Edge Play X (11 page)

Compton picked up her right foot and
sucked on her petite toes, running his tongue in between and around each one.
He licked the soles of each foot, he kissed the heels and Achilles tendons, his
little penis jutting out in front of him as parts of her feet glanced his cheek
ever so gently.

Compton thought that perhaps X was
going to let him fuck her, unaware that she had no intention of doing so.
Instead, X told him to stop and then unclipped his hands. She took the man’s
right hand and placed it between her thighs next to her vulva. Immediately, he
ran his fingers over the moist warmth of her labia, but just as quickly X
pulled his hand away from her.

“Lick off your fingers.”

The man eagerly obeyed.
When
Compton
put his fingers into his mouth,
X spit in his face.
She
suddenly regretted that she had allowed him to touch her at all.

“You don’t deserve it,” she said. “You
don’t deserve any of this. Enjoy it because it’s all you’ll ever get from me.”

“Yes,
Domina
,
it is a privilege to be in your presence. Thank you.”

 
She got off the bed and dressed, then removed
the tape from his eyes and tossed it onto the floor, leaving another task for
the man’s maids.

Pleasure then pain. That is what our
lives are.

*

Compton had asked X to speak and then
had made a request. He wanted to use the latex vacuum bed. He wanted her to
control his breathing. X considered.

She remembered the list that Simeon
had given her which had so simply listed erotic asphyxiation among all the others
fetishes as if it were as harmless as a foot fetish or wanting to be tied up.
Any asphyxiation play was dangerous. Every year there were people who
accidentally killed themselves trying to get off by restricting their
breathing. It wasn’t that the practice was new—people had been doing it for
centuries, had realized long ago that the hanged man often left this earth with
an erection and a wad of ejaculate in his pants.

She told him to get in.

Compton slid into the latex vacuum
bed, a contraption slightly longer and wider than his body. Once between the
two layers of latex, X zipped up the side, sealing him in. The only opening was
a small round hole that sat directly over his mouth.
 

A small vacuum sat near the bottom and
X turned it on, sucking out all the air and confining him inside. Encased in
the slick black latex, his body looked as if it had just floated up from a tar
pit. The vacuum continued its low hum, sealing Compton in completely and
outlining every curve and nuance of his body underneath. Under the latex, X
could see the discernable bulge of his erection. X leaned close to his head.

“Are you alright in there?”

“Yes,
Domina
.”

“You look ridiculous.”

“Yes,
Domina
,
of course I do.”

X allowed him to be restrained there
as she sat nearby watching him. Being enclosed in a bed like that was something
she would not have enjoyed, having a tendency for claustrophobia; however, for
Compton, he endured it without complaint and without muttering his safe word.

And then, she went over to him, placed
her hand over his mouth, and counted to 25, thinking that 25 seconds isn’t too
long, that being deprived of air that long won’t kill a person. Compton, she
knew, had no idea how long she would keep her hand over the opening. When she
freed the air hole, Compton sucked in the air with a couple quick gasps. There
was a hint of panic to it. She thought that it must have felt like being born.

After his breath slowed to normal, he
said, “Again, please, X.”

X placed her hand over his mouth and
this time counted to forty. When she lifted it, he again sucked in the air,
this time with more of a need than the time before.

X leaned down again next to his ear.
Speaking through the latex made it seem like she was talking to an older person
who was losing their hearing, and this in itself lent an absurdity to their
actions.

“Are you finished in there? Was that
enough for you?” X might as well have been talking to an old man on the toilet
who needed help getting off the seat.

“One more time, please, X, this time
for over a minute.”

X realized that Compton must have been
counting in his sack as his breathing was being withheld. She admired his
focus.

“Fine,” she said.

Once again, X placed her hand over his
mouth and began to count. As she looked down at Compton in his silly black sack,
she realized that he had trusted her completely with his life; her hand over
his mouth had become the line between life and death, and this thought, one
simultaneously frightening and compelling, gave her a deep sense of discomfort.
All it would take to end everything would be to keep her hand where it
was.
 
A few minutes with her hand over
his mouth would free her of this situation.

How long would it take until the brain
was impacted, until the alveoli began to scream for air? He deserved the
torture. Of course he did. For his wealth alone he deserved it, the vulgarity
of the monetary number, the incredibility of it, unknowable because his assets
changed by the second, this sum that had transcended wealth and achieved its
own mysticism. He should suffer for the number alone, for the cruelty it
represented.

She kept her hand over the hole even
though she had stopped counting. She kept her hand there even when she saw him
begin to struggle under the thin latex in a disturbing tremble. If he tried to
say his safe word, would she hear it over the hum of the vacuum? Would it
matter? Maybe Compton would pass out first. But if he died in this odd bed, how
would she explain it to the police?
To Simeon?
If she
killed a murderer, would she feel any guilt? What if he wasn’t a murderer?

Finally, she lifted off her hand,
allowing the oxygen to flow back into Compton’s lungs. This time Compton gulped
the air in with absolute urgency. X turned off the vacuum, unzipped the bag, and
told him to get up. Compton climbed out slowly, a dazed look on his face, the
man squinting and red-faced like an infant just out of the womb. A few moments
later, he stood up.

“Our play is finished for tonight,” X
said, the residue of her discomfort still lingering.

“May I speak?”

“Yes.”

“Allow me to retrieve your tribute.”

“First,” X said, “I have something for
you.”

She went to her bag and took out the
pencil that Simeon had given her.

“I have a gift for you. It may appear
to be a regular pencil, but it is one that has been in my pussy. Use it in your
office. Think of me when you look at it. Try not to lick it.”

X handed the pencil to Compton.

“Thank you, X, I will,” he said,
smiling a big grin before placing the pencil behind his ear.

Compton went behind the bar and
unlocked the safe. Simeon had told X that Compton would pay double if he could
watch her count the money in the nude, and X wondered if he had the courage to
ask her to do so.

When Compton returned, he was carrying
a small manila envelope.

He asked, “May I speak,
Domina
?”

“What is it now?”

“There is ten-thousand dollars in this
envelope. I would ask that you take the five-thousand above what has been
agreed upon if I could only watch you count it in the nude.”

X took the envelope from him, opened
it and pulled out all the cash.

“Get on your knees, Worm!” X
commanded, enraged that he had actually asked for such a thing.

The man obeyed and once he was on his
knees, X slapped him. Deliberately, she counted out five-thousand dollars and
threw it at him, the bills falling all around him in a storm of money. Then X
picked a few of the bills off the floor and stuffed them harshly into his
mouth. She paused for a moment, surveying the scene, halted by the image before
her, so surreal and humorous, the woman frozen by the dark pornographic beauty
of it.

The other bills she returned to the
envelope.
 

“You’re a pig,” X said, spitting on
his face in disgust. “I can’t be bought. You are not going to buy me, do you
understand?”

“Yes,” he said almost unintelligibly
behind the wad of cash in his mouth.

“Lie down on the floor, Worm, until I
am gone, and then after that you can climb back into your hole.”

And with that X got her things and let
Steinberg know via the intercom that she was ready to leave, the woman slamming
the door behind her as she exited. After returning home, X connected the camera
to her computer and burned the images to a disc before sending them to her
printer, knowing that they might prove useful to not just Simeon.

9.

For two weeks after X saw him, Compton
sent her flowers every day. Each morning she was greeted by a delivery man
bringing vibrant arrangements of roses, peonies, lilies, dahlias or other full,
colorful and fragrant bouquets. At first, X considered throwing them away, but
she had decided that the flowers had committed no sins, and their beauty had
won her over. As she placed them throughout her apartment, first in her living
room, then her bedroom, followed by the kitchen and the counter in the
bathroom, X pretended that the lovely blooms did not come from Compton, hoping
the denial of their origins would help her be more able to enjoy their
presence.

Anne had insisted that a show be held
for X’s new works, and finally, after repeated nagging, X had relented. The
show, they decided, would include both her older and newer work and be a
catered affair.

The gallery advertised the event in
the paper and on their website, as they did with all the other shows at the gallery.
X helped Anne display all the works, making sure they were showcased exactly
how she envisioned, tilting and adjusting the track lights above them until the
bright swaths which illuminated them also seemed to envelop them, injecting
each work with a vaporous and almost ethereal quality.
 

Because X was suddenly flush with
money, she had covered the cost of having the show catered and even made sure
to have a full bar service provided. The caterer and bartender, dressed in
tuxedo shirts and trying their best to appear calm as they rushed to set up,
were busy laying out tablecloths and silverware, stacking plates, clinking
glasses and hurrying in and out to their van to bring in the food, drinks,
serving plates, napkins and liquor bottles that would provide the food and
libations for the event.
 

A half hour before the opening and as
the two women were making finishing touches, another arrangement arrived at the
gallery, this one a generous collection of pink sapphire orchids. The delivery
man gave it to Anne who in turn gave it to X who opened the card, reading it.
Wishing you success tonight. T.
Another
arrangement from Compton, obviously aware of her show.

“Let’s put these on the table by the
hor
d’oeuvres,” Anne said as X handed the flowers to her. “They’re
lovely,” Anne commented. “Who are they from?” she prodded.
 
Anne was always curious about the men in X’s
life.

“An admirer,” X answered, deflecting
the question.

“That handsome man I saw in the
studio, I bet,” Anne said excitedly, referencing Simeon.

As X went through the gallery one
final time adjusting the paintings and trying to ignore the anger that had come
into her with the arrival of Compton’s flowers, she wondered, would the man
never leave her alone?

But as friends and gallery patrons and
other artists started to arrive, the anger began to subside. As X sipped at her
wine, a fruity white that left a sugary residue in her mouth, she noticed that
the gallery was absolutely packed with people. Many of them were familiar faces
while others were strangers. Still, all of them chatted together, laughing,
flirting, looking at her paintings between bites of citrus-infused mini-
crabcakes
, artichoke and parmesan
filo
bundles, petite
spanokopita
, slices of kiwi or fat
cherry tomatoes, alternating nibbles with sips of wines or mixed drinks drank
from short, glistening glasses, their buoyant overlays of ice speared by slim
red straws.

X thought the high turnout was perhaps
due to the California winter that even with its mildness had driven people to
do more inside, or maybe it was that their advertising efforts were finally
starting to make a difference. Either way, X enjoyed watching people viewing
and discussing her paintings and also enjoyed interacting and conversing with
the group.

At the peak of the evening, Anne came
over to X and put her hand on her arm.

“You’ll never believe who’s here!
Terry Compton’s over there! He’s a huge collector of art,” Anne gushed.