Chapter 13: The Silk Blindfold
The journal lay on the mahogany side table for two days. A silent, leather-bound accusation. Rio saw it every time she was in Agatha’s apartment, which was often. They fell into a rhythm that was neither domestic nor purely carnivorous. It was something else—a sustained note of ownership.
Agatha worked on a 19th-century escritoire in the corner, the smell of citrus oil and beeswax mingling with her sandalwood. Rio worked on her laptop at the dining table, designing a logo for a doomed indie band. The silence between them was no longer empty; it was thick with unspoken tasks, loaded glances. Rio wore the collar whenever she crossed the threshold. It was not a question.
On the third evening, Agatha closed the lid on her polishing compound and wiped her hands on a rag. She observed Rio, who was chewing her lip, staring at a vector curve on her screen.
“You’re stuck,” Agatha stated.
“It’s shit,” Rio grumbled, pushing the laptop away.
“Creative frustration is a form of energy. It needs redirection.” Agatha walked to her cabinet, the one with the lacquered finish. She opened it and retrieved a length of black silk. “Come here. Sit on the rug.”
Rio’s pulse, sluggish from hours of screen-glare, kicked into a gallop. She obeyed, settling onto the deep pile of the Persian rug before the fireplace, which was dark and cold.
Agatha knelt behind her. “The world is too much right now. All that visual noise.” Her hands were gentle as they gathered Rio’s pink hair. She tied it back loosely. Then the silk descended over Rio’s eyes, the world vanishing into a profound, velvety black. Agatha tied it securely at the back of her head, her fingers brushing the nape of Rio’s neck. “Breathe. Listen. Feel.”
Without sight, everything expanded. The tick of the mantel clock became a metronome. The distant hum of the elevator a whale song. Her own breathing was obscenely loud.
“Hands on your thighs. Palms up. You will not move them unless I say.” Agatha’s voice was a point of orientation in the dark.
Rio felt the air shift as Agatha moved. A whisper of sound, then the faintest, maddening touch at the hollow of her throat. A single tip, softer than breath, dragging down her sternum. A feather. It traced the line between her breasts, circled one nipple without touching it, making the flesh tighten and ache. Rio hissed, her back wanting to arch. She forced her palms to stay flat on her thighs.
“Good,” Agatha murmured. The feather traveled down her side, a ghost tracing the indent of her waist, the curve of her hip. It danced along the seam of her leggings, teasing the sensitive skin of her inner thigh. It was torture. Not pain, but the anticipation of sensation that never quite landed. A giggle, nervous and helpless, bubbled out of Rio as the feather flickered behind her knee.
“You’re ticklish here,” Agatha noted, her voice clinical. “Interesting.” She applied more pressure, a slow, deliberate stroke that was no longer just ticklish but unbearably sensual. Rio squirmed, her toes curling into the rug.
“Please,” Rio whispered.
“Please what? Be specific.”
“Please… touch me properly.”
The feather disappeared. The loss was a shock. Then she felt warmth—Agatha’s body kneeling before her. Hands, real and firm, slid up her thighs, pushing her legs apart. Agatha’s tongue replaced the feather, but not where Rio wanted it. It lapped a slow, wet circle around her nipple, teeth grazing the ultra-sensitive areola but never closing on the peak. Rio whimpered, her hands trembling with the effort of staying put.
Agatha’s mouth moved to the other breast, giving it the same lavish, neglectful attention. Her fingers, meanwhile, began to trace patterns on Rio’s belly, light as spider-silk, dipping into the waistband of her leggings but going no further. It was a map of promised land with no entry granted.
“You’re so eager,” Agatha said against her skin, her breath cool on the wet trail her tongue left. “Your heart is pounding through your ribs. I can feel your cunt clenching from here. It’s a palpable heat. Disgusting.”
The filthy word, delivered in that calm tone, made Rio’s hips jerk. A slick warmth spread in her leggings.
Agatha’s hands finally hooked into the fabric and pulled them down, along with Rio’s panties. The cool air was a shock. Agatha positioned her, pushing her onto her back, arranging her limbs like a offering. Rio felt utterly exposed, blind and spread open on the rug.
Then the touch returned. Not the feather. Not yet Agatha’s mouth where she burned. Just fingertips, skating along her outer lips, tracing the shape of her without entering. They brushed her clit once, a glancing blow that made her cry out, then retreated to stroke her inner thighs.
“You’re dripping,” Agatha observed. Rio heard a soft sound, then felt the slick, rounded silicone nudge her entrance. The head of the vibrator. Agatha pressed it just inside, a centimeter, no more. The low hum started, a bass thrum that vibrated through her entire pelvis. It was an agony of almost. She pushed down, trying to take more.
Agatha pulled it completely out. “No.”
The hum moved to her inner thigh, the vibration buzzing against the muscle. Then to her perineum. Then to the very top of her slit, just above her clit. It hovered there, the maddening frequency a hair’s breadth from where she needed it. Rio was panting, her back arched off the floor, sweat beading between her breasts. Every nerve end was screaming.
“I can’t… Agatha, please, I’ll do anything, just let me come,” she sobbed, the words torn from a place of pure, undignified need.
“What will you do?”
“Anything. Everything. I’ll write ten pages. I’ll clean your workshop. I’ll suck your cock until my jaw locks. Please.”
A satisfied hum, lower than the vibrator’s. “Good girl.”
The vibrator finally, mercifully, settled directly on her clit. The contact was electric, devastating. Agatha held it there, the pressure perfect, unrelenting. She didn’t move it. She simply let the steady, intense vibration do its work. Rio shattered in seconds, a raw, screaming climax that felt less like pleasure and more like a system purge. Her body convulsed, her thighs clamping around Agatha’s wrist, her vision whiting out behind the blindfold.
Through the receding waves, she felt the vibrator removed. Then Agatha’s body covering hers, skin on skin, her mouth finding Rio’s in a deep, consuming kiss. Rio tasted salt—her own tears or sweat, she didn’t know. Agatha’s hands were in her hair, cradling her head.
When Agatha broke the kiss, she untied the blindfold. The dim room flooded in, painfully bright, haloed and blurred. Agatha’s face swam above her, sharp green eyes studying her.
“Look at you,” Agatha said, her thumb wiping under Rio’s eye. “Wrecked by a feather and a piece of plastic.”
Rio tried to speak, but only a rasp came out.
Agatha helped her sit up, wrapping the soft throw from the chaise around her shoulders. She brought a glass of water, held it to Rio’s lips. As Rio drank, shivering, Agatha picked up the journal from the side table. She opened it to a fresh page, then placed it and a pen in Rio’s lap.
“Now,” she said, her voice back to its dry, practical tone. “Write one true thing. Just one. Before the feeling fades.”
Rio’s hand was unsteady. She put pen to paper. The sentence that emerged was blunt, stripped of all poetry. I am a thing you use, and it is the most real I have ever felt.
She showed it to Agatha.
Agatha read it. Her expression didn’t soften, but something in her eyes deepened, a acknowledgement more profound than a smile. She took the journal, closed it, and set it aside.
“I know,” she said. She pulled Rio into her, tucking Rio’s head under her chin. They sat in the quiet, on the rug, in the wreckage of sensation. The clock ticked. The city glowed outside. The empty page in the journal waited, but for now, the one true thing was enough. It was everything.