Kristen brought it up on a Sunday afternoon with nothing else going on, perched on the arm of the couch, and she was red to the hairline before she got the first sentence out.
"Okay. I've been working up to asking this for two weeks, so nobody interrupt." She looked at Jessica, then at the floor. "You know how every time — every single time, with anybody — the second you say stop, or wait, or slow down, they stop? Which is correct, obviously. That's the rule and they should. But it means I've never once been anywhere I couldn't get out of by opening my mouth. And what I want — " she pressed on through the blush like it was a physical thing she was walking against — "is to be tied down. Properly. And kept right at the edge, for as long as you decide. Not as long as I decide. Until you decide I'm done. Because nobody has ever not stopped when I asked, and I want to find out what's on the other side of that."
There was a beat of silence, and it wasn't the shocked kind.
"That's the most Kristen request I've ever heard," Jessica said. "You rehearsed it."
"Twice. In the car."
Megan had her hand up before Jessica finished the sentence. "Mine. I'm doing it." She said it fast, the way she'd have called shotgun. Only afterward did it occur to her that nobody had offered the job to anyone. Jessica raised an eyebrow at her. Megan kept her hand up. "I'm serious. This is literally the thing I'm best at. You do the rope, I do the rest."
Kristen looked between them, still crimson, visibly delighted. "You're both just — okay. Great. That was easier than the car."
Jessica did the tying. Kristen's clothes went on the desk chair, folded — she folded them herself, stalling and grinning at once — and then she was on her back in the middle of Jessica's bed. Jessica ran rope from her left wrist to the corner of the frame.
"Tell me if anything's too tight," Jessica said. "Uncomfortable is OK, tingling isn't. You won't be able to escape regardless."
"Noted."
One wrist to each top corner, one ankle to each bottom corner. Then Jessica doubled a length above Kristen's left knee, ran it out sideways to the frame rail, and pulled. Kristen's thigh went out past where the ankle rope had put it and stayed there. She did Kristen's right leg the same way. "Because the ankles are nothing," she said, to nobody in particular. "Ankles you work around."
Then she went back around the whole circuit taking slack out. By the second pass Kristen was spread in a wide X, legs pinned open at the knee, arms drawn up and out. Jessica tugged the last knot tight. There was maybe an inch of give anywhere on her.
"Try to close your legs," Jessica said.
Kristen tried. The knee ropes took it before her thighs had moved at all. "Nope."
"Sit up."
Her head and shoulders came off the mattress a few inches and the wrist ropes caught her. She dropped back. "Nope."
"Turn over. Cover anything. Touch Megan."
Kristen tried each one, laughing by the third. Each one ended the same way: a short pull and a stop. She could turn her head, flex her hands, arch her back a little, and that was the complete list. "This is extremely thorough."
"You asked for thorough." Jessica slid two fingers under the ankle rope, checked the color of Kristen's foot, adjusted a half inch, then did the same above one knee. "You asked for it in a speech."
"It was a good speech."
Megan sat on the end of the bed through all of it, keeping up a commentary — "you missed a spot, she can still wiggle her toes" — and privately taking inventory of the woman laid out in front of her. Kristen naked was a good sight. Kristen naked and unable to do anything about being looked at was better. She was blushing down to her collarbone about it, and she had asked for exactly this. It was, Megan thought, going to be a very good afternoon to be good at something.
"She's all yours," Jessica said, and stepped back.
Megan started slow, because starting slow was the whole art. She knelt between Kristen's thighs, settled in, and got to work with her mouth. Long soft passes of her tongue along the inside of one thigh, then back down the other. Then up the length of her slit, slow, stopping short of her clit every time. Kristen made a small impatient sound. Megan smiled into her and did it again, slower.
She worked her up by degrees. Broad and unhurried at first, her tongue flat against Kristen's slit. Then narrower, pointed, licking her clit while Kristen's hips tried to follow her mouth and found the rope wouldn't let them. She learned her fast, the way she learned everyone — the catch in Kristen's breath that meant close, the specific tightening in her thighs that meant closer, the little rising sound that meant three more seconds would finish her. She took her right up to that sound and then lifted off to a kiss on her hipbone. Kristen said something that wasn't a word and pulled at all six ropes at once.
"There it is," Megan said, into her thigh.
"You're evil."
"You wrote a speech about it."
She built her up and let her down. Built her up and let her down. Kristen's whole body worked against the rope every time and got nowhere. Every time she came back to the edge faster. Megan rode that, backing off earlier, coming back lighter. Kristen was loud in a helpless, delighted way, somewhere up at the other end of the bed.
The one thing Megan noticed, ten minutes in, was her jaw. A low ache starting behind the hinge of it, the ordinary wear of the work. She noticed it the way she'd notice a hill on a run — something to pace for — and filed it and forgot it. She was better at this than the ache was.
Twenty minutes in, Jessica appeared in the doorway with a glass of water and watched for a while before she started laughing.
"You realize none of this counts," she said.
Megan lifted her head. "Excuse me?"
"Kristen's whole thing. Her exact words. Everyone has always stopped when asked." Jessica gestured at the bed with the glass. "Right now, if she asks you to stop, what happens? You stop. You're a nice person. All you're doing is choosing not to stop yet, which is the one thing she said doesn't count. This is just Tuesday with rope."
Kristen, from the far end of the bed, breathless: "She's — annoyingly — right."
Megan started to argue and stopped. Jessica was right and, worse, it was Kristen's own speech she was quoting.
"So let's do it properly," Jessica said, and went and got the notepad off the fridge.
Jessica sat down with the pad on her knee and started writing.
"You're edging her and you're not stopping," she said, not looking up. "That's the first thing."
"Groundbreaking," Megan said.
Kristen got a breath in. She had been red to the hairline in the living room. She was not now. "When the edging's done I want the longest, most mind-bending orgasm she can manage."
"Oh, I can do that," Megan said.
Jessica wrote it down.
"How are you going to do it?"
"With my mouth."
"Only that?"
"Only that. That's the flashy version and I'm the person who can do the flashy version."
"Show-off," Kristen said from the bed, warmly.
"Correct."
Jessica kept writing. She tore the page off and handed it to Megan.
- Megan edges Kristen without stopping.
- When the edging is done, Megan gives her the longest, most mind-bending orgasm she can manage.
- Megan only uses her mouth.
- Megan doesn't stop edging Kristen until Jessica says so.
- Any health or safety problem and this ends immediately.
"What's it say?" Kristen said from the bed.
"Only you?" Megan asked Jessica.
"Yep."
Megan put the page down on the desk.
With both of them watching, she stripped down to her thong, and then did a little twirl for them.
"What's happening," Jessica said, amused.
"It feels right for what we're doing. You don't do a job like this dressed for class."
"Goddamn," Kristen said from the bed.
Megan picked up the pen and signed.
She knelt into position between Kristen's thighs and got back to work.
Jessica came over to the bed, bent, and kissed Kristen deep and slow. Kristen kissed her back hard, straining against the ropes to get closer as Jessica eased up.
She gave Kristen's nipple a light pinch. "Have fun. I'm going to get food."
She grabbed her keys and walked out the door.
"Did she just leave...?" Kristen said.
Megan kept working.
Ten minutes later she sat back on her heels to stretch her jaw.
The shock came off the collar and down through her like a whip.
She yelped and grabbed her throat. The second one landed right before she got her mouth back on Kristen's slit.
Her heart was slamming and her hands were shaking against Kristen's thighs. Without stopping meant without stopping, and Until Jessica says so meant Jessica. Jessica was no longer here.
"You okay?" Kristen asked, breathless.
Megan didn't respond.
For quite a while it was still fun — Kristen asking her to please, please just finish it, and Megan working her up and easing her down, enjoying just how frustrated Kristen was.
Then time started to catch up with them.
Kristen first, in her voice. The teasing went out of the asking and left just the asking. Then Megan's jaw — the ache from behind the hinge spreading forward along the bone, her tongue starting to feel like a muscle she was lifting rather than a thing she was using. She adjusted, changed angles, used her lips more, paced it. Managed it. Kept telling herself she was managing it.
Kristen said "please, Meg, please, I can't, please," and Megan heard herself think soon before she remembered she had no soon to give. She kept her mouth on Kristen, kept the pace, and said nothing.
The hours after that had a shape rather than events.
Build Kristen up, hold her under the line, ease her down, begin again. Never sit back while doing it. The working pauses inside the act — the kiss on the thigh, the slow drift down and away — those were nothing, those were the job. Anything more was not available. She learned to rest without stopping, and took whatever break she could get while still holding to the letter of what she signed.
There was water in the kitchen, one room away, and Megan stopped letting herself think about it. Her knees went somewhere in the first hour. At some point the reports from them stopped coming, which was worse than the pain had been. Nothing in the note said a word about her clothes and it didn't need to. She was going to be in a thong until this ended, and this didn't end until a woman across town said otherwise. The thong was the one part of that Megan had arranged herself, for effect, for an audience that had left. Her clothes were on the floor behind her. Getting to them meant sitting back off Kristen, which was the one thing she could not do. She had run out of feelings about it somewhere in the second hour.
And under all of it, the actual problem, which got harder as time went on instead of easier: keeping a woman at the edge and never over it. Fresh, with a fresh Kristen, it had been chess. Now her one permitted tool was a jaw that missed instructions and a tongue gone clumsy. Kristen's body had stopped being a reliable thing to read. Hair-triggered one build, unreachable the next. There was no pattern to learn, because Kristen was past having one. Twice Megan felt her go from nowhere-near to almost in the space of two seconds and had to go dead still against her with her heart pounding, half a breath from finishing the one thing she was not allowed to finish, with no idea what the collar would make of that or what she would be doing for the hours after it. Both times she caught it. She never let her over the line. It was the best work she had ever done. Kristen was past knowing whose mouth it was, and there was nobody else in the apartment to see it. She'd have taken a witness over the water.
Kristen's voice was the clock.
"Meg — okay — I know this is the thing I asked for, I know, I just need you to know it's a lot, that's all, I'm okay, it's just a lot."
"Please. Please, I'm begging you, please just let me, I'll do anything, I'll owe you anything, please, please stop, please —"
"I was wrong. This isn't what I wanted. I only thought I wanted it. Meg, this is too much, this is too much —"
That one was worse than the begging. Megan kept going anyway. Megan signed the note, and the note said Jessica.
"Please."
She lost her voice somewhere in there. After that, there was only sound — ragged, wordless. The gaps between them got longer, and they always started again. All of it arrived at Megan from the far end of the bed, from a face she had not seen in hours and could not look at without lifting her head off the one place she was allowed to keep it.
The front door. Keys in the lock, and Megan's whole body heard it before her brain did.
Then a bag going down on the kitchen counter, a tap running, a chair scraping out from the table.
Kristen found her voice the second the lock turned. The door got words out of her that three hours hadn't. Her voice was a ruin and it worked, and she aimed all of it past Megan at the kitchen: "Jessica. Jessica, please. Please make her stop. Please, I'm begging you, I can't, please —"
"Hi, you two," Jessica called back, warm as anything. "Traffic was terrible."
"Jessica. Please."
"I hear you," Jessica said. "God, I'm starving."
Kristen begged. Spread open on the bed, unable to sit up, unable to turn her head far enough to even face the door she was begging through, she offered Jessica anything, everything, apologized for things nobody had accused her of, said please so many times it stopped being a word.
Megan heard all of it and went on doing the only thing she could do, which was to edge Kristen.
Jessica appeared in the bedroom doorway and took it all in: Kristen wrecked and spread and hoarse, and Megan kneeling at the foot of the bed in nothing but the thong she'd stripped down to before signing.
"Still dressed for the job, I see," Jessica said, barely suppressing a smile. Megan did not lift her head.
Jessica took a sip of her water and came into the room. She sat down on the edge of the bed and traced a slow line around Kristen's breast with one finger.
"It's not up to her, sweetheart," she said, kindly, the way you'd explain a bus timetable. "It was never up to her. She can't stop. It stops when I say it stops — that's what the note says."
Jessica kept answering her, warm and useless, her finger going round and round. "I know, that has to be so frustrating. You're doing so well."
Then a hand landed on Megan's shoulder. It was the first time anyone had touched her since she knelt down.
"Okay. Go on, Meg. Let her finish."
It was not instant. That was the last joke buried in the note: the permission ended the edging and nothing else. It just handed Kristen's own words back to her.
Kristen was too far gone to come. Megan got her tongue back on her clit and got nothing but flinching — after all that, her body treated every touch as more of the same. Megan had to bring her back. It was the gentlest she'd been all day: slow, coaxing work, done with a tongue that had stopped taking instructions and a jaw held together by pure determination. She found the thread of her again and followed it up. And this time she didn't back off — no hover, no easing away, up through the catch in her breath and the tightening thighs and the rising sound and through —
Kristen came like something structural giving way. She screamed with what her throat had left, which wasn't much, and every limb hauled on its rope at once so the whole bedframe jumped — and Megan's mouth stayed on her, because it had to. The longest one she can manage. Kristen's line, asked for out loud from flat on her back, and longest meant exactly what it said: coming off her while Kristen was still going was coming off her. So she rode it — the frame knocking against the wall, Kristen's hips heaving up into her face with more strength than she'd shown in an hour, all six ropes creaking at once, wave after wave, longer than any orgasm Megan had ever been responsible for. Kristen shook and sobbed and laughed somewhere inside it.
It took about five minutes for Kristen to finally come down. The ropes went slack as all the breath went out of her.
Megan came off her and sat back on her heels. Her tongue was numb, her jaw was locked, and her knees had stopped belonging to her a long time ago. What she felt most, underneath all of it, was pride. She'd said this was the thing she was best at, and nobody in this room was going to argue with her now.
The untying went slowly and almost silently. Jessica did it one rope at a time, rubbing each limb as it came free, and neither of the others said much of anything.
When the last knot went, Kristen lay there a while without moving. Then she drew her legs together — the first time in three and a half hours her own thighs had touched — made a sound like something coming home, and rolled slowly onto her side.
Jessica came back from the kitchen with two glasses of water and set them on the nightstand. Then she got a hand under Megan's arm and helped her up off her dead knees and onto the bed.
Megan lay down beside her. Jessica draped a blanket over them as Kristen snuggled back into Megan's body, pulling Megan's arm around her.
Afterward, in the kitchen, Megan emptied a glass of water and refilled it.
"You planned that. From the second I volunteered, you were planning."
"Did you at least have fun?"
"My tongue hurts, my jaw hurts, and my knees feel like sandpaper." She took a drink of her water. "That was also the single hottest thing I have ever done in my life."
"Sounds like a good time to me."
"Fuck you."
Jessica laughed and topped her glass up for her.
From across the room, Kristen was talking. She'd been talking since her voice came back, on the couch with the blanket still round her, hoarse and glowing and unable to sit still.
"— because that's the thing, that's the exact thing, I begged. I actually begged. For hours. I asked her to stop and she didn't stop, and I asked again and she didn't stop, and it just kept not working. Do you understand that that has never once happened to me? There was nothing I could do and — " she laughed, and winced at what it did to her throat, and kept going anyway — "it was the best thing I have ever done. I want to do it again. Not soon. But I want to do it again, and longer, and I have notes."
From the kitchen, Megan could see Kristen's face clearly for the first time all afternoon. There was nothing complicated in it. Megan had given her the one thing nobody else ever had. She'd taken her well past anything a reasonable person would have wanted, and Kristen was giddy about it — about the exact stretch of the afternoon Megan would be feeling in her jaw for a week.
"Meg. Meg, you were incredible, I'm going to tell everyone, I'm going to tell people who don't want to know —"
Megan held up a hand.
"I'm never volunteering for that again."