Chapter Text
They were sitting across from each other at the kitchen table in the sunny yellow breakfast nook. It was a less formal setting than the dining table, but not as cozy as the couch. Neutral territory. Shades made coffee in the French press; Mariah brought papers and a notebook with items she wanted to discuss.
Before she could start, Shades asked: “What are the rules when we negotiate?”
“What do you mean?”
“The rest of the time – as long as I live here, I belong to you, obey you, defer to you.” Mariah was surprised to hear him sum it up like that. She had set it up without explaining it or even looking it straight in the eye herself. But he had figured it out. His insight into her thinking never ceased to amaze her. “Does that apply here?”
“I think,” she said, “that would defeat the purpose.”
“Then what are the rules?”
Mariah tapped her pen against the tablet with her notes. “Why don’t you act like you do when it’s a business meeting? We’re partners. Equals. I need your honest opinion.”
“Then we both have to be honest,” he said. “You don’t have to spill your guts, but…” he paused. “Have we started?” he asked, very seriously. It was sweet how careful he was about the rules.
Mariah inclined her head, fighting a smile. “Yes, we’ve started.”
“Okay,” he said. “You were upset last week. Both of us were at fault,” he said, and he really did seem like he was in a business meeting with her. He wasn’t disrespectful, but the overtone of obedience that colored all their interactions was replaced with frankness, “but we could have handled it better if you’d just been honest with me. If this,” he spread his hands to indicate the papers before them, “is meant to be for my benefit too, then I want to use it to avoid that.”
Mariah picked up her pen, wrote RULE 1: HONESTY in black ink on her yellow tablet and underlined it three times. She turned it around, held it up for him to see.
He nodded. “Okay. What do you want to talk about?”
“Open the folder,” Mariah said.
She had arranged the folder’s contents to get an honest reaction. On top there were several images printed out on photograph quality paper. The first was the most intense. It was of a muscular man suspended from the ceiling with leather cuffs. He was balanced on the balls of his feet, his body taut with strain. His expression was one of focused endurance holding together against the swell of some inexplicable, rapturous extreme.
There was the chance Shades would give her a flat “no” and think she was crazy besides. Given his blasé attitude about things before their argument last week, she liked to think a simple “no” was most likely. And she was prepared for that: there was a whole range of less extreme positions she could be perfectly happy with. There were three other photographs with examples in his folder.
Shades flipped the folder open casually and then his eyes widened. He sucked in a slow breath and blew it out softly, staring down at the image. “I can see why you were concerned,” he said calmly. He was always better at controlling his voice than his expression; Mariah guessed that was why he made wearing sunglasses his signature style. But he didn’t have them on now, and she could see that she had surprised him. It didn’t last long though: he narrowed his eyes, looked up at her. “Is this your opening bid,” he asked, “or something you really want?”
Mariah inclined her head. She was starting high so, when negotiated down, she would hopefully still be getting something she wanted. She wondered if he would catch that. “Both,” she admitted.
He sat back in his chair. “How long have you been thinking about this?” he asked. He was doing a good job putting on a poker face.
“This pose specifically?” Mariah asked. She wasn’t going to lie, but she wasn’t going to divulge every thought either.
“Yes.”
“Several weeks now.”
He considered that. “What about this kind of thing in general?” he asked. He must have noticed her hedge.
The question was phrased poorly, too vague to pin her down. She could pretend she didn’t know what he meant, or use the room to construct a deception that wasn’t really a lie. That would violate the trust she was trying to build here, though. He was right; this wouldn’t benefit either of them without honesty.
“Several months,” she admitted. The general idea had been around for almost as long as she had felt attracted to him, caught up in those hundreds of strange thoughts that a person simply ignored every day. But she had learned that it could be a virtue in this relationship to bring things she kept hidden deep up to the light. This conversation was where she would find the limits of that.
He frowned. “I would have understood why you got upset, if I knew this was on your mind. Why didn’t you say something?”
“I’m not in the habit of verbalizing every crazy impulse.” She didn’t want him to see how much she wanted this. It was immaterial and potentially risky, since he was too easily influenced by pleasing her. It was strange to be in a negotiation with someone who might not look out for their own interest well enough if she revealed too much, but the basics remained the same. She just had to keep neutral and watch carefully.
“It’s not crazy,” he said. “Dangerous, yes…”
Perhaps she should have given him this a while ago; she was relieved to hear him finally taking her concerns seriously. “So you can admit that it’s dangerous.” That made a nice change from their argument.
“Of course I can – like I said, our conversation would have gone a lot smoother if I’d known you were thinking about something like this .” He shrugged. “But, yeah. I can do it.”
“Okay,” Mariah said, feeling shaken. It really had been an opening bid. She wanted it; of course she wanted it. But the entire point of having negotiations was so he could freely push back against the extremes that fantasy and inexperience might lead her to. She needed him to say no to something, anything, just so she knew where to stop. She’d kept these feelings locked down tight for sixty-three years – bringing her demons out and taming them for someone would be a lot less terrifying if she had some rules for herself. “I appreciate that and I want to discuss it further, but first…” she tried to come up with some way to ask that wasn’t too revealing, and then her eyes caught sight of the yellow notepad in front of her, the dark black “HONESTY” in her own handwriting. “Could you please,” she said, using the word because they were equals right now, “tell me one thing you don’t want me to do? Anything.”
His eyebrows shot up. “Why?” He sounded, of all things, suspicious.
Even honesty didn’t require that she go into excruciating detail, so she said: “I would find it reassuring to work within limits.”
He considered that. “There are people who would use this as an opportunity to find out what I hate just so they could make me take it,” he said, very matter-of-factly.
Mariah wondered if something like that had happened before, but didn’t ask. “I’m not that sick,” she said, disgusted at the very thought. She’d screw over plenty of people, but not her people. For all that she'd scared herself recently, she knew that much. She didn’t want to hurt the few people she really had in this life. “I can tell you that until I’m blue in the face, but you have no way of knowing for sure until you trust me.”
There was a hunted look in his eyes, like she was asking him to jump out of a plane and trust that she’d packed his parachute correctly.
“I can live without this,” she said, pointing to the photograph. “We can shred all of this and I can just stick to the stuff we’ve been doing.” His expression eased and she continued, because it needed to be said. “I’m happy with what we have. I’m not going to kick you out for not giving me more.”
He nodded slowly. “Okay,” he said. For a moment, she thought he meant they should give up on this. But then he said, “Guns and knives,” and she felt something in her heart warm. He was willing to trust her. “I don’t want them to be part of this – they’re tools , not toys,” he said, and there was an edge of anger in his voice, not directed at her.
Mariah turned to a new page, wrote HARD LIMITS and put both items under it. Turned the tablet to show him.
He looked at it and then smiled, shook his head. “It’s like the constitutional convention of kink in here.”
Mariah laughed.
“Why don’t you tell me something you don’t want?” he asked.
She wondered why he needed to know, but decided to go with it. It was part of playing by the honesty rule. “I don’t want to play at slavery,” she said. “Ever.” She couldn’t quite keep the disgust out of her voice. “It’s absurd.”
His eyes darted away and then back. “Okay,” he said.
Mariah got the distinct impression he was offended by her virulence on this point. “Have you ever done that?”
“Do you really need to hear me say it?” he asked, annoyance creeping into his voice. “You know how common it is.”
Mariah spread her hands. “I’m not going to browbeat you over it. I’m curious.”
“Okay,” he said. “It wasn’t my idea, but yeah.”
“Did you like it?”
“Yes.” He looked guilty. “I thought of it as more of a Greco-Roman thing, though,” he explained. “Most people do. I thought you would have noticed that?”
“Sure,” she said, “Most people aren’t acting out plantation fantasies. But the fact that I’m the great-granddaughter of people who were enslaved is just part of my...” she thought of a nicer word than disgust, “annoyance with it.”
He leaned back, folded his hands in his lap. “Okay, now I’m curious – what else bothers you about it?”
Mariah sighed. She had done a lot of thinking about this in the past few months. It was something she had to work out if she was going to do this and look herself in the mirror. “I don’t have a simple answer to that. Do you really want to know?”
“I’ve got time,” he said.
“All right," Mariah said. "Slavery is about coercion. Force is all slave-owners have and the moment,” she snapped her fingers, “that weakens, people will reach for freedom.” She leaned forward. “Now, what do I have?” She raked her eyes over him very deliberately. “I have a… strong, intelligent, capable human being who wants to obey me.” There was a look of such naked shock on his face that she thought she ought to compliment him more often. “And I can push that so far you’ll let me break the Geneva Convention on your ass—“ she said, pushing the photo toward him with two fingers. “Why would I want to pretend like I have to force you to do anything? What I have is better than that,“ she said and smiled, let her satisfaction in that knowledge show. It was a wonderful thing. Every day it surprised her anew to have something so precious.
She had never seen him look dumbstruck before. His lips were parted and he was staring at her like she was a natural wonder, something terrifying and beautiful. It felt really good, but she decided to break the tension, so she said: “That just about answer your question?”
He laughed, reached out for her tablet, wrote something on it, and then turned it back for her to read. Mariah glanced down: there was a large “A+” written on the upper right corner of the page where she’d written “RULE 1: HONESTY.”
Mariah chuckled. “So glad you approve.”
“You’ve been thinking about the Geneva Convention?” he asked, looking bemused.
“Post-9/11 I gave speeches about the government’s use of torture. How could I want something that, legally speaking, qualifies as torture without thinking about it?”
“That’s not what you want,” he said, sweetly, with such certainty in his voice. “You want…” he couldn’t suppress his smile as he repeated her words back to her, “a, ah, strong, intelligent, capable person to play with.” His eyes were dancing that had made him so happy.
“Feeling pretty good about yourself, huh?” she asked, not suppressing her own smile. It was its own kind of power, being able to make someone happy just by telling them something nice she honestly thought.
“I’ve discovered that I like negotiations,” he said, nodding firmly. “In fact, I think I could negotiate all day,” he added, drawing out the word ‘all’ so it sounded lewd.
Mariah laughed again, her shoulders shaking. She felt ridiculous and happy. It was absurd to act like two giggly teenagers over the topic of consensual torture, but real joy in somebody else didn’t come along every day. So what if it was weird?
“You might be able to do this all day, but I’m not as fond of the idea. I’d like to switch to practicalities, unless there’s something else you’d like to discuss?”
He shook his head.
“Okay,” she tapped her pen against the photograph. “Do you have any ideas for doing this safely?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I’ve actually done it before.” Off her look he clarified: “For work. The goal there wasn’t to make it safe…” he looked amused at the very thought, “but I can reverse engineer from that. First of all,” he turned the image around, pointed out the chains, “we’re going to need thicker ones than that, something I can get a grip on to take some pressure off my legs.”
“Good,” Mariah said. “Why don’t you look through the folder and make notes for me? We can discuss them next week.”
“Okay,” he said. He stared at her a long beat. “Are we done?” he asked.
“Yes.”
He seemed to deflate into his seat, nodding. She hadn’t realized how tense he’d been, even when he was joking around with her, until that moment. Very deliberately, she set her pen down, stood and walked over to him.
He looked tired, though not unhappy. Mariah felt her heart tighten; she’d thrown a lot at him today. It occurred to her that all this legalistic bullshit was more of a comfort to her than him. It was how she thought and she had, until recently, never been on the wrong side of the law. Procedures and rules were safety to her. She stepped closer, stroked her hand over his close-cropped hair. Occasionally she thought about telling him to grow it out so she could grab a handful when she wanted, but she always stopped herself. There was something about the soft bristle of his hair, the warm skin of his head, and the delicate bone structure she could trace with her fingertips, that she liked. Men thought it made them look tough, and it did from the right distance. But up close it he seemed vulnerable, exposed.
“This was good,” she said, sincerely. Some warm tug in her heart compelled her to take it a step further. She said: “You did good, baby.”
His eyes softened and his lips parted, like she’d just given him something precious. Then, before she could react, he put his arms around her waist and pulled her in tight, resting his head against her stomach. His arms were like steel around her. There was something so good about knowing that she couldn’t get away unless he let her, but that he would always let her. She hoped that the negotiations would make him feel like that too. There were things she wanted to do to him where he wouldn’t be able to get get away, but he needed to know that she would always let him.
There was something special here to explore, the way kind words could move him. It didn’t have anything to do with pain, but it wasn’t entirely normal either. She experimented with it, stroking his head. “You did real good, baby,” she repeated.
His arms tightened and she swore he nuzzled her stomach. “Mariah,” he said, “please, let me take care of you?” His mouth moved lower on her belly, just above her cunt. He wouldn’t presume to go there without permission. He was offering, though.
If she wanted, he’d go to his knees right there in the breakfast nook. Mariah cupped the vulnerable, warm skin of his head and sighed in pleasure. That was a good idea. For later, though: she liked a nice soft bed for her Saturday morning sex. “Come on upstairs then,” she said, leading him by the hand away from the table.
--
The next time they met, Shades was the one with all the documents. He had made notes on everything in the folder she gave him plus added several pages of specs for a pulley based device intended to put him in the stress position she was interested in. It included a very well-drawn sketch using her basement’s measurements. He came around to her side of the table to show her, pointing out where everything should go.
He was eager about the whole thing, like a car nut talking about souping up their ride. That was a nice thought, to consider this a strange but harmless couples’ hobby, like riding motorcycles or bungee jumping.
Her basement already had a small bathroom with a toilet and sink in addition to heavy beams that would apparently be perfect for securing the pulley system. Mariah said that a bed should be added, and he agreed. Neither of them suggested adding new flooring or moving out the usual things found in a basement, such as the washing machine and dryer; all of that added verisimilitude to the fantasy.
“I can get you the name of my handyman,” Mariah offered. “For the installation.”
“I’d rather do it,” he said.
“Why?”
“I can do it safely. That’s what matters, right? Besides,” he said, looking up from the papers, “people talk.”
Mariah her heart warmed at that. He was trying to protect her reputation from wagging tongues. She reached out and smoothed her palm over the strong, warm lines of his back through his black dress shirt.
“This is impressive,” she said. “Especially the sketch.” He was untrained but he had a raw talent for perspective.
He stilled. With her hand touching his back, she could feel that even his breathing paused as her words sank in. She had been playing with that since last week, exploring the way her honest compliments could overwhelm him. She was no stranger to the power of words, but the intensity of his reaction was something new. It felt like having a magic spell she could cast any time she liked.
“Thanks,” he said, once he’d collected himself. Then he cut her a sly glance. “I do have a vested interested in getting this right.”
“Mm,” Mariah said, and then something occurred as she looked out over the breakfast nook table. “You know,” she said, barely suppressing a smile, “I believe I’ve found the way to build a better mousetrap.”
He blinked at her, confused at the sudden change of topic. “…You have?”
“Uh-huh,” she spread her hands over the papers before them, gave him a saucy look, “consult the mouse.”
He laughed.
“Of course,” she continued in her best bedroom voice, her hand drawing leisurely circles against his back, “I’d have to find a very depraved little mouse…”
“Who you calling little?” he tossed back, smirking. “But since we’re on the topic of depravity,” he licked his lips, “I can, uh,” he tapped his pen against the sketch, “have this set up by next week.”
Mariah sucked in a breath. That was much faster than she expected. It was one thing to talk about this crazy shit. She had become comfortable with that; their negotiations had made her comfortable. But it was a vague idea, somewhere in the future. Now it was next week.
She noticed her hand had stilled on his back when he turned to touch her shoulder in comfort. “There’s no rush,” he said.
“Of course not,” she said. She would never tolerate that. Nor would he do that to her. “But you’re feeling eager, aren’t you?” she asked. She didn’t quite understand what it was like to feel eager for someone to do that to you.
“It’s been on my mind,” he admitted.
“Can you tell me what it’s like for you?” She realized how imprecise the question was as soon as she asked, clarified: “Would you really enjoy this?”
He seemed to give that serious consideration. He took a short breath, ran his tongue over his bottom lip. “Look, Mariah,” he said, “I think you need to expand your definition of ‘enjoy.’”
Mariah considered that. “Do you mean you have a higher pain threshold than average?”
“I do,” he said, “but it’s more than that.”
“It would help,” she said, “if you could explain it to me.”
His hand squeezed her shoulder gently. “Okay,” he said, his brow furrowed as he thought it over. “You graduated summa cum laude , right?”
“In undergrad, yes,” she said, then felt the need to add: “I fell to magna cum laude in Law School.”
Shades smiled. “You ‘fell’ to a spot most of your classmates would have given their left nut for…” he said, looking at her like she was adorable. It was strange, to be adorable to someone. “You’re amazing.”
Mariah felt the corner of her lips quirk. “Thank you. But how does this relate?”
“Yeah, so – summa or magna , that took work. You’re brilliant, but there must have been… sleepless nights, endurance, commitment. You suffered for it.”
“I did.” Not the least because she’d learned as a girl that getting good grades was one of the few things she could do to keep herself safe. Somewhere in the back of her mind it always felt like her life was on the line, every single time she got a grade back. That feeling didn’t come from a good place, but she used it. There was nothing she wouldn’t use to drive herself ever higher.
He nodded. “But you enjoyed it too, didn’t you? You pushed yourself and you achieved. You felt proud.”
She was starting to see where he was going with this. She’d read people talk about endorphins from strenuous kink like athletes talking about a race. “Is it like running a marathon, then?” she asked.
“It’s better,” he said.
All the reading she’d done had given her information, but not understanding . She was puzzled and fascinated by the things people on his side of this said they experienced. They talked about endorphins and being able to achieve extreme feelings of euphoria. It was couched in strange neologisms like “sub space” that didn’t really help her. The only thing she knew is that it was nothing like anything she had experienced nor did she think she was capable of it, even if she wanted to. Which she very much did not: if she wanted that kind of feeling, alcohol and drugs were preferable to putting herself in someone’s power, even someone she trusted. Jesus, she didn’t even like to lose control with those things, let alone under the hands of some asshole who wanted to tie her up.
She was perfectly aware of the hypocrisy of those thoughts given that she was herself ‘some asshole’ who wanted to tie people up. And unashamed of it. She was glad that he got enough out of this to make it worth the risk. It was her extreme good fortune that he did. Without him in her life she would have to continue keeping all the pleasure these feelings gave her tightly locked away. And for her part she was doing everything she could to do right by him. That was all she could do.
“How is it better?” she asked. “I’ve been doing research. People talk about going to a deep, euphoric place… is that something you can experience?”
He nodded slowly. “Yes.”
“Have I managed that?”
“You’ve taken me pretty deep,” he said, and the phrasing of his answer tipped her off.
Mariah tilted her head. “But not all the way?” she asked, to confirm.
He shook his head slowly, watching her reaction.
Mariah touched his sketch. “Could this do it?” Learning that there were extremes he could experience that she clearly had not taken him increased her own eagerness. What would it be like, to do that to someone she cared about so much?
“A lot of things could do it,” he said. “It’s more about how you do it than what you’re doing. The--” his eyes moved over her face as he considered the next word, “command you exert.”
“Okay. What has gotten you closest so far?”
“When you order me to strip,” he said with certainty. Mariah noted that he hadn’t even had to think about that. It was obvious to him.
Interesting. She’d done that a couple times. It was very enjoyable from her side. Having some idea of what it was doing to him would make it even more fun in the future. It gave her important insight into how to evoke those feelings in him in other ways too. But it worried her. “Is it safe?” she asked.
He looked confused. “How do you mean?”
Mariah shrugged. “Is it like being intoxicated? Does it compromise your judgment? Will it make it harder for you to tell me if something goes wrong?”
“No… I can take a lot while I’m there and it is intoxicating. Everything feels good. But I can come out of it very quickly if something goes wrong.” He made a face. “I once punched a guy for touching me while I was like that -- not my dom,” he clarified, “some asshole who thought he could join the fun without asking permission.”
“Well, that’s… reassuring,” Mariah said. Or something like it. “Thank you,” she said. “This is helpful.”
He inclined his head, a grin at the corner of his mouth. “I’m here for all your mousetrap building needs.”
Mariah smiled back. “You know I like to take my time with these things,” she said. She didn’t want to get his his hopes up that she would suddenly know how to hit all his buttons just right after one conversation.
“I do,” he said. “And I appreciate it.”
“Good,” she said. “Then I’ll work on it. Don’t worry about having this,” she tapped the sketch, “come out of nowhere -- I’ll give you advance warning. I want to make sure you’re feeling well when we try it.”
“Fair enough,” he said. “Is this all you wanted to talk about today?”
“Yes.” Mariah slowly stroked her hand down to his tight little ass and gave it as squeeze while maintaining eye contact. “I’ve had enough of paperwork for today, haven’t you?”
He gave her an innocent look. “But, Mariah, what else is there?”
Mariah glared at him. “Don’t play coy with me,” she said, and gave his ass a slap, “or I’ll settle in with a good book and order you to clean the house all day.”
She was surprised at the intensity of his reaction; he looked very interested in that idea before he smoothed out his expression. “Marta would certainly appreciate that,” he said, noncommittal, referring to her housekeeper.
Interesting. Mariah filed that away with his reaction to compliments and stood, pulling him down into a kiss, her hands on either side of his face. She brushed his bottom lip with her tongue and tightened her grip; he opened for her, leaning in. He tasted dark and delicious, like the Sumatran coffee blend they’d been drinking. They had a rhythm now, push and pull. He settled in for the ride just the way she liked to start, his hands resting on her hips and lightly brushing up to cup her breasts. Sometimes she wanted him to be more active, rough even, but the default was him opening for her, following and supporting her as she took what she wanted. It thrilled her right down to her toes to feel his strong hands softly cup her breasts knowing she could, with a word, order him to push her onto the table and fuck her as rough as she liked. It was like having a whole palette of colors to play with and all the time in the world to do it.
Rough sex, like cunnilingus, was not a morning breakfast nook activity in her book, however. For all that she was a pervert now, she had some old fashioned notions about the proper time for filthy kitchen sex. “Come on,” she said, again leading him upstairs.
-
On Sunday evening Mariah curled up with some bedtime reading. Namely, the file folder full of pages Shades had carefully annotated in his small, neat printing. There was something cramped and awkward about how precise it was, the pencil pressed down hard into the paper. She noticed, with satisfaction, that he’d kept the images she included. He must have found them as stimulating as she did.
The documents weren’t enthralling. They were full of all the things she considered too boring to waste conversation on. There were the basics: allergy info, any old injuries she should be aware of. Plus a range of other questions. He was rather terse. Under the paragraph where she described her reasons for preferring the stoplight system to a single safeword he just wrote “OK.” In another section, where she asked if he was interested in using titles, he wrote, “If you want.” She nearly rolled her eyes at his scintillating responses. It was a strange contrast; he was so forthcoming in their conversations. But then she saw, off to the side, in smaller print, “I consider your name a title.”
Mariah felt the inexplicable urge to tenderly trace her fingertips over the words. His admiration was so nakedly sincere that there were still times it could catch her off guard. She had never liked surprises, and yet she found that she loved this kind.
There wasn’t much else interesting on that page, so she flipped back to the question where she asked him to tell her anything he’d like to request. She wasn’t making any promises that she’d do what he wanted, but she was willing to consider it. She could always use some fresh ideas to mix things up. Besides, she regularly brought him into the seamy contents of her mind, surely he could stand to show her a couple of his. He’d written: caning, fetters, collaring, special rules.
Mariah was impressed. Considering his terse replies and how hard she'd had to work to get him to admit to something he didn’t want, he was practically chatty about things he was interested in. She pulled her laptop over and Googled the terms to get some basic info on them. They all looked promising; she saved several sites to her special bookmark folder.
This might help her with the problem she faced: she wanted to explore how he she could make him feel before she started in on the consensual torture. It was a simple matter of good process. She needed to know what was between where they were and where they were going before hanging him up by the wrists in her basement. It was also a matter of pride. She had the suspicion that he was right: she could get him to "sub space" without needing to use pain. Recent discoveries around compliments and the prospect of being given onerous tasks seemed full of potential. Particularly if she combined them with one or two of the guaranteed list of kinks he’d just so kindly given her.
Mariah pulled out a fresh sheet of paper and started brainstorming combinations on it, absorbed and delighted by the prospects unfolding as she linked concepts, added keywords and notes. Fetters worked well with collaring, and “special rules” could work with her idea about giving him tasks. They had to be challenging enough but not too much; she needed to be able to honestly compliment him and watch him freeze like a rabbit. She smiled and thought again of the idea of mixing colors, having a whole palette to play with.