Light my Fire Alison Tyler

For our first anniversary, I planned a romantic evening for two. As romantic as ten bucks will get ya. Ella Fitzgerald crooned low on the radio. A bottle of cheap white chilled in the fridge. The lights in our apartment were dimmed (I put in low-wattage bulbs). And in the center of the dining room table stood two candles and a pack of matches.

When Eleanor got home, I took her coat for her and then led her into the kitchen. We'd watched Body of Evidence the night before, and no matter how silly the film is, I'll admit now that the candle wax scene with Madonna and Willem Dafoe had really turned me on. And anyway, I'd thought of this situation previously, in my own twisted fantasies, and I was ready, finally, to make my own mental movie a reality. Of course, in order to do it right, I needed my lover's consent.

I'm lucky. Eleanor and I usually operate on the same frequency. When she saw the unlit candles on the table, she knew instantly what I was telling her, what I was requesting of her. She smiled as she came toward me, taking me into her arms and kissing my forehead lightly. Then she whispered, "Get undressed. Lie down on the table."

We have a six-foot dining room table. It's like a picnic table, except that the wood has a weathered, almost silky finish to it. I followed her orders, stripping and climbing up, moving the candles to the far edge. Eleanor bent to kiss my lips before she picked up the pack of matches.

I was trembling all over, my body desperate to know what this new type of pain would feel like. My head swam with pictures of the wax dripping onto my naked skin. My cunt pooled with the thick liquid of my sex. I couldn't still myself. My hips beat a rhythm of their own against the hard wood beneath my ass.

Eleanor stood back from me, nearly laughing at the trauma I was putting myself through. I wished shed tie me down, or at least capture my wrists. She was wearing a floral-print silk scarf. She could do it in no time.

It's easier for me to take pain when I'm tied. But she didn't. She knew that I wanted this experience. And that I wanted it badly enough that I would stay still for her. Eleanor loves it when I force myself to behave.

I watched as she opened the matchbook. The match lit on the first strike, a burst of fire that she touched to the wick of the white candle and then shook out. When I closed my eyes, the red and orange spark of flame reflected on my lids. By the time I opened my eyes again, Eleanor was magically closer, inches from me, and she kissed me as she held the candle over my chest.

"You're pretty by candlelight," she said softly, into my mouth. "You look ethereal. Angelic." With her free hand, she stroked my blonde hair, wrapping one curl around her fingers.

"Do it," I wanted to say. "Just tilt the damn thing so that I can feel it." Sometimes wondering about how much something will hurt is actually worse than the actual pain. (This is definitely true for tattoos.) Sometimes anticipation alone can make me cry. But I knew that if I begged her, she'd deny me. She loves our games, has all the rules memorized. In fact, she wrote the rules herself.

Her lips met mine again, then traveled a line down my neck to my collarbones. The candle was still upright in her hand, and I stared at the flame as she nibbled further down, licking me, biting my skin, leaving marks with her mouth. I remembered reading a story in which the main character was hypnotized by staring into a candle flame. I tried to hypnotize myself, but it didn't work. Instead, I was still, on the table. I held my body perfectly in line, trying to be good for her. Trying to please her so that she would please me.

She moved further, down my flat belly, dipping her tongue into my navel, French-kissing my cunt when she reached it, her tongue making crazy circles around my clit.

I watched the candle. My eyes seemed to blur as I looked at the flame. It was purple, then suddenly yellow, then red, then gold. Eleanor was doing naughty, devious things to my cunt. Her whole mouth was sealed against it. My pussy swam with juices, and Eleanor seemed intent upon licking me clean, as impossible as it might be. Each drop she flicked away with her tongue was replaced by ten more. My pussy was a liquid sex factory.

And still, that candle stayed upright in Eleanor's hand. The wax now was beginning to slide down the sides, though. If she wasn't careful, her fingers would get burned. As the image flickered in my mind, Eleanor tilted the candlestick and dripped the first few dots of wax onto my skin. I didn't see it coming, didn't know to prepare myself, had grown too relaxed from her tongue probing me down there. And when it happened, I lost my breath and caught my breath, and bucked up against her.

She grinned at me, her lovely face all smeared with my shiny come, and she said, "You like that, don't you?" as she tilted the candle and drew a line of melting wax down my stomach, getting ever closer to my cunt. "Oh, the girl likes that?" Eleanor continued, blowing on the wax as it hardened, creating such a wash of confusing sensations within me that I didn't know what I wanted. More. Less. For her to stop. For her to keep on going.

She continued, lapping at the generous flood of juices with her tongue, keeping me on edge with a few occasional flicks of her wrist. The candle wax drips made a line down my belly. And as I focused on the jewel-toned gold and purple flame, as I watched my lover's head bob up and down on my cunt, I shuddered and felt those spasming contractions wash over me.

Eleanor grinned when she moved away from me, watching as I began, slowly to pull myself together. Finally, she whispered, "Candlelight always does make things more romantic, doesn't it?"