Free Bound to Accept by Nenia Campbell

lingering traces of both Tristan and Nutella. “It
couldn't hurt to try.”

    He texts me a few days later.
    Come over. Waiting for you.
    I look at the clock. It's
almost 6 P.M., which seems a little early for a booty call. If
that's even what this is. Is this a booty call? And, if so, am I really ready
to have sex?
    What do I wear? Jeans? That doesn't seem
dressy enough. It is evening, after all. You're supposed to look
dressier during evenings. But a dress seems too formal for the
occasion—unless he's taking me out to dinner, but I'm pretty sure
he'd offer to pick me up if he was.
    There's another text.
    Don't wear underwear.
    I swallow. Hard.
    That clears things up a bit. Whatever he's
planning is almost sure to be sexual, even if he doesn't actually
take my virginity. But I'm pretty sure he'd warn me if we were
about to have sex—at least implicitly, if not outright
explicitly.
    My jeans chafe too much between my very bare
legs, so I end up deciding on a denim skirt and a flannel shirt.
The skirt's a little on the short side but not too risque—at least,
not if I don't bend over—and I figure the busy plaid pattern will
hide the fact that I'm not wearing a bra.
    It does nothing to conceal the jiggling,
though, and on the bus ride to Tristan's, my breasts and my ass
wobble and bounce with every pothole. A creepy businessman-type
leers at me. Fucking creep.
    I stare at a Planned
Parenthood poster on the wall of the bus and wonder if it's as
painfully obvious to everyone else as it is to me that I'm not
wearing panties. The rasp of denim against my bottom, and the way
the flannel rubs against my erect nipples is a very odd sensation.
I feel naked beneath my clothing, which seems like it'd be stating
the obvious—we're all naked without clothing—but this is somehow
different. I feel as if I have been stripped of all protection,
laid bare, cracked open. Vulnerable .
    But then, considering what goes on in BDSM,
maybe that's the point. Maybe he wants to disassemble me, dismantle
me, to learn what makes me tick, all just so he can wind me back
up.
    I stand in his entryway
for a moment, hugging myself. I stare at his doorbell. Do I dare disturb the universe?
    I do. I do dare.
    Tristan answers the door on the first ring.
This time, he is wearing leather pants and an unbuttoned white
shirt, and leather boots that could easily be called
“shit-kickers.”
    He stretches out in the doorway, resting his
hand high on the molding. I watch his eyes flick over me, starting
at my Converse and then climbing back up to my face. I can almost
feel the drag of his gaze over my body, like an intimate caress.
“You look like a schoolgirl.”
    “ You look like an
incubus,” I retort, which makes his smile widen into a grin. A grin
that I can't help but notice looks…feral, and a little
dangerous.
    “ Maybe I am,” he says, and
lunges at me. I scream, and he quickly covers my mouth, swinging me
around so that I'm over the threshold, and shuts the door by
leaning against it. He reaches down to lock it with a
click.
    I can feel the heat radiating from his bare
chest as he runs the hand he locked the door with up and down my
torso, testing the material and the fastenings. This flannel shirt
has snaps instead of buttons, and when he realizes that, he gives
my shirt a yank, ripping it halfway open.
    I gasp against his palm as his other hand
slips inside my open shirt. What is he going to do? Is he going
to—?
    “ No!” I scream, as he
begins tickling me. It comes out muffled because of his hand. “You
jerk!”
    I start swinging my body back and forth, and
he lets his legs give out, and then we are rolling down the hall
and into his living room. He ends up on top of me, and pins my
wrists over my head with a muted slam. He is panting lightly,
grinning down at me, and his open shirt drapes over my body like a
curtain.
    “ This is an interesting
position.”
    “ What the hell was that
for?” I demand hoarsely.
    “ You said I couldn't