A shy reference librarian, and a college student who was disowned when she refused to submit to conversion therapy, meet in a bookstore. He's been waiting his whole life for her. Meanwhile, she's starting her whole life over. What ensues between the...
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"I need to grab a couple of things. Wait right there, please. Don't move."
Right. I'm not going anywhere.
He is only gone for a couple of moments – it's not exactly a large apartment – and when he returns, he has some unfamiliar items in his hands. They're black and leathery. I stare in fascination; my imaginary idea of being "tied up" has so far been limited to things like scarves and curtain ropes, because those things are a normal part of my daily life, whereas articles made of black-dyed leather are not. The smell of the leather is intoxicating. It's not a shoe store smell at all. It's sharper. It's almost narcotic. It goes up into my nostrils when I breathe, down through my lungs, and out places to which I never expected lungs to have any connection.
"Hold out your wrists."
I hold them out obligingly. I want to see what these things are and how they work.
They're a pair of leather manacles, cushioned and lined with some kind of velvety soft fabric, adjusted with holes and buckles, shiny silvery things that look as attractive to my perverted magpie eyes as the leather itself. He uses the tightest setting.
Then he puts my wrists over my head and affixes them to something that goes click. It appears to be a clip, attached to a chain, attached to an eye bolt screwed into the futon frame. I had no idea that it was even there. How interesting.
"Your wrists are almost too thin for these to properly restrain you." He looks down at me with a concerned expression. "I've always noticed you were slender, of course, but goodness, that's thin. Are you getting enough to eat?"
"Yes."
"Hmm."
The other black, leathery thing is a riding crop.
"Riding crops are very versatile," he says, as he settles into a kneeling position and picks up the crop. "You'll want to have one of your own eventually. The one you saw in the mall – if it was the same store I'm thinking of – was cheap and shoddy and would not have been good for much other than show; you'll want something a little more high-end if you want to use it as a whip. The cheap version you saw will also be hard to clean because it's braided suede, and whatever soap or other cleaner you use on it will tend to get lodged in the braided parts – another strike against it."
My voice is an octave higher than normal when I ask, "So, what do you do with it?" I hadn't intended on that. Oops.
Sangfroid apparently isn't one of my more reliable virtues when I'm facing a riding crop.
"Attend." He takes the handled end and thrusts it gently under my chin, forcing my head back. "Many people find this a little intimidating, especially when they are immobilized or otherwise helpless, possibly because of the threat of the riding crop itself being used."
