The Beast in Me

Helen's lips were at her ear, and she shivered.

"Remember. Banana."

Lucia nodded, and then twisted to try and look at her, but Helen stayed at the very edge of her vision.

"Eyes front."

She complied. It was hard to say why.

Fingertips danced up and down her side, over her ribs, and Lucia shivered hard. In the cool air, her nipples quickly reached the beautiful, painful ache that told her she was alive. Helen noticed them too. The redhead leaned over her shoulder, planting a row of kisses from the nape of the neck around to the collarbone, and along the collarbone, and she took up both nipples between her fingers.

"Mmmm," Helen purred. "Have I told you how much I enjoy the way your body reacts?"

Lucia smirked and said nothing, but couldn't stop herself from arching her back into the touch.

The touch vanished. Helen stalked across the room, back toward her closet again. Her heels made an incredible sound against the hardwood floor, but Lucia kept her eyes straight forward. Just like she'd been told to. In her peripheral vision, she could see Helen swinging a bag when she returned, and she unconsciously clenched everything.

"Legs apart."

Her shoes made a shhhh as they slid around to each side, as far apart as her pants would allow. Helen brough her own knees together, squatted demurely to the side, pulled out the most professional looking, all-black Hitachi personal massager that Lucia had ever seen, and brought the tip of it to rest against the crotch of her jeans. Lucia squeaked.

"Eyes up," Helen said.

The perverse pleasure of obeying was almost as good as the thrumming waves. Almost.

The redhead held her gaze for a long, long time, unblinking, until the pressure of it was crushing and she had to look away. Down at Helen's lips, which were pursed, and moist, and soft. At the tips of her teeth, visible through the smile. At her tongue, drifting back and forth within like a coiled snake.

"Do you understand," Helen said, "that you can stop this... at any time?"

Lucia nodded.

"All you have to do is say Banana."

Lucia nodded again, this time more emphatically, because as she did so Helen flicked the button on the vibrator and it started going much faster. Much harder.

"Good, because you're going to talk to me one way or another." When Lucia just stared at her blankly, Helen added, "Either you say the word banana, and this all stops no questions asked, or you beg me to make you cum," and with that, she flicked off the massager.

Lucia collapsed, shoulders slinking inward, and all the air in her lungs left in a rush. She hadn't been close, but she also hadn't not been close. Helen smirked and stood, this time with her feet planted slightly wider than shoulder width. Seated as Lucia was, this put Helen's gorgeous labia right in front of her. Lucia hadn't yet had much of an opportunity to appreciate how pretty it was. She had one petal on each side, and very plump outer lips. Perfect for kissing.

"Do you know what I like most about bratty subs?" Helen asked, as she walked around behind Lucia. Clack. Clack. Clack. Each heel strike sent a shiver down her spine. When she answered, she moved so that her whispered voice traveled back and forth from ear to ear. "It's that I get to be... creative."

A long line of kisses, from the top of her neck, down and around, along her collarbone, with one hand reaching for her nipple while the other brought the massager to rest against her groin.

Lucia flinched, clenched her teeth, and tried to control her reaction, but she couldn't stop the long, low grunt that escaped with her breath.

"That's my girl," Helen said, softly, and Lucia swelled. "You will tell me when you're getting close. If you don't want to say the word, you can just nod."

Lucia nodded once, knowing what would happen, and the sensation disappeared. Helen didn't immediately turn it off, though, as the buzzing moved through the air around her. She panted with a mixture of relief and growing anxiety.

Helen's lips brushed her ear, as she whispered, "Do you trust me?"

This brought Lucia short. She had, instinctively, placed a significant amount of trust in Helen, but this had been done without thought. Unconsciously. When Helen said sit, she'd sat. She knew she was vulnerable, though she really didn't want to think about that, and it had been a relief to let Helen take over. A huge relief, she realized. The more she thought about it, the less sense it made that she, of all people, would have surrendered so easily to this situation, in this state of mind. Lucia Alvarez was a fighter, a rebel, and always had been.

She was tough. Always had been. Always so hard on the outside. Living in rough places. Playing to rough crowds. Relishing every second of it. Never really resting. Never really letting her guard down. Never really connecting with anyone. Never really sharing herself. Not even with Vivian. Not all the way.

"Yes," Lucia whispered, and she realized that she was crying.

Helen moved around in front of her, and gently corralled her leg as she circled. Lucia matched her, bringing her knees back together again, and this time when Helen sat on her lap Lucia kissed her with all the fervid passion of a woman falling head over heels.

Helen's riotous mane fell around them as they kissed, and the world shrank. Nothing else mattered. She writhed, struggling uselessly against the handcuffs, and felt, more than heard, Helen chuckle. In the middle of that—in the middle of the kiss she'd been working toward for twenty minutes—Helen took both of her nipples between thumbs and fingers, and squeezed. Waves of searing euphoria broke across her skin, and Lucia whimpered pitifully...

...and having the room to be pitiful, just for a little while, was so freeing and so unburdening that she started crying all over again.

"You're going to beg me for it," Helen said.

"I know," she replied, softly.

"Stand up."

Helen stood, stepped to the side, and tucked her extended fingers under Lucia's elbow to guide her through getting her footing. The handcuffs weren't fastened to the chairback, but it was still in the way, and she blushed at the casual consideration being given to her. The basic, easy decency. In its own way, this felt like the real reward.

The taller woman led her toward the bed: a hand pressed gently against the small of her back and a tap to let her know when to stop. Her mind had lost the eyes straight ahead instructions from earlier, and she watched shamelessly, with rapt attention, as Helen knelt down, untied her boots, and unfastened her jeans. Care was baked into each motion, and she nodded gratefully when Helen helped her step out of all of it.

Helen helped Lucia onto the edge of the bed, on her knees, and then steered her forward until her shoulders and cheek came to rest on the satin sheets. Her toes and hips were nearly even, right at the edge of the bed, with her knees spread wide. That tongue, that eminently kissable tongue, slid through her folds like a ship at full sail.

"Close," she moaned, through gritted teeth nearly a minute later. The tongue disappeared immediately, and the sensation of two fingers entering her did not replace it. Not entirely. They probed her, exploring her walls, and Lucia was only too happy to give helpful directions. A little lower. A little deeper. Armed with better maps, it was only a matter of time until Helen built up another charge within her. Lucia clenched, groaned, and held on as long as she thought she could before, again, saying, "Close!"

Those same two fingers plunged into her again, this time through the back door, and Lucia's knees tried to spread completely to either side.

"Close!" she moaned, as Helen rifled those two fingers in and out while keeping a gentle pressure on her clit.

"Close!" she whined, from her back, as Helen sucked and licked and nibbled.

"Close!" she cried, her head on Helen's lap, as Helen moved the massager in circles around, but not directly touching, her pearl.

"Close!" she gasped, into the kiss, as Helen lay beside her and idly fiddled with a remote control.

When Helen let off, and the little bluetooth plug in her ass quieted, Lucia could not stop shaking. Her legs and her core were twitching, hard, and it was all she could stand. She leaned into Helen, drove her forehead into the redhead's shoulder, and wept as she said, "Please."

"Please what," Helen replied, as even as two.

Her abdominal muscles, flexing and relaxing involuntarily, made her voice flutter when she said, "P-please let me cum-mmm."

"How would you like me to make you cum?"

"Mouth," she cried, instinctively: no thought involved.

Helen pushed her onto her back, grabbed Lucia's knees, and parted them biblically. The slightest brush of the redhead's tongue brought her back to the precipice, and when they locked eyes, when Helen looked up at her with such hunger and intensity, Lucia imploded. Inward. Knees brought back toward shoulders. Spine curved forward. She curled so far in on herself that she could practically kiss Helen's forehead, and when the floodgates released, Lucia howled.

Two fingers entered her, curling in and up to feather the back side of her clit. Sweat, and more, poured out of her, and her eyes rolled up behind the lids. She saw nothing. She heard nothing. There was only the feeling, and the joy, and the release.

Years later, when the last of the tides drew back, Helen helped her onto her side and unlocked the handcuffs.

"You," Lucia gasped, as she rolled onto her back to look her lover in the eye. "You..."

Helen was biting her lip, and smiling, but her eyes were closed and her arm was moving rapidly. Lucia had to sit up a little, which hurt, to follow the movement all the way down, but before she could intercede, before she could give voice to her desire to give back, Helen came like a freight train. All she could do was lay there, and watch, and admire. Helen was gorgeous, even more so when she was making those little meeping sounds, like she was trying to hold in something that would not be contained. She did the one thing she could think to; she took Helen's face in her hands, cupping her cheeks, and pulled her into a long, slow kiss.

Slow was all she could manage, but it felt right nonetheless.

Helen collapsed on top of her, using her chest as a pillow for what felt like several minutes but was probably less than half of one, before getting up.

"Stay," she said.

Lucia did not give any thought to disobeying.

The redhead got to her feet, somewhat unsteadily but with a dreamy smile, and picked up the handcuffs. She pulled out the plug and picked up the remote, and the massager, and put them back in the bag, and went into the closet. When she came out again, this time fully naked, she gave Lucia a plain white t-shirt so big it could have fit two Lucia's side by side. When she came out for the last time, wearing another immaculately matched set of lingerie under a similarly overlarge t-shirt, she helped Lucia to her feet and guided her to a couch and television on the far side of the room that Lucia had not even known was there.

Helen sat down, put a blanket over her legs and a pillow in her lap, and tapped it gently with her fingertips, and when Lucia laid her head there it felt right. One handed, Helen pulled a blanket off the back of the couch and draped it over her. She was warm, and comfortable, and the nails dragging over her scalp made her eyelids heavy.

After a few minutes, Helen reached under the blanket, carefully took hold of Lucia's forearm, and pulled it out to where Lucia could see her wrist, and the two rubber bands.

"One," Helen said, as she pulled the first one off and wrapped it back around her own wrist. "We will never do anything like that again without better communication. You need to be able to talk to me, okay?"

"Okay," Lucia said, softly, if a bit mechanically.

"It's important," Helen said, laughing. "We are nowhere near, like, a gag, or something where you can't talk."

"Okay," Lucia repeated, this time nodding.

"We might get there—"

Lucia rolled over under the blanket, so that her back was turned to the TV, and looked up. "I understand."

"Okay," Helen whispered, "that gave me chills."

Lucia bit her lip and nodded, and the nails on her scalp resumed their gentle scratching.

"The second thing is a little harder. Are you..." Helen raised her eyebrows questioningly, and Lucia nodded. "Okay." She took a long breath, and then another one, before saying, "I'm going to guess that you were... fifteen. The first time that you had sex."

The statement took a while for Lucia to process, and she had to blink several times before she responded, saying, "Fourteen."

"And he was... Eighteen? Twenty?"

"Twenty three," she said.

"Twenty three," Helen repeated, softly. "I was, um..." She sniffed and looked away for a moment. "I was sixteen... the first time I was raped."

At this, as Lucia sat up and moved closer, the last vestiges of domme and sub slipped away and left two women: survivors. She just listened, occasionally holding Helen's hand, while Helen talked about how her experience had changed how she saw sex, and her body, and her self-worth, and what she had to offer the world as a person and as a woman. It changed her perspective in ways she hadn't come to understand until many years later, years during which she'd had the benefit of a loving partner (she was very clear about that, and how it had helped, and gave Lucia a lot of meaningful looks). She talked about how hard it had been to find the strength to love herself again.

Lucia listened to all of this, shaking with an unnamed but familiar fear. It took her a long time to understand what Helen was telling her, and even longer to understand why.

***

"Oh my god, the smell."

Helen smirked. "Right?"

Lucia closed her eyes and took a long, deep breath in through her nose. The tang of rubber and oil lit up her brain with some nostalgia she couldn't place, but she felt like a kid and it was amazing.

"This is all so cool!"

Helen nodded. "Yeah, I've been coming to Five Stride for a few years now, ever since my last place closed down."

Lucia walked along the rows of the skate shop, looking at the various displays for trucks, bearings, custom wheel designs, and a host of other things she hadn't even known were things. "I don't know how I missed this sport growing up."

"I didn't find out about it until... I don't know, maybe six years ago?" She licked her lips, looked down, and said, "Evan introduced me to it."

Lucia came to a full stop and looked back, but Helen was already trying to distract herself with something in front of her. It seemed like there were some ways in which she could bring up Evan and it was fine, and some ways in which doing so was followed by an immediate change of subject. This was one of the latter, and so Lucia said, "Oh I like these."

Helen looked over and smiled. "Those are outdoor wheels. You want..." She reached for another set on the neighboring shelf.

"How can you tell?"

"The little scale on the card is hardness," she said, pointing. "The soft wheels don't grip the same. You'd feel it if you tried to go around a corner real tight. If you're gonna do jamming, you want the hard ones."

"Giggidy."

The redhead pinched the bridge of her nose and snickered. "Walked into that one."

"We don't know that I'm gonna be a jammer. I only just started."

"Nah," Helen said, shaking her head. "We've got a lot of blockers, and none of us are jumping to fill in as the third jammer."

"So should I try to get in with... what were their names? Amy and—"

"Do what Amy says," Helen said, interrupting her sharply. "She's the good one. She'll teach you the right way to do it."

"And Nanette is—"

"Garbage." Helen frowned tightly, and muttered, "You're gonna want some Abecs, aaaand..."

Lucia moved around the aisles, and homed in on a black skate on display. "Oh, this one is pretty!"

"Good eye," the taller woman replied.

"And it's the right kind, right? With the low ankle support? For mobility?"

Helen smiled broadly and nodded, both eyebrows rising. "Yeah! Very good!"

"I absorbed something!" she cried, and gave a little triumphant fist pump.

Lucia walked around the store, eyefucking everything. Helen kept picking things up and handing them to her, but she always found a reason to put it back.

After the fifth time, Helen just glared at her. "Why do you keep doing that?" she asked, and picked up a pair of hot pink trucks that Lucia had just put down.

"Doing what?" Lucia replied, taking the trucks back out of her hand and setting them back on the shelf.

"Oh my god, did you not..."

"I can't afford these right now," Lucia said, sheepishly. "In a couple weeks, yeah, no problem. I can just keep using the rental ones for practice like I did last night, right?"

"I'm buying," Helen said, bewildered.

"No you are not!"

The redhead blinked at her. "Of course I'm buying. That's why I invited you to come with me, and didn't just give you the address to come on your own."

"You can't buy all this for me! It's expensive!"

"I know it is," Helen insisted, "but I'd be a complete bitch if I didn't! There are some steep up-front costs, especially if you're gonna go straight for jamming!"

"Helen!" she said, grabbing the taller woman. "You can't! I can't have you getting all this for me!"

"But I," Helen responded, looking a little lost. "I want to buy you stuff."

At this, Lucia balked.

"I mean, yeah, it's a flimsy excuse, but..." Helen blushed as she looked down. "I thought this could be something I—"

"You want to spend money on me?"

Helen parted her lips to speak, which Lucia watched fervidly, but no words came out. She just made a noise in her throat, closed her mouth, and nodded. Then she said, "Is... Is that—"

Lucia rolled up on her toes and kissed her, right there in the middle of the shop. In the middle of the day. After a moment, Helen's hands settled around her waist, and she felt very light. Like she might float away in a stiff breeze.

"I'll allow it," Lucia said, lowering her voice and giving it a sing-song quality, "Capitalist, but... then I'll owe you, and I don't have any money. How will I ever pay you back?"

Helen's smile became very asymmetrical, very quickly.

***

Helen and Lucia sat next to each other at the bar, leaned back against it, while more than a dozen of her students were warming up. Several of the students were casting curious, sheepish glances at the two of them, and Lucia realized that she probably didn't give off a very gay vibe. Certainly not before she cut her hair, anyway. Most, if not all of them, were seeing her hang around with another woman for the first time. She was surprised so many of them were looking, and so she leaned over just a little bit toward the redhead next to her.

"Yeah, they're staring," Helen said, before Lucia could say anything, and Lucia cackled.

"Would it be," she said, very softly, so as not to be heard from more than a few feet away, "alright if we held hands?"

Helen turned and gave her a very wry look. "Are you asking permission?"

Lucia rolled her eyes. "I just mean, like, this would be the first time that you and me... you know... in public... do... like..."

"I didn't expect the training to take hold this quickly."

"Shut the fuck up," Lucia said, as she laughed and took Helen's hand.

"The kissing didn't count?"

"No!" Lucia twisted on her seat, reached across with her other arm and punched Helen's biceps. "Obviously. That's just lust stuff. This is..."

For her part, Helen just shrugged, squeezed back, and suppressed a broad smile. Lucia knew the redhead was suppressing it because she was pretty sure that, if Helen had been actually mad, she would have kept her hand limp. It took effort, sometimes, to dig through the front Helen put up and get to how she really felt about something, but Lucia was finding that the effort was always worth it. The trick to it was that the actions always mattered most.