Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 104165 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 521(@200wpm)___ 417(@250wpm)___ 347(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 104165 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 521(@200wpm)___ 417(@250wpm)___ 347(@300wpm)
The scaredy cat in me wants to shout red right now. The chess player in me stays silent. If I say, “red,” he might do something really dastardly like the last few nights and play my own body against me again. I’d prefer a little pain to that, thank you very much. There’s got to be things harsher than that massaging flogger he used on me the first night and surely that’s what we’re graduating too, right?
I need him to finally hurt me so I can hate him like I’m supposed to.
His hands slide up my arm, caressing as he lifts it up to the cuff at the top right of the X. My heart starts to speed up, both at his nearness at my back and at being constrained again. Stark naked like this, I feel exposed except for where his closeness covers me.
But then, as soon as he’s cuffed my left wrist, he pulls back and I’m left there, spread-eagled and completely vulnerable. My instinct is to draw my limbs into myself and ball up when I feel like this—hide away, hide away! seems to call some voice from deep inside me—but I quite literally can’t, cuffed in this position. A small whine I can’t help escapes my throat.
“What, my pet?” Domhn says, his heat and the comfort of his weight at my back again. His breath is warm in my ear, and I sink back against him as far as the restraints will allow. “What are you feeling? Tell me.”
It’s only because I’m playing along that I actually respond honestly. Or so I tell myself. “I- I feel exposed.”
“That’s good,” he murmurs in my ear. “What else?”
“I want to curl in a ball and hide. I’d rather be in the cage. This is too exposed.”
He nods and for a second, just a second, I feel his forehead drop against the back of my neck.
“Thank you for telling me something real.” His voice is rough and intimate.
Then his weight disappears and again I’m left cold and clinging to a hard piece of polished wood.
There’s a long moment of silence before his voice comes back, and when it does, all the warmth is gone. “Our game will be one of impact play. There will be ten strikes, ten being the highest in intensity and one being the lightest.”
I blink at the wall, feeling like crying suddenly at the withdrawal of his intimacy. Which is stupid. This whole thing is just an emotional mind-fuck. He’s toying with me. Of course my emotions are all over the place and he knows it. He’s trying to throw me off-kilter. The fucking cunty bastard.
“You must take one strike of each intensity level, but you get to decide what order you take them in,” he continues in his instructional monotone. “You must ask for each blow, stating which number you want. Afterwards, say thank you, Sir, and ask for the next. But remember, you must take all ten.”
I breathe out, full of rage, grit my teeth, and say, “Ten.”
“Yes, there will be ten.”
“No, Sir,” I correct him. “I want number ten.”
He’s silent a moment. “You’re getting it backwards. One is the least intensity and ten is the—”
“I want ten. Sir. You said it was my choice.”
He can’t see my face but if he can feel any of the furious energy radiating off me, I’m not exactly playing a good little pawn. But fuck it. I have a feeling I’m about to go through a thing. I can worry about all my big plans ten strikes from now.
I can’t see him, either, but it’s as if I can feel him bristling as he walks towards the wall. I try not to picture the implement he’s picking up. I spent too much time the other day examining each one of them in detail. There were some vicious-looking rubber whips. What would that feel like biting against my flesh?
“Number ten,” he says, and then, with no more preparation, I hear the slightest whirring noise and then—
I see white and scream. Not from pleasure. This is pain, only pain. It explodes across the very bottom of my ass cheek, barely above where it meets my leg. Like a burn more than a blow. Tears immediately burst out of my eyes and down my cheeks.
“Now,” he says, sounding short of breath even though I’m the one weeping in pain here, and all he did was whip me. “Thank me and ask me for the next.”
How? I doubt if I can find my voice. I suck in a hiccupping breath. Though I suppose, as I finally do manage the breath, endorphins rushing in and the pain ebbing away with each heated pulse of blood towards the spot, I feel a little more back in control after the moment of absolute panic. My voice still wobbles as I make out, “T-thank you, Sir. Nine.”