The Prop Ties

Luis held still because Anwen had told him to hold still.

The studio in Redfern smelled of hot lights and paper backdrop. The client had gone, still talking about brand values in the stairwell. The watches were packed. It was only the two of them and a roll of black silk ties that had been props an hour ago.

Six weeks of noodles on Cleveland Street had led here. Anwen saying, over chilli oil, that she liked men tied where she could walk around them. Luis saying he had spent most of his twenties being posed and had never once been posed the way he wanted. They had named the words on the third dinner. Red. Yellow. The bar. The ties. Not during a job. After.

Anwen was forty-five. She moved like a woman who had spent twenty years telling people where to put their hands. Luis was thirty-two, freelance, used to being arranged. This was not a booking. This was the thing they had talked around for six weeks and then named, finally, over noodles on Cleveland Street.

"Wrists."

He offered them. She wound the first tie with a neatness that made his cock thicken in his jeans. Silk bit softly. She checked two fingers under the knot.

"Wiggle."

He could. Not much.

"If it tingles wrong, you say yellow. If you want it off, you say red. If you want more, you can just swear. I'll understand."

"I know."

"Say it anyway."

"Yellow. Red. I want this."

"Good."

She used the second tie on his other wrist and ran both up to the iron overhead bar she used for hanging paper. Luis's arms rose. The position lifted his ribs. Anwen stepped back and looked at him the way she looked at a frame she almost liked.

"Shirt off is going to be awkward now."

"You did that on purpose."

"I did."

She cut the t-shirt up from the hem with the little shears from the kit. The sound made him twitch. Cool air. Her knuckles brushing his stomach. The ruined cotton fell away.

Anwen put her palm over the front of his jeans and left it there, not rubbing, just claiming the heat.

"You've been hard since I packed the last watch."

"Earlier."

"When?"

"When you told the client to sit down and stop touching the product."

She smiled, small. "Of course."

The belt came out of his loops. She did not drop the jeans all the way. She shoved them to mid-thigh so he was trapped in his own clothes, cock out, wrists high, mouth already open.

"I am going to take my time," Anwen said. "You are going to stay exactly like this and watch me do it. If you pull, the silk will remind you."

He pulled once, testing. The bar creaked. The ties held.

Anwen kissed his throat. Then his chest. Then she went to her knees on the studio floor and looked up at him as if he were the product now.

She licked the underside of his cock with the flat of her tongue. Once. Waited. Did it again. Luis's hips tried to follow and found nowhere to go.

"Please."

"Not yet."

She took only the head into her mouth and sucked, slow, filthy, her hands on his thighs to keep him still. Every time he got close she stopped and breathed against him until he cursed. The third time he actually laughed, desperate.

"Anwen."

"Yes."

"I need you to fuck me or let me come. I'll take either. I'm not proud."

"I know you're not."

She stood, unbuttoned her own trousers, and pushed them down. No performance. She stepped out of one leg so she could move. Then she reached up, loosened one wrist just enough to turn him, and retied it so he faced the backdrop, arms still high, chest to paper.

A drawer opened. Lube. The click of the cap was extremely loud in the quiet studio.

A slick finger pressed behind his balls, then into him. Luis dropped his forehead to the paper. Anwen worked him with the same patience she used on a lighting stand. Two fingers. A twist. The particular pressure that made his knees want to fold.

"Colour."

"Green. Fuck. Green."

"Good boy."

The words went through him like a swallowed drink. She gave him a third finger because he asked for it without words, just a broken sound, and then the fingers were gone and something thicker pressed where they had been.

Anwen's strap was the dark one from the bottom drawer. They had talked about that too. She eased the first inch in and waited, her hand flat on his back.

"Breathe."

He breathed. She gave him more. The stretch pulled a groan out of him that did not sound like the man who had smiled at the client. When she was seated she stayed there, filling him, her mouth on his shoulder.

"This is mine for the next twenty minutes," she said. "You don't come until I use my hand. Understand?"

"Yes."

She fucked him in long strokes that moved the paper roll. The ties creaked. Luis's cock slapped his stomach, untouched, leaking. Every time he pushed back she made a pleased noise and gave him more of it. The studio lights were still on. He could see their shadow on the white: a woman standing, a man bound, the vulgar outline of the thing connecting them.

"You're shaking."

"I know."

"Do you want me to stop?"

"Don't you dare."

Anwen reached around at last. Her fist was slick. She stroked him in time with the strap and the combination wrecked his manners completely. He came with a shout that the brick walls threw back, pulsing over her knuckles and the paper, hole clenched tight around her.

She fucked him through it until he whimpered, then stilled, then eased out with more care than the last ten minutes had contained.

The ties came off one at a time. She rubbed his wrists. Pins and needles. He sagged onto the stool he had used for the watch shots and laughed once, helpless.

Anwen kissed his mouth. Soft now.

"Can you feel your hands?"

"Unfortunately."

"Good."

He looked at the ruined backdrop, the cut shirt, the silk hanging from the bar like a punchline.

"We're going to have to explain the paper to accounts."

Anwen wiped her hands on a rag, considering.

"I'll tell them it was a lighting test," she said. "It isn't even a lie."