She opens her mouth to speak, not even sure herself what words might tumble out from between her quivering lips. Before even a sound escapes, however, she feels his fingers tracing lightly over her mouth.

“No,” he tells her. “You forget, as I said before. Not in useless words. Only with this…” She feels his hand slide down from her lips. Silently, slowly, lingering to graze her skin, his fingertips trail down over her chin, dancing lightly down her neck -- one finger touching along her breast bone, then both hands hovering, not really making contact with her breasts. Concentrating, straining, eyes still closed, she can feel the air enveloping her nipples heat up and seem to spin. He does not even touch them, just vibrates the atmosphere around them. First the tips, then the whole nipple, and at last even her aureoles feel like they are being ignited -- like a lit circle of gasoline -- and her breasts ache, wanting to be grasped hard, squeezed, pinched, slapped -- touched. His hands move downward -- without seeing them, she knows, can feel the static electricity zapping between his fingertips and her flesh. She sucks in her belly as his hands lower to it, then again that heating of the air as he gestures just at her hip bones and the girdle of her pelvis bone. She dares a slight jutting, her ass cheeks clenching tightly -- touch me there, she wants to scream…right there. You KNOW the spot.

Instead, she feels his hands move lower still and her body sags at the knees in disappointment and frustration. Then she feels more of the strange sensations of not-quite touching. Upward from her knees to her thighs, slowly rising until her thighs quiver with the felt heat, she splays her legs outward, just a bit, enough she hopes to make the invitation impossible to ignore. But his caressing of the air between them continues until it thrums along her thighs. She feels as if his body heat is making waves and vibrations between his hands and her skin. As she feels her labia begin to ooze wetness, she shudders and gasps loudly as he cups and grabs her ass and grinds himself against her, clockwise, once, twice, three times. Her hips echo his movements and she thrusts herself against him harder to find…empty space once more. Again, the silent scream reverberates through her mind.

But there is not even an instant to be angry, to feel the desolation of absence of his body against hers. Her wrist is pulled forward and the mad rush through the darkness starts anew…or continues as he pulls her roughly along the corridors of his strange domain. After what seems like an hour or an eternity of running blindly, she stumbles and he pulls her up again. Then her wrist is pressed hard against a flat surface. She hears something click sharply around it. The same is done with her other wrist. Then her ankles are tugged this way and that and again the same sharp clicks…and the unmistakable sound of the clink of metal links as they ring against each other.

She feels him step away -- almost stricken with grief as the sudden absence of his heat and intensity so near her. There comes two other sounds to her ears. The scraping of something heavy being dragged and dropped…and the soft susurration of lapping water as it splashes upward.

“Open your eyes,” he tells her.

At first, blurry then clearing, she sees him standing three or four feet away and inhales deeply. His arms are outstretched and his palms seem to glow in the dizzying bright light after so much darkness before. As her vision clears she sees that it is not his palms after all. He holds in each hand a gleaming wrist cuff, sparkling from the room’s countless candles. She follows the links attached to the cuffs and sees them leading down to the floor and across the floor to a three foot wide gap in the flooring’s stone panels. Dark, indigo water slowly surges in the gap. She steals a look back into his eyes, which are intensely watching her. Then she looks back at the chain and sees it continues across the narrow watery chasm and to matching links attached to her ankles. The links then lead back to a thick wooden St. Andrews Cross to which she is chained, ankles and wrists.

She cannot help the gasp, but tries to bite it back inside herself. Her eyes sweep up over the metal cuffs holding her wrists above her head and then downward again, staring into the inky darkness of the water separating her from him.

“Now,” she hears him say softly. “Now you may use words to tell me what you feared and how you stopped that fear…back there.” he gestures behind him. She watches fascinated as he places one cuff around his own wrist and repeats the action with his other wrist -- linking her to him. He smiles at her and nods. “And with your body as it is now…embrace me without moving.”