Steak

She watched him. He moved with a brutal grace that bespoke of speed and savagery and surety, and his body- slender and tall and razor-sharp- seemed to hiss and crackle through the air, like static, like branches in storm.

She wanted to go to him. Too bad about the leather cuffs that bound her ankles together.

She watched from her place by the table, watched him moving back and forth in the kitchen, whistling, cooking. That smell- rich and red in the air, making her mouth water, so she had to swallow over and over as she watched- steak tonight, she thought.

She watched his sensuous movment- the tender flicks of his knife that parsed meat from bone and fat from flesh, the shifting of muscle along his back as he reached for one thing or another. She wanted to help- too bad about the ribbon that bound her hands behind her back.

He glanced, just for an instant, over his bare shoulder at her. He was wearing his cooking pants and nothing else, except a thin cheap ring that barely fit around his pinky. His back and chest were marked with cuts and bruises, and there was two- no, three now- days worth of stubble across his jaw. His eyes- the color of ice and the kind of fire that makes iron run like water- pierced her through the small raw wounds on her breasts, her arms and belly, scanning each like a sculptor would the most recents scores he had made on his masterpiece.

She lost herself there, in his eyes, as he threw the steak onto the grill with offhand grace and moved to sit down at the table. She wanted to cry out to him and tell him what he was, what she would be, what it was between them. Too bad about that tape across her mouth.

He sat down and opened his newspaper, studiously ignoring her pleading eyes. She tried to crawl to him- a part of her shocked, her, crawling, to the feet of a man!- but couldn't. She choked and gasped at the tightness there- too bad about the collar and leash that restrained her.

This was what he wanted, she knew- her humiliation. Deliriously, everything of her screaming against the submission, she knew that he had it.

She listened to the steak cooking and watched him. He finished the news, flipped idly through the Art section, tossed Sports over to the recycling bin. She knew he was counting in his head, timing things absolutely perfectly, making sure of everything.

Her heart beat against her ribs like a precious butterfly. Desire tightened her stomach and slicked her thighs, set her back and legs quivering. She wanted to rub her legs together for the tiny spark of pleasure that that would bring- too bad about the cunningly tied spreader that kept her thighs apart.

He stood up, his inner metronome ticking, and then he walked past her. Sensing a tiny error in his timing he paused by her to make it up, then reached down and gently scratched her head behind her ears.

Then he walked into the kitchen. The steak was ready and he pulled it off the grill, then put it on a clean white china plate. He cut it once, quickly and efficiently, releasing a thin trickle of blood that glistened with fat and spice. He licked up the blood, watching her face and the little thrill that shot through her at the sight, and then seasoned the steak to her taste with salt.

Kneeling, he slowly removed the tape from her mouth. Every inch was a spark of agony, and she desperately wanted to scream, shout, say any of the perfect things that had chased through her mind during her agonizing confinement- but in his blue eyes, everything was lost except for silence and terribly regulated lust.

Gently, he cut a single bite of steak from the bone. Impaling it on his shining silver fork, he lifted it to her lips.

"Eat," he said.

Everything that she was quivered. She bit down, tasted the perfectly cooked meat, the seasoning, the precious flavor that he had preserved for her. After so long with no sensation but discomfort, the tender wetness of it almost overcame her, and her gratefulness to him overwhelmed (however briefly) the parts of her that longed to scream, scratch, tear at him for his demands and his control and his overwhelming encompassing love.

"Eat," he said, holding up another tender morsel. She swallowed.