IN SUSPENSE

Shenoa Carroll-Bradd

Before they began, all was silent. Christie and Mac entered the stain-proof room together, fingers entwined in solidarity.

Christie’s stomach tightened, and her skin flushed and tingled, just as it had when she’d first met Mac almost a year ago. She wanted this, and there was no way she’d let nerves stand in her way.

Mac closed the door behind them before leaning in to kiss the spiral of rings up her earlobe, his breath teasing and warm.

Her nipples hardened as his kisses sent tingles up her scalp and down her spine. Christie leaned back against Mac and tilted her chin up, giving him better access to her neck and raising her gaze to the chains hanging from the ceiling like glowworm strands with bright steel hooks at their ends. She could do this, damn it.

Everything Christie loved had come hand in hand with pain, whether it was her Akita, Ponzy, who had only been adopted because her previous dog ran off, or the dozen tattoos adorning her skin. Those carefully inked designs had taken hours in the chair. This would only take minutes.

Mac wrapped his arms around her waist. “Hey,” he said between kisses. “It’s okay. We’ll start off slow.”

Christie raised a hand to fondle his zero-gauge earlobe before leaning in for a kiss. His lips parted, and she darted her tongue inside, playing with his silver stud.

He kissed back, harder, sliding one hand down to cup her ass and pull her against him.

She ground against his pelvis, feeling an erection swelling behind his jeans.

“Tell me when you’re ready.”

Christie nodded, moaning against his mouth, but did not answer. Not yet. She pulled back to peel his shirt up over tight abs and past his pierced nipples, exposing his chest piece: the MacMillan family crest bordered with thistles and bookended by a pair of intricately detailed raven’s wings. She ran her hand down it just once, though she’d seen it almost every day for months now. Still, the familiar design made her smile. Christie thought of it as a link between Mac and his ancestors, tracing ink back through the years to his distant highland predecessors, whose fiery coloring he still wore in a stripe down his scalp, and on the end of his chin.

He grinned, mischievous as ever, and tugged at the buttons on her blouse, pulling it open, letting air in over her flushed skin. Mac slipped a hand inside, massaging her right breast while he worked on the other buttons.

She kissed him in little bursts, darting in to press her lips to his, then pulling back before he had a chance to respond, teasing him into trying to follow when she retreated.

Mac slipped the last button free and her shirt slid down her arms, dropping to the floor. He cupped her face and pulled her into the deep kiss she’d been withholding.

Christie laughed against his lips, reaching down to unbutton her jean shorts. She hadn’t put on underwear that morning, a decision she hoped she wouldn’t regret later, once she was exhausted and sore. The denim was already damp from her growing excitement.

Mac hooked a finger into the waistband, helping to tug them down. When the denim hit the floor, Christie stood naked before him, wearing just her tattoos. They helped her feel brave, like little flags proclaiming, I’m no stranger to pain. I have no fear of it. I take it in, and the pain makes me more beautiful.

They stood together, her face cradled in his hand, just breathing. Mac’s muddy green-brown eyes held hers, and after a moment he asked, “Are you sure you’re ready for this?”

Christie pressed her lips together and nodded. “Absolutely. I’ve always wanted to try suspension, but it never felt quite right with anyone else. It requires a specific kind of trust.” She leaned forward to playfully run her tongue across his lower lip. “A trust I’ve only felt with you.”

Mac kissed her, smoothing a hand down her flat stomach, curling two fingers up to stroke between her slick lips until she rocked back and forth to his rhythm.

She knew what he was doing—taking her mind off of it all, flooding her system with endorphins—and she appreciated it. After a moment of bliss, Mac pulled away from the kiss and stepped over to the door, rapping thrice against it before rejoining her. He kissed her again, cradling her naked shoulders against his chest as the door behind them opened, and two tattooed men entered wearing surgical masks and gloves.

“We’re ready,” she said, stepping out of Mac’s embrace. If I can do this, I can do anything.

The attendants’ eyes didn’t linger on her bare skin, though she felt an electric thrill at their presence. The men very carefully and professionally positioned her beneath the hooks, and began their work.

Christie and Mac had set up their appointment two months in advance, just in case either party had second thoughts, and to be sure all arrangements were in place. She had been weighed, measured and gauged on their last visit a week ago, so the hooks could be perfectly adjusted for her size and frame.

The attendants sat Christie on a stool covered in a disposable plastic sheet.

Mac stood by, offering his hand to squeeze, which she gladly accepted.

The attendant to her left started the suspension, pulling up a sizable piece of skin on the outside of her thigh and pushing one of the bright, clean hooks in until it popped through and slid out the other side.

Christie stared at the hook in her skin, clenching tight to Mac’s hand, watching the man slide the shiny curve into position in the freshly pierced hunk of flesh before moving on. She came back to herself after a moment, looking around as if she’d just woken, her whole body tingling with a mix of pain and excitement.

“Doll,” Mac leaned in, “are you okay?”

“I…” Christie watched, rapt, as the other attendant did the same, popping the hook through her skin so she was symmetrical again.

“You what?”

Christie looked at him, a slow smile spreading over her face, a tightness spooling in her chest, identical to the winding beginnings of arousal. She bit her lip and fought the urge to grind her naked cunt against the plastic-covered seat. “I thought there’d be more blood, that’s all.”

The attendant to her left looked up, his warm eyes crinkling into a smile over the mask. “Glad to disappoint.”

She squeezed Mac’s hand for every hook the attendants placed in her thighs, upper calves and knees, and while there was no denying the piercings hurt, the pain was not what she’d expected. It was far from unbearable, and the sensation of cool metal moving beneath her skin was so deliciously novel, Christie barely noticed the pain with so much discovery blooming inside her.

The attendants worked quickly, their gloved hands deft with practice, but still gentle.

Despite everything else, Christie felt goose bumps break out along her arms, and she bit back a quip about never having had three men’s hands on her at once. Mac wasn’t really the jealous type, but she felt a new level of bond developing between them in the suspension chamber, and didn’t want to tarnish it with a cheap joke.

When the technicians finished inserting the hooks, Mac moved behind her, as discussed, and placed his hands on her shoulders. One attendant moved to the side and began to work the pulleys, drawing her knees up, while the other carefully removed the stool from beneath her. Mac’s hands went from resting atop her shoulders to cupping them as her torso moved parallel with the floor, shifting finally to support a fraction of her weight as her head came down to point at the ground.

“Whoa…” she murmured.

“Are you o—”

“I’m fine,” she insisted, cutting off the question. He sounded more worried than she felt, and she didn’t have any room for doubt just then.

The attendant who had removed the stool pulled back the edge of his glove to inspect his watch. “You have eight minutes in the air, starting now.”

Eight minutes. That’s nothing. I can do eight minutes with my hands tied behind my back. Blood was already rushing to her head; she could feel it heating her cheeks and pounding a sweet rhythm in her ears. She felt Mac’s hands on her inner thighs, pressing them apart. The pressure from the hooks in her skin increased when he took his hands away from her shoulders, and Christie bit back a short gasp. Instead of trying to look up at him, she gazed at the clean white floor, grinning at the strange sight of her short blonde hair hanging down like Spanish moss. She could see the attendants’ shoes at the edges of her vision, but Christie didn’t care. She was floating, like a fairy. Like an upside-down angel.

Above her, Mac’s breath tickled her thighs as he laid a quick succession of kisses down to her left hip bone, then the hands returned to her shoulders, lifting her just a little, taking some of her weight off the hooks.

Christie groaned, not out of pain, but out of need, wanting nothing more than to have him, right there. Her head swam, and she felt dizzy with desire.

Mac lowered his mouth to her aching cunt, sucking her clitoris gently between his teeth and flicking his tongue across the engorged pearl until she gasped and cried aloud, unconcerned with their audience. Working in tandem with his tongue, Mac lifted and lowered her shoulders in time with each lap and thrust, easing her weight on and off the hooks, sending ripples of pain and pleasure coursing through her suspended body.

“Five minutes,” the attendant said from the corner. His voice sounded far away, faint and unimportant.

Had three minutes already passed? Her head spun. Christie could hardly catch her breath. Between the pull of the hooks, the blood rushing to her head, and the sweet magic Mac was working between her legs, she felt the most powerful orgasm of her life building in her core and rushing forward on a tidal wave of sensation. Christie’s body was wracked with waves of shuddering climax, shaking so fiercely in the clutches of ecstasy that the chains rattled and chimed like sleigh bells, drowned out by her echoing cries of shattering joy.

Christie awoke cradled in Mac’s arms, feeling safe and loose and content. He’d wrapped her in a blanket. She rolled her head back onto his collarbone, pressing a kiss to his stubbly ginger jaw. “Why are we on the floor?” she asked sleepily, feeling like a contented cat in a sunbeam.

Mac’s arms tightened. “Because you passed out for a minute and scared me half to hell. The technicians brought you down and patched you up.” He flicked the blanket aside to show her the sterile gauze squares taped to her right leg. “They think all the blood rushing to your brain, coupled with the orgasm, must have overloaded your circuits.” He kissed the top of her head. “Are you—?”

“I’m okay,” she finished for him. “I’m more than okay. I’m… amazing.” She snuggled deeper into his arms.

“Yes, you really are.” Mac squeezed her tighter. “Can you stand? We need to get you home.”

With Mac’s help, Christie rose on wobbly, tender legs, and got redressed, grateful for her lack of underwear—one less article to pull up over her new bandages. As she buttoned her blouse, Christie gazed at her lover through her eyelashes, shy as a coquettish schoolgirl. “You know what this means, don’t you?”

Mac paused, holding up his shirt. His moss-brown eyes widened. “What?”

Christie crossed the three short steps to his side and stretched up to plant a sweet, soft kiss on his mouth. “Now it’s your turn.”

Mac stared at her for a moment, the corners of his mouth slowly creeping up into the mischievous grin she loved. “Do you dare me?”

“I dare you.”

Mac swept her into his patchwork-sleeved arms, holding her close against his chest, her flushed cheek pressed to the MacMillan family crest, as if inviting her to join the legacy.