I nodded.
The cool tails of a leather flogger dragged across my back.
I heard the crack before I felt the pain. There was no warm up, no gentle test to see if I could take it. The leather tails snapped against my backside, against and between the woven elastic design of the thong. It hurt where the flogger met fabric; it hurt more where it met my skin. My neck strained as I lifted my head, groaning against the gag.
“Shh,” he scolded. “They’ll hear you.”
Then snap, snap, snap, three stinging swipes that brought a ragged cry up my throat and tears to my eyes. I breathed hard through the pain, until it faded into the rosy glow of naughty pleasure I craved.
But if this was how we were starting out...
I had asked him to make me afraid.
Not being able to see what he was doing made it so much worse. Not being able to see him was another kind of torture altogether. I had to imagine his almost cruel smile, his forearms beneath his rolled-back sleeves.
The next strikes painted stripes of pain across the backs of my thighs, and I squeezed my eyes shut behind the blindfold. Hot tears sprang up, and I tried to blink them away, my lashes fluttering against the silk.
The song playing had a high electronic guitar line and a deep, sinister distorted bass. It only added to the foreboding I felt at being told I was a toy, just there for him to use.
He dragged the flogger between my legs, brushing my quivering center. Then he reached up and unsnapped something, and my hands were free, the cuffs broken apart but still encircling my wrists. “Turn over. Spread your legs.”
Oh, yikes. I’d hated when he’d used the flogger on me this way, before. But he’d given me an order. I got to my feet, sniffling at the tight feeling of my burning skin. I climbed onto the bed and spread my legs, my feet resting on the floor.
“No. Get them wide apart. I want those shoes in the air.”
I took a long, deep breath through my nose and reached down to hold my legs behind my knees, drawing them up and apart for him.
He stepped to the edge of the bed, the fabric of his trousers brushing against my bottom. Something shockingly cold touched my burning thigh, then I heard a snip, and another snip, and my nearly two-hundred dollar Agent Provacateur panties were just gone. I heard the whip of the flogger through the air, and my nails dug into my own skin as I braced myself. The blow didn’t land between my legs, as I thought it would, but on the duvet beside my head, and I yelped.
His hand closed over my throat above the collar, and I coughed. He didn’t let up. “Didn’t I tell you to be quiet?”
I nodded. His tongue traced the wet track of a tear up my cheek, to the edge of my blindfold before he released me. I gasped for air around the gag, and a thin stream of drool ran from the corner of my mouth. The position I was in, totally exposed, gagged, helpless, was utterly humiliating.
My nipples were hard, tight peaks. He pulled down my bra and let the ends of the flogger tickle each of them in turn. I stopped breathing; I wanted to know if he was going to hit me with the flogger again. I wanted to know if he was going to slap the flogger across my chest. I wanted to know how much it would hurt.
That’s control, Sophie. You want control. But not just over sex play. I wanted control over the entire situation. I wanted a certainty that Neil would be okay. I couldn’t have that. The more I lamented my loss of control, the less I was able to slip into the sub mindset and enjoy myself.
When my life had been utterly out of order, Neil had swooped in as this larger-than-life Dom and made me forget about everything. Now, he was entrenched in what I wanted to forget. I wasn’t sure I could get back into the sub space I’d become so good at inhabiting.
His fingers dived into the hair at my scalp, ruining my sleek ponytail to jerk me to the floor. My limbs tangled and clattered together as I fell with a cry. Then, in an instant, he was behind me, hauling me against his body to sit between his spread legs. He hooked his feet around my calves to force them apart. I heard the buzz of a vibrator, and I unconsciously bucked my hips.
Lying with my back against him— his back against the bed, if I judged our position correctly— I couldn’t feel his cancer. I couldn’t see the effects, the loss of hair, or the slight puffiness in his face. If I were leaning on his other shoulder, I would feel the apheresis catheter, but he kept my head against his left shoulder, held there with a palm against my cheek.