The thing that I like most about her is the way she says yes.
The way she looks at me, with her bright eyes wide – I already know that a sweet yes is forming on her lips, like a bead of dew. This time it was her fingers to answer me, because I could not find words to formulate my request and had decided to send her a picture instead. As they say: a picture is worth a thousand words, and sometimes even a word is worth more than a thousand when it’s ‘yes,’ black on white, communicating so much more than a simple assent. Her reply read: ‘I am ready to follow you everywhere, even in the abyss if necessary. I take all of you, the beautiful and the bad weather, the joy and the pain, the health and the disease’.
Pleasure and pain.
I sent her the suitcase from the photo, together with a train ticket and the address of a hotel: 5 days and 4 nights in her favorite city. The city in which I live.
***
I went to the station early to spy on her arrival. I like do this sometimes – I like to see her confused in the crowd, trying to read in her eyes all the expectation for our meeting as she searches for me. I thought I had missed her and I was starting to leave when I found her in front of me, the look hidden by a pair of sunglasses, her hair wrapped in a scarf and her slight frame, in a light coat. A round handbag in one hand and a black suitcase in the other. The black suitcase. She lifted her chin questioningly and I could not help but hold her in my arms and put my lips against hers. We started together towards the car and when, with an automatic gesture, I offered to take the suitcase.
***
After dropping her at the hotel, I head into the office, late. I do not know what she does with her days, I would like to say that I do not care. In reality, I’m always interested in more. I suppose she has friends in the city, and would also like to rest after the trip, even if it isn’t that long. She might go shopping, as she always arrives without luggage. And this time, the thought of seeing her walk away from me with the suitcase tightened my heart a little, in spite of myself.
Maybe I’ll decide to keep it, the suitcase.
***
We have dinner together in the hotel restaurant. Neither of us is really hungry and we do not want to waste the precious time we have available.
We talk little and one thing that I appreciate about her and, indeed, about us, about our being together, is that neither of us feels the need to fill the moments of silence that occasionally punctuate our conversation. We sit close around the square table. We keep a low tone of voice, which occasionally leads us to bend over one another. I feel the desire grow inside of me in proportion to the time I spend with her.
Finally, I can’t contain it anymore. As we leave the restaurant, I order a bottle of champagne up to our room. She looks at me, with those wide, brown eyes, and I take her hand to lead her onto the rest – really the start – of our night.
***
When we get to the room, the first thing I see is the black suitcase, standing out like a punctuation mark on the white blanket. Almost hypnotized, I walk over to it to glide my hand on its smooth surface, as if following the contour of a woman’s body. Then I reach out to her, who has been watching me at the door and I invite her to come closer. I sink a hand into her hair and pull her face to mine: her lips burn as her mouth opens to my kiss. I would like to take her immediately, but I had other plans in mind.
Releasing myself from her arms, I begin to open the case, pausing with it open just a crack. I take another sip of air before lifting the lid fully and letting my eyes rest on the objects that appear before me. In front of us.
I glance at the precious feathers, on the sinuous curves, on the shiny and opaque surfaces. But what interests me most is her reaction.
She is next to me and I reach one of her hands to hold her in mine. Looking at the contents of the suitcase and her gaze, as usual, is inscrutable to me: it passes from one object to another, as if evaluating its weight and consistency, uses and properties. Her chest raised a fraction of a millimeter higher than it had before, almost imperceptibly under her light shirt.
A rap at the door makes us both jump: the waiter with champagne. Neither of us worries about closing the suitcase and when the man enters his curious and somewhat ravenous gaze first settles on her, then on the objects. I extend a tight note between two fingers, I want him out of here as soon as possible.
When he finally leaves, I bring two full glasses back toward the bed and realize that, since we entered the room, neither of us had spoken.
Instead of handing her the flute, I raise it to her lips. She bends indecisively, her teeth gleaming an instant before she puts her lips on the crystal. She bends her head back more, and doesn’t stop until the glass is empty. She is breathless and a stream of champagne escapes her lips to run down her neck, which I lick obligingly. Her mouth meets mine hungrily and I can’t stand it any longer. I push her over the white blanket, next to the open suitcase. I extend a hand towards the elastic band that holds a pair of handcuffs and unfasten it with a snap. The noise is slight, but once again we both jump. She sits up on the bed, it’s like she wants to tell me something – maybe she needs to tell me something?
Tracing my fingers down her legs, I slide off her shoes, then take her wrists and put the handcuffs around them. Sliding them closed, they’re reduced to two precious bracelets that tightly encircle her delicate wrists. She looks at her hands imprisoned and then looks up at me, raising her mouth for a fast kiss (her lips are always feverish). I oblige, then refocus my attention on the contents of the suitcase. I thought about what we would do for days, how I would use those objects on her, with her, but now that we’re here, I can’t make up my mind.
‘Not the blindfold?’ Her voice surprises me and makes me jump for the umpteenth time during the evening – I must be nervous. I stretch out an indecisive hand towards the rich leather of the blindfold in the case, but instead I open another elastic snap.
‘No. I want you to see.”
I give the short handle a sharp flick of the wrist and, before our eyes, extends into a long riding crop. A moment of fear widens her pupils, before she closes her eyes in two slits and lays on the bed. I extend the crop toward her like a wand, tracing up her leg. I see a smile widen on your eyes, as I use it to lift her skirt, then light trace a heart on her thin panties. She gives a slight, unmistakable wiggle, letting me know that I guessed the spot well – and that the game has begun.
I move the suitcase so that she have more room to lie down, extend her imprisoned hands over her head and positioning the pillows so that she can see what I’m doing. First, I snap open the top button of her shirt. Then the next. And the next, until I see her naked breasts emerge. I use the square edge of the crop to tease her nipples, then give them a light smack with the crop once they’re hard. Not too hard, but I bend over to suck on them by way of recovery anyway.
With a decisive gesture I roller her over – now she’s lying on her stomach in front of me, arms raised above her head, face hidden and hair disheveled.
Her open shirt is tangled around her and I push her skirt the rest of the way up around her waist – now fully able to appreciate the delicate mesh her underwear. I raise my arm for my first strike – crack – and she jumps on the bed, stifling her cry. The red strip that appears almost immediately on his skin makes me re-calibrate the intensity of my strokes, offering a rubbing, cupping hand to soothe between strikes. Her bottoms, clearly not designed to be worn on more than one occasion, became spotted with holes which, widened by my hands, soon became the majority. I stop for a moment, I’m thirsty. I drink my still waiting glass of champagne and realize it’s still cool – we haven’t been busy for as long as I had thought.
She hasn’t stirred from the bed, but her panting has slowed. I approach the suitcase and this time I have no hesitation. I gently touch her shoulder and invite her to turn around. She turns to me with her face hot and her eyes shiny. I help her settle back comfortably and spread her legs, tearing what remains of the panties. I lie down next to her and let her see the feather teaser I hold between my fingers, a moan of pleasure and exasperation emerges from her throat. I run the feathers on the naked skin of her breasts, her belly, her thighs. I pass lightly over her clit, and she has a start as if I had hit her again.
‘I want you to enjoy this,’ I tell her as I continue to brush her body with the feathers. I do not know how long we go on like this: she with her prisoner hands and torn clothes, ready to enjoy at any moment, always on the brink of the abyss without ever falling.
I, with the teaser in one hand, to write invisibly on her body. She doesn’t realize it, but I’m writing the story of what happens next.