Safeword: Mayday by Candace Blevins
Chapter 29
Heather’s weight rested on the cross beneath her abdomen, her wrists and ankles in cuffs, connected to the four corners.
Marcus had secured her to it before tilting the entire thing forward a few degrees. The footrest had moved with the cross, so her feet were still securely planted and holding most of her weight, but a small percentage shifted onto the center of the cross.
It was comfortable enough, but she felt so damned vulnerable — spread, restrained, and off balance. She was breathing faster than normal, and she concentrated on trying to control it.
Marcus wrapped thick rope around her body to hold her to the cross — around her torso so it covered her kidneys, around her upper arms, and just above her knees. It wasn’t tight, but he wrapped it around and around, so when he was finished, she couldn’t move her torso at all.
She wasn’t sure she liked this, but she concentrated on keeping her breathing slow and even, lest panic sink in. She’d learned how to remain calm and focused in life-threatening situations — problem SCUBA gear, or malfunctioning equipment on a rappel could be deadly if one succumbed to fear rather than keeping a steady head and fixing the problem.
But there was nothing to fix with this situation. She’d agreed to let Marcus tie her up and hurt her.
Marcus stepped into her vision holding nipple clamps. She watched his hand approach the nipple and grasp it, but he didn’t clamp it yet. Just held it at the ready.
Heather breathed in slowly, counting. One Mississippi two Mississippi three Mississippi…
“I loved watching you and Kyle. The two of you are beautiful together. Why did you put him in headphones? He isn’t restrained, so he can pull them from his ears and listen, if he wants to, while you’re otherwise occupied.”
“If I restrain him while you have me tied up, it makes you responsible for both of us, and that isn’t right. I knew he wanted some kind of control, a reminder of who he is to me, but I didn’t want to blindfold him. This seemed the best option. His orders are to keep the headphones on and to remain on the bed. His restraints right now are my will and his submission to me.”
“And if he disobeys?”
“At the moment, if he removes the headphones for anything other than an emergency, I’m considering an hour of the baby shark song while he’s bound in a hogtie.”
“Tell me why we just had this little talk.”
As soon as he asked, she knew. “I was freaking out a little. Now I’m not.”
He nodded and finally put the clamp onto the nipple he’d been holding. He was much faster with it than he’d been before, so one second it wasn’t on, the next second it was, and Heather gasped and moaned as the sensations shot from her nipple to her clit, as fast as electricity.
He placed the nipple clamp on her right nipple and held eye contact with her this time. The line to her clit lit up again, and she tried to wiggle her ass, but the ropes held firm, which made her heart beat faster once again.
He leaned down to kiss her forehead.
“Let’s get started then.”
He walked behind her and asked, “What’s your safeword?”
Her unease continued to grow, and she focused on the fact that this was Marcus, and she was safe. It would be easy to lose herself to panic, and she didn’t like the way it felt. She steadied her voice. “My safeword is mayday.”
“When do you use your safeword?”
“If I need you to stop.”
“Do you safeword if it hurts?”
“Only if I want you to stop. The controlled pain you give me is okay if I’m enjoying it.”
“Very good. I’m going to give you ten strokes with a flogger — no time to recover between, and they’ll be intense — then I’ll back off and give you a proper warm up. Ready?”
Heather’s pulse sped, her breathing rate increased, but she gave him a nod and said, “Ready.”
The first stroke fell on her right ass cheek and she jerked, but couldn’t move. The second fell on her left ass cheek, and she began fighting the restraints in earnest. Something was wrong, she couldn’t breathe, her chest hurt. Oh God. Her chest felt like an elephant was sitting on it, and her diaphragm couldn’t work. She yanked and pulled at her bondage, but could only move her arms and legs a little, and her actual body none at all. She couldn’t breathe and her chest fucking hurt. The limited view she had tunneled in and went fuzzy, and she thought she might puke.
* * * *
Marcus realized on the third stroke that there was a problem. He was in a figure eight and the fourth stroke landed before he could stop his momentum. He threw the flogger to the ground, took two steps to the cross, placed his hands on her back, and said her name, but she didn’t hear him.
She was fighting the restraints, probably injuring her wrists and ankles. He gave Kyle the silent safeword signal — fist, then hand open with fingers spread, then fist again — and motioned for Kyle to come to them. Kyle pulled the headphones off, sprinted towards them from the bed, and Marcus told him, “She didn’t call mayday, but she’s panicking and I can’t get her to listen to me.”
Marcus worked on removing the ropes from around her legs, first. “I’ll get the ropes, you do her cuffs. I’m not sure what she’ll do once she’s released, but she’s going to hurt herself if we don’t hurry.”
Kyle had Heather’s feet free before the words were out of Marcus’s mouth, and Marcus had the rest of the ropes free within another twenty seconds. He hadn’t expected trouble, but he always used ropes with an eye towards safety, so it didn’t take long.
Kyle turned her around to hold her, but she was still freaking, and she swept her legs under his knees, knocked him to the ground, and took off running.
* * * *
Heather ran in a blind panic. Out of the playroom, down a hallway, down the stairs, into a bedroom, and then a bathroom. She slammed the door shut and tried to lock it, but the damned door didn’t have a lock. She turned and ran to the shower, put her back to the corner, and sank to the floor, arms wrapped around her knees, knees drawn to her chest, and tried to breathe, but her chest hurt and she still couldn’t take more than tiny shallow breaths because it fucking hurt.
She was having a heart attack; that had to be it. Her chest hurt, she couldn’t breathe, and her pulse rate was running away.
She heard the bathroom door open and close, and then footsteps slowly walking in her direction. She heard the footsteps walk around a bit before coming to the shower and looking in. She could see the shadow at the edges of her peripheral vision, but didn’t look up to see who it was. Her gaze stayed focused on a line of grout on the floor a few inches in front of her toes, and she hoped whoever it was would just go away.
They didn’t go away. The feet walked into her vision and stopped in front of her, just out of reach. After a dozen of her shallow, rapid breaths, the feet crossed and Kyle sat before her in criss-cross-applesauce.
“I’d love to hold you, but I’ll let you come to me when you’re ready. Can you tell me how you feel? You’re still breathing hard, and I’m concerned.”
Kyle’s presence, and his calm voice, helped Heather come back to herself. She’d been like a wild animal in fight or flight mode, but now her logical brain was coming back into control.
She’d had a panic attack. The chest pains weren’t a heart attack. She’d be okay as soon as she could get her body to chill out and calm the fuck down.
She kept looking at the line of grout, eyes focused on it, seeing it in more detail than grout should ever been seen. “Panic attack. I had a damned panic attack. What the hell?”
“Can I touch you?”
“What I really need is a punching bag — something to work the adrenaline out of my system.”
She finally brought her gaze up from the grout, but something was wrong. “Your eye? What happened? You need ice!”
She leaned forward, concerned about his eye, which was swollen, with some discoloration already starting.
“My eye isn’t important right now. You are.”
Heather tried to stand, and she managed it, but her knees were shaky. She reached for the wall, took a few seconds to get her balance, and walked out of the shower towards the kitchen. “Marcus! We need some ice for Kyle’s eye!”
He probably had an ice pack, but if not, she could put some ice in a ziplock baggy.
Kyle’s hand touched her shoulder and she very nearly turned and hit him. Was that what had happened to his eye? Fuck.
“He was heading to the upstairs kitchenette to get some when I went looking for you,” Kyle told her. “He should be along soon with an icebag. Stop worrying about me and talk to me about you.”
She headed upstairs, back to the playroom, because she remembered seeing cold-packs in the first aid kit in there. “You took the headphones off. You’re supposed to be in bed.”
“Marcus gave me the safeword signal from across the room. Once you freaked out, the scene was over. Will you let me take the clamps off your nipples?”
She started to protest that she hadn’t freaked out, but realized that was a pretty good description of what she’d done. She hadn’t even realized the nipple things were still on. She reached up, pulled them off, and tossed them onto the table just inside the door to the playroom.
The playroom was always perfectly neat and tidy, so the ropes on the floor around the cross caught her eye. She looked to her wrists and saw the cuffs were still on. Someone had released the cuffs from the cross, but she’d taken off running and hadn’t given anyone time to remove the cuffs from her wrists and ankles.
“I have no idea why I freaked. What the hell happened?”
Marcus appeared in the doorway. “My guess is the extreme restraint brought up a repressed memory, or something else from your past, but we’ll analyze the why of it later — right now, we cuddle. You were terrified, and that scared me, so I need to hold you, and I’m guessing Kyle feels the same way.”
She didn’t want to be held, and just the thoughts of it made her start to breathe out of control again.
Kyle’s hand stroked her back, skin on skin. She looked down and saw she was still naked. Kyle and Marcus were, too.
Kyle’s voice was soft. Softer than normal. “We don’t have to hold you. We can just sit near you, if that’s all you’re up to.”
She forced herself to take one very deep breath, and then slowly let it out. “Let’s get the ice on your eye, and then maybe I can hold you, instead of you holding me? That sounds like a better idea.”
Kyle reached for her hand and placed it on his arm, let go of her hand, and walked them to the bed so she was holding him, rather than him holding her.
Her arm came off his when he crawled onto the bed, and she followed him. He stretched out, his head on a pillow. Marcus was still standing beside the humongous bed, the bag of ice in his hand, and she took it from him and gingerly placed it on Kyle’s forehead, just above and around the swollen eye.
“Join us Marcus,” Heather told him. “I don’t think I’m going to freak again.”
Marcus reached for her hand, turned it over, and removed the cuff. He ran his fingers around her wrist, drawing her attention downward, and she saw ugly red marks. She looked down to her ankles and saw red peeking out around the cuffs down there as well.
“Let’s get the cuffs off you, and I’ll put some ointment on the marks.”
When Marcus stepped away to get the ointment, she told Kyle, “I don’t remember what happened between the first strike of the flogger and when I ended up in the shower. Please tell me I didn’t hit you in the face.”
“You didn’t hit me in the face.”
She exhaled. “But I did hurt you, didn’t I?”
“I tried to hold you, but you didn’t want to be held. I fell against the cross, but I’m fine. It’s more my forehead, or my eyebrow, I guess. You didn’t know what you were doing. How are your wrists and ankles?”
“They don’t hurt, but my shoulder doesn’t seem to be working quite right, so I may have wrenched something loose in there again.”
“How will you know? Do you need to have it x-rayed?”
“If it swells or has a lot of heat, there’s a problem. I’ll give it an hour or two and check range of motion. What the hell happened?”
Marcus spoke from behind her. “I take full responsibility. You’ve done so well, I jumped forward a step on the bondage thing, and the full restraint plus being leaned forward and off balance combined with my starting out strong appears to have been too much. I’m sorry. You put your trust in me and I blew it.”
Heather was quiet a moment, considering. “You reacted quickly, right? This isn’t on you. There was no reason to think I’d panic like that. As you said, I’ve done great with everything up to this point. I’m not the type of person to have panic attacks, and I’m surprised I did. I can’t hold you responsible for that.” She turned from Kyle to look at him. “And now that you know, I’m sure you’ll take it into consideration in the future.”
“You’re more forgiving of me than I am of myself, but thank you. How are you feeling now?”
“Like I need to burn all this adrenaline out of my system. I don’t suppose you have a punching bag?”
Marcus shook his head. “No, but I have some free weights. Or we can dance, if you’d rather?”
“You can dance?”
“Yes, and Kyle’s not so bad, either. I’ll lead you and you can lead Kyle?” He chuckled. “Between the two of us we might be able to tire you out.”
“It might be better for me to go for a run, but I don’t want to leave Kyle. As soon as I’m gone, he’ll take the ice off.”
“Strap the sofa cushions to a tree and then whale on them,” Kyle said. “We have plenty of rope. My eye will be fine, with or without the ice, but I’ll leave it on to keep the bruising down.”