primer - n. 1. An introductory textbook; 2. Any device by which an explosive charge is ignited

Day 10

Ryan looked at the clock on her nightstand and then back to the front door. It had originally been one of the side doors of the house, but now it was her personal entrance to the room she was renting.

Ryan had been lucky to get the remodeled garage for only a few hundred a month, especially in a college town and with all the amenities that had come with it. She had her own private bathroom, which included a shower. And even though she had to go into the actual house to cook her meals, it was still pretty convenient because the connecting door between the house and her room led directly to the kitchen. She didn't even have to worry about being too noisy because the wall she shared with the house bordered the kitchen, giving her an entire room as a buffer.

Not that Ryan was loud. She usually wore headphones if she wanted to listen to her music louder than the usual background level she kept it at. She'd also learned many ways of being silent, both from her violent childhood and simply as a night person in a day person's world. Plus, all of the walls had been reinforced and insulated against the cold months of Michigan winters and the extra padding tended to double as soundproofing.

Ryan glanced down and took one last inventory. All of the items she needed were laid out on the table she was sitting at and she intended to use each and every one if necessary.

There was a light knock at the door and Ryan got up to answer it. McKenzie was standing there and Ryan knew she'd been crying from the puffiness that was still around her eyes. Ryan really wanted to hug her, but after last night, she decided it was best to keep her distance.

Ryan stepped back and pointed to her computer chair, which she'd positioned across from the one she'd been sitting in.

"Sit down."

"Um, Ryan? I think we need to..."

"Sit down and don't make me tell you again."

McKenzie clamped her mouth shut and did as she was told.

Ryan reached for the sturdy black leather cuffs she'd placed so neatly on the table and McKenzie's eyes widened.

"Uh, Ryan..."

"Shut up."

The warning tone in Ryan's voice stopped McKenzie completely and she sat very still as Ryan secured the cuffs around her wrists. Ryan grabbed one of the long black leather strips on the table. She clipped one end to McKenzie's left cuff and then wrapped it around the arm of the chair, before securing the other end so that McKenzie couldn't release herself. Then she did the same with McKenzie's other wrist.

Ryan picked up the ball gag that was left on the table.

"If I have to use this, I will, but I'll leave that up to you." Ryan sat down. "I don't want you to speak until I've given you permission. Do you understand?"

McKenzie nodded her head.

"All right."

Ryan clasped her hands in front of her, leaning her elbows on her knees with her legs spread apart in stereotypical butch fashion, and faced McKenzie squarely.

"Now, we're going to talk, or rather I am. The reason you're tied up is because I can't trust you not to touch me and I can't trust myself not to fuck your brains out if you do."

Ryan's head dropped as she sighed and then rose again as she took a deep breath and gentled her voice.

"McKenzie, I'm in love with you. I know, that might sound crazy, since we've only known each other for a few months, but that's how I feel. Only, I've never been in love before and it's making it very difficult for me to retain control over myself when it comes to you. Do you understand that me not having control is very dangerous to you? There are things I want to do to you that I know you're not ready for. But you keep pushing me..."

Ryan stopped as she saw a tear roll down McKenzie's cheek.

"Oh baby, I'm not talking about yesterday. You were perfect yesterday. I've never had a slave submit so completely to me before. And that's what I want from you. So don't change that. What I was referring to was when you asked to talk to me about the rules and you knew damn well that you had no intention of obeying them, or even really talking about them."

McKenzie nodded her head in admission.

"You were trying to manipulate me and that won't work if you really want to be with me."

McKenzie nodded her head vigorously. She wanted to be with Ryan more than anything.

"Okay. Then we need to come to an understanding on a few things. First, we cannot kiss. You can't even ask me to. Not only have I promised not to stop with just a kiss, I know I can't. Or at least it feels like I can't. I don't trust myself to be able to pull back, especially if you're encouraging me."

Ryan smiled ruefully and McKenzie returned it with a shy one of her own.

"And, baby, when I said we couldn't touch, my intention was not to make you love-starved and I realize that's what I've done. To both of us. I'm truly sorry for that and I apologize for the problems it's created. I had originally only meant that we couldn't touch sexually.

Ryan reached out to hold both of McKenzie's hands and pulled her chair closer. She wanted to reaffirm for McKenzie that non-sexual touching was acceptable. She'd never meant to be completely hands off with the girl. It had just worked out that way as the pressure built.

"I know you need to touch me. You need to feel that connection to me. It makes me solid to you. It makes all of this real."

McKenzie looked at Ryan in surprise. She'd assumed Ryan didn't have a clue how important touch was to her. She craved it and being denied was too much to bear. She was terrified Ryan was going to change her mind about being with her and then she'd be left with nothing. Maybe if she could touch Ryan, things wouldn't feel like such a dream. She'd have something real to hold on to, something tangible.

She squeezed Ryan's hands in gratitude and Ryan continued.

"But regardless of any of that, of what happens or doesn't happen, I never want you to doubt that I love you. There's this song, it's by Billie Myers, called Opposites Attract. But anyway, one of the lines goes, "You say you love me for all that I'm not and I still love you for all that you are." And that's how I feel about you. I feel like you love me for all that I am; you accept it all. I mean, you came back even after yesterday and somehow I knew you would. I could just feel it.

"But then, in return, I love you for all that you're not. You're not cruel. You still have your innocence. You've experienced pain just like everyone else, but it's not so deep that you're scarred like I am and I just love that about you. You bring me hope. And the idea that someone like you could actually love someone like me is amazing to me. I never want you to know what I'm talking about when I say I've been hurt really bad. I never want you to understand any of it. But I do want you to understand me, so maybe you will have to learn about some of that stuff."

Ryan trailed off and looked away. She didn't usually plan too much for the future; she just waited for it to happen and dealt with things as they came to her. But she'd suddenly been thinking a lot about the future, about her future with McKenzie.

Ryan shook her head and came back to the present.

"The thing is, McKenzie, you have to respect my wishes when it comes to no sexual touching because it's not just you we're talking about."

Ryan tried to think of how to say what she wanted to say.

"Yesterday... I almost... Okay. Maybe I should start at the beginning a little. I know I've told you about how all the adults in my life were abusive to me when I was a kid. But see, one of the ways I learned to cope was to find pleasure in some of those things. My fantasies can be very violent sometimes, but I don't want to act on them. But with what you put me through last week, and then how beautifully submissive you were for me yesterday, I was-I was really close to losing control."

Ryan gripped McKenzie's hands a little tighter to reaffirm their connection. She also wanted to soften her next words without censoring them.

"McKenzie, if you had touched me, I would have raped you. And I'm not talking about some kind of consensual rape scene that happens all the time in the S and M community. I wanted to make you scream and bleed and then make you come against your will. I wanted to shame you and guilt you into believing you'd brought it all on yourself and then fuck you again."

Ryan heard McKenzie's breathing increase its pace and she squeezed the girl's hands in reassurance.

"But there's absolutely no excuse for hurting someone like that and you have to believe me when I say I never want to hurt you. I do want to cause you pain in the name of heightened pleasure, but I never want to hurt you."

Ryan gave a half-smile to try to lighten the mood, but then she became serious again.

"I want to believe that I'm not capable of doing those kinds of things, but I have to be honest with myself. There's a darkness inside of me and I have to be constantly vigilant to make sure it doesn't get out. But when you attempt to challenge me the way you did, you bring that darkness closer to the surface. I'm not saying any of this is your fault. I have to be responsible for my own actions. But that doesn't give you the right to disregard the boundaries I've set up. They're for both of us and they're not meant as a punishment. And by the way, your punishment still stands. You have another three days before I'll consider allowing you release. Unless you've changed your mind about all this and then I'll untie you and you can leave and none of this will ever happen again."

McKenzie shook her head in alarm and almost opened her mouth to protest, but then she remembered the ball gag and bit her lip.

Ryan nodded in acceptance.

"Okay. Now, about the touching. We can hold hands," Ryan grazed her thumbs over the backs of McKenzie's knuckles and squeezed her fingers to emphasize the statement. "And sit next to each other, and even hold each other, but the second either one of us feels like it's too much, we need to stop and there can't be any protests."

McKenzie nodded her acquiescence.

Ryan took a breath. Maybe tying McKenzie up hadn't been such a good idea. It gave her mind too many images to play with. She shook her head and looked away.

"God, I just know we need to find some kind of middle ground or we're both going to go insane." Ryan looked back over at McKenzie. "You may speak now."

McKenzie swallowed. She wasn't sure where to begin. She squeezed Ryan's fingers.

"Um, is it all right to ask if you can untie me?"

"Oh God, yeah, sure."

Ryan scrambled to get up and undo the restraints.

"I'm sorry. I just didn't want a repeat of the past few days. I don't think I could stand up to that kind of pressure again," Ryan mumbled as she released the cuffs.

McKenzie rubbed her wrists, though they didn't hurt, they were just a little sweaty from the leather. Then she leaned back in the chair to get a little more comfortable as Ryan retook her seat.

"I wanted to apologize for that, Ryan. I know I shouldn't have pushed you like that. I just wanted you so much... Sometimes, I can't stop thinking about you, about touching you, feeling you touch me. But a lot of times, it doesn't have anything to do with sex. I mean, it'll turn into that if I keep thinking about it, but most of the time, I just think about holding you or you holding me. But then you said we couldn't touch and I'd just get so frustrated, you know?"

"Yeah, I know. I'm sorry. I think I was trying to protect myself from you, more than anything else."

"Heh, guess that kind of backfired on you, huh?" McKenzie asked smugly.

Ryan laughed.

"Yeah, it did."

McKenzie looked around at the room.

"So, um, what do we do now?"

"Well, could we maybe keep talking or something? I don't want you to go yet," Ryan admitted.

"What did you want to talk about?"

Ryan tried to think quickly, but the things that were coming to mind sounded stupid to her.

"I don't know. Anything."

"You can't think of anything?" McKenzie asked.

The look on Ryan's face showed she'd been thinking of something, but for some reason she seemed embarrassed.

"I.. um, well, all I can think of is stupid stuff."

"Like what?"

"Well, I got a new computer game. And I like debating theology. And I was thinking maybe we could watch a video, or I've got a ton of taped episodes of Deep Space Nine and Voyager and Star Trek: Next Generation and Xena that we could watch. But I don't know if you're into..."

"That sounds great. I am totally in the mood to just chill out. What episodes of Voyager do you have?" McKenzie smiled.

The relief was clear on Ryan's face and McKenzie thought it was absolutely adorable how the older woman seemed to have completely lost her cool. She tried not to be too smug about it, though.

Ryan ran through her list of favorite episodes from memory and McKenzie picked the one she wanted to watch at the moment. Ryan turned on her TV and VCR and put in a tape. After rewinding to the beginning of the episode they'd chosen, which was the Voyager movie Dark Frontier, they both looked at the double bed. It was the only place from which they could both comfortably watch TV.

"I just want to be in your arms right now. I need to feel you. Is that okay?" McKenzie asked shyly.

Ryan thought about it. Could she touch McKenzie right now? Her instinct was to say no, but the memory of holding McKenzie in her arms the week before sent warmth straight to her heart and she nodded.

"We can try it."

Ryan grabbed the remote and climbed onto the bed. She propped her pillows up behind her and then settled back onto them and spread her right arm in invitation while holding the remote in her left hand.

"The second either of us can't handle it, we need to say so, okay?"

McKenzie nodded and then kicked off her shoes before she crawled onto the bed and cuddled right into the curve of Ryan's body. It was soft and warm and sent a feeling of excitement and then peace through her whole body. She rested her head on Ryan's shoulder and watched the TV for a moment, but then turned her head to look at Ryan.

"Thank you," McKenzie said as she caught Ryan's eye.

McKenzie didn't wait for a reply and replaced her head in its earlier position on Ryan's shoulder. Then she relaxed for the first time in days.

Ryan kissed the top of McKenzie's head in response and leaned her cheek against the soft hair.

"Thank you," Ryan whispered.

Ryan thoroughly enjoyed the feeling of wholeness she felt with McKenzie snuggled against her side. They fit together perfectly and she never wanted the closeness to end.

They watched the hour and a half episode and, as the show progressed, they ended up talking through most of the scenes as they analyzed the characters' behaviors. There were many scenes between Janeway and Seven that they had to rewind and watch several times in order to illustrate a point and by the time the movie was over, they were sitting up, legs crossed, and just enjoying hanging out together for the first time in almost two weeks. The tension had faded and the emphasis on the sexual side of their relationship had been pushed down for a little while, giving both women a much-needed break.

Ryan got up from the bed and went to the VCR to eject the tape. She looked at the time and turned back to McKenzie as she slid the cartridge back into its protective paper sleeve.

"Um, it's kinda late. I guess you probably need to go home and get some sleep."

McKenzie moved to the edge of the bed and started putting her shoes back on.

"Yeah. I've got an early class tomorrow."

Ryan remained silent as McKenzie finished tying her shoes and then the girl stood up. They both watched each other for a moment, trying to decide what to do next, but then Ryan lifted her arms and McKenzie was pressed against her in an instant, her own arms wrapped around Ryan's waist.

Ryan's arms naturally came to rest around McKenzie's shoulders and squeezed. The warmth and belonging she felt was amazing.

"God, I love you, McKenzie," Ryan whispered.

It was as though no time had passed since they'd held each other on the bed. The connection between them seemed to grow stronger with each moment they spent together.

"I've never felt anything like this before. I didn't even think I could. I've been hurt by so many people. But you... You make me feel safe," Ryan confessed.

Ryan felt several tears fall from her eyes and she closed them as the intensity of her emotions rushed through her.

McKenzie squeezed Ryan in understanding and continued to rest her head against the tall woman's sternum. There didn't seem to be a need for a verbal reply and McKenzie was content to simply be where she was. Ryan's scent was exhilarating and calming all at the same time and she took deep breaths to inhale as much of it as she could.

Ryan was doing something similar with McKenzie's hair. She couldn't get enough of it and her lips were itching to kiss the side of McKenzie's head. Instead, her hands started to unconsciously rub over McKenzie's back through her T-shirt. It wasn't long before Ryan realized what she was doing, though, and she removed her hands. McKenzie let go of her and Ryan took a step back.

"Sorry. That's about all I can take."

"It's okay," McKenzie said softly in understanding. She'd been about to start rubbing herself on Ryan's leg. "Um, should I go now?" McKenzie asked uncertainly.

It was the last thing Ryan wanted McKenzie to do, but it was probably a good idea. She nodded her head.

"Yeah."

McKenzie nodded in return and slowly headed for the door.

"Um, McKenzie? Would you like to go out with me?" Ryan asked impulsively.

McKenzie stopped at the door and turned around. The smile that lit up her face was dazzling. She nodded her head and Ryan smiled in return.

"Great. I'll, uh, come by the house around six? We can go get something to eat and maybe catch a movie or something?"

McKenzie just nodded again, but the smile never left her face.

"Okay. Cool. I'll see you tomorrow then," Ryan said.

McKenzie nodded again and then left.

Ryan lay down on her bed and just grinned. She had a date.