Wax

Mark is open.

He is spread-eagle on the landing, his wrists bound by silk ropes to the curling balusters of the staircase. Two dozen candles of every shape, size, length and breadth flicker in the dark. A sheen of sweat begins to dot his skin. Diagonal shadow lines criss-cross his torso like the bars of a jail cell. He is naked, cock lying small and innocent against his thigh. He looks foreign to her.

Sydney stands over him, hovering like a transient specter of the night. He doesn't look at her. She imagines herself a goddess, glowing. He'll burn up if he looks, spontaneously combust into a cinder of sooty ashes, breaking apart and floating away. She wants it this way. She wants him to feel like he's about to shatter.

"I can't believe you're trusting me this much," Sydney thinks out loud. Mark has always told her that she should think out loud, and she does, even when it's not appropriate.

"Me neither."

She laughs, and then stops abruptly. She's always laughing. She laughs when something's funny, of course. But she also laughs when she's scared, when she's so angry she can't cry, when she's lonely and when something is so weird and wild and out of control she doesn't know how to react, a common occurrence when she's with Mark. Defense mechanism. She's not sure which kind of laugh that was.

"You know you can back out at any point."

"I know, but I want to do this."

She could have tied him to the four-poster bed. In her fantasies, he's lying in that bed, sinking into the softness of her feather duvet and percale sheets. But that was too nice, too neat, too comfortable for what she really wants. She wants him at attention, hyper-aware of everything around him. She wants him sliding across the hardwood floor on his back, the cutting pull of silk on his wrists.

The candles have been burning for a couple of hours now. Pools of melted wax surround the half-black wicks and the cylindrical sides have collapsed in on themselves. She'd lit them in preparation. The match head had danced around each wick because her hands shook.

She takes a long look at Mark and can't quite believe the vision is real and not part of a waking dream. She's held off long enough. She takes a deep breath and fills her lungs with a little courage. Teetering on the edge between wish and fulfillment, she realizes the danger of one over the other.

"Are you sure this is okay?" she asks one last time.

Mark nods with finality.

She arranges herself over him, her thighs tangled in his, her rump resting on her heels. She takes pleasure in watching Mark's cock respond, awakening when she hasn't even touched it yet.

With the candle poised over his chest, Sydney stops. He is watching her. His gaze is too palpable to ignore and she can't will her hand to tilt that extra inch. She rises, retreats to her bedroom and returns with a blindfold. Mark frowns as she secures it behind his head, but he doesn't say a word.

She doesn't hesitate this time. When she tilts the candle, the wax flows. He squirms with this first contact, jolting with first pain. She continues, spacing the pain at capricious intervals. As Mark writhes beneath her, Sydney realizes that he is not making a sound, not a whimper, a squeal. Even his breath is quiet.

She stares at the rivulets, the balling beads of wax congealing against his ribs. The wax pools, then cools quickly and forms a thin layer over the wide plane of his chest, a rainbow swirl of red, green, violet, white, hypnotizing her, consuming her with the desire to make him hurt.

The liquid drips down from the candle, dances on the mushroom-rubbery skin of his dick. Instead of shrinking away from the pain, his dick gets harder, twitching and rising up proudly. And then she is aching from the sudden deluge of sex and smell and wet, rapid desire.

She presses her palm on his chest. The wax cracks and peels, falls away from his skin, leaving faint red burn marks, a road map of past pain. She sinks down over him, and circles her hips, pulling and contracting on his dick, the remnants of wax on him coating her all up inside.

She rips the blindfold from his eyes and his head whips back with the force of it. "Look at me. I want you to look at me when you come."

He opens his eyes, and she can see the effort it takes, like he's prying them with a crowbar. His lids flutter, the thick brown lashes brushing against the translucent skin beneath the rims of his eyes. He struggles to look at her. He's looking but not really seeing, his vision blinded by the pain, pleasure and sensation he feels.

He is there. Sydney can feel it. He jerks on his bonds, clenches his fists. Sydney blinks hard, afraid that he'll hurt himself. The staircase is shuddering vigorously and his hips shudder up and into her with equal force. A delicious grunt finally escapes his lips, and then he is still.

The edges of Sydney's ruby lips curl and she wants to laugh again. She didn't come, but she doesn't care. She knows she can't wipe the smile threatening to bust out, so she doesn't, and indulges herself in one loud giggle.

"What?"

She smiles even bigger. "Nothing."

She dismounts, unties his bonds and then sits next to him, cross-legged like a little schoolgirl. After rubbing his wrists, Mark turns on his side, rests his head on one hand. Sydney can tell from his expression that he is coming back into himself, coming back from whatever heaven or hell her pussy and her hand and her mouth had taken him, and she doesn't like that.

His hand is on one of her knees, tracing the bone underneath, around and around in descending concentric circles. He pushes her legs apart, his palms pressed against the inside of each thigh.

Mark reaches around her body and pulls a tapered pillar candle from its wrought iron holder. He holds it delicately between two fingers and brings the flame up close to both their faces. Sydney feels the heat from the candle and from him, all mingled into one pulsing source. Licking his fingers, his eyes turn to hers, expressionless save for the haunted glare always present there. She can see the flame dancing against his pupils, twin licking tongues against two lake-slick surfaces. He presses on the wick with his thumb and forefinger, extinguishing the flame with an audible hiss.

He traces the length of the candle on her -- cherry red wax, matching the cherry blush of her sex. All at once, the candle is up inside her, the wick tickling her soft pink walls, the shaft coming away slick and wet and shining.

He's fucking her, fucking her hard with the thin candle. He adds two fingers, three, then presses the thumb of his other hand to her pulsing clit, building, building, until she's smoldering, flaming inside, rising up and arching. Sydney imagines the smoke snaking out between her fevered, red pussy lips, flames licking them up like a hot little tongue.

She comes, reaching for him. She's always reaching for him, and she dies a little, every single time.

©2002 by I. K. Velasco