Beauty in the Broken

“Ten,” he says behind me.

He runs the thin, smooth wood over my globes, letting me feel the potential viciousness of his instrument of choice. I pinch my eyes shut.

When the first lash falls, my upper body bows off the bed. I suck in a breath, but gag on the ball in my mouth. It’s excruciating. I thought the whip was bad, but this pain is thinner, deeper. It burns to the bone. The second has me writhering, trying to make myself flatter on the mattress. Tears steam from my eyes. I bite into the ball in my mouth, but it doesn’t help. He hits me again before I have time to catch my breath. I wail around the fabric that muffles my sounds. It feels as if I’m suffocating. Spots dance in front of my eyes. I wish it was from a deprivation of oxygen, but it’s from pain. I can’t stand it. I won’t survive it. Every muscle in my body clenches. Cramps pull my calves and feet tight. I scream into the ball of socks, the cotton sucking up my saliva and leaving my throat dry and burning. I try to block it out, pray to faint, but I’m awake and sensitive, feeling every lash that whooshes through the air and turns my skin into a canvas of fire.

There is a point of relief, after all. My vision starts swimming and something else pushes through the pain. Arousal. The lower half of my body is glowing. Heat devours my globes. My clit throbs. Grinding my hips on the edge of the bed, I seek distraction for the ache. Damian lets me, and just as well, because when he cries, “Ten,” the lash that follows cripples me. It hurts a thousand times worse than all the others. I don’t have to look to know this is the one that broke skin. Shaking, I half-choke and half-sob. The magic word is ten, but the hurt is far from over. It’s too deep under my skin. It’s traveled all the way to my heart and nestled in my soul.

I’m clenching my knees and rubbing my thighs together when his hand comes between my legs. He touches me where it aches with pleasure until a new kind of burn starts to build. My sensory impressions are cross-wired. Raw need overtakes the pain until my lower body throbs with desire. I’m high on it, relaxing my muscles and giving over to the touch.

Damian says pretty words of how good I’m doing, but they’re nothing but white noise. I home in on the rough timbre of his voice, letting it stroke my senses as the calloused pad of his finger strokes inside me. He enters me with another finger in my dark entrance. I’m hot with fever, burning up. I push back against his palm and make disgusting noises around the gag. I’m submersed in a fire where climaxing will be my only release. He stokes it higher, raining kisses over my back and in my neck, beckoning me to look at him.

I try, but my eyes won’t focus. He’s got something in his hands. Lube. He tells me to tell him no and squirts cold, slick liquid around my anus. I pinch my eyes shut again, because I can’t cope with more than processing the different sensations I’m feeling. It’s already an overload, the way he puts pressure on my dark entrance with his cock, and how the muscles stretch to accommodate the large head.

I can’t tell pain from pleasure, any longer. It hurts when he pushes in, and it feels good in other places. It feels unbearably good where his fingers are pumping inside my pussy. He’s going too slowly. I can’t take it anymore. It hurts too much. I just need him deeper, to go from torture to pleasure. I push back, but he holds me down with his hands on my hips, keeping me still.

“Shh. You’ll tear.”

Everything is already torn. My heart is bleeding, and my skin is mourning the loss of what we could’ve had even as the burn twists into pleasure.

I heave and remember I can’t swallow.

He pumps, going shallow. It takes a long time, so long I start to drift in a sea of happiness. Just when I’m about to go under, he presses a finger on my clit. I start to contract around him, too full, too filled with Damian. He’s in my pain and under my skin. A band of pleasure pulls my womb tight, and my vision splinters into spears of light. He moves faster, igniting fresh pain and pleasure. The sound of my scream is lost as he releases himself in my body. He stabs his hips into my burning buttocks. His muscles lock. He grunts and pushes me deeper into the mattress. Just when I think my ribs are going to crack, he lets up and pulls out.