Mind Caviar Fiction: "The Touch" by J. Z. Sharpe

J. Z. Sharpe has published erotic fiction in Scarlet Letters, Dare, Blood Moon, and various other net venues. Her muses won't leave her alone, so she appeases them by writing quirky tales (like this one) and feeding them chocolate. The following piece is a previously unpublished Mind Caviar exclusive.

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The Touch
by J. Z. Sharpe

Melisande came to me as the answer to a prayer.

Many years ago, when I realized that my wife would never share my dark passions, I began to long for a woman who did. Not that I didn't try-- gently, respectfully. After all, I had always been open with her, honest in everything I shared. Although Ginnie and I enjoyed our life outside the bedroom, she found nothing arousing about my sexual tastes.

"No, put those things away," she decreed one night, "for good!" when I tried to make a game out of a satin blindfold and a set of fur-lined handcuffs. I fidgeted all night while my wife slept and when I did find sleep, my dreams were not in sync with my reality. The very next day, I gave up on my dreams with Ginnie, and so my longing began.

Ginnie and I had gone to a flea market in Soho looking for antiques to furnish our loft. It was a gentle time: after a disagreement things often seemed calmer between us, like the fresh breeze that blows away a summer thunderstorm. Still, part of me felt like an unresolved chord. I stood, lost in thought, examining a display of handmade jewelry as I wondered how that void could be filled.

On a rack of necklaces, I found myself drawn to a triple strand of round, lavender stones alternated with sharp dark ones, the soft submissive pastel against the dominate, pointed black. "Oh, isn't that pretty!" Ginnie said, coming up behind me, "Are you going to get it?" I nodded. I'm sure she assumed that I bought it for her, but when I took it home, I put it on my altar instead, the little table in my study where I lay all my hopes. I made a place for it with my crystals and other holy things and then I prayed with all the passion that a man can create, for the bondage Goddess to come into my life.

*****

We met over the internet. Even now, I sometimes lie awake and think of the many souls who would never have found each other if it hadn't been for chat rooms, bulletin boards, the discreet joy of e-mail and private messaging. Melisande shone like a streaking meteor among the constellations of submissive women who frequented my favorite net hangouts, with her intelligence, her sense of humor. As I got to know her, I soon discovered her almost obsessive desire to please. Against my better judgment, I dreamed of meeting her in person; after all, she only lived two hours away. We discussed the possibility, looked for an appropriate time and place where we would not arouse suspicion from our spouses (she was married, too). And eventually, because we wished for them, the appropriate times and places presented themselves. Oh, yes, there was more than one meeting, each time more delicious, more precious than the last.

I took it upon myself to train her in the way I thought all submissives should be taught: gently, with care and forethought, knowing full well that a good education must be tailored to the individual. We discussed our limits and tastes at great length. I informed her that when we were in private, she would always be naked, while I reserved the right to remain clothed. She would be expected to speak to me with the utmost deference and respect at all times. I taught her about the many flavors of pain, how the pinch of a clothespin could be just as potent as the sting of the whip. I showed her the pleasures that only a master bound to his slave with true commitment and obsessive desire could bring.

At first, she refused to use the safeword I gave her, insisting that she hadn't yet reached her point of no return. So I pushed a little farther, struck a little harder-- until one day she nearly passed out. "Did you forget your safeword?" I scolded, "Damn it, that's why I gave it to you!"

"You won't be angry if I need to use it, Sir?"

"No! Never!" I looked into her eyes and found them on the verge of tearfulness. "Never, my dear," I said in a gentler tone, "I promise. Oh, I wish I could read your mind, but I can't! I need to know when to stop."

As I spoke, I brushed my fingers against that sweet place where Melisande's face curved to meet her chin. She let out a long sigh. "Does that feel good?" I asked. She nodded, so I continued. She sighed again, and I leaned close to her ear, my lips almost touching its shell-pink folds.

"That's my girl," I whispered, and brushed her cheek again, "Come for me."

Oh, the storm, the fury, when my Melisande comes! The Herculean rush of power throughout my entire being as she does so by my command! I watched with amazement as she threw her head back and screamed, while her deliciously moist pussy ground against the chair where I had tied her. The way she clutched the arms and wrapped her legs around the rungs, she might as well have been bound to them with iron chains. Her hysterical joy lasted for several minutes; when it subsided at last, I think we were both surprised.

"What happened?" she gasped.

"I believe you came, my dear."

Melisande laughed, "I believe I did, too!"

I let her catch her breath. Rummaging around in the bag I used to carry my toys, I found the necklace at the bottom, sealed with care in an envelope. I took it out and put it around her neck.

"What's this, Sir?"

"The necklace I told you about." I clasped it, then let my hand fall against that same magical place on her chin. She shivered visibly.

"The one from your altar?"

"Yes, that's the one. You're my bondage goddess, Melisande. If I ever had any doubts, they're gone." I kissed her cheek. "And I'll bet that I can teach you to come again, just by touching you in this way. Can't I?" I said, running my hand along her cheek

She nodded. "Yes, yes..."

"But not now," I said, and dropped my hand. "Enough for today's lesson, my dear student. You've done very well."

*****

We had few chances to play in person, but we made up for that with many stolen hours of phone sex and, when discretion demanded, cybersex, too. Her home office was tucked away in her attic, a place her husband rarely visited. So even when he was home, we could play-- and we did. Every time, no matter what else we did, I would ask her to touch herself along the edge of her chin, in that same magical place and without fail, she would climax as soon as I commanded her to do so, never a moment before. Our sessions were the bright point of my life; at last the broken chord had been resolved.

Until one day, when an e-mail I sent her came back, "addressee unknown." Blaming it on a temporary net glitch, I sent it again. The "mailer daemon" returned it with the ferocity of a well-served tennis ball. I sent it three more times. Thrice more it came back.

I arrived at my office the next day to find a message from Melisande on my voice mail. She sounded frightened and I thought I could hear the rumble of passing traffic in the background. She began with a long deep breath. "Sir," she said. "My husband found out. Everything. I'm leaving him. I can't stay. I'm sorry," A drawn-out pause, "I'm sorry," she said again, "I'll call you when I get situated." Then she hung up.

My world crashed around me, I sat at my desk for several minutes, clutching my forehead and wishing it could only be a dream. She would call me soon, she had to. Melisande was a spunky little lady, she would land on her feet. I would hear from her within the next twenty-four hours, I was sure of it.

But two days passed, a week, a month. Melisande disappeared from the net and from my life. I never heard from her again.

*****

Ginnie, of course, had no knowledge of my dalliance, which is probably just as well. I turned to her with a renewed sense of what I might have lost. We took a memorable vacation in the islands, where we discussed the possibility of moving to a larger house in the suburbs, getting a fresh start, maybe even having children, an idea which we had always approached with a certain ambivalence. Ginnie's biological clock would run out soon, so if we were going to start a family, we had to begin right away.

Despite all this supposed domestic happiness, I felt a dark hole growing deep inside, a restlessness that no suburban dream could quench. At work, around my friends, and always around Ginnie, I felt like I was playing a role, reading from a script. The search began again.

I visited all my old net hangouts, but they brought back too many memories. Too many people in cyberspace had known Melisande and me as a couple, so to them I must have seemed like a sad misfit in my lonely new role. I gave up the chat rooms and checked my e-mail only occasionally. Perhaps I was too old for such nonsense anyway.

Then I received the invitation. It came from my old friend David, who was the one person outside the net with knowledge of my passion for the erotic exchange of power, and even he didn't know my whole story. I never told him about Melisande, I felt it too important to guard our privacy, no matter what.

"I've been invited to a private party in Manhattan," he said over the phone one day. "Next Saturday night. Didn't you tell me that Ginnie was going out of town next weekend?"

"Her sister in Boston is throwing a baby shower for some old school friends. What sort of a party are we talking about here?"

I heard a low chuckle on the other end of the line, "A fetish party. Invitation only. But I'm allowed to bring a guest. You game?"

I almost said no. If it was the sort of party I thought it would be, I knew that I would spend the whole evening lost in the past. Every woman there would be compared to Melisande, and against such perfection, no one else could even come close. I formed the word "no", and drew breath to say it. But as I exhaled, the no turned to, "Well, yeah, okay, I guess."

"Gee, you don't have to sound so enthusiastic, man. If you don't want to go, just say so. I just thought, you know, you used to be into this sort of stuff, it might be kind of fun."

"No, no, I'll go with you. It's just-- oh, never mind. Where's it being held?"

"Don't worry about that. I'll pick you up."

*****

Although I had often fantasized over it and heard many accounts of play parties from others, I'd never been to one myself. It was held in a brownstone on the upper West Side, a dark house decorated in somber colors and filled with cigarette smoke and the weighty scent of patchouli incense. About thirty people were in attendance, though, to be honest with you, I cannot vouch for the accuracy of this number, since the party was scattered between the house's many rooms. David, ever the voyeur, dove right into the thick of it, dragging me from the parlor to the kitchen and then upstairs. "In every room, a different fetish!" he shouted over the thud of repetitive electronica. I began to get a headache. I wanted to go home.

We came to the last room, the sunroom at the end of the upstairs hall, buried deep in the bowels of the mansion. Half the people seemed to be crowded in here, and from the anticipatory buzz, I realized that something was about to begin. I peered over the heads and saw a makeshift stage built from wooden pallets and carpet samples and lit with a cobbling of floor lamps and candles. An odd, X-shaped structure dominated the set. Bound to this device was a naked woman, her back to the room, her dark hair just long enough to kiss the curve of her ass.

I shivered. There was something quite familiar about that curve.

"What's going on in here?" I heard David ask a bystander.

"Master Desmond is giving a demonstration of whipping techniques."

Master Desmond was a paunchy guy in jeans and a black tank shirt. Tattoos riddled his forearms like the devil's idle doodling. He bumbled around on the stage, picked up one whip and applied it to the woman's backside, while saying a few inaudible words to the group, then repeated the process, first with a cane then with a cat-o-nine-tails. The woman, meanwhile, squirmed deliciously, and made all the requisite noises as her master worked her over.

Still, I perceived a slight lack of enthusiasm on her part. This could not be Melisande, I thought to myself. She would be much more eager, the darling girl-- why, Melisande would lean into the whip, reach out for it, begging to make contact! "It can't be her," I said out loud.

David turned to look at me, "It can't be who?"

"Excuse me." I pushed through the crowd to a position at the side of the stage, where I could catch a glimpse of the woman's face. Of course, she was blindfolded, but I saw something familiar in the curve of her jaw, the tip of her ear underneath all that hair. Then she twisted a bit in her restraints, and the sight of a triple strand of lavender stones confirmed my suspicion. I nodded to her master as he crossed the stage in front of me, looking for a whip he'd laid down earlier. "Excuse me, sir," I called out. "May I ask you something?"

Master Desmond slouched over to me. "Sure. What do you want to know?"

"Actually, I hope this isn't out of line, but it's a bit of a request. I believe I know your submissive, rather well." I pointed at Melisande, so lovely in her restraints. "We were friends once. I was her first master."

"Wait a second...are you...?" He glanced over his shoulder at her. "When I first started training her, she used to talk about this guy, said he was the only one who could make her come. I can get her pretty close, but I gotta really work at it."

"Well, I've got a secret, a trick... May I?"

Desmond shrugged, "Be my guest."

I got up on the rickety stage and approached the chained woman. Oh, yes, it was my Melisande, I recognized her perfume, mixed with the heady feminine scent that haunted all my dreams about her. I fingered the necklace, then lifted my fingers to her chin and ran a single stroke, from ear to lip.

"Hello, my love. It has been too long."

She stiffened, like an electrical shock had been sent up her spine. I stroked again, and her hands curled into little fists straining against the leather cuffs that held her to the cross. "Sir," she barely whispered, "is that you?"

"It's me, my dear. It's me."

Melisande began to gush, "Oh, my God, it's you," she blurted, " I'd thought I'd lost you, Sir, it's..."

"Hush!" I kept brushing my hand over her luxurious skin, that same route down one side of her face. I touched nothing else, "I see you have not forgotten your training."

"No, Sir, no, I never did ."

"Quiet, quiet. Just breathe," Back and forth, ear to lip, again and again, "Feel my touch, Melisande. Feel my hand. Know that my love is as great as it ever was. What is lost can now be found."

Her breath was quick, but even, "Yes, yes," she whispered, "I understand."

"Good. You want my permission, don't you? Is that what you crave?"

She nodded, "Yes, Sir, yes! Please? Please Sir," she begged.

I smiled. The chord resolved itself with resounding glee, "That's my girl," I murmured, leaning close to her ear and filling my face with her perfume, "Come for me, Melisande. Come for me. Now!"

The heavens opened, the furies descended. She drew an impossibly deep breath, then leaned backwards, straining the chains that held her so tightly. With her hair dangling free, almost touching her knees, her face in a stiff grimace, Melisande let out a scream that silenced the entire room. Her pelvis pushed forward, and I could see a stream of crystalline liquid running down one thigh. Her master stared at me, open-mouthed, while she gyrated in place now pounding the cross with her hands. The sound of splintering wood brought Desmond running and he caught her just before she brought down the whole cross and buried us all in a pile of cheap lumber.

"Holy shit, man!" he yelled at me, "What did you teach this one?"

I merely smiled, and stepped aside so he could release her from her cuffs.

As soon as her hands were free, she tore the blindfold away and looked around the room, confused. I knew she was looking for me, but I deliberately stayed to one side and waited for her to find me. As soon she did, she ran over and hugged me tight, her words lost in a stream of sobs. I held her close and stroked her beautiful hair.

"What are you doing here?" she finally said, "I tried to send you e-mail, but I lost your address. I couldn't call you. I tried once, but she answered. I hung up-- I didn't know what to do."

I held her face between my palms. She'd plastered it with make-up for the occasion, although most of that now ran down her cheeks in long gray smudges. "Oh, I'm so glad I've found you."

"I am too, my dear. I am too."

I nodded toward her friend Desmond, who was walking around the remains of the stage, dropping his toys into a cardboard carton. "What about him?"

Melisande shrugged, "He's nobody. I don't even know why I agreed to do this tonight. I don't get into this stuff like I used to." She sighed and leveled me with her beautiful eyes, "It's not the same without you, sir."

"Come on," I said, signaling to David over her shoulder. I owed him an explanation now, but it was one I was happy to give. "Get dressed, then let's all have a cup of coffee, okay?"

The three of us grabbed a taxi downtown, riding in silence through the perennially busy streets. David kept glancing at me, a quizzical smile on his impish face. I knew he would want to know everything: who this woman was, how I knew her, what I had done to make her so wild. And how would this impact my life with Ginnie? Where would we go from here? Melisande would want to know that, too.

At the time, I had no answers, but at that moment, it didn't matter. I smiled at them both and rolled down the window of the cab, letting in the crisp evening breeze for us to share. My symphony of longing ended in a grand finale filled with the horns and chaos of the city outside, yet through all the noise, I could hear the joyful chords at last resolve, a tribute to the end of my search, then fade away.

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