QUEEN FOR A NIGHT

Robert Black

I don’t believe it occurred to Sara that her seat seemed a lot like a throne.

I am sure she was unaware that regal tribute was waiting at her feet. But I know she knows how much I like to study the stars—and how proud I am of giving gifts the recipient never forgets.

We were all but alone at my cabin in the pines. It was her birthday, August 12, the night of peak activity for the Perseids. I’d told her years ago that there was magic in her arrival, that she was born under a shower of lucky stars in flight.

At times she has found it difficult to believe in her sidereal good fortune. Tonight she was in for a surprise that could not fail to elevate Sara’s assessment of herself.

As we relaxed beneath a silky new moon, the heavens were sporadically vivid with flares of white in the deep blue stillness before dawn. Head back, eyes bugging, Sara giggled as a meteor cut a long bright scratch through the ink of the clear northern sky. We sat on the deck together in matching outdoor chairs—outsized and overpriced, elegantly molded of hard plastic, with tapered slats like stylized sun rays defining each fan back.

Her feet rested on her unopened present, a box six feet long, three feet high and three wide. I had covered it in purple cloth, tucking the excess fabric carefully beneath, and topped it with a spray of evening primrose I’d arranged to look like a bow.

Ice hissed as it melted in the near-empty pitcher of mojitos on top of the box. My barefoot best friend extended a big toe to toy with one of the lemony petals in the bouquet.

“They open in the evening and close in the morning,” she said, still looking up.

“So will you,” I said, nudging the box with my heel.

“What are you talking about?” Sara was starting to slur; Perfect, I thought, rising to my feet.

“How long has it been since you’ve had your kinks worked out?” I asked, my back to the rail just behind her.

“What’s with the riddles?” she replied.

In lieu of a response I dug my thumbs into the ropes of muscle at her lower neck and started to tug at her shoulders. The green tumbler slid out of her limp left hand and fell a few inches to land upright on mahogany.

Sara purred down low in her chest, leaned back and stretched her legs up and out in full. “Mmm…but don’t hover over me, hon. I don’t want to miss the fireworks.”

“There’s no danger of that.” I nudged her pits and she lifted her arms so I could work the tension down and out of her fingers. I used to practice on Sara when I studied for a long minute to become a massage therapist; she picked up the drill shortly before I dropped the inclination.

“Since when have you been well taken care of?” Another trick question; I knew she had been chastely single since her son of a bitch of a boyfriend cut her loose with a semiliterate text message almost three months ago.

“A night like this is more than I could hope for,” she said. “And besides, there are limits on the things…friends can do for one another.”

“Not as many as you might think,” I said, taking my hands away. “How come you haven’t been asking about your gift?”

“I figured you’d show me when you were ready.” Sometimes her passivity gets under my skin a little. Tonight it would play directly into my perverse little hands.

“Almost,” I said, leaning back and looking up. “Do you remember the shooting star we saw a moment ago?”

“Mmm,” she said again, eyes closed in what I assumed was recollection. “What about it?”

“That flare cut through the constellation of Cassiopeia. Turn around in your chair and look up.

“It’s named after a vain queen, who boasted about her unrivaled beauty.”

“Sounds like someone I know,” Sara said, ass out, eyes skyward.

“You should try arrogance once in a while,” I said. “It works wonders for me.

“Will you do me a favor, sweetie?” My friend knew well the tone I use when I tiptoe toward plain speaking.

“What?” she asked, head back, eyes wider, lids heavy with liquor and distilled ambience. Her easy sincerity always charms and endears me. Under my roof it was all conveyed in code. With Sara I could be straight and plain.

“Please don’t jump away when we open your present…just go with me on this one.”

“What are you getting at?”

“Look up, hon. Those five stars define Cassiopeia.” I sucked down half my drink in one gulp. “It’s shaped like a W. As in woman. And wanton. And why not.”

I paused, then I pleaded. “Do you promise not to jump? To accept your present in the spirit in which it is given?”

“Jesus Christ, yes,” she said. “When the fuck am I going to get it?”

“Now,” I said, throwing my tumbler over the rail. “Turn around, your majesty. Remember your promise. And enjoy.”

I lifted the cloth before Sara to reveal the front door of a cage. A puppy cage, as it’s known in the trade: All-steel construction, fully welded and powder-coated, with round three-quarter inch bars for a smooth clean look.

Behind the bars cowered the prize in the Cracker Jacks: a smooth, clean-looking young man, fully muscled and oil coated, with steel wrist shackles hooked to matching lengths of chain running up to his sturdy bondage collar.

The chains were a custom order, long enough so my darling pet could lift his head—which he knew not to do when I opened the door and led him out by the leash affixed to his choker.

At which point Sara broke her promise, scrabbling like an upturned beetle to right herself, regain her poise and flee.

“Hold it, sweetie,” I said, my back to the cat that had not yet emerged from his bag.

“You’re out of your fucking skull,” Sara said, seated now and trying to rise. I caught her partway with a hand on each shoulder.

“You promised not to jump.”

“This is wrong,” Sara said, “on so many levels. I don’t know where to start.”

“He knows where.”

“Stop clowning, Jess. This has to stop. Now.”

“Nothing has started, hon. Please sit down. And listen to me.”

I knelt on the deck at her feet with my ass close enough to his face to feel his breath thereupon. He knew better than to move a muscle.

I caught Sara’s furtive glance at my captive and endeavored to tease out the devil in her.

“Tell me what you think is wrong.”

She laughed and shook her head. I bent my back to chase her gaze, to catch it and hold it gently.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she said.

“I’ve seldom been this serious. Please tell me what you think is wrong.”

“Okay, damn it,” Sara said. “You can’t keep people in cages, like you’re running some kind of perverted petting zoo.”

“Yes I can, sweetie,” I said. “We don’t have to feed the animal, but I can keep him, for as long as he wants to be kept.”

She shook her head slowly, looked down, got a rich eyeful before she looked away. And looked back, then said, eyes skyward, “Then where the fuck do you get off keeping this poor bastard in handcuffs?”

I resisted the temptation to suggest that she could easily imagine where I got off and on in this roundelay. “I must confess that sometimes he gets a little too free with his hands,” I said. “And also, he appreciates the challenge of tending to his duties without them.”

Sara’s eyes were now stone-sober wide, pupils big and dark in a manner reflecting something beyond indignation. I did not have to look to know that my pet remained kneeling, his eyes to the wood.

“And what on earth is the matter with him, that he wants to be kept this way?”

“Please look at me, sweetie. And listen for a long minute.” She stared. I drew a deep breath. “This is going to sound medium cold, I suppose, but it’s the god’s truth as I’ve learned it. I don’t inquire about what’s in his heart. Just asking the question would suggest that I think something is wrong with him. And with me. I don’t see it that way. It thrills me to know I can capture his spirit and sport with his flesh as I please. As you please. What’s in his heart is none of my business.”

Gone stiff, Sara leaned back in her chair. I flashed on the vintage Maxell cassette ad, with the impassive seated man blown theatrically backward by powerhouse high fidelity.

I nudged the mojito glass toward her limp fingers and soldiered on, grasping for poise.

“Lean in, hon. He doesn’t need to hear this.”

She did. And I was sure he did too.

“This may strike you as strange, but they line up like jets at Newark International for the privilege of being where he is.”

Sara met my eyes squarely for the first time in the last three minutes. “Get the fuck out of here,” she said.

“Isn’t that true, my pet?”

“Yes,” he said, then was done talking.

For the first time, Sara sized him up in the manner I’d been hoping to see: like a lobster tail in a chafing dish at a sumptuous Lucullan banquet. He was a former competition swimmer, with the wide shoulders, broad chest and ropy muscles common to his appetizing breed. I turned to face him, reached in and pulled off the gold sash that girdled his loins. His large meaty cock bobbed in earnest, perpendicular to his flat belly, a love soldier standing proudly at attention.

I tugged at his leash. He crawled to the edge of Sara’s chair. She tensed but did not retreat. “Isn’t he lovely, dear?”

“Yes,” Sara said with a quiver. Or whimper.

Another pull and he eased in closer, before Sara could close her legs.

“Haven’t you ever given pleasure to a man and received none of your own in return?”

She threw her head back, bellowed, “Stop it!” and saw the mother of all celestial fireworks slash a brilliant trail through Andromeda. Bold and bright, the streak of light pulsed for five exquisite seconds through the grand constellation named for Cassiopeia’s daughter, also known in reverberant legend as the Chained Lady.

“Oh my god,” Sara said. On cue, the chained man buried his head beneath her skirt and nuzzled her mound with his nose. He tugged her panties to one side with a deft motion of his lips and buried his long tongue inside her. He licked and kissed and serviced her attentively as Sara sank back in her chair.

Still on all fours, he looked up at Sara, gray eyes going from shy to sly in the slightest narrowing of his eyelids. Then he yanked at the bonds on his wrists, his chains clinking in the heavy silence.

Sara looked down at him and started to smile. She eased her legs apart and he slid his tongue back into her pussy—drawing it upward, pressing it flat, then easing out to make wet warm contact with the hood of her swollen sweet spot.

She petted his head, leaned back and cooed. He took her clit between his lips and tugged at it lightly while drawing a breath. Her calves on his back, she slumped in her chair to give him better access. He sighed in joy, which made Sara giggle. He answered with sensuous swirls of his tongue—dirty, deliberate, around and around.

“Oh my god,” Sara said again. “Oh fucking god, you win.” He lapped at her now, all languor and patience, from the cleft of her bottom to the crown of her bliss. She began rocking her hips in lewd rhythm, slow and deliberate, fucking his face.

“What’s your name, sweetie?” she whispered.

“Happy birthday,” I said and went inside.

* * *

The cage was not as heavy as it looked. Its six sides detached easily and were stored discreetly.

The same could be said of its praiseworthy inhabitant, who by arrangement had put away the hardware and made himself scarce before sunrise. I had discreetly taped to his trim lovely flesh the key to free himself from his bonds. I leave you to imagine where.

At just after eleven, I was gratified to see Sara in bent spent angelic repose on the sofa to the left of the sunroom door. Her ash-blonde hair was a riot of clump and tangle; she had never changed out of her sundress. I spread a second blanket over my homegirl and read a little while the coffee brewed.

According to legend, Cassiopeia was arrogant and vain.

She bragged that both she and her daughter were more lovely than all the Nereids, the nymph-daughters of the sea god Nereus. This incurred the wrath of Poseidon, ruling god of the sea.

He placed her in the heavens tied to a chair so that, as she circles the celestial pole in her throne, she is upside down half the time. The constellation resembles the chair that originally represented an instrument of torture.

“Each to her own myths,” I said to myself as Sara began to stir on the couch.