S L I C K is an erotica series for A+ members about titillation, torture, fucking and getting off.
This is the third installment of the erotica series Constellations, about finding and keeping kink connections and navigating polyamorous love.
Content notes: flogging, restraints, penetration
Reina was Bennett’s longest running play partner. They met at a queer burlesque night in 2005 when Bennett was performing a heavily choreographed lip sync with two other butches and one genderqueer femme to “My Humps,” and Reina surprised everybody by singing “Don’t Cha,” over a karaoke track, even the Busta Rhymes parts. She came out in a long-haired silver wig, curls bouncing everywhere. Her makeup was over the top, and she wore leather pants, a fishnet off-the-shoulder crop top over a silver bra, and silver sneakers.
She shamelessly flirted with everyone, backstage and on stage, but she went home with Bennett.
After she fisted Bennett — and they came, seeing stars — she lay back on the black bedsheets (Bennett was single and 25, and kept their place more like a bachelor pad than they would admit now) with her hands behind her head. Her dark skin was shiny with sweat in the streetlight coming in the un-curtained windows of Bennett’s Telegraph Hill apartment, and with her arms up she was all elbows and wrists, long and lean. It had been a cool summer, and the fog had come in the afternoon, but Bennett’s windows didn’t close all the way, so there was always a slight draft. In their vigorous, part-wrestling part-rough sex evening, the pillows and blankets all ended up on the floor. Now Bennett gathered them and spread the blanket out over them both. In their pillow talk, Reina told Bennett the story of how she got her name.
“I took it for myself, sugar.” That might’ve been when Reina’s nickname for Bennett started. She stared into the foggy outlines of buildings and cars under the glowing orange high pressure sodium street lights. “I’ve reinvented myself so many times, but this name has stuck. This guy I knew, while I was at Stanford, he used to call me ‘the little queen.’ Then Eva — you’ll meet Eva, she’s one of my best friends — she was the one who started calling me Reinette. She was a French major. And they thought I was pretentious!” Bennett laughed with her, trailing their fingers over Reina’s hip. They warmed at the idea of meeting Reina’s friends, already intimidated and excited to have this rock star in their life.
“What about you?” When Reina turned her wide brown eyes with long lashes and full attention to Bennett, they blanked with the intensity, and leaned in to kiss her instead of answering.
But what they were talking about came back to them after a moment. “Bennett is my mom’s last name, my middle name,” they said. “I always hated my birth name, it was always too girly. Even as a kid. Then on the softball team everybody was being called by their last names, but there was another Matthews on the team, so they started calling me Bennett.” They shrugged. “I like it. I like how it honors my mom but isn’t the name she gave me. That one just never fit.”
Reina nodded, not asking about Bennett’s dead name. They talked a little more, then raided Bennett’s fridge and ate cereal in the kitchen barefoot, before Reina called a cab.
They never quite courted for domestic and life partnership, and their connection waxed and waned over the years, sometimes seeing each other more often, sometimes less. Now, ten years later, they were happy together with biweekly dates and Bennett always looks forward to their time together. Reina was easy to talk to, and brilliant, always off on some adventure and bringing back stories to tell. Their rough play was a relief for Bennett, who needed to be taken down every once in a while, and it was easy to bottom for Reina.
Illustration by Raisa Yavneh
A week after Bennett’s disappointing date with someone they’d hoped would be their new sub, they were still brooding. Reina was doing her best to distract them and work it out of their system, but Bennett had a hard time letting it go. They had texted about it briefly, but Bennett didn’t talk about it when they got to Reina’s converted warehouse in South Beach. They negotiated with the ease of two long-time lovers, putting together the bare bones of a scene where Bennett would take off their shirt and go to the St. Andrew’s Cross, and Reina would get out her best floggers. After that, Bennett assured her they were packing, and Reina smiled her kid-in-a-candy-store smile, and they both knew how they’d wind up.
Bennett could barely feel the flogger’s tails on their back. It was all muffled, hitting the energetic wall that felt like concrete, not actually feeling it make contact with their skin. They loved being able to play with Reina freely; they loved how it added to their partnership with Paige, rather than took away from it. They loved how Paige got excited to hear about as much as Bennett wanted to share. They loved Paige’s open heart and open arms, her soft belly and how people relaxed in her presence. They loved switching with Reina, they loved switching with Paige, they loved living with Paige. So many things were just precisely right about their life and their constellation of intimates. But there was someone missing. Bennett couldn’t shake that. A full-time submissive, someone they could influence and train and control and maybe even daddy. Paige didn’t want that. Reina didn’t want that. Someone masochistic who would love showing off their bruises like badges of honor. Paige didn’t want that. Reina didn’t want that.
By the time Reina fell into a pattern, Bennett was starting to soften. The flogger’s message is love, one of Bennett’s mentors always said. The dense thud was working the concrete back into clay, clay into sand, and Bennett was starting to feel again. I can have what I need, they told themself. They repeated some words Paige had said, and some they told themself: It’s okay to be sad about this. Something is missing. Something I want. It feels like an ache in my heart I can’t get soothed any other way. It’s okay for me to want this.
Bennett didn’t notice when tears started. When Reina came over to wrap her arms around them, pressing her bare chest to their back, she wiped their cheeks.
“Okay, sugar?” Reina whispered at their ear, stroking their hair and their bare arms.
“Okay,” Bennett whispered back. Their body was heavy, they were limp between Reina and the cross. “Bed?”
Reina nodded and peeled herself away, easing Bennett over to her four poster bondage bed. They were soft and alive, every nerve ending electrified. They slid their jeans and socks off, setting their packing cock straight and through the o-ring in their RodeoH boxer briefs. Reina was already topless and took her pencil skirt with the big floral print and boy short undies off quickly. When she came over to kiss Bennett and encourage them both to the bed, Bennett whispered, “Tie me down?”
She nodded, a small, curt, professional gesture, then slid to the under-bed restraints, attaching them to Bennett’s wrists and ankles as they positioned themself on the bed. The tension of limited movement, the vulnerability of their limbs spread wide, and the relief of not being able to do anything flooded Bennett — a confusing, potent cacophony that overloaded their system enough to short-circuit any of the rest of what they were holding. Tears were coming again before Reina even got on top of them.
When she did, she split her thighs and straddled Bennett, tight and hot, scratching down Bennett’s chest and easing up and down. Bennett, a profusion of feelings, gave up on all their process thinking and just concentrated on feeling: Reina’s smooth thighs against theirs, her body weight on their hips, the moans and breathy sighs she was making; and the tight restraints securing them, keeping them safe. When Reina reached for the wand vibrator she kept in the drawer of her bedside table, Bennett was long overstimulated and was pretty sure they weren’t going to come, but they didn’t care. Reina worked her way to a powerful, beautiful climax. She fucked herself on Bennett’s cock, arching her back, head thrown back, with her beautiful long neck exposed, mouth open and gasping. She shook and thrashed, then collapsed down onto Bennett’s chest with their cock still inside.
Bennett was empty, spent, content. Their mind was calm, a rare treat. They knew something was still nagging at them, something more they wanted — from their life, their partners, their intimacies — but at the moment, it didn’t bother them. It was missing, but it would come. They were drinking in Reina’s hot, calculated lust, and Paige’s sweet partnership, and the openness of queerness that defied the rigid expectations and norms, and the other lovers who taught them to unlearn monogamy, and their heart swelled.
And at that moment, it was more than enough.
Loved this. Made me teary while reading. Thank you!