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Spock binds her quickly, and does not explain why. He is not in the habit of using restraints, since testing Nyota’s self control is intriguing in its own right, but tonight he will not allow the opportunity for sabotage. He has planned every part of this project in the months leading up to shore leave, and he is leaving nothing up to chance. The hotel room he has acquired is well equipped, the staff discrete, and his supplies are all at the ready.
Nyota is too intelligent to fight as her hands are bound in front of her and then secured to one of several hooks on the room’s walls, but she does watch him. Nyota’s eyes are nearly as perceptive as her ears, and for this reason he has secured a blindfold, which he applies now. He wonders if that will prompt her to speak, but she merely clenches her jaw.
He begins to remove her shirt with his knife. It is a satisfying but very base method of removing her clothes, one he rarely indulges himself in. But tonight’s activity is already an indulgence, he reasons, so there is no reason to limit himself.
The bare skin of Nyota’s back is as pleasingly flawless as ever. Spock did extensive research to ensure that his intended project would not cause her permanent harm. He runs his fingers along her skin, probing at the muscle and bone beneath. Spock almost always prefers to face Nyota in their relations, to watch and feel and taste her, and it is a fascinating change to explore her this way. He can feel the tension in her muscles and mind, her need to understand why he is acting so abnormally.
He debates how much to tell her. There is no logical reason for what he wants, as Nyota will inevitably discover. “I do not intend to cause you extensive injury.”
“Then why all this?” She jerks on the restraints, tosses her head to indicate the blindfold. Her irritation is clear, which means he has not completely unnerved her. That is pleasing. He strokes the column of her spine again, admires the sharp dip between plans of muscle. It took him three days of deliberation to decide on the shape and location of the modification. There had been a plethora of possibilities to sort through, and he had settled finally on the most traditional, the one that would most evoke that ancient instrument of human self-control. It is inarguably hedonistic, but he has debated with himself and discovered that in this instance he does not care.
He swabs the area he intends to pierce with a sterilizing wipe, and with each pass against her skin Nyota shivers. Her anticipation increases his own, but he does not allow himself to be hasty. “Be still,” he commands.
“For what?”
Spock does not answer.
She grows truly frustrated then, so he waits as she fights against her bonds vehemently. It is useless, of course, and therefore illogical, but he accepts that it is a necessary emotional expression. There will be time to punish her for it later.
She stills eventually, only to turn to her most effective weapon. “I never took you for the tattoo type, Spock. Or do you just miss your Romulan friends?”
It takes eight seconds for Spock to be in an appropriate emotional state to reply. He brings his right hand down on her right buttock sharply. He smacks her again, and again, always on the exact same spot, until on the seventh blow she cries out. He grips her hip, presses his thumb into what will turn into a large, purple bruise and says: “I do not intend to tattoo you.”
Nyota stands stiffly for a moment, but then she nods, bracing her weight into her bindings as she takes deep breaths.
Spock leaves her to calm herself and retrieves the materials he intends to use. He arranges them on a tray and places it within easy reach of where Nyota is bound. Then he puts on the gloves, sterilizes the first needle he intends to use, and readies the first ring. He knows Nyota is listening to him, hearing things possibly even beyond Vulcan range, and he wonders what she makes of his movements. Can she determine what he’s doing? Does she attempt to guess the logic behind his actions? Has she guessed yet that there is none?
He returns to her back and finds the exact spot where he will place the top row of piercings, just below her shoulder blades, five and eight hundredths centimeters from the center of her spine. He pinches the skin, ascertains one last time that his measurements are correct, and drives the needle through her pinched skin.
Nyota hisses a breath as Spock withdraws the needle and replaces it with the ring before fastening it closed. He quickly applies more sterilizer and an anti-inflammatory, although that does not stop the cuts from bleeding. That is not distasteful to him: Nyota’s skin flushes far less easily than most of the other human crewmembers’, so he takes pleasure in exposing the blood beneath it.
He continues to pierce her skin, and the silence of his quarters is broken only by Nyota’s erratic breathing. Her hands and jaw are clenched, and Spock quickly grows frustrated with his gloves as he touches her over and over and gleans nothing of her mind. Nyota’s self control is always as admirable as it is frustrating.
When he has completed all twelve piercings he steps back and considers his work. The rings stretch in a perfectly symmetrical pattern down her back, flaring under her shoulder blades before narrowing in the middle back and widening again just above the dimples beside her lumbar vertebrae.
There is just one more addition before his project is complete. He takes the ribbon – red, for Nyota, always red – and lets it unfurl, running it in his hands until he has found the exact center. Nyota has turned her head shamelessly by this point, clearly listening to his every movement. Spock does not see disapproval in her profile, an emotion she sometimes has difficulty hiding, but he has seen her with Captain Kirk enough times to know that she can if need be.
He begins to lace the ribbon through the first set of piercings, and watches Nyota shiver at the feel of the fabric against her skin, even more so than she had at the piercings. He threads the ribbon through each consecutive pair of rings, careful to keep it smooth and flat. He pulls it taut but dares not exert too much pressure on the rings; ripping Nyota’s skin would ruin the effect.
Nyota is breathing slowly and deliberately now, and Spock cannot determine if it is because or in spite of his actions. He forces himself not to hurry as he pulls the ribbon through the last pair of rings and ties it into a perfectly symmetrical bow. The ends trail down the end of her back to rest on the edge of her skirt.
Spock is aching to take her now, even though it means proving undeniably that this exercise has been purely for his gratification. He makes himself hold off, to admire the criss cross of ribbons and rings and the little patches of blood drying around the entry points.
He stares until Nyota asks: “Are you going to stand there all night?”
She does not sound angry, or mocking, or even confused.
Spock removes his gloves, reaches under her skirt, shunts her underwear aside and finds her dripping.
Fascinating.
He pulls her skirt down with unseemly haste, nearly tearing it as he pushes it to the tops of her boots. Her underwear is ripped as he shoves it down. Nyota does not seem to care, pushing her hips back in a way that elongates her back. Spock’s breath hitches in his chest as he removes his own pants and undergarments, and he is pathetically frantic as he pushes inside her.
Nyota moans loudly as he enters her, so unrepentantly human. Spock fucks her hard, harder than he normally might, but staring at the ribbon and piercings is causing a kind of madness in him. The modification is so fitting for Nyota, this expression of control, precision, and undeniable sensuality pierced and tied onto her skin. He has spent so long thinking about it, hating that he could not stop thinking about it, that he can barely comprehend that Nyota does not find him weak for wanting it, for needing it the way he does.
She comes before he does, loud and shivering, and then hands in her bonds languorously as he drives himself to completion. He feeds himself on the satisfaction he feels from her under his hands until he is overwhelmed with sensation. When he is done he braces himself against the wall, careful not to agitate the piercings, and catches his breath. Nyota does not press against him, but she does not try to move away, either.
After he has regained composure there is nothing to do but untie her. He frees her hands first, and then slowly undoes the blindfold.
When Nyota turns to face him her face is curiously blank. Spock looks down quickly but she isn’t holding her knife.
She steps closer, stands mere centimeters away from him.
She smiles. “You know, I think there’s a mirror above the bed.”
A mirror. An unnecessary expression of decadence and vanity. But for once, Spock cannot find it in himself to disapprove.