Eddie called me in an absolute panic. Her gobbledygook made no sense until I managed to calm her down. I contacted Mona, and the pair of us converged on Eddie’s place and took her to the hospital where Helene had been sent for treatment for shock.
“Am I correct, Marina?”
My left eye twitches with the desire to tell him he is wrong, but even the thought makes my stomach churn again. Not a good sign. Hell, since when did submissive traits and ulcers work together? Christ.
“Yes. Sir.” I tag on the word, because at this moment, he isn’t Nate but Sir. My Sir.
“So, there’s no reason for you to fly to New York, is there?”
“N-no, Sir.”
Hearing the quiver in my voice, he leans forward and cups my cheek, tilting my head up so I look him in the eye. “I know you want to protect them, Marina. But sometimes, you can’t. They have to live for themselves. Their choices, their decisions. If they knew that you were kneeling at my feet, they’d probably be concerned for you. They might wonder if you were in an abusive relationship. They don’t know you need this and they probably wouldn’t understand it. What goes on behind closed doors...only the people involved know the truth.”
My mouth trembles as I whisper, “I do need you, Sir.”
Saying the words isn’t necessary, he hasn’t made me say them, but they just pop out to say hello. The truth will out. Isn’t that what they always say? And for that space of time, it most certainly has.
At that moment, I know that whatever happens, bad or good, in the world outside of this room, to people in our circle of friends, he will always respect me and them, so long as I don’t disrespect our relationship.
That has to come first. Always.
Another lesson learned.
Once again, like a mind-reader, he murmurs, “You can always come to me, Marina. I’m always here for whatever concerns you have. Not just as your Sir, but as your partner. I’ll always listen and try to help. But what we have must come first. You come before anyone else in my life just as I must in yours.” He sighs. “These last few days, you’ve been too good. You haven’t been my Marina.” His Marina. The words send shivers down my spine in contentment. “This had to come, and I’m sorry it did over a subject like this. You’ve already been disciplined, but by completely forgetting your role in our relationship, you undermined it. You need further discipline, don’t you?”
I damned myself for putting us in this position. Where my friends are concerned, I’m as volatile as TNT. When Mona was threatened after the arson attack on her apartment building, my panic was total.
Now, with Mona and Eddie incommunicadas, that panic has returned and completely fucked up my thought process. I’d acted like the Marina of old and not the new Marina I’m learning I truly am.
“Yes, Sir.”
“You understand why, don’t you? I’m not punishing you for caring about your friends, but for forgetting about what we are to each other. For forgetting to ask my opinion, for overlooking me. That is verboten, Marina. You must always ask and concede to me. Are we clear?”
“Y-yes, Sir.”
“Good. Now stand up and go to the bed.”
I do as ordered and watch as he struggles to his feet. One of his wounds has been on the borderline of infection for the last few days and his suffering has increased. Even though he does it silently and without complaint, I know and hurt for him. That I’d done exactly as he’d said, forgotten about him, makes me feel so incredibly guilty. He could take the belt to my behind again, lash it against my bare butt, and I would accept it gratefully.
My own guilt is more acidic than his chastisement.
Especially as he is so focused on my own well-being. He only came to the room to bring me a tray of food, for God’s sake, and I completely forgot him... Shame and horror wriggle around my insides, and I watch as he heads over to the dresser and returns with three ties.
Two, he straps to my wrists, and after indicating that I should lie down, he ties me to the bed. The final one he wraps around my face, covering my eyes.
Blind and my body tethered, isolation swamps me.
“I’m going to leave you here for half an hour. You’re not to fall asleep. You’re not to utter a word. You’re to lie here and think about how you should have approached me. Do you understand?”
I whisper that I understand and his footsteps sound loud in the room, before the door opens and closes again. Silence, nothing but silence. Even knowing I'm safe in Nate’s bedroom, I feel inordinately uncomfortable lying on his bed stark naked.
For the first few minutes, I spend time worrying about somebody walking in to clean his room. It is a stupid thought, because Nate told me that I’d clean our quarters, and considering, even in New York, I’ve always done it, the idea doesn’t bother me even though I knew he thinks it’s a chore.
While I know nobody will come in, I worry that someone may not see the memo to leave Nate’s quarters alone.
I’d like to say I wasted five minutes on that, but in the silence, alone, my sight stripped away from me, five minutes feels like an hour.
And then, my misery and guilt returns. I’m a drama queen. I know it, Mona knows it, and so does Eddie. If I get mad, I explode, and the fallout is immense. My anger is nasty and mean and frantic. I understand Nate’s fury and I know I was wrong.
A part of me questions whether I deserved the punishment I received and my natural response is to say, ‘No. Of course not.’ I don’t particularly want to be chastised. But I’ve learned that want and need are two different things.
Do I want to be tied to the bed?
No.
Do I need it?
Yes.
I’ve been bad. This is Sir’s way of disciplining me, of teaching me wrong from right.
And I did do wrong. I can’t believe five days of zombie-walking was instantly overtaken by a blast from my recent past. But considering how new to this I was, it could only have been expected.
For half an hour, thoughts and questions roll around my mind. I repeat the scene in my head, replaying it and changing the way I reacted and how I should have behaved. It’s difficult, and if I ever have another hissy fit, I know that no amount of discipline will make me think before I leap. If anything, that makes me feel even guiltier.
Shame and humiliation at my lack of control, at my inability to control the temper that rarely fuses but once it does is like an atomic blast, has me trembling. At this point, I know I’ll always be a disappointment to him. That I’ll never be able to please him totally and the tears start flowing.
I manage to work through the sobs of self-disgust and in the aftermath, lay there quietly, waiting for my time to come to an end. I don’t even have it in me to be angry at the time-out, a punishment for kids. I deserve it and I understand why Nate chose it. Corner time and being restrained are because I broke so many rules my butt would have no skin on it after the requisite number of spankings.
I cringe at the number of fucks and other curse words I used, the amount of disrespect I threw his way... and as my mind whirs in the silence, I hear a noise that brakes my concentration. A faint whisper of sound, like fabric brushing against fabric, something I wouldn’t have heard had I not been so reliant upon my ears after having my vision taken away from me. Somehow, I know Nate is here. With me.
And that alone makes me start to sob again. He hadn’t abandoned me. Even in this, he is protecting me, ensuring I am okay.
I didn’t hear the door open, so I know he didn’t intend for me to realize he is here, and then his hands are at my wrists, releasing them from the bedposts and tugging the blindfold away from my eyes. Blinking up at him through tear-laden lashes, I watch as he climbs on to the mattress and lies down beside me. As he reaches for me, I pour myself into his arms. On his side, he angles one leg upward and I hook both of mine in between them. Tucked into his embrace, surrounded by him, my face resting against his throat, I sob out my apology.
I’ve never cried so much in
my damn life. Not even when Jimmy died. I’d been stoic in my grief. Silent and miserable. Utterly depressed at his loss.
But now, it is like an explosion has cut through the dam and only Nate can patch up the holes in the wall of my composure.
How long we laid there, his hand rubbing my back, me cuddled into him, I don’t know. It is one of the single-handed most empowering moments of my life. And the other time had been after the second spanking on that first night.
Why did I find this situation empowering? It’s difficult to explain. From down during the punishment, realizing I did something bad and hating myself for disappointing Sir, to the up of being embraced and cherished…
There’s nothing quite like it.
Eventually, into the silence, he whispers, “We’ll start to get back to normal soon. These last few days, you’ve been too good. It isn’t normal.” He chuckles at that and the sound makes everything inside me glow. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but it isn’t. If I’d found you in tears, I’d have thought you were in a form of sub drop. But it’s almost like your mind is processing everything. Well, enough is enough. I want you to follow the rules, but you have a voice. Don’t think you don’t. I want you to be self-aware but not to the extent you don’t utter a damn word. It’s a phase. You’re thinking you can avoid punishment, but what you don’t understand, Marina, is that you need to be punished.
“Just because you blow a gasket whenever you’re furious doesn’t mean you aren’t self-contained. You are. You hold everything in and only when the pressure is too much, do you let go. Only this...” Nate swept a hand down to my butt and tugged at the reddened flesh of my behind. “...can release you from that without having to blow a fuse.”
“I’ll try my best, Sir,” I whisper against his throat, wanting to kiss his Adam’s apple but not daring to. "I am learning, I promise."
“I know you are and you make me proud. I’m here for you, little one, always. If you’d come to me today and expressed your concerns, told me your fears, I would have listened and we could have discussed your need to visit your friends. I don’t want to punish you. I don’t have to punish you to play with you.” He bent his head and pressed a kiss to my temple. “Now then, just to prove I’m not mad, I have a gift for you. You’ve been a naughty girl today, but you’ve learned your lesson and you understand why you’ve been disciplined, don’t you?”
Nodding and whispering my assent against his skin, he continues, “Go and look on the floor in the closet. There’s a gift for you.”
When I was growing up, my grandfather on my mother’s side had a saying, ‘Beware Greeks bearing gifts.’ Xenophobic as the phrase was to Greeks, he was talking about the ancients who’d managed to con the Trojans by sending them a ‘gift’ and then using that as a means to destroy the city of Troy.
Well, I’d been played that way too.
Christ knows what he is giving me, my mind is blank, but the idea of pleasing him enough for a gift has me slipping off the bed and rushing to the closet faster than a kid on Christmas Day morning.
I open the box in the closet and I’m glad I did. Under my breath, I utter a curse, one too quiet for Nate to have heard and even though I knew it was bad, you try to withhold a fuck when you come across a box of toys.
And I’m not talking dollies.
I recognize some of the products and some of the producers. At Papillon, I’d had to stock the rooms, more so the dungeons and we’d only used the best manufacturers. The finest whip makers, the best leather workers for floggers. The box in my hand contains thousands of dollars’ worth of gear and it is all for me.
A flogger, paddle, a silicone whip, and a riding crop. Cuffs, thick rope I know is used in shibari, Japanese rope bondage. Long silk ribbons. Nipple cuffs and silver pegs, chains to attach to them, weights to add to the sensation. Dildos, anal plugs...all in varying sizes and all eye-popping in their colors and functions. A proper blindfold made from silk, and something that has my insides quivering...a gag.
I can’t be certain if I’ve naughty or nice this year, because while this was marketed as a gift, nearly everything made my eyes cross.
“Bring it in here, Marina,” he calls out and I don’t fail to hear the amusement in his voice. Apparently, shell-shock can occur thousands of miles away from the battlefield.
Feeling dazed, I pick up the heavy box and return to the bedroom. He’s turned on, I can see the glint in his eye. He climbs off the bed and says, “You can get dressed now. Your punishment is to see that everything is cleaned and ready for use at my convenience.”
After that, I remember he walked over to me, bussed me on the temple, and left me to it.
And it is thanks to that box that I’m in my current position.
Okay, it isn’t the box entirely. Two curses at Sam for telling me he needs an extra fifty grand for some equipment in the horse stables, a slam of my hand against the desk in my fury and turning my back on Nate when telling me to calm down prodded me into my current state...
Wrists tied to ankles, butt in the air, face down on the bed, a bullet vibrator in my pussy and the order that if I cum, I won’t be allowed to climax for two whole days, reverberating around my head.
Damn my big mouth.
Chapter Seventeen
Ten days ago, I signed a contract. Weird, but again, my taste in naughty literature made the experience entirely acceptable if bizarre.
It seems peculiar to think that I, Marina Joy Denison, pain in the ass extraordinaire am agreeing to this stuff. But the weirdest thing, did my hand shake as I signed it?
No.
Did every part of me scream, “Fuck, yes. I want this?”
Yeah.
It’s a bit like I’m in a parallel universe, but hey, if I get off on this stuff, I get off on it. And Nate, well...he’s just perfect. He always was but somehow, this all makes it better. I wish I could describe why. He just is. It’s like I am made for him and he is made for me. Ha, maybe one of the Fates matches subs with their Doms.
After that particular episode, the turbulence in my brain calmed down. Just knowing that he didn’t expect me to be his fuck slave, a mindless body that he could use and abuse... well, as you can imagine, it eased my concerns. And his words, that he didn’t need to punish to play, triggered my dirty, little mind into thinking all sorts of naughty things. So, when he presented me with a contract, I was excited. I could tell he’d gone to the effort of writing it himself, because it was tailor-made to my ‘quirks,’ and somehow, when I signed my name something deep inside me sighed with relief.
I agreed to uphold his six major rules.
Or the six commandments as I’d come to think of them.
Thou shalt not lie.
Thou shalt not defy me.
Thou shalt not cum without my permission nor touch thy form without my say so.
Thou shalt not leave Blue Ridge without me until thou art judged to be a ‘good’ girl. (I.e. free from contacts with the mafia. Hell, even though the idea makes me claustrophobic, I did get him shot, after all.)
Thou shalt comply with direct orders.
Thou shalt not curse.
And ever since my ulcer diagnosis, I guess he’s made it seven.
Thou shalt eat.
I also had to agree to maintain a smooth as silk pussy, and fuck, I didn’t need to sign my life away to agree to that. I swear, it makes velvet feel abrasive. And when I’m wet, something that occurs embarrassingly often, I’m even slicker. It’s the craziest, most delicious feeling I’ve ever known. In fact, I don’t even know why I haven’t had a wax before.
The most interesting aspect of the contract was the play list.
To the clientele interested in BDSM play at Papillon, I had to give them a play list. To the subs, they had to fill one out. To the Doms, they needed to be aware of Rosalie’s and Jessie’s limits.
They’re long. Filled with acts, that to me are very icky, like water sports, and then the bizarre, mummification. So, to see the modifie
d and short version tells me that these are things Nate is interested in.
It gave me an insight into the man, and if I’m honest, turned me on. I swear, I’ve never spent so much time drenched down there.
If it weren't so thrilling, it would be off-putting.
I had to rate from one, NEVER, to five, DEFINITELY. Anything over two was fair game.
Bondage (light) 4
Collars (leather) 5
Cuffs (leather) 5
Gags (ball) 4
Harnessing (suspended) 2
Intricate rope bondage 4
Leather restraints 4
Shackles 2
Spreader-bars 5
Spread-eagle 5
Corsets (wearing) 5
Caning 3
Clip and Clamps 3
Flogging 3
Spanking (over knee) 5
Spanking (other) 5
Wax 3
Ice 3
Whipping (single tail) 2
Whipping (other) 3
Blindfolded 5
Housework (nude, collared) 5
Piercing (permanent) 4
Phone sex 5
Teasing 5
Tickling 5
Just the idea of being subjected to any of it makes me quiver inside. Nothing on there entirely freaks me out; there are just some things that are way outside of my comfort zone. I knew, as I looked down the list, my baby steps into this world were leading me in the right direction.
And with Nate having calmed down a tad, letting me realize that I don’t have to walk around with my mouth zipped up and making a Stepford Wife look outspoken; I feel a ton better about this situation. Am I slightly pissed with him about making me feel that way in the first place?
Hell, yeah.
Talk about a crappy belief to insert into a newbie’s head, that she has to be an angel, or else. But let’s face it; the man took a bullet for me. He was in hospital for four weeks, recently discharged, and through the pain and discomfort, had to be tossed around in a small plane before he could get home.
Sinfully Mastered: Naughty Nookie Page 21