Page 65 of What Blooms in Barren Lands

“And do you trust me to only ever hurt your pretty pussy in ways that you’ll love?”

He laid his hands flat on my shoulders and upper chest, brushing my hair away.

“Yes.”

No sooner had the whispered word left my lips than Einar pushed me, and I landed on the bed, the sheets slick and cool under my bare arms.

“I’m going to go and get a few ... accessories,” Einar announced.

He turned on his heel, but stopped by the door to trap me in his gaze one more time before walking out with words promising danger. “When I get back, you’d better not be wearing anything, or else you may find that I made no promises about not hurting other parts of you.”

I practically tore my clothes off, throwing them on the floor in a haphazard frenzy. Not because I feared his threat, but because I craved his praise. I lay on my side, facing the door, long ready for him before his footsteps came near.

“What a good girl you are,” he cooed as soon as he saw me, and a powerful dose of pleasure burst through my bloodstream.

I inspected the items he had brought with him: a rope, hand sanitiser, lube, and a kitchen timer. He set these on his bedside table before taking two more articles from the wardrobe: a black scarf and a familiar, burgundy bathrobe belt.

“Since it served us so well the first time.” He shrugged with a smile. “You know already what to do, babydoll. Lie on your back and raise your hands for me.”

I did, and he leaned over me to tie me to the headboard the same way he had done on our first night together.

“That’s it, exactly like that,” he drawled. “You know how much I love rewarding my good girl.”

I smiledloudly. Not laughed but rather beamed with a euphoria-saturated moan.

Reaching over me to grab the rope, Einar brandished his knife from the sheath at his belt, and he cut it in half.

“Now put your legs up for me, wide apart and bent at the knees,” he instructed me.

I did as he asked, puzzled and uncomfortable with the way he wanted me to expose myself. He hooked the rope underneath my left knee and tied its ends to the corner of the headboard, before doing the same with my right side, preventing me from being able to close my legs.

“There, you’re almost ready.” Einar’s lips touched my entrance briefly, his tongue tracing my core, and the sound of his groan, suffused with yearning, filled the air at the same time as my cry of pleasure.

“One final thing.”

He leaned over me with an uncharacteristically tender, encouraging smile, blocking the light from the window. Then he tied the black scarf over my eyes.

“The game is simple.” His voice reached me through the darkness that had enveloped me. “I’ll fuck you with my hand. I’ll set the timer to forty minutes, and in that time, you can come as many times as you want. But each time you do, I’m adding a finger, until you’re taking mywholehand and then some.”

“Oh no,” I groaned, trepidation and anticipation fusing in my voice in equal measures.

Being deprived of my sight made me more attuned to my other senses. I was suddenly acutely aware of a mild draught coming from the direction of the window, of the rickety creaks of the old house around us, of the faint flowery smell of the sheets.

And when Einar’s fingertips touched my hip, a joyful shock slashed through me like an electric current, no matter how soft and insignificant the contact was.

“There’s only one word you can say the whole time, and that word is ‘stop’. You understand?”

“Uh-huh.”

“If you can last the whole forty minutes, with or without completing the full hand, you get to come on my cock.”

The sheets rustled, and the mattress’s shape shifted beneath me as Einar moved.

Click ... click ... click, came the sound of the timer, dry and mechanical, with a slight resistance to each tick. Then the indecent slosh of the sanitiser being applied, Einar rubbing his hands diligently somewhere above me, then by the sound of it pouring water onto them from a glass on the nightstand to wash the sting of the alcohol off.

In the meantime, I occupied my mind with a calculation of what was in store for me, trying to convince myself that I had nothing to fear. If, say, I took fifteen minutes for eachculmination, I would still just narrowly miss having to take four fingers. I would have to take three, but that would be nothing but pleasant, as I already knew well from experience. It was just the bondage and the blindfold that were causing my anticipatory thrill.

My sense of tentative reassurance lasted precisely until the warm, fleshy tip of Einar’s finger touched my clit, until he began rubbing it, circling it, his pace like that of a looping pirate ship, slower and faster, slower and faster, round and round, unhurried but relentless, his other hand closing around my breast, kneading its nipple, and, oh god, a violent spasm of ecstasy gripped me hard, and cat yowls tore their way up from deep within my chest ...