WELL LIT
Sara Taylor Woods

Talia likes to sit at my feet when she reads. I’ve never told her to do it, never even asked her. When pressed, she blushes prettily and avoids my eyes and won’t answer me. And really, I like it—the warm, soft curve of her rib cage pressing against my leg, the familiar vanilla smell of her, the way her fingers trace senseless designs on the top of my foot.

Tonight, my own book lies in my lap, forgotten. I can’t take my eyes from the graceful slope of her neck and shoulder, how her head tilts, how her fingers creep absently to her collarbone, to her ear. The Christmas tree throws blinking red and blue shadows from the next room, dusting over her dusky skin like snowdrifts.

I want to replace her fingers with mine. Those lights with my mouth.

She arrived this afternoon clutching a brass menorah and a box of candles, her chin stuck out like I was going to laugh at her. She came in and we ordered Chinese and when the sun went down, she lit four candles, said the blessing and set the menorah in the front window of the dining room. I went to the recliner, barefoot and shirtless, and she settled at my feet.

The haphazard shadows from those guttering candles join the Christmas lights painting the walls. I run my hand over Talia’s hair, my fingers wrapping around the back of her neck. I squeeze, and she shivers, laying her head on my knee.

I say, “What are you reading?”

Beat. “Hmm?”

I grin and pinch her earlobe. She jumps, but I can feel her smile against my leg. “What,” I say again, “are you reading?”

“Herman Wouk.”

“Heavy.” My hand goes back to her hair, and she rubs her cheek against my knee like a cat. “Put it down,” I say, “and come up here.”

She doesn’t even bother with a bookmark, just lets it slide onto the floor, then turns and climbs into my lap. She hikes up her sweatpants and straddles my hips, but doesn’t touch me. Just watches me. Just waits.

“I got you something,” I say.

“What?” she says. “You said—”

I tap her bottom lip. “I said you shouldn’t get me anything. I didn’t say I wouldn’t get you something if I felt like it. And I felt like it.”

She retreats in protest. “Sean—”

I grab her chin and kiss her; her reaction is immediate, electric. Her hips grind against me, the fingers of one hand brushing my collarbone. My cock is suddenly, painfully hard. I grab her hands and pull them behind her back, hold her wrists with one hand. I push up against her, fisting my free hand in her hair. My lips on her throat, her chest, and she’s panting, her pupils huge and unfocused in the flickering darkness. I could let go of her hands—they’d stay as effectively as if they were bound.

That knowledge—that I can mold her, arrange her limbs and her mind, and that she’ll stay, holding the shape I want like wet clay—is intoxicating. When she’s like this, her eyes shining and distant, her breath ragged, the temptation to see how far I can push is nearly overwhelming.

I like to watch the struggle. The battle of wills. Often, that’s enough.

It isn’t tonight.

I let go of her wrists and tuck my hand under her ass. I stand up and she wraps around me like a summer night. She won’t stop grinding against me, even in this precarious arrangement, and I pin her to the wall.

“Behave,” I growl in her ear, “and I’ll let you come tonight.”

She whimpers, her bottom lip catching between her teeth.

“Are you going to behave?” I ask. “Or am I going to have to take you over my knee right here in front of the window?”

She squirms, but doesn’t respond.

“Talia.” I lean into her. “Answer me.”

Finally, she nods, and I bury my face in her neck, my beard rasping against her skin, my teeth scraping along her throat. She tips her head back and something like a growl boils out of me. I carry her to the dining room table; the lights on the Christmas tree wink off, on, in patterns, bouncing off the mirror-black windows. My mouth has a mind of its own, dragging across her collarbones, down her sternum.

“Stand up.” When she lets go, I step back and say, “When I come back, I want you naked, bent over that table. You understand?”

She nods.

When I step into the hallway, I can hear her scrambling to strip her sweats off, to lose the top. I want to watch, want to see the first smooth revelation of her skin, the warm brown of her nipples, the parentheses of her hips.

But I pull the plastic bin from the top shelf of the hall closet and grab the shopping bag from the floor. And when I return, I see Talia bent over the table, her long slender legs crossed at the ankle, trembling, hourglassing up to the perfect heart of her ass, and she’s so fucking beautiful like this, waiting, I can’t even breathe.

I swallow and drop my burden. The clatter makes her jump, and she lifts her head to look behind her. I raise my eyebrows, circling an index finger. Her eyes widen, and her face disappears behind the curve of her ass again.

I snort, amused at her dismay, and I grab her scarf from the hat rack. I come up behind her and slap her ass. She jerks and gasps, but she doesn’t look back again. Her arms are stretched across the table, her cheek pressed against cool wood.

“I don’t recall,” I murmur, letting the fringe tickle the small of her back, “telling you to move. I think what I said was to be bent over this table. Isn’t it?”

She doesn’t say anything. I slap her ass again, pausing to admire the pink-and-white outline of my hand. I purse my lips, tracing my palm print with a fingertip.

“Isn’t it?”

She nods and whispers, “Yes.”

I walk my fingers across her skin, just skirting her pussy. Not touching it. “Yes…?”

She swallows and pushes her hips up into my hand. I give her a sharp swat. She backs off.

“Yes,” she whispers, “Sir.”

“Good girl.” I run my hand down the curve of her ass, and she gives a feline little mewl. “Lift your head, baby.” She does, and I wrap the scarf around her eyes, knotting it behind her head.

I fucking love this part: the visible shift in priorities, deciding which of her remaining senses is the most important. The tightening of muscles, the parting and licking of lips. Breath quick, hoarse. The runs of gooseflesh.

I pull out the string of Christmas lights from the plastic bin and drop them on the table next to Talia. She jumps. I pinch the back of her thigh. She squeaks. I grin.

“Spread your legs,” I say. “Let me see you.”

She unhooks her ankles, but doesn’t spread them wide enough. I know she’s embarrassed—she’s got her ass pointed at the front window, and we can’t lower the blinds, not until the Hanukkah candles have gone out. She’s got at least another hour.

I squat next to her and run a hand up the inside of her thigh, the tips of my fingers dragging in that space between lips and leg. She shudders; even her inner thighs are wet.

“Don’t make me tell you again,” I murmur, “or I will tie you to this table and leave you here all night.”

Her feet inch apart. Almost there.

“You don’t want my neighbor to see you like this when she’s walking those miserable little Scotties tomorrow morning, do you?”

That does the trick, and she finally gets her legs right. I smile and start pulling the lights from their plastic H-frame. The frame fits neatly between her ankles, lashed into place with braided wire.

Up one calf, draped along the line of her torso, looped around her neck, back down the other side, winding down her other calf. Under the table. Around her wrists.

I plug the lights in.

Her reflection in the window, limned in white lights, affects me in a way I hadn’t anticipated. “Look at me,” I say, and I’m alarmed at how dry and husky my voice is. We both know it’s stupid, that she can’t see me, but she lifts her head anyway, her nose pointing toward the sound of my voice. I run my fingers over her forehead, smoothing out the hair caught under the scarf. She leans into my hand, like she did when we sat reading, and I catch a fistful of her hair, pulling her head back even farther.

Her breath saws in and out of her mouth, her pulse pounding wildly in her throat.

I just hold her there for a moment, before I’m able to speak. “I have your present.”

She swallows, her throat working. I want to run my tongue up the ridges of her trachea. I want to bite her, want to watch her dissolve and run through my fingers. I want to mark her, want to tell the whole fucking universe hands off, and I don’t want to use words.

“Sean?” Her voice is tiny in the blinking darkness. She’s going to protest again, and I cut her off, bringing my hand down on her ass, my fingers spread. She whimpers, the table creaking beneath her shifting weight.

“I did not give you permission to speak.” I make a lot of noise with the shopping bag; there’s only one thing in it, but I can’t resist fucking with her. “I bought you something, baby. Deal with it.”

The vibrator is pretty tame, all things considered. But when she told me that she’d never owned one before—never even used one—I had no choice. And now that I’m staring at it, I find it strange we’ve been playing for all these months without one.

So much we haven’t done. So much I want to do. Her body is stretched out, taut, vibrating like a violin string. I lick my lips, untangle my fingers from her hair.

“Do you remember what you said about sex toys?”

Her head cocks, tilting maybe an inch to the right. If she could see, she’d be looking into the left corner of the ceiling. Finally, she shakes her head.

“You said that buying a sex toy is a commitment. More than a safeword. Because it’s got one use. It’s dedicated to fucking. And that makes you feel dirty. Not the bruises I’ve left on you.” I run my fingers along the tender boundary between her thigh and ass. “Not when I made you come in your aunt’s guest bathroom halfway through Thanksgiving dinner.” I smirk. “Do you remember that? You were horrified. You were so fucking wet.”

I dip a fingertip into her pussy, swipe up toward her ass. She moans, pushing her hips up to my hand, and her forehead thumps against the table.

I lean down and kiss her cheek, leaving my lips close to her ear. “You’ll get your present. But if these lights go out”—I tap the wires around her wrists—“I’m switching to the belt.”

She whines and tries to bury her face in her armpit.

She hates the belt. She loves the belt.

My fingers find her pussy again, and she jerks against my hand. She pushes back against me, and I pull my hand away, a gossamer trail stretching between her cunt and my fingers. It catches the blinking Christmas tree lights before it breaks. I lay into her ass, my hand cupped, a little upswing in my stroke. The pops of flesh echo in the little room.

Thirty seconds in, her ass is pink and red all over and she’s squirming. I stop and push two fingers back into her.

Goddamn—the noises she makes launch straight from my brain to my dick, and I can barely keep my balance.

I do it three more times, spanking her and finger-fucking her, shortening the intervals each time, and she’s writhing, shaking under my hands, willing to fuck anything, willing to do anything as long as it brings her relief.

I press the vibrator against her before I switch it on. I don’t want her to have time to process the noise, to know what’s coming. I don’t want her to be able to prepare for it.

When it comes on, her hips twitch so violently the whole table moves. “Jesus,” she pants. “Fuck. Sean—”

“Careful,” I murmur, dragging the little toy up to her clitoris. She shudders, lacking breath to even curse me again. “Shame to unplug the lights.”

The orgasm that rocks her seems to take her by surprise, her voice cracking hoarse. She’s trying to dance away from me, but I keep the vibrator pressed against her, my palm on the small of her back. “Hold still,” I growl. She whines, and I slap her thigh.

“Hold. Still.”

She does, and the next orgasm comes less than a minute later.

“Sean,” she pants, “please—”

I lean down and bite her ass. She jerks against me, her legs trembling, every muscle drawn tight like piano wire.

“Please, Sean, what?” I ask.

She doesn’t answer, but I’m willing to forgive her when I see her fingers curl into tense fists, and she comes again, bucking against my hand.

“Fuck,” she mutters.

She’s leaning away from me, and I wrap my fingers around her hip to pull her back into position. “Please, Sean, what?” I ask again.

She keeps moving away from me, trying to avoid the vibrator. Even a half-dozen sharp swats—the last one grazing her shining cunt—don’t keep her where she’s supposed to be.

“Talia,” I snap. “Quit trying to pull away from me. I’ll tell you when you’re done.”

“I can’t.” She swallows. Licks her lips. “Please. I can’t. I’m sorry.”

“You can, baby.” My voice is as soft as hers. “Give me one more.”

She does. This one takes longer than the other ones, but it’s a hell of a lot bigger. Her whole body clenches and curls up, and when her fisted hands jerk up from the table, the string of lights goes dark.

For a moment, we’re both silent, immobile. Processing what just happened.

I unbuckle my belt.

It slides out of its loops with its own eagerness. I switch off the vibrator and drop it on the table, then walk around to the other side to squat down in front of Talia.

The look on her face is priceless—the belt scares the shit out of her, and works her up like almost nothing else we do. I suspect it falls into the same category as sex toys, but she won’t admit it.

“Sean,” she whispers. “Please.”

I know what she wants—for me to fuck her—and, for what it’s worth, I do, too. My cock is straining against my jeans, and I know that when I finally get inside her, when I feel her satin heat wrap around me, I won’t be worth shit.

“No,” I say. “No more free passes. No more begging. I told you not to unplug the lights, and I told you the consequences.”

Her brow wrinkles over the top of the scarf, and she sucks her lower lip into her mouth, contrite. It’s impossible to explain to her why I’m doing this. Why I have to.

Because I can’t handle it when you pull away. Because I can’t think straight when you avoid my hand, and because I love you, god, so much, and when you pull away from me, it hurts.

“Okay?” My voice cracks. I clear my throat. Try again. “Okay?”

She nods. “Okay.”

I want to kiss her, want to feel her lips give against mine, her forehead against mine. I want to fuck her and carry her upstairs and spend the rest of our lives in bed, her shoulder tucked against my ribs, one soft hand spread like a star over the beat of my heart.

I stand up, folding the belt in half, and walk around the table again. She’s swaying. I lay my palm on the small of her back, and she stills, but when my fingertips brush her ass, she gasps. Her heat sears me, and I can’t stop my hand fanning over the spread of one cheek.

I’m tempted to wring another orgasm from her. Just because I can.

“You are so goddamn beautiful.” I hadn’t meant to speak out loud; my words fall like snow around us, piling up in drifts, soft, heavy. I trace a bright welt, and she shudders, but not from pain. “Look at you,” I murmur. “So patient.” I pinch her inner thigh, my knuckle brushing against her clit; she jerks away from me again.

My hand falls hard against her ass, flat-palmed and spread-fingered, not bothering to aim for the fleshy part. She gasps, the noise almost a sob, but she doesn’t try to evade it. She isn’t afraid of the pain. She’s afraid she’s going to come again.

She’s afraid I’ll make her.

I twist my fist in her hair, pulling her head back, and push two fingers into the heat of her cunt. She rises off the table like a parabola, panting.

“Do not,” I growl, “pull away from me. This”—I twist my fingers inside her, letting the belt scrape against the raw flesh of her ass—“is mine. Do you understand me? You’ll come if I want.”

She’s stopped resisting. She’s so good at absorbing the pain, but that isn’t what I want. I want her to take everything I give her. I want her to drink it down, to metabolize it.

“Talia.” I pull my fingers out of her and bring the belt down across her ass, once, twice. My fingers plunge inside her again, and her hips jerk against the table, the skid of its legs a startling stutter in the silence.

Her throat works, muscles straining around the arch of her neck.

“I need to break you of this habit.” I want to smooth her sweaty hair from her forehead and kiss her, but I don’t. I pull my fingers out of her again and let her hair go, let that hand slide down her spine to the small of her back, relishing the perfect curve of bone, the play of muscle, the softness of her skin.

Six strokes, the perfect gradient of purple to red to pink lining her ass. She takes them without a sound, just hard breaths and tight fists.

But when I say, “Four more. Then you’re going to come again,” she turns her head to me, mouth open to plead. I press her face to the table and the belt comes down again. The noise it rips from her is almost a scream.

Three more, and I yank the lights from her, kick the frame from between her feet, and scoop her up in my arms. I grab the vibrator and carry her into the living room, pulling the scarf from her eyes as I walk. I lay her down on the carpet and she winces, the pile rough against her tender skin. I pull her hands over her head, then wind the scarf around her wrists, not bothering to tie it. I don’t need to. Her eyes are wide and glassy, and when I wrap my hand around her throat, they flutter shut.

“No,” I say. “Look at me.”

When she does, I unbutton my jeans and pull out my cock. “I’m going to fuck you.” I feather my fingers across her cunt, making her moan. “You’re going to come on my cock, because that’s what I want. And you’re going to be looking at me when you do it.”

She hesitates. Nods, her lower lip between her teeth.

I growl. I want to bite her. But I just say, “Good girl.”

I push into her, and for a second, the whole world stops, shut down by the smooth heat of her clenching around me. Her jaw drops open, and her short, sharp gasp almost makes me come. I swallow against it, shaking—I know I won’t last long, but I need to make it a couple of minutes, at least.

One stroke, two, and I feel a little more anchored to the planet. I pick up the vibrator and switch it back on. Her lower lip’s between her teeth again, and I lean down, get right in her face.

“You keep biting that lip, you’re going to give me ideas.”

She whimpers, but I keep my hand on her throat when I curl down to suck a nipple into my mouth. She arches under me, and I bite her, pressing the vibrator between us.

She yelps, squirming. I squeeze her throat.

“Nowhere to go, baby,” I whisper. She’s panting, looking everywhere but at me. I’m scaring her, and it has nothing to do with my grip on her neck. “Come for me. Give me one more.”

I can feel her tensing beneath me, trying to push another out, but she’s still not looking at me. I let go of her throat and slap her cheek. She gasps, her cunt spasming around me.

“Talia. Look at me.”

She does, finally.

“Sean,” she pants. “I can’t.”

“Yes, you can.” I pinch her nipples. “You’ll do it for me.” The carpet and the open zipper of my jeans are scraping her ass, and I know she likes it. I sit back on my heels, dragging her with me by the hips. Her legs fall open. Short thrusts, but deep, the vibrator pinned between us. I slap the insides of her thighs, hard enough to leave bright white handprints.

“Come on, baby.”

I grab her throat again, and suddenly, I can see it: her whole body tensing, her hands curling into fists above her head, her hips tilting up toward me. Her body bows, trembling, then all at once, she shouts something incoherent and stretches out, her spine arching off the carpet. I have to hold on to her hips to keep her from rolling away. The way her pussy pulls at me, fluttering pulses running along the length of my cock, pushes me hard, and, squeezing her hips hard enough to leave bruises, I come, too.

I slide out of her and before I’ve even caught my breath, I kick my jeans off. I free Talia’s wrists and pull her into my lap, my back against the couch. I grab the blanket from the sofa and wrap it around her. Her head rests on my shoulder, and I kiss her forehead, my arm curled around her.

She looks up at me, her eyes pink and puffy, her face streaked with tears. My chest is hot, tight, like there’s not enough room for everything in there, and I smile down at her.

She says, “I love you.”

I kiss the top of her head. “I love you, too, baby.”

She smiles, broad and relieved, like she hadn’t been sure how I’d respond, and snuggles down against my chest. I lean back into the couch, one arm around her, the other in her lap. She plays with my hand, running cool fingertips over my skin.

When she speaks again, her voice is thick, sleepy. Just a whisper. “Merry Christmas, Sean.”

I lace my fingers with hers and bring her hand up to my lips. I kiss her knuckles, her fingertips. “Happy Hanukkah, baby.”