The Ropes of My Professor Taught Me to Obey

I ran into Carla in the hallway at the faculty building. We barely had time to talk because she was late for a seminar for her doctorate, but the nerves I’d been carrying since what happened with Adrián loosened when I saw how calm she was. She didn’t mention the other night’s dinner. Only, as we said goodbye, she laid a hand on my arm and leaned in to my ear.

—Adrián told me you spent the night together —she whispered—. He didn’t tell me what you did. But just imagining it made me curious… I hope he calls both of us soon.

She kissed my cheek and a slight tremor ran down my back. I watched her walk away. Apart from Lucía, Carla was going to be the second woman I’d sleep with, and the idea excited me as much as it unsettled me. I had never liked her in that way, but I recognized in her an elegance that made me wonder how she was still single. Now, seeing the sway of her hips inside those jeans, I remembered the neckline of her shirt and the way her breasts moved under her pajama top when we shared a flat. I was flustered and quickened my pace toward the library.

I took refuge among the books like a castaway tending a fire in case someone sees the signal, with my phone always in view, in case Adrián wrote, in case Carla rescued me from my own anxiety.

The instructions arrived in a text message. I almost laughed at how old-fashioned he was about these things.

Tomorrow at 7:30 p.m. in the apartment. The door will be ajar. Come in quietly and follow the hallway. First door on the left, Carla’s room; second, yours. Get dressed separately and wait in the living room. Don’t shave, Elena.

I read it in one go and the book I had in my lap fell to the floor with a crash at the last line. I drew a few looks, muttered an apology, and read it again slowly, trying to slow my heart.

I arrived on time. Carla was already waiting in the doorway. Neither of us had chosen anything provocative; we knew that night our clothes wouldn’t stay on for long. Then it struck me that he had sent the same message to both of us, that she had read the same thing I had. Why didn’t he want us to see each other first? Why had he asked me not to shave?

We slipped in as quietly as possible. There was light in the kitchen and I could hear Adrián speaking to someone, slowly, choosing each word. We couldn’t see who. Carla pushed open her bedroom door and we looked at each other for a second before separating, silently bolstering each other.

My room was empty, with white, cold walls. On a chair sat a folded garment and a black box. Not a mirror in sight. I undressed quickly and left my clothes over the back. The garment was some kind of old shirt, loose, almost Victorian. I pulled it over my head: it covered me completely except for my feet, with ties at the neckline. I opened the box. Nothing in it could possibly have been underwear.

I smiled, flustered, as I took out the gag: a leather collar with a metal buckle at the nape and a black ball. I slipped it into my mouth —it faintly smelled of jasmine— and fastened the buckle. That way I wouldn’t be able to speak, and my lips were left parted. I bit down on it; it gave a little under the pressure of my teeth.

I went out to the living room with a shiver, embarrassed by how I looked, discovering that the fabric brushed my thighs and breasts as I walked. Carla was already waiting there, facing me. If mine was modest, hers was shameless: a tight little slip with a ridiculous skirt that left her hairless sex on display, and two openings in the chest through which her nipples peeped out, circled by rings. My eyes told her what my mouth could not, and two flushes bloomed in her cheeks.

—They are our guests —said Adrián—. Carla, and this is Elena.

We turned toward him and his companion. Adrián looked elegant, his shirt buttoned all the way to the neck. The man beside him inclined his head to each of us.

—He is Mr. Ren. You can call him Ren, plain and simple —Adrián said.

He was a man with fine features and a face almost without expression, except for those narrow dark eyes in which something warm shone. His black hair was tied back in a small ponytail and he wore a shirt with floral motifs under a sleeveless vest. I was a little taller than him, but that difference didn’t make me feel superior, quite the opposite: he radiated a calm, icy, almost reverential authority.

—I’m burning to meet him, Mr. Ren —Carla replied, bowing her head. There was a husky edge to her voice, and out of the corner of my eye I saw her bite her lip. Was it because of the rings?

I looked at Adrián, feeling ridiculous. He gave me an apologetic smile and gestured. Carla moved behind me and removed the gag, taking the opportunity to press herself against my back so I could feel the edge of her nipples.

—I bow before my master and before you, Mr. Ren —I greeted him with a theatrical gesture that drew a glint of approval from Adrián. Carla tightened the ball back into my mouth.

Ren finally smiled, and only then did we see the fine lines around his eyes, the only sign of his age. Adrián had said they were friends from the faculty, so he must be around fifty, though he didn’t look a day over thirty.

—The lotus flower peeks out shyly to steal the sun’s gaze and hides its beauty among its petals —he murmured, running his eyes over Carla. Then he looked at me, and his hawk’s gaze pierced me. I knew that man could drive me mad with pain or with pleasure with equal ease.

—Let’s go up to the attic —Adrián suggested.

Carla and I walked together down the hallway, hearing Adrián’s firm footsteps and, beneath them, Ren’s, almost feline. We climbed a spiral staircase to a landing. The attic was spacious, with a high ceiling and exposed wooden beams, and a radiant parquet floor. They had covered the skylight and hung little lanterns. At the far end, on a raised platform, stood two sturdy chairs and, above them, a tangle of ropes hanging languidly from the beams.

—He never brought me here —Carla whispered to me, just before the men returned from the closet carrying coils of rope over their shoulders.

Then Adrián came toward me and embraced me. Those hands that had so well punished me at last were tangled in my hair, at last were freeing me from the buckle, at last were kissing me. I pressed myself against him, aroused, not caring that Ren and Carla were watching us. Naive, I ignored that he wasn’t looking for a lover.

He pulled away, held my wrists, and asked me to raise my arms and bend them back. I obeyed, confused, and felt the rope slide around my wrists and under my armpits. I blinked. In the background, Carla was already looking at us with her hands tied in front of her chest.

—Does that bother you? —Ren murmured beside my ear. I shook my head. In that position I could only move my fingers, but the ropes, taut and firm, didn’t hurt: the jute was soft, not rough.

—Sit on my lap, Elena —Adrián ordered from one of the chairs, his chin resting in his hand, as if in one of his master classes. I smiled and walked toward him.

He sat me on top of him and began kissing my neck, slowly, moving down my skin with patience. From there I could see Ren kissing Carla, first hesitantly and then with more confidence. Adrián untied the neckline of my shirt and slid his hands to my breasts. Beneath my thighs I could feel him hardening, and I rubbed myself a little against him, claiming him.

—Matanawa —Adrián whispered when I saw Ren pass a rope around Carla’s stomach and cross it between her legs, tying it to her back—. It’s the binding that focuses on the sex.

Carla moaned and squirmed. The rope must have been rubbing her cunt, because every time Ren tightened or loosened it, she let out a muffled moan. Adrián tightened the gag around me again and pinched my nipples; I moaned into the ball, and the two of them looked at us again. He soothed the sting with caresses and then repeated it, and I shuddered anew.

—Suck your friend’s cunt, Carla —he ordered.

***

I knelt before them both. Adrián even parted Elena’s lips so I could see her pink, wet intimacy. She looked at me pleadingly over the gag, her eyes blazing. I was sure that, if she could speak, she would have asked me the same thing.

I brought my mouth to that feverish sex. It was the first I had tasted, the first woman I had given myself to, and on top of that I was sharing Adrián. I slipped out my tongue and buried it in her slit. Elena trembled. I kept licking, kissing, bumping into Adrián’s fingertips, while the jute brushed against me and clouded my head with the same sense of losing control that obeying him gave me.

—Unzip my cock and lick it —said Adrián.

I fumbled for his zipper with my tied hands. As I licked him, I remembered how it had all started: that afternoon in his office, him melancholy over the anniversary of his wife’s death, me handing him a handkerchief, our fingers brushing, the kiss neither of us wanted to break off. He warned me I didn’t know what I was getting into, that he was not an ordinary man. I didn’t apologize. I only nodded.

“Would you be willing to shed the prejudices of this society? To obey my orders and trust that I won’t hurt you?” he had asked me in a voice that, for a moment, sent a shiver through me. I nodded then as I was nodding now, sucking him, making wet sounds so Elena could hear them and be content with the finger Adrián was thrusting into her cunt.

I lifted my eyes. Elena was looking at me with clenched jaws, biting down on the gag, a thread of saliva at the corner of her mouth. Jealousy and desire were mingled in her eyes. I knew it bothered her to see me sucking Adrián’s cock. But he was the one leading us, and she would do well to remember it.

***

At a signal from Adrián, Ren took me to the platform while Carla sat on our master and let herself be impaled by his cock. I was still burning, furious that they had denied me my orgasm.

—Do you know what Ren means? —he asked me, gathering the hem of the nightgown and pulling it up over my head. I shook my head—. Penitent.

He tied my hands behind my back and ran two more ropes over the beams with incredible skill. He ordered me to crouch and wound the jute around my stomach, thighs, and arms. He circled me, checking knots, indifferent to my nudity.

—Ah, yes, fuck me, more! —Carla panted with her eyes squeezed shut.

Jealousy and heat vanished from me all at once when I suddenly felt myself suspended in the air. I was barely touching the floor with the tip of one foot. My legs were spread, one knee bent, my arms motionless. I began to rotate slowly and Ren’s hand stopped me. One of the ropes brushed my sensitized sex and clung to it; I moaned. He took advantage of the tremor to gather my hair and tie it to another rope, forcing me to keep my face lifted.

—Undress, Carla, and free your nipples —Adrián ordered, standing up to look at me in detail.

Then a silky blindfold plunged me into darkness. Ren placed something on my nipples, two clips that sent a weak current through me that shook me whole and left a bewildering tingling that descended all the way to my sex.

—The lotus flower floats in the stillness of the pond —he whispered, caressing me.

I heard soft footsteps: Carla. And Adrián in front of my blindfolded face, brushing my lips with the tip of his cock. He was balancing on one foot to get closer to me, to make me lick it, to feel my friend’s juices on him.

—Fuck me, master —I begged. Adrián gave a little laugh.

Then two hands spread my asscheeks and a wet tongue slipped in between them. I jolted.

—That’s it, Carla, lick right there.

I thrashed uselessly against the ropes. Adrián held the back of my neck and used my mouth however he pleased. Something blunt and cold insinuated itself into my anus. I tried to resist and two pinches on my nipples tore a pained moan from me.

—Don’t resist, Elena —he whispered to me. I relaxed, let it in, opening myself to the unknown.

Then, before my blindfolded eyes, something passed in a flash and a point of heat fell onto my skin. Wax. My trembling voice fell silent with the first burning dart on my ass cheeks, a spear that pierced me and faded into a warm tingle.

—Carla is pouring the drops of your penance on you —said Adrián—. Do you want more?

—Yes, master —I begged—. Do it, Carla, keep going.

The next drop ran down my back and this time the heat didn’t fade: it seemed to sink into me, to transform. I barely noticed that someone was lying beneath my body, removing the rope from my sex and starting to penetrate me slowly. A strange heat, different, was scratching inside my anus and spreading. It wasn’t just the wax. Something was igniting it from within.

—Master… is that you? —I asked, bewildered. He didn’t answer me. He just fucked me, just used me, and the invisible fire in my entrails drove me to delirium.

—Oh, God, I’m going to… master, master.

A finger entered my ass like a burning blade through butter and silenced me. A torrent crackled inside me, arched my back, and hurled me into the orgasm I had wanted so badly. The cock inside me emptied at once.

—Good, Elena —said his voice. Underneath me. It had been him. He removed the blindfold and I blinked, dazzled, smiling like a fool.

***

When Carla knelt on all fours, she wasn’t offering herself to Adrián: she was offering herself to me. I nodded silently, looking at her generous ass, her parted sex.

—Deb —I called her, hungry, with the same tone I used to invite her out to party.

—Isa —she replied, moaning the moment my tongue touched her wet cunt.

I took my time giving her the pleasure she deserved, remembering what Lucía had taught me. Her anus still gave off that extravagant glow, the embers of the previous fire, and that burning made me burn too, made my hips sway. It immediately caught Ren’s attention, and he entered me carefully and soon quickened the pace.

—Isa, Isa, ah, I’m going to… —Carla panted.

A flash blinded those two creatures who had given us their bodies that night. The old Polaroid my immortal wife had given me captured Carla’s face, contorted in bliss, and Elena’s, half hidden behind her friend’s hips, with a cheeky hint of a smile, as if she knew I was going to photograph them. Beneath Carla’s suspended feet rested, harmless, the small ginger plug. Figging, Ren had explained to me that technique was called.

When I showed them the photo, once they were dressed, both blushed and averted their eyes, like those shy students who never raised their hands and then aced every exam. I said goodbye knowing Elena would not come back: too many shadows behind her eyes, a sadness that faded near me but that she would have to face alone. I also knew that one day I would have to say goodbye to Carla. I only prayed it would be later rather than sooner.