The Lemon Magnet

BDSM The list was on the fridge under a magnet shaped like a lemon. Helen read it again while the kettle boiled, because reading it was part of the night. Jude had written his side in neat block letters.

Hers were faster. They had added a line that afternoon, over lunch, like people adding milk to a shopping note. Impact.

Hands, then the paddle. No marks that show at his Monday meeting. He can come.

She decides when. Stop word is red. Slow word is yellow.

She was forty-six. He was thirty-four. They had been doing this for a year and the list still made her mouth go dry, which she considered a success.

Jude came in from the shower with a towel around his waist and saw her looking.

"We doing it." "We're doing it. Lose the towel. Hands on the counter." He did.

No joke. That was one of the things she liked about him: he could be filthy and he could be exact, and he knew which hour was which. Water still clung to his back.

Helen put the list face up beside the fruit bowl so he could see it if he turned his head.

"Colour." "Green." "Count for me." The first smack was a test. Palm, low on his arse, more sound than sting. He breathed out.

The second was real. By the sixth his skin had pinked and his cock was hard against the cupboard door, which he had not been told to hide.

"Ten," he said, voice already lower.

"Good. Stay." She took the paddle from the drawer where normal people kept tea towels. It was small, leather, chosen because it could be mean without becoming a story his colleagues could read on his body.

She showed it to him. He nodded. The first strike landed with a crack.

Jude jerked, then settled. Helen waited. She liked the waiting.

It was where he stopped being a man who had written a list and became a man inside one.

"One." "Louder next time. The list can hear you." She gave him eight. Not even.

Some light, two that made him rise onto his toes and swear. After the fifth she reached between his legs and found him leaking. She smeared it back over his balls with two fingers and told him he was easy.

A drop hit the tile. She made him look at it.

"Yes." "Yes what." "Yes, I'm easy. Please don't stop." "I won't. Not until the list says." The last three were the hardest.

He counted them cleanly. When she set the paddle down, his arse was hot under her palm and his breathing had gone ragged in the way that meant he was inside it, not performing it. Helen turned him.

His cock stood up, flushed, a bead at the tip. She did not touch it.

"On your knees. You don't get that yet." He went down on the kitchen tile. She stepped out of her underwear, left the dress on, and sat on the edge of the table.

He looked up. She crooked a finger.

"Make me come. Hands behind your back. If you use them I'll stop you and we will start the count again." He put his hands behind him.

The position made his shoulders tight and his cock look abandoned. Helen hooked a leg over his shoulder and pulled him in. His mouth was good.

It was always good, and it was better when he was not allowed to steer. He licked her in long strokes, then sucked her clit, then groaned into her when she ground against his face. She held his hair.

Not a yank. A claim.

"There. Stay there. Don't get clever." He stayed.

She came with her head back and a hand braced on the list, the paper crumpling under her palm. Jude licked her through it until she pushed him off, oversensitive, laughing once. Helen set the paddle down and picked up her tea, which had gone the colour of a warning.

She drank while he stayed bent, cock dripping, hands where she had put them. The waiting was the second implement. Jude's shoulders shook once.

"Please," he said.

"Please is not the list. The list says I decide." "Yes." "Say the line you wrote." "She decides when." "Better." She made him stand in the corner anyway, for a minute, before she let him fuck her. Hands on his head.

Paddle on the counter. The pink on his arse visible whenever she glanced over. Jude breathed like a man trying not to touch himself.

Helen finished the cold tea.

"Colour." "Green. Mean green." "Come here." "Up." He stood. She turned, bent over the same counter, and looked back.

"Fuck me. You can come. You will say thank you when you do.

If you come before I tell you, you will stand in the corner with your hands on your head until I finish my tea." "Understood." He pushed in hard. The heat of his punished skin met the backs of her thighs. Helen reached under herself and rubbed her clit while he took her, the pace already gone, the kitchen full of the sound of it.

She made him slow down once, just to hear him whine, then let him have it. He lasted less time than he wanted. She felt him swell and told him to do it.

He came with a broken thank you, hips flush, both hands locked on the counter beside hers. The lemon magnet fell. Neither of them picked it up.

After, she ran a cold cloth over the worst of the pink and made him drink water at the sink like a person. The list had a crease through the middle.

"Too much?" she asked.

"No." He touched the crease.

"Add a line." "What line." "Next time I count out loud for the paddle too. I almost forgot. I don't want to forget." Helen wrote it while the kettle, ignored, clicked off.

"Monday meeting survives," she said.

"Barely." "Good."