The chain in my hand while I read

The clamps live in the drawer with my hairpins. He knows which one, and that evening he brought them himself: set them on the arm of the chair, chain towards me, and stepped back.

I hadn’t asked. At dinner I had said only that after nine I would be reading, and that he shouldn’t start anything that needed his hands. He understood, the way he always does — not from the words, but from where I was looking. I was looking at the drawer.

Two of them on a short chain, with screws to make them bite harder or softer. I bought them two years ago and for the first month I set them loose. Now the screws are turned to where it is hard for him, and I don’t touch them any more: he knows that setting is mine, and that if it ever changes, I will be the one to change it.

“Undress. Here.”

He took everything off and sat on the floor at my feet, his back against the leg of the chair, facing me. The cage had been on since morning, and when he sat, the steel knocked against the parquet. I love that sound more than the sound of the key.

The first minute

I leaned down and put on the first clamp. Not quickly. First I took the nipple between my fingers, rolled it, waited for it to harden — and only then let the spring go. He breathed in through his nose and didn’t breathe out until I picked up the second. The second is always worse: by then he knows what is coming.

I lifted the chain off his chest and wound it twice around my index finger. Checked: with my hand resting on my knee, it was taut just enough for him to feel it. It would hurt only if I moved my hand. He was watching my fingers, not my face.

“Don’t move. You may breathe.”

And I opened the book.

For the first three minutes the clamps are almost nothing — he told me that himself. Then the burn starts, and by the tenth minute it is a steady pain that neither grows nor fades, and there is nowhere to go from it. I can hear it in his breathing: even at first, then with pauses, then even again but deeper, through the nose. I read and listened to him without lifting my eyes from the page.

The page

Between paragraphs I tugged the chain. A centimetre, no more. Without looking. He would suck in air, and the steel between his legs would shift — I saw it out of the corner of my eye, and I liked that I didn’t need to look. He knew I could pull at any second, and that I wasn’t watching, and that right now the book interested me more than he did. The whole evening rests on those three things.

At the twentieth minute he said:

“Mistress.”

“Did you want something?”

“No.”

That was our entire conversation for the evening. He called to check that I was there. I answered so he would know: I was, and I had heard everything. He needed nothing more, and I went back to the book.

What comes next is the part I am still a little ashamed of, and I am writing it for the women who also read until they forget the room. The book was good. I forgot him. Not for a minute: a chapter ended, the next began, and I looked up only because the hand holding the chain had gone numb. The clock on the shelf said five to ten. He was sitting as he had been: back to the chair, palms on his thighs, face wet. Not tears — sweat, at the temples and above the upper lip. The clamps had been on for thirty-eight minutes. I had never kept them on longer than thirty.

Taking them off

The sharpest moment isn’t putting them on. It’s taking them off. The blood comes back into the nipple, and that hurts more than anything before it. He explained this to me in the first year, and I didn’t believe him until I tried it on myself — one clamp, in the kitchen, for two minutes. That was enough.

I unwound the chain from my finger. He saw and closed his eyes.

“Look at me.”

He opened them. I took off the first, and he made a sound I still can’t describe: something between a groan and a laugh, short, through his teeth. The second I didn’t take off. I kept my fingers on the spring and waited. He waited. I counted to ten in my head, and at eight his leg twitched.

“Don’t move.”

At ten I took off the second. The same sound, lower. And I laid my palm on his chest, where it burned. Just held it there. The skin under my hand was hot and damp, his heart beating straight into my palm. He slid down until his cheek was on my knee, and stayed there.

“Why didn’t you remind me?”

“You were reading.”

Three words. I sat with my hand on his chest and thought that in five years he had never said anything to me that mattered more. I had forgotten him, and he had not forgotten me. He had sat in the clamps eight extra minutes because I wanted to know how the chapter ended. And he hadn’t reminded me, because I wanted to know.

Night

I closed the book and laid it on the arm of the chair, beside the clamps. Then I opened my knees.

He understood without a word: rose onto his knees between my legs, lowered his head. I held the back of his neck and felt his chest, with its two burning points, pressing against my shins. He was pressing himself there. He needed something to rub against to bear the pain, and he rubbed against me. His tongue was slow, as I taught him: a long time around, then inside, then around again. I didn’t hurry him. The evening had been mine from the start, and I intended to finish it at my own pace too.

The first time I came looking at the hairpin drawer: it was open a crack, as it always is on the days my husband has been peering into it. The second — with his face pressed into me and my hand on his nipple. I squeezed it between my fingers the second it took me, and he groaned into my skin, and that sound made it stronger.

I didn’t unlock him. He wasn’t expecting it: for us the two aren’t connected, clamps don’t buy the key. I had seen the steel move when I tugged the chain, and how tight he was inside it while he knelt between my legs. Pain and arousal don’t argue with each other in him. I understood that long ago, and it still surprises me every time.

We slept as usual. In the morning there were two dark marks on his chest, identical. I touched them with a finger over breakfast, and he froze with the cup in his hands.

“Tonight, no book.”

He nodded. I put the clamps back in the drawer myself and shut it tight. Let him open it.

• Set the screws once and leave them: the clamp’s setting is yours, not his.
• Hold the chain so the tension depends on your hand, not on how he sits.
• Set a timer if the book is good. Past thirty minutes should be your decision, not your forgetfulness.
• Take them off one at a time, with a pause. Watch his face at that moment: everything you did this for is there.
• Don’t unlock the cage after clamps. Pain doesn’t buy the key, and he should know it.