“If you can’t tell that you’re pushing me too far or that I can’t endure what you’re doing, you don’t deserve to play with me.”

A FRagile Balance

Chapter 3

© Chris Courtney Photography

Cassandra’s relationships were driven only by lusts of the mind and body. She was not romantic. In fact, she hated even the idea of love, possibly because she wasn’t good at. Other people’s feelings were not her concern, and if left unfettered, it led her to be cruel – not out of malice but out of pure disregard. When people loved her, she felt she owed them something she wasn’t willing to give. When she became infatuated, it was always with people who were well out of reach. She wanted to be known not loved. She wanted to be worshipped not adored. She had an ego, not a heart.

She relished impermanence and consummation. She lived for the moment without any regard for consequences. Growing up in San Francisco where the earth can shake feats of towering man-made engineering into instantaneous graveyards of twisted steel and dust, made the conventional tenets of stability, faith and reliability seem absurd to her. She did what she wanted, when she wanted and if she didn’t want, she didn’t do. She devoured information, ideas and people until she was full or until there was nothing left to savour and then she moved on. She could be generous if she wanted to give of herself, but she never gave in to what others wanted if it came at her expense. Coercion was an absolute dead end with her.

Sean knew this and had known it of her since they first met and locked horns years ago. He was maddened by her impenetrability at first. He could not manipulate her into anything, the way he could with other women. As an actor, women flocked to him and they wanted him to like them. His regard made them feel special, and he used this well and often with others, but it was lost on Cassandra. She was more 

He growled again thinking about it, and his mouth began to water as he realised that she was not just being submissive, she was a submissive. It wasn’t how she behaved or a role she played, it was who she was. He wondered why he hadn’t seen it before and then he remember her stature. She didn’t lower herself to submit, she elevated him to dominate.

impressed that he had studied medicine in college and had chosen not to become a doctor. She liked that he could be completely clinical about pleasure, that he wasn’t in the least bit squeamish, and that the dirtier the sex, the more he ritualised hygiene so that it enhanced her experience and made her more voracious - especially when they played with multiple partners, because he made sure she never had to worry about anything.

At first, Sean thought she was frigid, until he realised her appetites were even more salacious than his. He knew he was in rare company when she challenged him to contests of sexual prowess, which meant inviting a third and sometimes even fourth into their scenes, and unbeknownst to their guests, Sean and Cassandra engaged in all manner of sexual competitions. They were like minded vampires, who attached no deep significance or emotion to their purely carnal desires.

They had a vaguely dom/sub relationship but that came mostly out of their primal dynamic rather than a constructed paradigm. Sean was older than Cassandra by more than a decade and he was a successful actor, who no one ever recognised. Sean revelled in the anonymity of being able to play without attracting unwanted attention, and he loved seducing women by telling them who he was and what he did. Sean enjoyed grooming them and getting them to submit to him in ways they never would have dreamed. Cassandra called them the ‘paint by 50 shades women.’ She considered them charlatans of deviance.

Sean had approached Cassandra like all the others. He seduced her like all the others, but there was an inclining of something with her he couldn’t put his finger on. They had sex a couple of times and then didn’t see each other for a couple of months. She didn’t call in desperation the way the others usually did and that piqued his interest without him even realising it until, out of the blue, she asked him to meet her at a seedy hotel in Oakland.

He liked seedy, but he never let on about it. People’s expectations of him where based on the irony of Hollywood standards – the irony being that Hollywood was the seediest place on earth. He wondered if she knew he liked the rougher underbelly of life. When she greeted him in a shabby thong and t-shirt, it gave him the vague impression that another man had left her like that. The thought that he was coming in for seconds immediately aroused him. She had bated his instinctive, alpha-male, competitive spirit. It made him want to claim her, make her his sexual territory, to prove that he owned her in ways that no other could.

* * * * *

More by Eurydice:

* * * * *

Her breasts filled out her t-shirt that seemed perfectly too small just the way he liked, and he tried to remember if he had mentioned that to her before. He realised that their previous encounters had not left any impression and he had no real recollection of her – but this he would not forget. He actually growled as he came at her pushing her on to the unkempt bed. She had either been with someone else or she had just woken up. He scrambled for a moment when he realised he hadn’t brought any of his well kept tools with him to tie her up. It made the unexpectedness of her all that more alive, it even threatened him some that he had so underestimated her.

Without asking her, he went through her things and found a bra, stockings and a pair of knickers that he could use to tie her to the bed. He hadn’t realised that improvising could enhance his experience. He usually planned every detail, was well prepared and followed a strict pattern. Everything here was up in the air, and he hadn’t expected her to defy him. When he turned around, she was gone.

It took him a moment to realise she was in the shower, and he was relieved she hadn’t locked the door. He smiled to himself and barged in. He reached in and turned the warm water to absolute cold and waited to hear her yell at him. He heard her sharp intake of breath and commanded her not to move. He pulled back the shower curtain to see her bearing the cascade of cold water. He admired that she wasn’t trying to shield herself and the determination in her eyes when they flashed at him defiantly. She wasn’t going to give in to a petty torment.

He turned the water off and watched her drip for a minute before handing her the t-shirt.

“I need a towel.”

“No, I want you wet.”

She put the t back on and he savoured how it clung even more and became see-through when wet. He pulled her into him and devoured her mouth feeling her wet body through his now damp clothes. Slippery as she was, he hoisted her out of the shower and put her back on the bed, holding her down with his weight so she couldn’t escape again. He felt very self-satisfied with his makeshift bonds, and once she was secure, he stepped back to admire her.

He hadn’t realised how small she really was until he saw her almost consumed by the bed. She had such a formidable personality that was so much larger than her frame. He wondered if the voluptuousness of her breasts made her seem bigger. He couldn’t figure it out. Why did she look so different, so much more alluring and vulnerable tied up like that?

After a moment, he took off his jacket and began to settle in. He sat, admiring her and ran through all his tried and true scenarios until he figured out what he wanted to do. He walked around the bed appraising every inch of her. He wanted to strip her of her pride and wilfulness. That was the usual way to regain his power. He didn’t need to degrade her, he just had to make her feel like he could see all her flaws. That couldn’t be too hard, she wasn’t that beautiful – at least not in the conventional sense. She wasn’t someone he’d notice on the street, but the more he looked the less he could find in her to devalue. It wasn’t until he met her steal gaze that he clocked that she wasn’t the least bit self-conscious or distressed by his scrutiny.

He waited for her to say the expected bravado, ‘like what you see?’ or something similarly trite, but she said nothing. He moved to the foot of the bed and watched her eyes following him. He reached for her thighs, holding her gaze like a dare, but she didn’t flinch. He spread her wide open, without the slightest hint of blush from her, and then he looked at her sex, opening before him, and he lost himself for a moment. Her sex was plump and as voluptuous as her breasts. She was still wet and dripping from the shower. He wanted to drink from that font and satiate his thirst, but he had to control his urges, or she would win.

When he looked back she was still watching him expectantly – and it hit him like a ton of bricks – she had a confidence about her body that he had never experienced before. She wasn’t the least bit shy in this arena that’s why she had always seemed tall and commanding to him even though she was quite small.

Her quiet intensity filled him with a kind of ferocity he hadn’t experienced in decades. He wanted to ravage every inch of her. He growled again thinking about it, and his mouth began to water as he realised that she was not just being submissive, she was a submissive. It wasn’t how she behaved or a role she played, it was who she was. He wondered why he hadn’t seen it before and then he remember her stature. She didn’t lower herself to submit, she elevated him to dominate.

“What’s your safe word?” When she didn’t answer him, he wondered if he had assumed too much. “A safe word is something –“

“I know what a safe word is,” she said almost condescendingly. She wanted to scream at him for mansplaining safe words when he had been doing so well so far.

“Then what’s yours?”

“I don’t use safe words.”

“Why not?”

“If you can’t tell that you’re pushing me too far or that I can’t endure what you’re doing, you don’t deserve to play with me.”

It was almost a slap in his face. She could use words in ways that held more of a sting than his cane. He almost reacted, but again the knee-jerk response would cost him his status. He thought for a moment, “I don’t think I’m comfortable with that.”

She smiled at him, “good.”

“How will I know where your edge is?”

“You have to pay very close attention. Look at me. Can’t you tell what you’re doing to me right now?”

“Yes, but what if I want to blind fold you? Or you close your eyes?”

“If you blindfold me, that’s the risk you take. If I close my eyes, then I don’t want to see you, or I don’t want you to see what I’m thinking. You’ll have to pay attention to all of me to figure it out. If we’re both not at risk, we’re not in it together. You don’t get a safety net with me, anymore than I get one with you. The real thrill only exists if there’s real risk.” She waited a moment. “Or you can leave.”

The good part of him, the part that prided himself on compassion and compersion and being a male feminist and treating women with respect wanted to go. His conscience was telling him to run. But the savage part of him, the barbaric, ferocious, absolute masculine part of him craved her the way a starving dog craves meat. And he saw her then, not as something to merely get off on, but as a vast, endless domain that was his to conquer if he wanted it. It humbled him to realise, he didn’t even know where to begin, what would work, what wouldn’t, and it delighted him to know it would take years and years and years to figure her out, if he ever could.

He crawled over her and bit her left nipple hard, holding it in his teeth. It scared him to know it would hurt her and he used the fear to let his senses open to take in her full reaction. His heart pounded wildly, and he felt the exhilaration coursing through every nerve. He noted the sound of her squeal, the thrust of her torso, and the unexpected rise in temperature, even though he didn’t know if the heat was his or hers. He felt her nipple rise in his mouth and the soft ridge felt miraculous against his tongue. The conflict between wanting to tear her flesh and wanting to worship it caught him off guard.

He wanted abandon every artifice he had created for himself until now and just drown in her flesh - but he couldn't shake a vague sense of panic that told him to RUN.

© Copyright Eurydice Rising