Free Natural Instincts by M. Raiya

jackknife.
    He opened the blade and returned to straddle me, so huge and hot that I couldn’t believe he’d actually fit inside me, and I couldn’t believe how badly I wanted him there again. I couldn’t stand not to touch him, and struggling against my bonds felt exquisite.
    “We need to do this to make the link complete,” he said. “Normally we would each make the offering, but I think, under the circumstances, it would mean more if I did it.”
    I nodded, which made the rope around my neck pull even tighter.
    He brought the knife to the center of my chest in one of the few spots left bare by the rope. Then he glanced at my face. “You won’t cry out, will you? Do I need to gag you?”
    That struck me as very funny. For the first time in almost as long as I could remember, I laughed aloud. I shook my head. Words to communicate with him would never be necessary. It was part of what I loved so much about him—he had not once given me any indication that it was important to him that I speak. He accepted me as who I was, just as it had never occurred to me to wish he wasn’t what he was.
    “All right,” he said. His eyes half closed as he marked me with a single line in the center of my chest. I writhed with the ecstasy of it. Watching him turn the blade on his own chest almost made me faint. I’d read that slipping into a strange, altered reality was sometimes gifted to people in the depths of submission. I’d only dreamed I would ever find myself there. He put me into that place and held me there as he pressed his chest to mine.
    The blood of a god transfixed me.
    For a long moment, I stopped breathing, stopped thinking. Then, his weight over me, I felt my heart pick up the rhythm of his as my breathing took on the tempo of his. I felt tears streaming down my face as he freed my legs with a single, quick tug on the rope. Then he was slipping inside me again, deeper and deeper, over and over. My arms were still bound, so I couldn’t clench myself to him, but his weight pressed against me, and his mouth found mine. His arms slipped around to hold me, trussed, against him. I was crying when he came inside me, and then, light as a feather falling to the water, I spiraled into ecstasy.
     
     
    H AL ’ S STEW had long gone cold before we got back to it, but we didn’t mind. We took more food and the champagne to the rock at the water’s edge and ate there. Actually, I sat nestled between Jon’s legs, leaning against him inside his arms. He fed me from his own bowl since my wrists were still tied, though more loosely now for circulation’s sake. He’d said that maybe he’d untie me in the morning so I could shower—or maybe not, and he’d shower with me. That sounded fine to me. He was talking about building us a cabin on the far side of the pond so we’d have more privacy, which was also fine with me. I’d already sent my boss a text telling him that I was resigning. He hadn’t been happy about it, but since I’d made him many millions, he’d wished me well. I’d sent another text to my landlord, asking him to box up my few belongings and put them in storage for me. That was it, as far as my practically nonexistent life until now required.
    I belonged to Jon. I understood what the phrase “beloved of the gods” meant. I wasn’t the first to succumb to a force of nature. But I didn’t think anyone had ever been happier to.
    “No,” Jon said after a while in the stillness. It was so late that the only sound was the gentle gurgle of water against the rocks. “It wasn’t a mistake that brought you in the wrong entrance. You’ve taught me a lot about life in the last few hours.”
    I stared at him.
    “I was as afraid of love as you were,” he said quietly. “I didn’t know that it would make me more, not less.”
    I smiled.
    He brought our shared glass to my lips. I sipped the sweetness. The fingertips of his other hand lightly touched my neck as I swallowed, as though he was giving his