Chapter One

 

I can already feel the rankling sensation in the pit of my stomach the moment I push open Jeremiah's door. The aroma of coffee is so thick it makes me dizzy. It is my aphrodisiac of the moment; where with one whiff, the simmering heat of sexual need that tantalizes my body becomes so overpowering that I have just one thought in my brain and bones.

Jeremiah is the owner of Jeremiah's Coffee Bar, one of a dozen narrow façades along the busy street. His shop, like most of the others in this district, is part of an urban renaissance that began several years ago to revitalize a sagging and dispirited downtown that was fast becoming a haven for slum lords, the homeless and seedy thrift shops. Jeremiah's renovated space looks artistically antique now, rather than squalid. The two-story brick building is a solid structure with the established date of 1872 chiseled into a slab of concrete above the second floor, and beneath that date, faded green lettering states the building's original purpose, 'Mercantile'. In the second floor is the loft where Jeremiah lives, in the basement is a makeshift dungeon, an unofficial play space for a small community of shadowy types who occasionally need to act out bondage sex fantasies on neutral ground.

As I swing my ass onto the barstool, Jeremiah notices my smoldering expression with one raised eyebrow. He studies me carefully while polishing glass mugs with a meditatively Zen-like dexterity.

"We're closed," he finally says, as if the surly brute were talking to a drunk who just stumbled in off the street.

"The door was open and the sign still on," I remind him without trying to be flippant. I stare at my burly friend with great affection, while reminding myself why I'm here. The black-haired, beer-bellied, skuzzy, bearded brute cracks bullwhips with the finesse of a painter's articulate hand. I shake now thinking of the cracker whizzing by my ear infusing the space about me with its high-intensity explosion as the fall splits the air. The thought alone sends a shiver of nervous anticipation up my spine, while afterwards a tingling at the back of my neck remains.

I hear paper rustling behind me and turn around, seeing a light-skinned Black man reading the newspaper at a table near the bar. He stares up briefly, observing the scene for several seconds then turns back to his reading. His face is familiar, but I don't spend the time trying to remember where I saw him before.

Returning to my sacred mission, I seek Jeremiah's face with the gaze of a wounded soul with an outstretched hand.

"Is it always this way with you, Hayley? Never gonna get any better?"

"I wish," I say, with a hint of hope in my voice.

"I got work, you know."

"But I'm yours, honeybun," I sweet-talk him, eyelids fluttering as obviously as a Playboy bunny's.

He chuckles under his breath. He's thinking something about my sick character he's not saying. I know how he judges me, how they all judge me. He called me a sport fuck once, but that's not the truth. I do have moral standards, but I'm just confused, and now an injured bird with tattered wings in need of repair.

I nod in the direction of the Black man. "You want me to kick him out and close up?" I ask.

Jeremiah gives me another few seconds to sweat this one out, before finally saying, "You can close up, but he's good to stay."

What does that mean? "Is he going to join us?" I ask.

He laughs aloud and hits the countertop hard with a glass. I practically jump from my skin. "Leave your clothes in the upstairs hall and get yourself downstairs, slut."

Unsure, I hesitate. The pokerfaced Black man gives the scene a unique twist, making me oddly afraid. I shouldn't care. I've been naked before strangers more times than I can count. Am I wrong to think he is not as disinterested as he looks with his solemn face stuck in his newspaper?

Jeremiah hates being made to wait-especially when he's doing a female a favor. Scowling, he reaches over the bar and grabs my throat in his large hand, squeezing enough to shake me back to life. "Now!" he says tersely.

"Yes, sir."

I practically fall off the stool getting to my feet, and move directly toward the far left corner of the coffee bar where the stairwell to the basement is walled off in a small alcove. It's not much privacy, but it's all I have as I slip out of my shoes, then strip away my winter coat, my best red sweater, and my jeans. I left off my underwear when I left my apartment this morning, as if I was beginning the script then in anticipations of the final act now.

I am a fair-skinned blonde with hazel eyes, about five feet six inches tall, pretty average. Right now, my shoulder-length hair is wildly disheveled. I think Jeremiah likes it that way. My breasts hang out, jiggling softly against my chest, nipples responding to the draft of air seeping through the old building. I remember one lover telling me that I have a body made for sex-tight in the right places, but curvaceous where it counts, hips, ass and voluptuous breasts, as good as a 1950's Playboy pinup when women had flesh enough to hold. I don't know what makes me think of that lover now since; if I don't want to make Jeremiah mad, I need to get downstairs.

I don't know if either man sees me naked, because I won't look back before I hurry down the rickety staircase, shivering until my teeth chatter. My belly makes a weird jolt as the damp musk hits my nostrils. I think of this subterranean maze as the gateway to hell. In winter, the ancient oil furnace clangs in erratic ear-splitting rhythms, sort of mimics the bad hard metal that plays in the background of most dungeon play. Once hitting bottom, I wind my way in the dark along the narrow stone path toward the punishment room, feeling my way with my hands, mice and spiders surely following in my tentative footsteps. Suddenly, the corridor is awash with a feral glow. Jeremiah turned on the lights, thank God.

For a second I linger, my body hugging the stone bricks. Every nerve ending has come alive, so what I touch feels like fingers grasping to take hold of me. My pussy aches; my belly spasms. My breaths come in ragged gasps, while my mouth is parched with the taste of sex. I keep close to the stone, enjoying its support. And for a moment, my hips gyrate against the scratchy granite, imitating the motions of fucking. The more the rough surface scratches my belly, the more I want it cutting into me. I stop to feel a wave of orgasm that's been dallying at my sex for days rise up threateningly. I could come right here without Jeremiah's help, but we'd both be pissed.

Thankfully, my friend abruptly intervenes, grabbing my hair and shaking me from the erotic splendor just before I hit the edge. He thrusts me the rest of the way down the corridor to the Hall of Retribution-the space he so aptly named, where from every angle the tools of punishment hang in ominous array, inert now, but like jackals awaiting prey.

"What a bitch you are!" Jeremiah comments. I see with some relief that he's alone.

I know my friend resents the way I come into his Coffee Bar: knowing that with a little pussy power, I can always finagle a trip to his dungeon. I don't recall he's ever refused me, although I prefer not to think of what it means to have him so easily won-it would destroy the headspace I have so meticulously carved-Jeremiah in charge as I surrender.

He locks my wrists in iron manacles, while my cunt drips its expectation down my inner thighs.

"You're hurting bad, huh?" he taunts.

He's noticed. "Rough week," I say.

"Any particular reason?"

"I saw Daniel Mulray yesterday."

"Ah."

I'm so glad that I don't need to explain more. He knows my neurosis, my psychosis, my hysteria, insanity, obsessions and phobias. He understands silently why I need him now.

I'm bound to the stone wall, arms high, feet wide, and my waist strapped to the cold surface. In seconds, the chilling cold climbs into my belly where it joins the gnawing ache that keeps up a restive residence beside its companion-sexual fervor.

I make the wall my lover as the first talons of Jeremiah's braided cat slash across my shoulders. My empty, open pussy hungers for each searing shock of pain and clenches taut. He pauses and I jiggle inside the bondage to settle my body and shake out the tiny discomforts. I feel his energy now. I sense his emotions running high, gearing up for the long battle with me. I'll wear him out before I scream the first, "Stop, please stop!", which, of course, he'll refuse to acknowledge.

This pain feeds my pulsing sex. I dance around the orgasm for a time, supremely content to have Jeremiah back off to quell the urgency, only to drive on again with this wicked cat o' nine tails. I feel his blows all over my body, my back and shoulders, my thighs, my calves, my ass. Oh, how my ass burns!

Harder, I want it harder!

He reads my thoughts, responding to the dictator in my brain who directs this show. The master becomes the servant, not the reverse; all good subs believe that's true. It's part of our game. I only know for sure how grateful I am that Jeremiah knows when to lay it on hard, and when to say enough's enough.

Once I'm swimming though a sea of endorphins, it no longer matters what Jeremiah does to me. I feel my hard won satisfaction reigning down like something fresh, like petals of flowers, or the smell of dew come morning. He attacks me from behind, stroking my raw flesh with his fat fingers, feeling his way between my legs to the wetness drooling from the mouth of my vagina.

He splashes his weapon over my shoulder, and I smell the scent of leather sexuality. The falls hang down, tickling my breasts and the peaked nipples that have been chafed by the jagged stone.

"You ain't seen nothin' yet, sweetheart. Not yet," he threatens in a melodiously gruff voice; a poor Bogart imitation, but I love it. He speaks from his rumbling groin, which now wriggles in against my bruised ass. He bites my neck, gnawing it for a time, then starts a trek of bites and kisses down my back, as I smother the sounds of my satisfaction with a bitten lip. His hands maul my flesh as if it were dough; his inner heat pours out through his hands. They burn me now as hotly as his spray of stinging leather once burned my skin.

He makes the ache far worse, bringing it to desperate straits that will take frantic turns before this torture ends. After all, he has me bound. I'm at his mercy. I asked for this, all of it, even the part that I didn't script and can't say I care for. I fight with him, hoping that he'll allow my body to cum and end the tease, even as I realize now that he's in this scene for himself as much as me.

I know he'll fuck my ass before the night ends.