Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2007 23:59:50 +0200 From: Julian Obedient Subject: The Garden and the Basement I did not know what had gotten into him when he came back from his run. He was glowing, gleaming with sweat. In his skimpy shorts and cut away t-shirt, he look like flowing iron. You're early, he said I got up from the front steps where I had been sitting. I finished the work I'd set myself and figured I'd wait for you here in the green world rather than in my hot little apartment. I'm glad you're early. You can take my shower with me. It was hot enough and I was grimy enough from the bike ride over ^Ö bicycle, that is, not a motorbike like Danny's -- especially the last part, on unpaved roads, that the offer of a shower even without him would have been appealing. Ohh, that's good, he purred as I massaged his neck with my soapy hands and slid down his back. When I came to his ass there was no longer even the pretense of massage. I was worshipfully fondling it in awe of it, of its shapely, smooth, exquisite beauty. I gasped as I caressed it and surged as I saw him surge at my touch. He turned facing me. I clasped his cock and he clasped mine and our lips touched and our mouths tore at each other with all the force of desire. We breathed out slowly as we separated, higher than when we began. He dried me and I dried him. Come, he said. I want you to wear my clothes tonight. He put me all in black, starting with the satiny, skin-tight microfiber miniboxers, black jeans, black, button down the front shirt with the top three buttons open, black boots. He was wearing leather. I held on to him with both arms around his waist as he plowed through the air. He took his bike up an old stone path to a small stone house. Where are we? I asked. My uncle lived here. I used to visit him when I was a boy, he said, taking off his Ray-Bans. He's dead now. It still had not left him, that fierce glow radiating from an invisible center that fired him. What's wrong? he asked seeing that I was looking at him a little lost. Nothing, I said, snapping out of it. I just can't get over how you look. It's hard to take my eyes off you. Close them. Then I won't be able to see you. Close them he repeated firmly. Yes, sir, I said and obeyed. Keep them closed, he said, and led me by the hand I don't know where until he told me to open them. We were in a garden. The night was hot. The daylight was falling. The air was becoming steadily a deeper blue. Unbutton your shirt some more, he said as he himself unbuttoned it and moved his fingers underneath and began gently to graze my nipples with his fingers and my lips with his lips. I looked into his lovely green eyes and could look nowhere else. The air was heavy with the smell of flowers blooming. A stream ran by us and twisted like a lazy snake. Do you like my garden? Is it yours? The house and all the lands. Yours? Mine. Do you ever live here? I keep it as it was when he lived in it and visit it sometimes. For a second a phosphorescent blue white burst upon everything around us and on Danny himself. But before you could say lightening, the lightening was gone. And then the rolling growl of thunder followed it. We better get in the house, Danny said, taking me by the waist and directing us towards an oak door set into a stone façade. What a comfortable house, I said. It's always been my dream house, Danny said. I can see that, I said. Can you? Danny retorted. Yes, sure, I can, I said, feeling like I had to defend myself and doing my best to do so. It's the kind of place where you can imagine yourself inside a space that belongs entirely and exclusively to you. It's because when I come here I do the things I can only do in my dreams. It's my dream house. It's the only place I can be where I can feel what I feel and I don't have to account to anybody for my feelings or feel what they feel or want me to feel. Ok, I said. Let me show you the basement, Danny said with a wink. He lit a Coleman lantern and I followed him down a set of twisting brick steps into a large space, palely lighted by the white glow of the lamp. I don't know what I expected to find. Dirt and damp, cinderblocks and concrete? It wasn't that. It was probably the most elegant room I have ever seen when Danny lit a dozen wax candles in two bronze candelabras. The candelabras stood on a marble mantle over a working fireplace. Behind them was a large, gold-framed, beveled edge mirror. It was like I'd entered the set of a CinemaScope and Technicolor costume drama. Without my even noticing he had done it, Danny got a high-dancing fire jumping up and down with its waves of flame. Once it gets going, it's hot in here. Are you trying to tell me something? I said laughing. Yes, he said with a cold earnestness, take off your shirt. When I looked at him inquiringly, puzzled, he said in a low voice that scared the hell out of me, Now! I did not know who he was. I'd never seen Danny like this. Danny, I said quietly. But the words were hardly out of my mouth than I felt his palm strike and my cheek flame. I lurched and caught myself. Now, shithead, means now. I knew it did and I was shaking as I pulled my shirt over my head without even unbuttoning the rest of it. But my mind was racing. I was obeying. Why? Because I was afraid? Yes. But really because it was Danny, my Danny who had held me many nights in his strong and delicate, tender embrace and poured sweetness into me. Because it was Danny whose beautiful lips I had kissed with such desire. I had worshiped his lips with prayers I mouthed as I pressed my lips to them. I was shaking as I stood and he looked at me. He took me by the arms and pressed them to my sides. The fire burned still sending out great waves of flame. You have good reason to be trembling. And then he smiled and took me to him and kissed me and slid his hands down my arms to my wrists and I thought everything is all right until I felt the metal bracelets and heard the snap of one lock and then another. He did it with such precision and finesse that I did not notice it until it had happened. I stood with my hands cuffed behind my back as Danny looked at me intently. It's over, he said. Whatever you thought it was, it's over. There's only one reason you are here and that is that you will completely obey me. As long as I choose to keep you here you belong to me and I can do anything I like. You have no say in the matter. I looked at him in disbelief, in shock, frightened and realizing there really was nothing I could do. My wrists were cuffed, a chain attached to the cuffs was hooked to a wall, too, and Danny had clamped little bronze rings to my nipples sending a pain wave through my entire body. It was continuous but varied in intensity. At times I became unconscious of it. At other times it flared, like a tongue of flame and then abated. After a time, when it came back, I realized it had become familiar to me, that iron wave of pain, and it made me feel proud. I was welcoming the pain. Danny knew it. I saw he did from the way he looked at me. It pleased him. You like being docile, admit it. Yes, I said. You want to submit, don't you? Yes, I said. You welcome the pain. Yes, I said. You belong to me. Yes. And I can use you however I want to and you have nothing to say about it. I know it. You want it to be that way. Yes, I said. I do. My heart was beating hard and I was still trembling. The sting of the lash was a shock and a relief. I could not believe that Danny had hit me with a whip. Danny! But he had, and it felt right, inevitable. I could not believe that I allowed it. I don't know why I thought that. It was obvious I was not allowing it. I had been taken prisoner. There was no escape. Look at me, Danny commanded. I looked up into his soft, beautiful face, the face I had been adoring for nearly a year and on which I had seen adoration directed at me. But now^Å What do you see? Danny quietly demanded. I knew what he was talking about. I saw anger, anger in search of any object to release itself on, and I knew I was his chosen object. He was honoring me with the pain his anger caused me. Another whip stroke. Tell me you want me to leave my mark on you, cause I'm gonna do it no matter what. It gushed out of me without thought. Please leave your mark on me, please. Then he administered the coup de grace. He unfastened me. Without warning though was another whip stroke on my back. But then he became deliberate and very slowly prepared for the next stroke. I watched, fascinated by the movements of his hands and felt the preparation to strike me become the sting of the lash upon my back. But it was the one after that, the third stroke that caused my epiphany. Danny had allowed enough room for me to withdraw, to resist the second and third strokes. I did not. The thought never entered my mind. For some reason that made me very glad.,, so glad that I began to cry. Not the lashes. Not Danny's unrecognizable cruelty. I was not crying because of any of those things. I was crying at the idea of Danny leaving his mark on me. Why are you crying? Danny said, taking me in his arms. I knew from his eyes that he understood everything in all its convolutions and foliations. I put my arms around his neck and became weak with happiness when he kissed me. Would you like to live with me in this house, Danny whispered with a wonderful smile on the lips his breath danced upon. In this whole house? He smiled tenderly. In this whole house, and the garden, too. When you write, please insert story name in subject slot. Thanks.]