Tales of MU

In Which Mackenzie Goes Weak In The Knees

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Author Interjection:

Hey, folks… if you follow me on Twitter you might have noticed that not only are updates happening more regularly in terms of days of the week, I’m also a lot better at predicting when they’ll be finished. If you follow my blog, you know I’ve implemented some changes in how I approach my work… a culmination of the improvements I started last spring, before life so rudely interrupted. You’re only beginning to see the benefits of these changes, and my new work cycle is a lot more resistant to disruption and stress.

Since I know not everybody follows my Twitter or reads my personal blog… or even the on-site blog posts here… I just wanted to drop a line here where it would be noticed to let you all know the new schedule. I’ll be removing this note when the next chapter goes up.

Regular chapters will go up every four days. I know that remembering “every four days” is not as easy as specific days of the week, so to keep things simpler I’ll always start with a new chapter on the first of the month. So it goes like this the fourth, the fifth, the minor fall, the major lift: the 1st, the 5th, the 9th, and so on. To get synced to this schedule, the next chapter will be on Wednesday the 21st. In addition to that, I’m going back to posting OT stories on the weekends, starting with the unfinished incentive stories. So you won’t have to wait five days for something to read.

If all that’s too much to remember, I’m working on a calendar page for the site showing when updates are happening. Or you can just check it as often as you do now and count on there being updates. This schedule gives you 8 new chapters a month, which isn’t the most I’ve ever written in that stretch but it’s something I can do more reliably than three or more a week.

Last but not least, the long-delayed start of Kin & Distant Relations, the tale of Mackenzie’s long-lost brother and his family, will be on Wednesday, September 30th.

Thank you for your patience, and enjoy tonight’s chapter!

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Amaranth asked if I had anything new about Twyla at dinner, so I told her what had happened. To my surprise, she didn’t say much, just bit at her lip and looked thoughtful. I wondered if I was in trouble with her, especially when after we left the Arch she told the others that we’d be going back to our room in Gilcrease.

“Please excuse me, I need to have some words with my toy,” she said to Ian.

“Remember what we talked about,” he said.

“I will,” she said.

I wasn’t worried as she led me back at a fairly brisk pace. That one word “toy” and a very owning glance over the top of her glasses had been enough to put me into submissive space. It was a very calming thing to be taken in hand by the woman who so lovingly owned me. More than that, I couldn’t feel like I had anything to worry about from her. Outside this dynamic, I might be concerned about how Amaranth might take something or fear I would disappoint her. Within it, I was just hers, and it didn’t matter how she reacted… however she took me, I was hers to take.

That’s not to say that if I did disappoint her while in submissive mode, I wouldn’t feel it acutely… it just wasn’t something to be worried about unless it happened.

She said nothing the whole way back, or during the ride up in the lift, so I said nothing. When we got to our room, she stopped outside the door, put her hands on my hips, and turned me around so I was facing away from the door.

“Stay,” she said.

I stayed.

Behind me, the door opened and then closed. I could hear her moving things around. She hummed to herself, a habit that she’d picked up from Two but that she’d improved by adding melodies. This one was something folksy and rural, probably about something growing or rolling or rowing, or about someone who’s gone off to war never to return. I doubted that the nymph-communing farmers who ran the Paradise Valley co-op/commune had ever marched off to war, but folk songs had a way of sticking around.

Eventually the door opened again… I couldn’t say how long, but it wasn’t long enough for Amaranth to get tired of humming the same tune or me to get tired of hearing her. It was almost but not quite long enough for me to forget where I was, mentally, and turn around at the sound.

I didn’t, though. I stood perfectly still, even as I felt Amaranth approaching behind me… at first in that not-quite-tangible sense of presence you get when someone’s looming up behind you, and then in a more literal sense as her bare breasts brushed against my back. She reached up around and over my head with both hands, and a strip of dark material slipped down in front of my eyes. I had just a moment of thinking that maybe she’d decided to let me try wearing her collar already before I realized it was a blindfold.

“Close your eyes, baby,” she said, and I did.

She pulled the black satin strip over my eyes and knotted the ends behind my head. As soon as she let go of it, it tightened against my skin, conforming my facial contours like it had been sculpted for them. I could no longer open my eyes.

“Caron still gives me a discount,” Amaranth said, speaking of the merchant of fetishwear and body mods who’d tried to snare me into slavery the year before, until we found out she’s in love with a kobold… a pairing that might raise eyebrows among the races that have any to raise, but that was downright verboten among the dwarves. “I told her it’s not necessary, but she insisted. I think she still feels bad about what happened.”

Even in my sub state, I almost couldn’t help pointing out the difference between “what happened” and “what she did”, but I let it pass. Amaranth pulled me into the room. I could smell something floral, and maybe kind of vanilla-y.

“Walk slowly,” she said, and I did. “There are candles,” she added, and I froze. Lit candles were way against the rules. “They’re illusionary! But they’re long tapers and I don’t want them getting knocked over.”

She led me… I wasn’t sure where. Possibly towards the desk, but maybe towards the bed. Or maybe just the center of the room. Offhand, I couldn’t remember a time when I’d ever been in the room in darkness so complete that I couldn’t see anything. There was nothing like having my sight cut off completely to hammer in just how bad a sense of the space around me I had.

“I had planned on doing something like this on Friday night, but Ian and I talked and he’d rather have you then,” she said, her breath warm and close on my ear. She nuzzled the side of my head with her nose, her chest rubbing against my upper arm.

She began to undress me, slowly. It required my cooperation, which required her guidance since I coudln’t see. She could have simply whisked my clothes away… she’d done that often enough… but this was a lot more tactile. I could feel her hands on my clothing and my skin, smell her scent in the spaces she’d just occupied. It was arousing and disorienting. I had no bearings to begin with, but I turned around so many times that I completely lost my sense of forwards and backwards. If there hadn’t been a floor under my feet, I would’ve had no sense of up or down.

There were no restraints except the blindfold, but Amaranth had managed to make me feel completely bound up all the same. I was completely helpless, and my only sense of presence was Her, the warmth of her skin and the golden glow of her scent.

Then she put my hands behind my back, and wrapped something around my wrists. It felt like the same type of ribbon as the blindfold, though it was clearly quite a bit longer as she was able to thread it back and forth between my arms multiple times.

I could tell when she tied it off in a bow up near my shoulder blades, because the whole length of it hardened in an instant.

“There,” she said. “When I showed this particular accessory to Steff, she tried it out by trussing me up like a turkey, but of course I don’t eat meat so instead I’ve laced you up just like a corset. Though I do need to get Two to show me how to make a nicer ribbon.” She put a hand on my butt, not patting so much as resting it. “Oh, when you blush, you do blush all over… but don’t worry, I wasn’t going to have her show me on you.”

She giggled. I loved the sound of her laughter. Having it be almost her whole sensory presence heightened the effect, sending warm shivers down my spine. I wriggled and writhed, and the bonding scarf around my arms seemed to briefly squeeze in response.

“I thought about getting a gag, but it seemed like it was unnecessary,” Amaranth said. Her fingers that had been cupping my ass drifted down and towards the middle. She wiggled them as they lost contact with my skin, so the tips of her fingernails just barely tickled the spot where front met back. “My toy speaks when I want her to speak and doesn’t when I don’t. Isn’t that right, clever little toy?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said.

“I want to talk to you about Twyla,” she said, touching my elbow and leading me… somewhere else. “I’m glad you kept your patience and your temper with her, and that you tried to figure out where things went wrong with her. You don’t have classes with her again until Tuesday, do you?”

“No, ma’am,” I said. “It’s just that one class.”

She positioned me in front of what felt like the foot of the bed, facing it.

“That’s good,” she said. “There’s no reason you’d have to run into her for the next four days. Don’t go seeking her out before then.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Of course, it could be a good idea for you to go speak with Professor Bohd,” Amaranth said. “Now more than ever… if there was some kind of misunderstanding and blow-up between the two of them and your name came up, it could damage your relationship with her. But… that is your relationship, and so I’ll leave it up to you, but I expect you to at least consider it.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said.

She pushed me forward a bit, holding on to my waist to make it clear that I was meant to bend. I braced myself, even as I felt the growing warm, wet tingle of anticipation spreading within me.

“This is not going to be a spanking,” Amaranth said, gently caressing my backside with the back of her hand. The bed shifted as she sat down beside me. The mattress was firm enough that I didn’t sink in towards her. She gave a stinging slap to one side of my ass. “At least, not primarily… I know you still associate spankings with punishment, and I know you’re feeling conflicted and uncertain. Tonight I want you to feel nothing but love.”

She paused, and then gave another sharp slap.

“Though, now that I have you in this position it’s sort of hard to resist,” she said, and giggled. I didn’t mind a spanking one bit… I did still have an association in my mind between them and punishment, though I’d learned to take them for pure pleasure… but even if it had been nothing but pain and punishment, it would have been worth it for her laughter.

“Maybe that’s for the best,” she said. She put her hand on the back of my thigh, rubbing it. “The other things I have in mind… well, you’ve always been at least a little conflicted when it comes to your own pleasure. My generous toy, always better at giving than receiving… though you’ve come miles when it comes to giving.”

It was true. When she’d met me, I’d only been able to function sexually on instinct… not looking at where my hand was going, not thinking about what it was doing. Over time, the barriers that kept me looking away and stopped me from even acknowledging what was happening had fallen away.

At least, some of them had.

“Maybe tonight’s not the night for expanding boundaries,” Amaranth said. “At least, not past sensory deprivation.”

She got up off the bed.

“Would you like it soft or hard, baby?” she asked.

I wanted to answer her right away… as she’d said, I spoke when she wanted me to and not when she didn’t… but I found I didn’t have an answer to give. At least not one that she’d offered.

“What do you want?” she asked.

“I want to be yours, ma’am,” I said. “I want you to do with me as you please.”

“Very well, baby.”

It was hard. It started out slow, but it was hard from the beginning.

She used the studded leather paddle we’d procured together during our freshman year. Though she carried no weapons, she wielded it like one, using all the muscular force her soft, curvy frame could bring to bear on my invulnerable rear. Each time the paddle slammed down on my ass, I gasped and jerked.

The real pain always came a moment after, when the paddle pulled away from my skin. It wasn’t that it didn’t hurt before then. It did. It hurt enough to take my breath away, too much for me to actually feel it all at once. It took a moment for me to take it all in… and when I did, that’s when it really hurt.

She kept it hard and slow and steady, not building towards anything. It was like she was practicing her stroke.

“I wish I could bruise you,” she said after a while. “Selectively, I mean. There are times when it’s handy not to have to leave a mark… with most partners, I could heal them. But I’d love to be able to leave my mark on your cute little rear. I’d like to see how long I could make it last, know that every time you squirm when you sit it’s because the seat’s poking a bruise… I know the pain lingers and you squirm plenty after a night like tonight, but a visual aid would be nice sometimes.” She laughed again. “I didn’t really know I had a sadistic side before. I think it’s Steff’s influence. Are you ready for the real thing now, baby?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said, and she started. The blows across my exposed and raised backside came faster now, and with each one she built up speed. Now the sharpest pain was when the studs hit, because they were biting down before the tingle of the last blow had even begun to fade. My arousal grew with the pain, and so did my sense of surrender to it. I felt like I was being driven into the mattress… like I would drive worm my way into it to get away if I could. The fact that I couldn’t felt less like a consequence of its actual solidity and more of the bonds around my arms. It was the divine Amaranth, not any mere trick of physics, that had anchored me to the spot.

Warm pleasure grew within me as Amaranth drove me towards climax like wagonmaster whipping a horse. Despite my repressed background… or maybe because of it… It didn’t take much to get me going, or much more to bring me home, but Amaranth was an expert at pacing and she liked to draw things out.

She was an expert at teasing, too. Every time I came close, she drew back a little. The blows became slower and gentler. Sometimes she just stroked me gently with the edge of the paddle. That was pretty excruciating, too, given the devastation she’d wreaked on the region she dragged it over… but it wasn’t enough to send me over the edge. She talked casually and conversationally during these intervals. It was mostly a comforting blur of words, like when we read together and she kept up a whole stream-of-consciousness dialogue by herself… it gave me another sense of her presence in the room.

Then came the words that pierced right through my haze of pain and pleasure.

“My mother says she’s close to making a decision.”

“She what?” I said, forgetting my place in the exercise, forgetting everything.

Amaranth reminded me with a swift underhanded upward flick of the paddle, right between my thighs that left me reeling. I think I came, but for once the pain was too much to be sure.

“Don’t take that tone, especially not about Mother,” Amaranth said. “And don’t slouch.”

“Sorry… ma’am,” I gasped, trying to get back into position. My knees had given out. I was still technically on the bed.

“She didn’t say about what,” Amaranth said. “Which could mean it’s something about the seasonal migrations, or whether that consular fellow’s spent enough time as a deer, or whatever. Though you know what the obvious subject is.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. Amaranth’s divine mother wasn’t sure what to make of one of her daughters dating a half-demon.

“I don’t want to worry you for no reason, baby,” Amaranth said. “That’s why I didn’t tell you as soon as I got back… especially when it could mean anything, we weren’t even talking about you when she said it… but I’ve been thinking about it, and I decided you should know anyway. You understand, baby?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Good,” she said. “Now… let’s wrap things up, shall we? Your little outburst gave me an idea for a big finish…”

I had an idea where she was going after the little “love-tap” she’d given me, and I found myself cringing and clenching in anticipation. The tightness in my lower body fought against the rising tide of pleasure, and when the end came… without the feared punishing blow… it came hard, passing through me like a bolt of lightning and leaving me weak and shaking and drooping off the bed.

“There… what were you expecting, baby?”

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