Taboo or Not Taboo, That Is the Question

Sacchi Green

(You knew somebody had to use that title. Don’t judge me.)

Can you call something taboo if it hasn’t been forbidden by anyone with authority to forbid anything? How about if it just hasn’t occurred to anyone that such a kinky twist could exist?

I don’t know, but I do know that this story falls into the ”Don’t try this at home, kids,” category. In fact, don’t try it anywhere.

This is a lengthy excerpt from my story “In the Red Tent.” It’s close to being the whole story, but there are sections of considerable interest both before and after what you see here.  It was originally published in M. Christian’s Best S/M Erotica in 2002, but that’s out of print, so if anyone wants to see the whole story just ask me.

More to the point in terms of promotion, I’ve written two more stories with the same characters, “Bright Angel”  set at the Grand Canyon (which I’ve excerpted on Oh Get a Grip before) and “Meltdown” in the anthology Don’t Be Shy from Ylva Press. AND, most importantly, "Meltdown" is included in the recent collection of my own work, Wild Rides, from Dirt Road Books. The interactions between the characters have mellowed just a bit by the third story, but there’s stlll plenty of bite.

_______________

Excerpt from “In the Red Tent”
By Sacchi Green

"I don't give a damn who hears." I shoved my knee harder into her crotch. "You're the one who had to have a public campground with hot showers and all that crap. Yell or shut up, makes no difference to me."

A lie, and she knew it. I'd acquired a taste for her screams, of pain or fury or pleasure. But I gave her no time to think. One carabiner glinted from the nipple it clamped—not a real 'biner I'd trust to clip my ropes together on a sheer rock face, just a two-inch key-ring version, but as much as I could handle on myself when I'd tried it. I groped for another and gave her a matching pair, pressing my mouth hard over hers to eat the sharpness of her cry. When she tried to bite me I decided she was ready to move on.

"Want this?" I held up one of the cold gel packs I keep in the ice chest to ease my knees when they get too bad. She shook her head, still gritting her teeth against the pain. "Good, because you're going to need it more here." I jammed it suddenly between her thighs.
Her hips bucked at the icy impact against her warm, wet lips. I kneed it hard against her, forcing a moan, but when she spoke it was to gasp, "Harder, you dickless crone! Get something in there!"

I slapped her across her perfect, taunting face. Such exquisitely sculpted features—insured for millions, flaunted across screens and billboards, devoured by the masses; envied, desired, hated—no wonder she sometimes begged me wordlessly to mark her. Someday, the world and our jobs be damned, I might. But not now. Not much.

"You think you want it, you cold bitch?" I yanked away the gel pack and slapped it across her belly. It was still icy enough to make her jerk. "You'll need to be frigid for this one."
Beneath her defiance was a plea—startle me, jolt me, make me feel! If I never managed it again, I'd do it now, play my last card, use the one weapon in my unintended arsenal she'd never yet felt.

The ice axe I pulled from my backpack, though, was nothing new. "This is just for starters," I said, unsheathing it. "Don't relax too much."

The axe was an old friend, the first piece of my gear Maura had seen the day she'd snooped into my closet. The look on her gorgeous face had been so funny I'd grabbed my camera and shot frame after frame as she took in the rows of pegs hung with coils of rope, assorted carabiners, pulleys, hammers, saw-toothed adze blades, and axes with laser-cut heads and spikes like the jaws of fossilized carnivores.

She realized within seconds that what she saw was both more, and less, than she'd thought at first glance. Her delicate finger traced the edge of an adze blade, then twiddled the crotch of a limp harness with an elegantly manicured fingernail. "Roby," she said, with a sultry sidelong glance, "you've just got to show me how you work this thing!"

It hadn't started as an actual date, just dinner and a discussion of the next project we'd both signed on for. Maura, as far as I knew, dated exclusively those who were rich, powerful, older, and male. Since "older" was the only part I had going for me, I'd never taken her teasing seriously. We'd worked well enough together on projects over the past couple of years; she likes the way my camera can make her look real as well as beautiful, how I see her faults and use them to show something beyond beauty. Now I wasn't sure what she was up to, or, in spite of my body's intense reaction, what I was going to do about it. Maura was too used to adulation.

"That one's for climbing," I said, "but if it's riding you have in mind, I'll see what I can do."
 But all traces of laughter dissipated as though she hadn't even heard me. She gazed more intently into my closet, then reached for an axe, a piolet, lifted it from its peg, and lay its head flat against her cheek. I took it from her gently, then drew its spike infinitely lightly along the line of her collarbone. She didn't shrink away. I traced the edge of her plunging neckline slowly, slowly, down into the sweet valley between her breasts. All evening I'd been achingly aware that she was wearing nothing under her slim cashmere dress; now I could watch her nipples rise as the sharp point descended.

For years I had wanted to feel her soft, resilient flesh under my fingertips, my lips, my tongue, filling my mouth; but I knew with sudden certainty what she wanted from me now, what my weathered face and scarred body said to her. It had nothing to do with softness. With a quick twist of the axe I split the knit fabric open until it fell away from her flushed body. The warm musk of arousal rose from her cunt to mingle with the jasmine scent she wore.

Rock and ice and heights had always been the edges that drew me. Time and injury had diminished my reach, but not my hunger. In Maura's darkened eyes, her uneven breathing, I glimpsed other, unconsidered edges, sharper heights; and knew, from my own accelerating pulse, that I would give her what she wanted.

So it began. Four months later, in the red tent, I rested the axe head against Maura's throat, pressing just hard enough against her windpipe to leave a line that would be gone by morning. She tugged hard against the brightly striped handcuff leashes, meant to keep climbing tools from plummeting down a cliff face and now roped to the tent frame; but she was careful not to move her head.

I lifted the axe, reversed it, and drew the spike down her chest and then in a figure eight around each soft, smooth breast. Ice tools are fashioned more for strength than sharpness; the shallow red line would be gone by the end of our vacation week. She trusted me to never mark her body so that it would show in her modeling, however much she might sometimes beg; she trusted me to pierce her mind with more indelible force.

"What's the matter, can't find your way without following the dotted line?" she taunted, but without breath enough for the intended sting. This game we'd played too many times before. No bisecting her across belly and shaved pussy, this time, with a line drawn by tiny, sharp kisses from a blade.

"No more kid stuff," I said abruptly. "Close your eyes." I set aside the axe and flicked open the 'biners clamped to her nipples. The pain of returning circulation distracted her. She whimpered and screwed her eyes tight shut while I reached into my pack, past disinfectant and other medical supplies, to a bundle rolled in layers of bubble wrap. I eased my body from above to beside her, feeling the pain in my knees subside but hardly caring.

"Keep them shut!" I ordered. My prize rolled free of its wrappings into my hand. "Don't move a millimeter!" I gripped the handle and gently, ready to pull back in an instant, touched the cold metal to her eyelids. "What do you think you're going to get?" I murmured, moving it down across her nose to her lips. "Want a taste? Careful!" as her tongue came out to meet my challenge. Like my other ice tools, this one was more strong than sharp, but still dangerous. I was tempted to press it against her full lower lip enough to cut, remembering her mouth's tendency to swell into extremes of bee-stung succulence, but I resisted.

"Time to look," I said, "while you can." Her eyes opened, and the threat of the unseen gave way to startled incomprehension.

"What the hell!" she said, looking at the seven thick inches of spiral-machined, nickel-plated steel rod I held above her face.

"Think about 'where the hell,'" I told her. "This is an ice screw. When the ice is too hard and free of crevices for an axe or pick to hold in it firmly, this screw will force its way on through." I moved it down toward her belly, and she craned her head upward to watch. I pressed it lengthwise into her tender skin and then rolled it, leaving a wide trail of abrasion, no more then might be attributed, if it wasn't quite gone in a week, to a scrape against stone while climbing. Not that taking a rare commodity like Maura rock climbing in the first place wouldn't be enough to get me fired.

"See," I said, holding it up again, "these jagged teeth at the end get a start in the ice before the screw turns." I nicked her above the pubic bone, where even in a bikini ad it wouldn't show. Four tiny, curving slits made a lovely circle, like a secret mandala.

"How much of a start, I wonder, do you need before I screw you," I mused, lowering the tool out of sight and pulling on latex gloves. A prick on her soft inner lips made her gasp, and then two of my fingers were inside, working her. "An icy bitch like you needs some softening up before even a tough screw like this can work," I told her sternly, as her softness firmed with engorgement and her juices lubricated my hand until it was all I could do not to force her to come too soon. Her head was thrown back and her hips arched toward my pressure. She trusted me not to cheat her, as much as she trusted me not to mark her permanently where it would show—and not to let her know if what she thought she felt wasn't always what she needed to believe it was.

"One more look," I told her, holding up the gleaming screw with a hand freshly wet from her cunt. I touched my tongue to one finger. "I'm not tasting enough fear yet. You think you want it? Think again!" I gripped the steel threads with the other hand and then let her see the traces of blood seeping through slits in the latex from my cut fingers. "And that's without twisting," I said. "If it will cut my tough old hide, think what will happen deep inside where you're so soft, so tender...needing to clench so hard..." But there was already a keen edge of fear in the musk rising to fill the tent like incense from a ritual fire. As much of it was mine as Maura's. I leaned close to her and murmured, "Can you keep still enough? Keep from coming? Are you sure?"

Her eyes were wide and uncertain. Her beautiful lips quivered, but her voice was peremptory. "Get on with it!" she commanded, as though this were the last photo shoot of a long, grueling day when nothing had come out right.

"You'll get it," I said coldly, "when I decide to give it to you." I spread her thighs. Her lips were swollen, ready, deep pink glistening with the seepage of her arousal. I lowered the screw.
She trusted me. She knew I would pull on a fresh glove over my cut fingers. She knew, but suppressed the thought, that I would sheath the steel in latex; and she knew now how ineffective that barrier could be.  She didn't know, didn't need to know, that there were two steel screws, one deliberately blunted and sterilized. And she would never know how I hesitated over which to use until the very instant before the cold of the metal seeped through the latex to chill her flesh.
_______________


Note: Things happening in this story would definitely be considered taboo in such BDSM circles as I’ve observed, if it hadn’t been made clear that disinfectants and other medical supplies were on hand.