The Argentine

The one who loves you will make you weep." – Argentine Proverb

The rope is soft and though it is tight it does not cut my skin. I can feel the blood pounding in my fingertips; it's rhythm like a metronome as the seconds tick by. The knots are firm and true; I imagine they were learned in your years on the ranches on the Pampas herding cattle. I won't test their strength, I trust them. My bound hands lie palm-side up casually across my bare back as I am curled on the floor into what my yoga teacher would call Child's Pose. My forehead rests on the carpet, its hand-knotted pattern easing a tattoo impression on the skin there and on my knees. My breathing is slow, trance-like, the barest filling and emptying of lungs. I can smell the dry wool of the carpet, the years of dirt embedded there. I hear your steps coming closer walking across the hardwood floor and I shut my eyes tightly. I breathe in your scent, a mix of chicory-heavy coffee, your beloved Palomino and your favourite cigars.

I feel you walk behind me and gently readjust my hips, lightly pressing warm fingers to skin to lift and angle them higher. I silently chastise myself for not automatically positioning myself this way, but how could I have known? Still, I relish the brief touch, the tiniest tenderness. You ease the tip of your black leather Italian-made shoes between my knees signaling me to space them wider, wider still. And though the muscles in my thighs begin to burn in this uncomfortable stance, the dull ache is forgotten when I feel the smooth leather of your shoe caress my inner thighs. Satisfied with the position I am now in you move away, displaced by air and emptiness.

A cool draught in the room licks at the growing humidity between my legs. It makes me shiver. Absentmindedly I hope I do not wet your expensive Persian carpet. I hear the muffled click of a latch on a case opening. Somewhere, perhaps in another room, perhaps for other ears, Debussy's Clair de Lune plays. You click the case closed and step back to me kneeled and curled in the centre of the room. Silent as nightfall I feel you standing near me, looking at me, observing; I can feel a slight shimmer of heat coming from your body. You stand so quiet and motionless, the calm centre of this tempest in which I have placed myself.

You touch my shoulder with the tip of your riding crop, the one your father gave to you after you had successfully broken your first wild horse at the age of fourteen. It is old yet sturdy, the leather tip soft as a smooth fingertip traveling my skin. Down to lower back, across my arms twined there, to the trembling curve of my hip. The expectation is almost more painful than the blow. Almost.

I hear the sharp slap a second before I feel the sting. The suddenness forces the breath out of me in a rushing gasping exhale. I barely have time to register the sensation, quantify it and record it in memory when it is followed by another, then another and more in quick and fluid succession. My body jolts with every strike. My forehead rubbed raw, chaffing against the textured carpet. The skin on my buttocks and thighs is alight, and I am trembling uncontrollably; mewling, moaning and undulating like a cat in heat or a felled jaguar dying in the rainforest. I have forgotten my language and can merely grunt and gasp softly. I wouldn't know how to beg for reprieve in Spanish even if I wanted it.

I realize the taste of blood in my mouth and believe I have bitten through my lip. The blows continue in staccato, measured and precise, yet I am unable to predict neither their intensity nor their placement on my body. Far, far away Clair de Lune continues softly, gently. When my tears come and my breathing is ragged and burning in my throat, you stop. My entire body trembles like little earthquakes. My tears puddle on the carpet beneath my face. Through the haze I can feel your deft fingers untying the rope around my wrists, the knots unfurling and sliding easy as whispers. My hands slide and fall limply to the floor on either side of me, nearly numb and useless. Yet it is when I try to raise myself, to make the small movements to get up, that you grasp my hips from behind and plunge into me, grinding your still-trousered thighs against my red and tender ones. I know you want me to scream, to cry out, but I have no sounds left, no protestations; this last cruelty seems the natural end to my torment this night. Each thrust reminds me where I am marked by you and I welcome it, savour it like remembered sweetness. For this how I know you love me, reaching down and slipping down into the dark with me.

After you cum, you pull down a rough saddle blanket from the nearby couch and wrap me in it, tenderly tucking the fabric around me, the prickling wool around my chin. You lay next to me on the carpet, holding me, your fingers brush away the last vestiges of tears from my face. "Querida," you say, your first words to me all evening. "Muy buen." You lightly kiss my eyelids, I feel your smile stretch against my cheek and I know you are pleased.