me again until now. It's nearly eleven o'clock. The place should close soon, I think, but there are still those half dozen people looking as if they have settled in for the night.

"You going to stay?" he finally asks me.

"What do you think?"

"I think you'd better try another night."

"Why? These people will be going soon, won't they?" I nod at the two tables of three.
I must have strange powers of psychic persuasion, because at that moment, occupants of both tables make the usual moves in getting ready to leave.

"See? What did I say?" I look at him hopefully.

Jeremiah leaves me alone while his customers pay their bills. Then he buses their tables and wipes them clean for tomorrow. As soon as the front door closes, I feel the pulse of sexual heat crescendoing in my belly. My crotch grows warm; my panties are wet.

"Jerr, please," I finally get his attention and say very politely, "you gonna make me beg?" I know he's got to feel my arousal; his ache for what we have can be as strong as mine.

"Not tonight, Hayley," he says flatly.

"What?"

"Not tonight." No explanation.

"But why?"

He finally moves in front of me, placing both hands at arms length on the bar between us, so it seems his huge energy is pouring out on me in a behemoth wave. He looks me in the eye. "Because, I'm not going to play with you tonight, Hayley. That's all."

"So, what are you not telling me?" I'm starting to get edgy.

"Hey," he humphs, "there's a lot I don't tell you. All you really need to hear is I'm not playing. That's it. End of story."

My mind is a total muddle at one moment and then a complete blank. I can't think of what to say. Feels like he slapped me in the face and I'm still reeling from the blow. Reeling. Hurting, even. That's it...hurt...his rejection hurts.

"I'll take you down, Hayley," another voice brings me jarringly back to reality.

I didn't know anyone else was in the room, although I turn, knowing before I see him that it's Pierre.
"But I..."

"No. Don't make excuses. Get downstairs now."

For a mild-mannered, bookish, reflective and slightly enigmatic academic, he's damned convincing without raising his voice.

The flutter in my belly begins to swell again. I'm so embarrassed I don't know what to say.
"I'd suggest you do what you're told," Jeremiah says, having read my mind. But I'm so focused on Pierre, it's like Jeremiah isn't there. His voice sounds as if it's rising out of a tunnel far away.
I wait for the man to break the strange standoff of wills with some typically droll retort, but he doesn't waver.

"I - I..." I start and stop abruptly.

"You going or not? I don't have all night."

On any other day, I'd be ready to zing him with some flip response like I usually do to my enigmatic friend, but I resume my speechless pose, gazing at the light-skinned Black man wonderingly, until the message finally sinks in. Then, I fly off the stool toward the back staircase and race down the steps full speed, practically tumbling at the bottom, finally stopping my breathless body at the hard stone wall and with my back to the surface take a moment to catch my breath.

Recovering, I watch every footfall of Pierre's boots, taking the stairs slowly, one by one until he finally pulls up face to face with me. There is a darker light in his eyes than I've seen before. He's put on the stance, the look, the character of my favorite brand of lust threatening, dark, mysterious and irrefutably in charge. He takes my chin in his hand and stares me down.

"You're committed from here, no turning back."

"Of course," I say meekly. I feel as submissive now as I feel walking away from Ellery's house.

Lured by weeks of innuendo, our sexual chemistry battling to contain itself, we arrive at this moment, where suddenly it's now permissible to feel every possibility of our pairing explode inside the borders of this dungeon.

My parted lips beg a kiss but he lets go my chin and motions to the dark dungeon corridor. I begin my walk.

Afraid I'll stumble any second, I reach out to the wall to steady myself. Pierre follows close behind, carrying a lit candle that, as we move forward, bounces an erratic shadowy glow on the walls ahead. He suddenly stops me with a hand on my shoulder.

I thought we were alone tonight in the basement, but I hear the sound of a weeping woman beyond us and then someone swishes behind my back in a long trailing skirt. Whispers and crying crowd the air; the place seems populated with ghosts and things that go bump in the night. I shiver, my legs hardly able to hold me.

We turn into a musty alcove, where Pierre's candle illuminates the locked door that no one goes beyond. He moves in front of me, searches his pants' pocket and produces a key that fits snugly into the iron padlock. The latch gives and the door swings on its hinges, opening to a dark space beyond. I strain my eyes to see inside, while behind us the music of a Gregorian chant begins, sending me reeling back centuries.

Two chains dangle from the center of the room, each securely attached to the end of a wooden yoke that floats between them. While I attempt to grasp the scene with my mind, Pierre moves swiftly from niche to niche where a series of fat candles are there to give the room an eerie glow. The smell of incense filters in from the room next door, through broken places in an old brick wall that separates the two spaces.

"You going to undress, or do I have to do it myself?" Pierre asks as he lights the last candle and blows out the one he carried in.

I'm suddenly petrified realizing that I've never been naked with him before or if I was when was watching some public scene with Jeremiah, I didn't know he was there. He knows more about me than just about anyone but Jeremiah, and yet, he's the one man who doesn't know me sexually. That scares me. Know my body, but not my heart; know my heart and not my body, but you can't know both. This philosophy keeps me safe and sane.

Pierre doesn't ask me to undress twice. But I actually think he's decided to forgo the nudity when he jerks me toward the center of the room and the dangling yoke. While I remain mute and docile, he opens the wooden collar and fits it around my neck. Then he moves my hands into position, so that before my own will kicks in again to fight him off if in fact it would I am immobilized.

"Next time, you'll respond a little faster, Hayley," he says, as he pulls a long bladed knife from a sheath tucked inside his pants.

I shriek. "What are you going to do?"

"Well, I think first thing is to silence you." He uses rope, wrapping it tight through my mouth and around my head several times, until I can't budge my jaw. "Next," he states, "I'm going to cut away your clothes." The gleaming knife appears again. It must be ten inches long. I flinch, willing myself not to fight him. Oh damn! This is an almost brand new sweater.

By the time he slips the blade between my skin and the soft knit, the rising energy of my lust is exploding all around me. With every touch of the cold stainless steel, I shiver.

He rips open the front of my sweat and my breasts bulge out, almost popping from the lacy pink bra. The tip of the knife teases my left nipple where it peeks from underneath the fabric, almost exposed. He lifts up, cutting the pretty lace. Oh, no! Not the bra, thirty dollars of my hard-earned money down the drain. He takes pleasure nipping each bit of lace, while making sure to poke my skin in the process of undressing me. I sense his cool domineering enjoyment as more of my body appears before his eyes. When he has the bra in shreds, he watches intently as my nipples harden into inch long bullets of sensitive flesh.

He removes a pair of clover clamps from his pocket and captures each nipple between the tight pinchers. I gulp as a steadily building pain begins to move through me, and Pierre moves on with his knife.

At my backside, he slashes away at the remains of my sweater until all the pieces drop to the floor. He tears away my skirt with his hand and starts in on the pantyhose, the knife ripping through the sheer nylon as if there were no resistance at all. He doesn't stop until I'm naked, with only a layer of nervous sweat to protect me.

He's behind me, where I feel his hand make a slow, circuitous journey down my back to the crevice of my ass. He runs a finger along the rim with such a delicate touch that I think I'll orgasm right there. Then he leans in, his breath on the back of my neck tickling my hair while his free hand gathers some into his fist and he pulls back, just slightly the yoke makes it too difficult for more.
"Feel what it's like to be the captive, Hayley. Think about it because it's going to be a long night for you and me."

I grunt as if I'm trying to talk, but I really have nothing to say even if I could.

"You're wet here," he says, as his fingers reach deeper between my legs and he feels the opening of my vagina. I catch the scent he stirs into the air. "You'll come when I tell you and not before, you understand?"

"Uh, uh," I grunt.

"That's the rules. You get punished if you break them."

Oh! But I want to be punished! I silently scream.

He snickers then. "And, don't worry, you'll get plenty of the hard stuff you crave," he kindly reminds me. "But disobedience has prices you won't enjoy."

I have been warned. He moves to my front and yanks away the clover clamps, to which I shriek behind the rope gag. Taking my sore nipples between his fingers, he begins to squeeze them firmly. "Look at me!"

Our eyes meet, and though I can hardly stand his gaze, I do because I refuse to fail.

"That's it. Feel the pain wash over you. Sense it in your head and in your heart." I know he wants my undivided attention... I'm trying so hard, but I can hardly keep from bailing out of this one. I struggle uselessly. "No, Hayley, don't go away from me, stay here," he says to keep me focused.

I grunt again while he continues with the torture...pinching...twisting...pain raking through my body, insistent, resolute, unyielding pain. "That's it, keep going. Keep going for me." He knows I falter and twists a little harder "Yes, you can, Hayley, I know you can. It's everything you need. Eyes on me...every second..." His groin beings to sway before mine in tempting moves that threaten my success.

'Oh, please!' I beg him with my tears, with my silently screaming heart and the volcanic thrust of my pussy toward his prick it must be hard as a rock.

"Yes, Hayley, that's it," he practically smiles. "You can come now!" At the moment he gives the order, his pinching fingers drop between my thighs and tease the edges of my aching cunt. I need no more to cum likely no more than the command but his touch focuses me on the place of my pleasure, and the orgasm that rocks me with a thunderous force. "Don't look away!" he bellows sharply.

But no! No! I can't look at him anymore! I can't!

My eyes finally close as the spasms rip my belly and cunt.

Instantly, his hand drops away! No! Please! My body wrenches inside the horrid bondage, the spasms slicing through my belly. But I want more...I open my eyes and see Pierre now on the other side of the room, leaning casually against the wall waiting for the climax to end.

Seeing the expression on his face, which looks like something between disappointment, disgust and boredom, my pleasure diminishes quickly. He finally strolls toward me. "How sad that you get to the moment of your greatest gift and then piss it away."

What? What does that mean? I pissed nothing away.

"I told you to keep your eyes open and focused on me."

There's a wooden slat in his hand and with no ceremony at all, he begins to smack my misbehaving pussy with sharply stinging smacks. I writhe in agony, realizing that he has no plans to stop. I scream from behind the gag and he still goes on while a bucket of tears spill from my eyes. This hurts worse than any spanking I've ever earned. I finally wrench against the yoke so violently that he has to stop. There is anger in Pierre's eyes that magnifies my own internal fire.
"Rebellion will get you nowhere, little girl," he says.

My pussy, my pubic mound, my entire groin throbs from the fiery burn. When my body finally settles down, he starts spanking my pussy again, but this time, he makes his case, pausing just long enough for me to catch my breath and for him to scornfully rebuke me for my weakness.
"I give a command, you follow it! You don't question it. You don't waver. You don't ignore it. I may show you mercy, but that is mine to give, not yours to take. You got that?" he snaps, as the wooden slat splats against my raw pubis.

I vaguely nod.

"You want rules?"

No! I don't want rules!

"Well, let's learn them now."

But I don't want your rules! I stare at him with hardened eyes as if to say this, but he pays no attention.

Splat!

I wince.

"I rule in the dungeon, not you. You put on your cloak of submissiveness and do what you're meant to do."

Who says I was meant to do anything for you!

He sees the rebellious answer in my eyes. "Don't you dare defy me!"

I'll defy you all I want, asshole!

He knows I'm not relenting and this makes him smile in a surly, challenging sort of way. "I'd suggest you curb your passion for mutiny because you're in this yoke until I deign to remove you from it. If it takes all night to teach you that fact, then it takes all night." I struggle again to communicate my resistance. "Still want to fight me, Hayley. Is that it?" he asks, as if he expects me to answer. But he doesn't need my voice to know my response. He sees it in my eyes. "Fine then, I'll leave you here to stew."

He throws the slat in a corner and strolls away, behind me and through the door. I hear his boots on the floor, and the heavy oak door as its hinges creak, and the sound of the key in the lock as it seals me away in my despair.

I struggle again, rattling the chains attached to the yoke but there's no one to hear me.
I hate this! I want Pierre back! A sobbing rain of tears falls from my eyes. The longer I stand in this yoke confinement, the more uncomfortable it becomes and the more my arousal burns at my sex. I fidget longer and attempt to scream, but the sound is too muffled inside my lonely cell.

Oh, if only! My heart aches as dearly as my pussy with the thought of Pierre...never has there been a man who could do this to me!

Was I so terribly bad? Did I lose him forever? Do I really want him to return or should I hope for Jeremiah to release me?

I think I'll go mad with worry before my captor returns.

But then the click of the lock, the squeak of the door, and sound of boots on the floor brings me back with a sigh of relief.

"So, you're done now being defiant?" He gently strokes my face.

I nod. My grief vanishes in an instant.

"And you'll do what I say? You'll follow my rules? And if I tell you to cum with your eyes wide open, you'll fix them on my face?"

I nod at all of this, not realizing what it means, what a cruelty this will become.

His hand is in my crotch again, fondling me to a heightened arousal once more. Yes, I can keep my eyes open and on him like a beloved slave. In seconds, he takes the angry fire in me to the brink again.

"But not yet," he says.

Not yet, but why?

I breathlessly pant behind the gag. Then I watch as Pierre pulls his knife from its sheath again and my eyes focus like daggers on his closed fist. He delicately runs the blade over my body until the whole of me he is shaking in anticipation.

"Don't jerk, you'll get hurt," he warns.

I try not to, but every time he lifts the steel from my skin and starts anew, I twitch in an uncontrollable movement. While my eyes plead with him, he shakes his head.

"You try, but not hard enough." He ponders this thought silently. "You know, I'm probably too exacting for you. But then," he smiles meaningfully, "that's what we're here to find out."

I don't think I'll be failing him this time.


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