“This isn’t like the last flogger. The tails of this one are thinner and braided. It stings, but it’s beautiful for all that. What is your word, Ruthie?”
“Red, Sir.”
“Let it begin,” he said quietly, and then the flogger fell.
She hissed, she yelled, she pleaded. It was beautiful, but it was agony as well because the intent she’d heard in his voice earlier was packed into every strike. He wanted to scare her off, to show her he wasn’t what she wanted.
Yet every mark he left was infused with love, and the heat spiraled, down her back, over her bottom, down her legs until she became a supernova of want and need. It settled in her stomach, moving lower into her pussy until she knew she was fire.
The burn wasn’t sweet; it was more than that. How many times his flogger fell she didn’t know. She felt the coolness of the chains in her hands, felt her body shifting to avoid the blows, and then Tobias would stroke her skin with his palms, ease the sting and kiss away the fire with his lips. Always the sting ended in pleasure.
He knew her body and played it masterfully, giving her enough soft caresses to counteract the pain from the stinging flogger. She craved the thuds of the first flogger, finding that the sting centered her mind and allowed her a deeper insight into what she wanted. As the pain came it looped through her soul and then departed, and through it all was Tobias.
Her rock. Her love. Her Dom.
The tails fell over and over until he was begging her. “Say the word, Ruthie! Don’t let me do this to you,” he pleaded.
She remained silent, her mind shut down to anything but the bite of his flogger and the pleasure of its sting.
“Ease me, Sir,” she finally managed around a mouth seemingly filled with cotton.
She was gone, floating in a space she’d never been before—her body demanded surcease while her heart demanded everything.
He cursed, and she heard it as if from a distance. The flogger dropped to the ground and he grabbed her hips, canting them to the angle he wanted, and then his cock was between her thighs, a heat all its own.
“Say the word, Ruthie!”
He was pleading with her. Her soul insisted she give him what he wanted, but her mind commanded her to remain silent. This was her chance, and if she failed here, he would be lost to her.
“Please, Ruthie, say the word,” he said at her ear. “Don’t let me do this to you.” The same plea again, and it almost broke her.
“Fine,” he ground out. “But I won’t forgive you for this.”
Then he was inside her, his long, thick cock sinking deep, filling her and taking her over with a single thrust. He rode her through it, not stopping, setting a pace that had her crying out with every thrust. He was gentle, then hard, then harder, and it was glorious.
She flew so high she touched the sky, but when he stilled behind her and pulled out without coming, she knew she’d lost him.
It had all been a lesson. Could she handle him? Yes. But he’d shown her he would never accept her submission. He wanted more. Ruthie wasn’t enough.
He uncuffed her hands, and when her body dropped into his arms, he picked her up gently and carried her to his bedroom. She knew the path, counted his steps, and tried to keep her sanity. Her body ached, but it wasn’t painful. Her heart hurt and it was excruciating.
He hadn’t come. He had the last say, and by not giving her his release, he’d shown her what he’d apparently known all along—he didn’t really want Ruthie. Not all of her, anyway.
Her mind was numb, her body depleted. Her overall emotional state wasn’t conducive to figuring this out right now.
Tobias gently laid her facedown on the bed. The silk of his sheets was a taunt to her body so she groaned, because she couldn’t handle any more sensory input at this point
.
He murmured nonsensical things to her, and she floated in her subspace, recognizing that he was applying balm to her back and small kisses over his marks, but she couldn’t be bothered with it.
“I wish you hadn’t come here tonight. I wish you hadn’t pushed me, Ruthie,” he said against her neck. He shifted and lay down beside her, careful not to touch her back but running his hands through her hair. The hair he’d pulled earlier.
His hands traced her cheeks, over her lips and the shell of her ear. A tear fell from her eyes because even though she was floating, she knew that when she woke up he would be gone. He wasn’t going to give her what she wanted, and Ruthie wondered what was so broken inside him that he couldn’t see he’d obviously taken her to heaven.
But the darkness tugged at her mind, and her body gave over to it.
“I love you,” she whispered, determined to leave him with those words.