You’re Beautiful in Rope

I moved as he asked and knelt in the middle of the throw. He came behind me and got to his knees also, his thighs outside mine. He must not have been kneeling down though, because he was still taller. His heat radiated onto my back, though he wasn’t quite close enough to touch me.
He touched a finger to the front of my temple. “Closed, please.”
I shut my eyes and took a long, deep breath. As I finished the breath, he leaned forward, against my back, and wrapped his arms around my torso, just below my breasts. Then he took a long, deep breath. His chest pushed into my back as he expanded his lungs. His chest hair raked along the skin of my back. As he released, I realized I was releasing a breath as well. He breathed in again. I breathed in. Out. Out. In. In. He held me tight as we breathed together. I found my anxiety slipping away as I breathed there, in the dark with him.
He took my left arm and raised it over and just behind my head, then put pressure on my forearm, urging toward my right shoulder. My muscle tightened with the movement. He held it for several seconds, then gently lowered my arm. He did the same with my right arm, angling it over my head and to the left. I felt the stretch in my triceps. Was that what he was doing? Stretching me? That seemed odd.
He slid his arm through my elbow toward my back and pulled my arm against his chest. My shoulder muscles stretched. And then he did the same on the other side. The whole while he continued to breath, pausing to press his chest against my back, which made me breath in time with him. He wrapped his arms around me again and hugged me tight to him. We rocked forward and back for a long moment. Everything—his movement, his scent, just his presence—soothed me, and I felt more relaxed than I had in a very long time.
He remained against me, but let his hands roam over my skin. His palms skimmed my arms and my belly—I tried hard not to be self-conscious. He rested his chin on my shoulder as he moved his hands down across the outsides of my thighs. His breath tickled along my neck and collarbone. Then he wrapped around me again, and we rocked for a few moments more.
One of his arms left me briefly and then returned. Rope, a little bit scratchy and smelling of grass, rubbed against my shoulder, across my chest and up my neck. He hadn’t uncoiled it. It felt like a big lump of rope. His arms moved again, and I heard the rustle of rope on rope. Then a strand—double strand?—fell across my thighs. He dragged it slowly and it tickled my skin as it moved. He drew the piece up over my breasts and over my shoulder, the whole thing trailing lightly over my skin.
My entire body woke up. My skin received every touch from the rope or from him with a jolt of electricity. As he ran the strand behind my neck and down my other shoulder, goose bumps broke out and I shivered. My breathing had quickened, and the low moan from my throat surprised me.
His hand trailed down my left arm and grasped my wrist. He brought it close to my body, and I felt rope being wrapped around it. I peeked from beneath my lashes and saw him anchoring the rope around my wrist. I closed my eyes again. I didn’t really need to see. I’d realized that this wasn’t about seeing.
Using the long end of the rope, he brought my wrist up to my right shoulder, positioning my arm across my chest. He pulled the rope down my back, across and around the left side of my torso. He made it tight, and the rope bit into my skin. It hurt, but didn’t, at the same time. He angled me back against him, and I leaned, letting my head roll back on his shoulder. His scent—cloves and sweetness—hit me again. I breathed deep.
He wrapped the rope around my arm and my belly from left to right. He pushed me forward with a hand in the middle of my back until I was leaning down, head almost to the floor. I felt him pull the free strand through the piece hugging my back, and then he pulled me up by the rope. It bit into my skin in the front, with painful little lines. I swayed into him again.
The rope came against the front of my neck, but gently, his thumb guiding it, brushing my skin back and forth. A little twinge of panic tried to overcome me, but I pushed it down. He was giving me sensation. He wasn’t even tightening the rope. I relaxed again.
After that, things just became fuzzy. He unwound the rope from me, leaving the anchor on my wrist. Then my arm was drawn behind my back, and he wrapped the rope around my torso, binding my upper arm to my side and my wrist and hand to my back. He never tied the rope off. His palms roamed over my skin, warm and earnest. He left trails of heat wherever he touched.
He shoved my body forward again and then covered me with his. The weight of him held me down. I didn’t feel fear, but rather comfort. His weight comforted me.
Surrounded. Cocooned. Safe.
My mind turned off, and I floated. His movements against me still registered, but only from a distance. I had no real concept of the order in which he did things. Nothing hurt. Everything felt good and right.
“You are beautiful in rope,” he whispered very close to my ear.