#rope work

“You defied me in front of my friends.” Sanji’s eyes were shooting lightning. “You questioned my skills. And worst of all — you publicly enjoyed that abomination. Not even mentioning that I had to resort to kids menu plain cheese pizza. Zoro will remember it forever. Everyone will.”

“Forgive me, my love.” You kept your voice sincere. “Let me show you my repentance and devotion. A full tea ceremony, just for you alone.”

Slick was already dripping down your thigh at the thought of being punished by Sanji and where it would lead you.

“I will not make it easy for you. You will be bound in a way that allows you to perform it, but teased throughout while I sip my tea and enjoy your servitude.”

You gasped. Oh. He would be tortured just like you. Possibly more. But you just looked down, letting your eyelashes flutter, and accepted your fate.

“Anything you find fitting my rebellious behavior, Sanji. I’ll take it.”

The rope ran from your throat down — a single line bisecting your chest, branching at the sternum into a harness that framed your breasts without covering, knots sitting at the breastbone and navel like punctuation. Around the waist it cinched twice, then dropped lower, a vertical line pressing exactly where it shouldn’t, exactly where it would make itself known with every movement. Your thighs wrapped together with some range of motion.

You could kneel. You could lift your arms, turn your wrists, perform every gesture the ceremony required. He had been precise about that.

Sanji helped you into the kimono after, smoothing the emerald silk over the rope with unhurried hands, adjusting the fabric at your shoulders, your sleeves. His fingers paused at your waist where a knot sat beneath the silk.

“Comfortable?” he asked.

The word landed somewhere between genuine and cruel. You knew he knew the answer.

“Yes,” you said.

He tied the obi himself, snug over everything, and stepped back to look at you. Whatever he saw satisfied him. That small smile again — not the evil smirk from the galley, something more tender. 

“After you, my precious lady.”

The soft afternoon light filtered through the screens, bathing the tea room in warm gold. Cherry blossoms floated in a shallow dish, the air thick with his perfume and matcha. You knelt and tried to think about your hands.

Sanji sat opposite you in a dark yukata, with something that wasn’t quite a smile. His visible eye was already dark.

You lifted the cloth and began.

Cleaned the utensils, scooped matcha — smooth motion, no hesitation. The chasen against the chawan, that particular wrist rotation, froth building green and fine. Every movement of your arms shifted the harness across your chest.

Every careful lean forward pressed the central line more firmly where it sat, and you kept your face still and your wrists fluid and your breathing measured, which was its own kind of ceremony.

Sanji watched your hands. Then your face. Then your hands again.

“My precious lady,” he murmured, voice already a shade rougher than his usual polish. “The way your fingers curl around the chasen… I could lose myself watching you for hours.”

You presented the bowl with both hands and a bow. His fingers brushed yours in the transfer and stayed a beat too long. He sipped slowly, and you watched him shift on his cushion, watched the flush creep up his neck, and noted it.

Good, you thought. Suffer.

The ritual continued — folding, rinsing, each step its own small test. The silk moved against your bare skin with every motion, and the rope moved with it, pressing and releasing and pressing again, never enough, always present. The dampness between your thighs had become obscene. You prepared the second bowl with perfect form and hated him a little.

Sanji’s posture remained correct. His breathing did not. You could see the effort, your boyfriend holding himself in place by will alone, jaw slightly tight, that curved eyebrow twitching. He’d expected to enjoy this cleanly. You could tell he hadn’t anticipated how much watching you concentrate would undo him.

Good, you thought again. Worse for you than for me.

You weren’t entirely sure that was true anymore.

By the time you made the final bow your composure was technically intact and practically in ruins. The rope had been a constant presence through every gesture — tightening when you reached, shifting when you breathed, the central line an unrelenting reminder of exactly what was waiting at the end of this.

At last Sanji set the bowl aside, rose from his cushion and came around the table without hurrying.

He untied the obi and the kimono fell open. Sanji sat back on his heels and looked at you with an expression that had nothing polite left in it.

The rope still framing everything, your skin flushed from an hour of ceremony and restraint. 

“It was my pleasure serving you.”

“You were absolute perfection,” he said, and his voice had lost its smoothness entirely. He took your hand and brought it to his lips, pressed his mouth to your palm, held it there. His breath was unsteady. “These hands. The entire time.”

 He knelt beside you and reached for the rope at your ankles first — unwinding it slowly, one pass at a time, his fingers tracking the line of it down your calves. No rush. Making a point of having none.He freed your knees. Your thighs. Set the rope aside in a loose coil.

The harness across your chest and the line at your center he left exactly where they were.

“There,” he said quietly. “My precious lady.”

Sanji lowered you onto the futon. A kiss came first,  gentle and sweet, tasting matcha. His hand cupped your jaw as he kissed you harder, pouring every ounce of pent-up desire into it until you were both breathless.

Only then did he begin to move lower.

Sanji’s mouth traced the rope with torturous care. He started at the knot at your sternum, pressing open-mouthed kisses along the line that framed your breasts. His tongue followed, hot and wet, licking slowly along the path.He lingered at each knot, sucking lightly, teeth grazing just enough to make you gasp. When he reached the knot at your navel, he circled it with his tongue, then dragged a slow, broad lick downward, following the vertical line that pressed so cruelly between your folds.

Every kiss and lick made the rope shift against your clit. You arched, a broken moan escaping as his mouth worshipped the harness. He sucked at the sensitive skin just beside the rope, then licked directly over the line where it disappeared between your thighs, the tension maddening.

“So wet,” he murmured against you. “Through all of it. You hid it beautifully, my precious one.”

You pulled his hair. He hummed appreciation against you and sucked your clit until your thighs shook and you stopped being composed about anything at all.

The orgasm broke like everything you’d been holding through the ritual releasing at once. Sanji gentled you through every aftershock, murmuring in your skin, hands stroking the flesh beneath the rope. Only when your breathing began to steady did he rise, shed the yukata, and look at you the way you’d been waiting to be looked at since the galley.

“May I have you completely, my lady?” Still that politeness. Somehow, still.

“Yes. Right now. Immediately.”

He laughed and kissed you deep. You tasted matcha and yourself. Then he pushed inside in one slow complete thrust and stilled, letting you feel the stretch of him, the rope pressing between your bodies where you met.

“Every time,” he breathed against your mouth. “You feel extraordinary every time.”

He began to move — long deliberate strokes, pulling back almost fully before driving deep. The chest harness rubbed against your nipples with every thrust. His hand gripped your hip and you stopped thinking in words.

The control he’d held through the entire afternoon — through the galley, through tying the rope, through watching you kneel and perform and flush and squirm and refuse to break — came apart all at once. His pace turned wild and possessive, the sounds of your bodies making love filled the quiet room alongside your moans and his increasingly ragged breathing.

“That’s it,” he gritted out, still somehow sweet, sweat on his forehead. “Take every inch, my beautiful lady. You’ve been so perfect.”

The second orgasm built fast under the pressure of him and the rope both, cresting hard when he ground against your clit and closed his mouth over your neck at once. You clenched around him and he followed with a low broken groan, burying himself deep, hips stuttering through the finish.

Afterward he gathered you against his chest, pressed his lips to your hair and stayed there.

His heartbeat was loud beneath your ear. You felt it gradually slow while the tea room settled around you both, matcha aroma still faint in the air. 

He reached up after a moment and found the knot at your sternum. Sanji worked it loose with careful fingers, then the next, unwinding the harness slowly, hands tracking each pass of rope across your skin as it came free. When the last of it fell away he ran his palms over where it had been, your ribs, your waist, as if checking the work.

“Alright?” he murmured into your hair.

“Mm.”

He pressed a kiss to your temple. Your cheek. The corner of your mouth. His hands settled at your waist and stayed.

“You were magnificent,” he said quietly. “My precious lady. Every moment.”

You considered your options. Decided on honesty.

“Did you bring the rope to remind me how it all started”

“May be. Or maybe I was just waiting for the right moment.”

“Next time I’m putting ketchup on your pasta” 

A pause. You felt his chest move trying to hold the laugh. “Get some rest” he said, with great dignity.

You smiled against his skin and closed your eyes, melted into his arms around you, the rope in a loose coil somewhere behind you neither of you was thinking about anymore.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​