Beyond Limits Ch. 04

"Oh Russell, Russell!"

She kissed me, kissed me full on the mouth, and I reached down and gripped my cock and held it up as she got her knees under her on the sheet and aimed herself over me. She kept her fingers there, spreading her pussy, and groaned into my mouth as she quivered down over the head of my straining dick. I could feel the hot mucus mixing between us, she and I, lubricating one another, greasing the way for the deeper penetration but it wouldn't come. Her thighs held her up and I ignored the deep spasms in my ass that told me to thrust up hard into her. The wild and evanescent tickling on the head of my cock made me jerk and spit blanks into her and made my balls suck up and pucker in mock ejaculation and April groaned, grabbing my pecs as if they were a woman's tits, digging her nails into me.

"Oh Fuck!" she moaned.

I felt the flogger draw back and slap down over my pendulous balls, a ghostly whisper of pain and stimulation that made me grit my teeth and arch my back, shoving my cock into her. April's nails dug into me as I penetrated her and she gasped and raised up so that I was out again, denying me just as I'd told her to do.

Now she was catching on. "Don't move, I said!" she whispered. "I'm your master, bitch! I'm your master!" She whipped me again, callously, like you'd whip a racehorse.

"Ugh!" I sank back on the bed trembling. Everything male in me wanted to thrust, but I kept myself still with my will for her; I kept myself passive, and the result was the quivering tremble as she mounted me again and screwed her hips around, overwhelming me with pleasure, stirring the head of my dick around in her honey-sweet hole.

She grabbed my hair and held my head so she could see my face, and she seemed to enjoy watching my expression as she fucked me, pleasure like pain on my face. God, she was excruciatingly good—squeezing me, nipping me, screwing the head of my dick around inside her as the oil slid out of her greasy cunt. Several times I grunted out that I was close, that I was coming, and I grabbed her thighs and my stomach clenched tight, the muscles in my legs standing out like steel bands, but April rose up off my cock and stared at me angrily and called me bitch and cunt as I fought with myself not to ejaculate. She waited till the crisis was past, till I was under control, then she whipped me again, and I reveled in the whipping.

She tortured me with pleasure until I was too weak to resist her, and that's how she took control of me. I became her beggar and her slave. But this was what I wanted to know. This was what I wanted to witness.

And finally I was where I wanted to be, lying there trembling, unable to move, April squatting over me and drawing on the head of my cock with her pussy like a child sucks a lollipop. I was no longer in charge of when I was going to come. It was all up to her. She controlled me. She ran me. I had nothing with which to resist her, and yet at the same time, she was gone too, I could tell. She'd melted, dissolved, existed only as the knob of my prick which parted her flower-slick lips and pierced her soul, so that when I finally gasped that this was it, that I couldn't hold it any more, all she did was groan and reach down behind her and grab my balls in her fingers so she could feel the final climactic spasm, the gushing eruption that would bring us together, inundating her and obscuring the boundaries between us.

"April! April!"

Her nails dug into my chest and she sank all the way down on me at last, taking me in to the hilt as I thrust up and flowered inside her, giving her what she'd demanded. It came out with anger, with triumph, with wild relief, a gushing rose of expansion and will that took possession of her and brought me back into the world even as my mind went blank of everything but the feeling of her. I was pure consciousness, pure awareness of force of life, a light that shouldered the darkness away. I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her close, pressing her ass down so that I was trapped deeply inside her as I ejaculated and April held my head pressed against her, as if in that moment we shared our helplessness, this exchange of life.

I didn't know who was running whom just then, who was the master and who was the slave. The current ran both ways like a wave in a bottle, echoing off either end and returning, and all I felt was the tragedy that this would end and that eventually darkness would separate us again. But for now were joined through a bridge of white and gold and pink, the same bridge the angels used, though never so deliciously obscenely.

* * * * *

I told Lexi about my experiments in subbing and she listened with some interest, but she wasn't surprised at the outcome. She really wasn't that interested in my sexual experimentations, and why should she be? The opening of the play was getting close and all sorts of things were up in the air and it was a strange time to be talking about anything. I'd finished the closing speech, the soliloquy, and it was strange and shadowy itself, full of doubt and unexpected pain and no one was happy with it. Everyone thought I should be concentrating on the play rather than dwelling on the past but I was obsessed in my own world. I told her what had happened with April.

"No, you're not the type to sub, Russell. Believe me. You don't have the patience and you're not that giving. I don't mean that in a bad way, but it's just not you."

I was talking to her on the phone from my apartment as the sun sank below the hills to the west, painting the hills and the trees in the park blue and purple across the reddish snow. By this time, Lexi had almost become external to the Lexi problem, like the moon shining over a ghostly landscape. I couldn't really blame her for what had happened. I couldn't hate her for falling in love with someone else. Maybe that was my mistake. Maybe that showed a lack of ego strength, but I couldn't, and so we talked. We talked about her or we talked about me as if we were third parties.

"That's what everyone tells me," I said. "Everyone seems to know just what I am except for me. How come everyone knows this? What's the big deal?"

"You're a top, Russell. I at least know you that well. You have to take charge in the bedroom."

"So? Maybe I just never tried the other way. People change. You changed."

"Some things don't change. You're not suddenly going to become gay, for instance, and this is something like that." She sighed with exasperation. "Look, why is this so important to you all of a sudden? What does it matter what you call yourself? Do what you want and don't worry about it. That's the only thing that counts."

"No, no," I gripped the phone and shook my head. "It does matter. It matters to me, Lexi. It matters. Because I don't know what I am anymore. I don't know who I am or what I'm supposed to be doing. I'm losing things, Lexi. I'm losing everything and I don't know how or why but I'm losing them and you've got to tell me! You've got to tell me what's happening, why I'm falling apart like this! If I'm doing things wrong and should be giving more then I want to know so I can stop and change because it's killing me, baby! It's really killing me, understand? And I don't know how much more of this I can take..."

"Russell, Russell..."

I could hear the concern in her voice, the warmth, the way she reached for me, but really, what good did it do? It's cold out there. It hurts. There's nothing you can do about it. Shadows stretched from tree to tree. The world was cold and alone. She didn't bend her knee for me.

"Fuck it, Lexi, it's alright. I get carried away at twilight."

I'd been about to ask her about her own experience of subbing, whether she felt that she actively gave something to Cormac when they played and if she had any idea of just what that thing was. I was honestly curious about that but also morbidly nosy, and I also had it in mind that I'd show her just how over her I was by asking a question like that, but it was obvious to me now I wouldn't be able to emotionally withstand asking it, let alone dealing with any kind of answer no matter what it was. Not in the slightest.

In fact, although I had to intellectually accept the fact that Lexi was subbing for Cormac, I was totally unable to deal with any actual images or details of what that might involve, and the mere idea of Lexi being in emotional thrall to anyone was enough to make me physically sick. To imagine her so deeply in love with this arrogant son of a bitch that she longed for his touch or a word from him filled me with a blinding rage so intense it actually made me nauseous and caused my palms to sweat. It taught me the meaning of "emotionally ill", because that's what I was regarding her subbing for Cormac: emotionally fucking ill.

"So anyhow," I chirped. "You said you had something to ask me?"

She let go of her concern reluctantly. She knew I was hurting. She didn't know how much.

"You're sure you're alright, Russell? I'm really worried about you, honey."

"Well, I'm having a rough time. That's to be expected, right? Not much we can do about that. Now what did you want to ask?"

She sighed. "I'm kind of embarrassed to ask. Of course I know I can trust you with my life, Russell, but even so. Is it okay to say it on the phone?"

"What, Lexi?"

"That thing April had? A Rose of Water in the Body of the Sea?"

"Yes?" I knew what she was talking about. The heroin.

"Can you get us some?"

Us.

"What for?"

She laughed nervously. "What do you think? We're experimenting."

I'd been so wrapped up in my grief that I'd almost forgotten about the heroin. Sandra had taken the kilo from April for twenty thousand dollars, minus an ounce I took for myself and left in April's keeping. It was a ridiculously low price for heroin of that purity, but April wanted to get rid of it and so she had.

I didn't know how I felt about supplying some for Lexi and Cormac. On the one hand it seemed irrelevant, an afterthought, part of my life that no longer concerned me. On the other, it had once been much more than that to me, and I'd told Lexi all about it. It had been a subject of deep shame to me, and I'd told her, and now she was going to start playing with it with Cormac. I felt violated.

"Lexi, you don't want to get involved in that. Not now, not with the opening so close."

"Just a little Russell. We'll hold it till after the opening. A little private celebration And we know what we're doing. Mac's done this before, and God knows you've told me enough about it so I'm practically an expert. We won't screw the opening."

I didn't say anything.

"Russell..." She lowered her voice to that tone. "It's just a favor. For me, baby. Please?"

Right then I knew that he'd put her up to get it from me because that was the thing: I couldn't refuse her. She controlled me.

The thought occurred to me then but it didn't seem that important. It seemed almost cute, a boy and girl thing—Lexi could make me do whatever she wanted just by batting her eyelashes, and wasn't that sweet? Didn't that make us loveable? Even then I didn't realize the significance of that, what it meant.

"Ask April," I said. "You're just going to snort it, right? No needles?"

"Of course. But could you do it? I really don't want to ask her myself and have word getting around. "

"Yeah, sure. I'll tell her to give you some. I'll have her bring it to rehearsal."

"No. You, honey. You can drop it off to me somewhere. This makes me kind of nervous and I only trust you."

"Yeah. Okay."

"Thanks, Russell. You're the best." She sighed. "So what do you think? Are you ready for this? The opening?"

"No. Of course not. But it'll be mostly local. It's when it goes to Chicago that'll be bad."

"You don't have to go," she said

"No. I might not."

Cormac had pretty much taken over the whole play when he'd taken over Lexi, and there was nothing I could do about it. It was pitiful to be in the state I was in but I had no choice, and I knew this only proved that Lexi was right in her opinion of me, of being unworthy of her. The opening was only days away now and I had little to do with the play anymore. I'd stopped going to rehearsals, stopped caring, stopped feeling involved ever since the break-up, and like Lexi, it just wasn't a part of me anymore. It was something from a different life.

It was going to open on campus like a regular student production although it was anything but that, and it would run for the usual two weeks before Christmas, then Cormac would take it to Chicago where he'd made arrangements with a very good local theater group to put it on extended run, and there it would be noticed. A Mr. Barnett, a lawyer, kept calling me with details about the contract, but I couldn't be bothered to deal with him. I knew I was being offered a good deal, but I couldn't concentrate. I couldn't deal with what was going on around me.

I called April and told her I wanted a gram of my stuff, a gram of the ounce she'd set aside for me. She was suspicious. "Russell, why do you want to start fooling around with that now?"

"It's not for me."

She was quiet for a minute. "For Lexi?"

"Just get it for me, April. It's my stuff, right?"

April brought it over and I proceeding to cut it 20:1 with lactose, which seemed like a pretty fair step-down. I knew as I was bagging it that it was a dangerous idea, mixing love and anguish and despair and sex and dangerous drugs. But I did it anyway.

* * * * *

I arranged to meet Lexi at a bar called Josie's because I really didn't think I could handle seeing her in Seymour's. Josie's is a kind of sports bar, loud with big screen TV's and information overload, exactly the kind of place where you can't possibly have a serious conversation about feelings and a relationship that crashed and died. It's like trying to have a funeral in a circus.

Her hair was a little longer and that broke my heart right away. She grew her hair for his hands, and I'd already missed the nights she'd brushed it out. She told me I looked good too, which had to be a lie because I knew what I looked like, or maybe she was just totally oblivious. I think that was probably it. She was in love, and most women in love are oblivious. In fact, she talked to me as if we were old friends and had never been lovers at all, complaining about the parking around Cormac's place and the difficulty in adjusting to his hours. She'd brought a couple of books of mine that she'd ended up with, and that made me immeasurably sad—things of mine she no longer needed or wanted. She told me the split-up was for the best, but that I just didn't realize it yet.

"No, Lexi," I said to her. "For me it's not for the best. For me it's one of the worst thing that's ever happened to me."

"Russell," she leaned over and touched my arm. "People break up every day and they survive it. We've managed to do it and still stay friends. That's a major accomplishment. You should give us some credit for that."

I didn't feel like anyone deserved any credit.

"I've lost a piece of myself in this break-up, Lexi. You stole a part of me. You took it with you and you gave it to Cormac, and now I can't go on without it."

She looked at me sympathetically. She knew what I was talking about. "No, baby. I didn't take anything from you. People change, that's all. We change and we morph and new parts of our personalities emerge and things we didn't like yesterday we like today. You keep on thinking I rejected you, but it wasn't like that."

"You rejected that part of me, yes."

"I didn't Russell. I never did."

"You did, Lexi. I wanted something from you and you would never give it."

"Icouldn't give it. I didn't have it to give then."

"No, Lexi. You apparently did have it to give. You gave it to Cormac just fine."

She sighed. "I keep telling you, that was different."

"Well of course it was. You gave it to him and not to me."

"Russell..."

I looked at her. Her face in the lights of the TV's seemed both so familiar and so alien to me now, as if I could see the old Lexi struggling to break out of her. She seemed flat, two-dimensional, a symbol of herself.

"All right," I said. I got a grip on myself. "Sorry."

I had a question I wanted to ask her, a question I'd been thinking about for days. A hypothetical. It wouldn't cost her anything, and it might just save my ass and give me back my self-respect. It was kind of embarrassing, but I didn't care anymore. I asked it of her now:

"All right," I said. "Look, this can't make any difference now because it's all water under the bridge. We're through and not getting back together and I understand that. So just tell me this, Lexi, for my own peace of mind—and my peace of mind is riding on this, a lot is riding on this—if things had been different between us, if you knew then what you knew now, if this change you'd gone through had happened back then, when we were together, would you have let me dom you? Would you have shown me that respect and given me what you give him?"

I was offering her a chance to save me, something that would cost her nothing. I was reaching to her from the hell of where I was and I was begging her, and it would have taken so little, so very little on her part. An, "Of course, Russell." A shy smile. Dropped eyelids. That's all, and I never would have mentioned it again, never would have put it to the test. Just this little admission that I was as good as he was.

Instead, she looked at me sadly. "I can't say that," she said. "I just can't."

I felt the blood climb up my neck and into my face at the same time it seemed to drain from my brain. The room, despite all the noise, seemed to get very still.

"Damn it!" I looked at her. "Can't you give me a yes? What does it cost you? What could it possible mean to you?Lie, Lexi! You can lie, can't you? For me? For what we had? Aren't I worth it? Is that asking too fucking much?"

She was silent for a moment, then she said, "I just can't say that, Russell. I can tell you that I gave you everything I was capable of giving you at the time. I gave you everything I had to give. That's what I can say, because that's the truth. But this, I really can't say that."

She snapped her purse closed and stood up. "Now I have to go. I really do. We have an early rehearsal. Thanks so much for this stuff. And I really hope you feel better. I'm so sorry things are bad for you, Russell. I really am. They'll get better. I know they will. April's a terrific girl. It was great seeing you."

Her words boiled through me and didn't stop. Pain and anguish, unalloyed. Rolling numbness, humiliation.

I stood up and watched her leave the restaurant and the first thing I thought wasWhat a bitch. What an unmitigated bitch!! I hadn't asked her for much. Just a lie, a white lie, an admission that she would have let me dom her. It would have saved me, given me my balls back, my self-respect, and yet she couldn't give it to me. She wouldn't give it to me.

I hadn't been back in my apartment twenty minutes when she called me, though.

"Russell, baby, I'm sorry, about what I said in the restaurant. I didn't mean to hurt you. I never meant to hurt you, through any of this. When I was with you, I loved you more than I'd ever loved any man. I gave you everything I had to give. You've got to believe me. I don't want to lose you, Russell. I still love you, baby, it's just that things are different now, and I can't help that. We can't control our hearts. You understand? Please say you understand, Russell. I don't want to lose you."

I held the phone, feeling numb and sick. The snow was white outside and black with shadow. "I understand," I said. "I know."

"I didn't know about that part of myself yet. I just didn't, and you can't give a part you don't know about, that hasn't been born yet. It's like you might as well have asked me to take a gay lover for you..."