Minutes ticked by. Interminably long minutes while I cursed him in my head.
“Take them off, cross your arms, and put each peg on the other nipple.”
I swapped the pegs over and endured the shooting pain as the blood returned before I put them back on again.
Waiting again.
“Same again, off and back on.”
He barely glanced at me. I glared at the screen, the tension in my body rising. If we’d been on the phone, I’d have been ignorant of his lack of attention. However, the webcam revealed him reading, not gawping at my breasts.
Minutes felt like hours as my nipples throbbed. Then he told me to do it again—take them off and put them back on.
“Too slow,” he reprimanded. “No hesitating.” How could he tell without looking at me? Somehow, out of the corner of his eye, he had spotted my delay in reattaching the fiendish things.
I bit down on my lip and stifled an ouch. He kept asking me do the same thing. I had gone down the pleasure-pain route and returned to just the goddamn pain. The usual mental mantra playing in my head—I am doing this because I want to please him—failed, especially without his looking at me. The next stage—why the fuck am I doing this—arrived on cue with the watery eyes. How did I stop him giving me the same instructions? Cry uncontrollably? Safe-word?
“Again, Gemma,” he droned.
The pain was immense. My hands shook and trembled as I targeted a part of my squished nipple not red, sore, and sweet agony.
“Do I have to wait all evening?” He stared at the screen, right into my eyes, at long bloody last.
My fingertips wavered, refusing to pinch the peg. Why do this? He didn’t look pleased with my efforts—his eyebrows knitted into almost one thin line of blond hairs. I was close to being awash with tears and wanted to cup my breasts to support them, as if it would make a great deal of difference.
“Move them, Gemma.”
“Argh!” I screamed as I took them off. “Fuck you! You’re a sadistic shit!” The untamed words fell out of my mouth as I failed to absorb the pain.
Jason laughed. That you-have-been-got kind of chuckle he used when he’d had his way with me.
“Didn’t want to safe-word?”
“Yes, but that was so much better—yelling at you.” The cursing had provided a moment of euphoric liberation, bursting all my pent-up frustration out in a mighty shout and, at the same time, negating the pain in one swoop of adrenaline.
“Keep them off. You know I don’t push you, you do. You only had to admit you’d had enough. You didn’t, why?” he asked.
I rubbed my tender breasts, dispersing the pain, waiting for it to ease off before answering. I lowered my eyes. “I think I might have been having fun, somewhere along the line.”
“Look at me.” I bobbed my head back up and he’d cocked his head to one side. “Fun?” he queried.
“I knew it would have to stop at some point, and one of us would end it. Safe-words are such an anticlimax.” My lips curled into a smile, and the laughter came from deep within me, almost a childish giggle.
He wagged a finger at me. “Don’t go thinking calling me a sadistic shit is an acceptable safe-word. That was a one off. I wanted you to reacquaint yourself with how you
r mind works, because you need to know what makes you tick as much as I do.”
“You didn’t even look at me.” I sulked.
“Didn’t have to. I could hear you, though, eh? Your little whimpering noises. So perhaps I am a sadistic shit after all.”
We both grinned, mirroring each other’s expressions and, for a moment, we were virtually together in the same room, conjoined and happy.
We finished chatting about my loneliness, and he pointed out the same applied to him, stuck in a hotel. I felt a tad self-centred, also relieved. I went to bed comforted by his words of love.
***
A substantial amount of routine and sameness governed our daily lives, and we didn’t always rely on sex to connect. There were the trips out, meals in fine restaurants, and dinner parties at other people’s houses or venues. Jason received numerous invitations, and he declined the majority. Those he did accept, which were not part of the BDSM community, he chose based on ulterior motives. The hosts’ position, status, and influence in the world of politics or business he frequented, the like-minded executives or social movers in non-competitive industries.