by Elle Luckett
The gentle slap of the flogger started when he reached the small of my back, the movement coming in soft figures of eight. It was more of a tickle for the first couple of sweeps, the pleasure of it a contradiction to the pain around my nipples as I drew deep breaths. The sweeps grew in speed and intensity, rising and falling like waves until a slow burn rose beneath my skin’s surface. It was erotic, even when the burning began to grow, and pain rose to join the fray. Fire danced over the surface of my back. It moved with the flogger over the curve of my ass and over my thighs where the stray tails found a home against my pussy, lighting up the night with flashes of white.
I held onto my climax with white knuckles, unwilling to interrupt the flow of his hands as the tails met flesh over and over in the erotic dance I was sinking into. A few more, and my control and ability to hold back would be gone.
I should have known better than to doubt he’d been reading my body. The moment my control slipped, the flogger fell away, the quiet whisper of it hitting the ground punctuated by Asher’s body crashing against my back, the soft cotton of his shirt like sandpaper against my sensitive skin.
“Come, kitten.” He pushed two of his fingers inside me, curling them to stroke inside of me. “Come.”
My body unfolded around him before the last syllable left his lips. The cry fell from my lips swallowed by his whispered encouragement, his fingers pistoning and stroking until my arms burned from the pull against my restraints, and my jellied legs only just held me up as fire raged through my body. My brain brushed against the exotic white space that had been so elusive until he’d walked back into my life and lit me up.
Asher held me until my trembles subsided, and my legs found their purchase again. His lips brushed slow kisses over the fire of my back now easing away, and his hips thrust against the heat of my ass only once, but it was enough to make me squirm before he stepped away, confident I wouldn’t collapse.
I could have been standing there for an hour and I’d never have been aware, but he made his presence known when he returned, the warm palm of his hand running down the small of my back to my ass where he dropped a playful slap on aching flesh.
“I’m going to use a vibrator with a clit stimulator.”
It was to counter the pain, a trick he’d used before, so I nodded once before dropping my head on my arm and give myself a moment to catch my breath. I wasn’t sure how long I would last between the pain and pleasure of a vibrator. The torture would be brutal, sharp, but I suddenly craved it against the slow burning of this heat on my flesh. This aching need between my thighs and the euphoric bliss of tension that still gathered inside me soared as he slipped the thick vibrator inside my pussy with a finger resting along the shaft of it.
It would have been enough on its own, but my body became boneless the moment he tested the settings and vibrations stroked my walls forking like electrical currents through my aching clit.
Asher caught me when my legs gave out, holding me upright before the ropes and cuffs supported my weight, his gentle chuckle a growl of appreciation.
“I’ve got you right where I want you, kitten.” He bit my shoulder, and my body twitched, forcing a groan from my lips. “Can you stand?”
“I think so, Sir.”
“I’ll catch you if you start to go again.”
“I know.”
Running his tongue along the bite he’d just given me, Asher eased away from me experimentally. His hands were only inches from my hips as he waited to make sure I was stable before he ventured farther away again.
I thought I was good until I heard the swish of the cane land against his palm.
When I tried to look over my shoulder, my body listed to the side, and a swarm of hummingbirds burst to life inside of me. The anticipation had my breaths sawing in and out, my body clutching at the vibrator inside of me. I saw the smile Asher was wearing before my need for oxygen forced my head back around. It was filled with arousal and need, a hint of sadism working around the edges as he took in the blank canvas in front of him.
I flinched the moment the line of the cane was tapped against my ass in warning, my body turning to liquid as the first blow came painfully against the back of my thighs. It wasn’t enough to elicit a scream from me, but it was enough to steal my breath as pain flared. My body swayed, but I stayed on my feet, hands winding around the rope to keep me grounded as the second strike was mete out over my ass with bruising force.
Asher worked to his own rhythm, never allowing me to become complacent or too deeply lost in the agony of it. When the pain led to tears, he used the vibrator to counter, bringing my body high enough to touch the clouds before bringing me crashing back to earth with the cane’s strike. Fire and feathers were how my mind processed the rolling waves of light, heat, and intense lashes.
The pain was brutal in its beauty, lines of fire opening my flesh to agony and emotion as every thought I’d ever had fled and left me with nothing but the pain and pleasure. I pleaded for more, asked him to stop, and begged him to fuck me, but he was in his own head, leading my body in the direction he wanted when he wanted it. The moment I slipped my foot into oblivion, he was there, pulling the vibrator free and sliding inside me with a thrust so brutal he had to keep us both upright.
He fucked me with almost as much violence as he’d struck me, and I felt him everywhere, his name falling like breaths from my lips drowning out the choir from the swamps surrounding us. I felt whole, complete, and right. The world now seen in a milky clarity that felt strange while I mentally floated five feet above.
I was lost in him, this moment, and the love that swelled and surrounded my heart. The two of us were whole like this, two puzzle pieces coming together like it was always meant to be, and that last nagging doubt in the back of my mind fell away.
I barely heard his whispered and hoarse command for me to let go, but before releasing the last vestige of conscious thought, I obeyed his request and let the wave sweep me away with it.
I woke up on my stomach in the beautiful wrought iron bed, the soft glow of dimmed lights washing over the glorious body of the man next to me. His eyes were on mine, smiling but cautious as he ran his fingers over the skin that felt flayed on my back. It wasn’t an unpleasant feeling, but it had been enough to stir me, and Asher didn’t look the slight bit remorseful for it.
“It’s almost morning,” he said quietly, leaning in to press a kiss to my lips. “I was beginning to get worried about you.”
“Morning? How long have I been out?”
“I managed to get you to drink a bottle of water before I put you to bed, but that was over six hours ago.”
“Six hours?”
Asher’s grin grew to that Cheshire cat proportion again as his eyes studied and held mine. He had every right to be smug. For the second time, he’d dropped me into sub-space as quickly as he’d fucked me. When I opened my mouth to apologize, he pressed down on a welt on my back, the fire flaring to life and forcing a groan from my lips.
“I cleaned you up, but I’d like you to take a long bath before I rub some arnica ointment on your back.”
“I’m not sure I want to move yet.”
“Are you hurting?”
“I can’t tell yet. Just the usual ache so far.”
Asher gently brushed strands of my hair back from my face, tucking them behind my ears while waiting for me to go on. The smug satisfaction was suddenly mine when I realized he had no idea where I was going with this. That he’d somehow missed the crash of the emotional divide as it fell away under his hands. That he hadn’t seen it felt strange to me because it was all I felt now. It surrounded me, embraced me, and sang like the songbirds beginning to wake beyond the windows.
“Are you going to make me ask?”
“Uh-huh,” I teased, rocking forward in search of his lips.
He obliged me, the soft brush turning into a needful and hungry possession when I slipped my tongue over his bottom lip. Realizing what I’d done, he eased off, his li
ps a whisper against mine while he watched me. “You distracted me.”
“It’s a good distraction.”
“Tell me why.” This was a gentle command, appealing to that part of me so desperate to please him.
“I love you, Asher Morris.”
His eyes lit up at my confession. “Took you long enough, kitten.”
“I like to make you work for it.”
“No,” he said, closing the distance between us, his lips pressed against mine. “You wanted to be sure.”
There were a million and one reasons I loved this man, new and old, but this one stood out in this moment. He understood me. He realized why I hadn’t given myself over to him the moment he’d displayed interest. He also appreciated that I’d needed to be sure before falling at his feet. He respected that I had to consider our daughter in every one of my decisions.
After my confession, we made love, slow, hot, and sometimes painful, considering the state of my back. He loved me physically, emotionally, and spiritually in that big iron bed, and then he took me for a bath and pleasured me with his hands until we’d used almost all of the hot water.
After sleeping for most of the afternoon, we made our way back into New Orleans before picking up a delighted Ashleigh from the gymnastics camp. We spent the evening playing at the park and watching movies curled up together in my bed.
This was something that grew into a weekend habit over the following month.
Ashleigh grew used to having Asher in her life as much as I did as the days and weeks passed. He eased himself into our daily routine without much fuss, and on the days he couldn’t be there to pick Ashleigh up with me, she began asking where he was. My parents and brother accepted him in our lives too, even enjoying his company enough to invite him along to any event they’d typically invite me to. In my brother’s case, even some he wouldn’t, like poker night with the boys.
Asher even fit in with my life in the club. He was happy to occupy the end of the bar and flirt with me on busy nights when we couldn’t play. His patience was endless until the end of my shift, where he’d drag me to a hotel room and fuck me senseless for teasing him all night. The girls who worked the bar with me loved having him around, and the Doms accepted him as they always did as one of their own. Some days, I forgot he hadn’t been there the whole time, and others, when I tripped and momentarily missed those moments of isolation, he was perceptive enough to pick up on it, and distanced himself until I was over my idiocy.
It was almost six weeks until I realized that we were actually building a life together without much effort, Ashleigh’s birthday party was days away, and I’d been lost in planning that. I was catching up on laundry doing Asher’s along with mine and Ashleigh’s. I dropped his boxers into his half of my underwear drawer while he was at my desk with his laptop, and it hit me like it hadn’t been slowly building up to this for a month.
“Asher?” I dropped the last pair of his shorts from the wash into the drawer and bumped it shut with my hip.
“Yeah, babe?” he asked in a distracted tone, his fingers still moving over his keyboard in their usual rhythm.
I stalled, unsure what I was trying to say, which gained his attention faster than any words could have. He studied me over the back of the chair for a moment before holding his hand out to me, and when I took it, he pulled me into his lap. Ashleigh was at the park with my mom and Iona. Dad was at the hardware store, and the house was unusually quiet.
“What’s going on, kitten?”
“Just thinking, I guess.”
“About?”
I sighed as I tried and failed to put my thoughts into words that wouldn’t sound bratty and awkward. I loved having him here with us, was happy that he no longer left in the middle of the night to drive an hour to the cabin so he could work as he had those first few weeks. There was no elegant way to express all of those feeling, so I blurted out the only translation of my feelings that I could.
“We can’t live together at my parents’ house. It’s weird and awkward.”
“Agreed.” It was said as though it had been evident to him for a while. “But I wasn’t going to be the one to rush you.”
“You weren’t… what?”
“As much as I love your family, I would like my own family, in my own home, with the woman I am deeply in love with.”
“Why didn’t you talk to me about this before?”
“You weren’t ready. You’ve had your parents in your life for years backing you up. They’ve had you and Ash in their lives and loved every moment of watching their granddaughter growing up. I wasn’t going to be the one to suggest taking you away from that—away from them.”
I turned, framing his handsome face in my hands as I fell into the blue of his eyes for the millionth time. It was my favorite place to drown and lose myself. They felt like home to me because he shared those beautiful eyes with our daughter.
“It also gave me time to work on something,” he continued, the smile making his beard twitch over his hidden dimples.
“Oh?” I asked, brushing my lips over his. “And what’s that?”
“I made an investment or two, so we’d be ready when you finally figured it all out.” Reaching around me, he typed a couple of things on the keyboard before angling the desk chair so we could both see the screen. “I made a very generous offer on the house with the oak. They’ve accepted.”
“You bought the house with the oak tree? Your rental?”
“We bought it. It’s in both our names, and yes, I couldn’t let it go.”
Excitement rose in me. This house that I’d inadvertently fallen in love with would fulfill all those fantasies I’d been secretly falling into over the weeks we’d been spending there. The visions of Ashleigh with a puppy running around the yard and climbing the tree all formed like a beautiful picture in my head, then crashed over me like a tidal wave when I realized how far away we would all be from my family, school, and work.
I worked in the heart of New Orleans, and though it wasn’t that far away, an hour’s drive at two in the morning would be tiresome. I loved the house and had fallen in love with it that first night, but it was a significant change in our lives and a sudden one.
“Asher—”
He held up a finger to stop me and clicked another couple of times on the mouse before giving me a smug smile when a beautiful yellow house filled the screen. The house was one of the Victorian-era mansions in the Garden District that I’d admired more than a few times in my life. The house sat on the corner of Camp Street and First. I knew because my parents lived only blocks away. I’d also Googled it when it went up for sale and knew how much they were asking for it.
“I think you forget how well I know you sometimes,” Asher said with amusement before I could make anything more than a strangled noise. He brushed his lips over my neck and waited me out, his hand easing gentle circles over my back as I stared hopelessly at the screen.
“It’s too much. And too much for the three of us,” I whispered, meaning every word.
“For now, maybe.” He nibbled on my collar while I stared, open-mouthed. “One day, maybe we could change all of that. The secondary appeal to the sheer beauty of it is that it’s close to your parents’ house. It’s in Ashleigh’s school district and close to her gymnastics, and work for both of us is only minutes away. For shits and giggles, it also has an apartment we could lease out if the desire arose.”
I stared at the screen in shock and curiosity. I was aware enough of money and finances that I hadn’t wanted for anything in my life. My grandparents had a lot of it, so I’d never worried, but this was just insanity. This was that crazy thing you watched on television with a hint of disbelief.
“You bought two houses.” The statement came out in a whisper.
“I couldn’t let the cabin go. When the realtor told me they were looking to put it on the market, I made an offer. That beautiful tree has to be ours, and the house—it’s not far from here, and I know that you want
to be close to your family. So that too had to be ours.”
Ours.
“Jesus, Asher, when were you going to tell me?”
“When you realized we couldn’t build a life together in your parents’ home. Like I said before, I wasn’t going to be the one to suggest moving to you. You do understand that, don’t you?”
I did, and I answered him with a kiss that made him growl with appreciation. A sound that died in his throat when the front door crashed open and Ashleigh’s voice called out for us both.
“If you want more kids, you’d better get used to that,” I mumbled with a grin, pressing my lips to his briefly before rising to greet the streak of pink that dashed into the room and threw herself into her father’s arms.
“It’s almost my birthday,” she told him again, as she did every time she saw him. It had escaped her notice that he was living here as much as it had mine.
“That’s right, on Sunday,” he confirmed, brushing wisps from her braid aside with an adoration that made my whole body heat in loving appreciation of this man and his love of being a father.
“My party is on Saturday.”
“That’s right. I have an invitation.”
“You do.” She squealed in delight, her arms folding around his neck.
“Maybe after your party, you, your mom and me could go and spend the night in a very special place. How would you feel about that?” Asher’s eyes flickered to mine, and I nodded. The three of us hadn’t had much of an opportunity to be alone together. There was no better time than her birthday. Six years to the day that she’d crashed into my life. It felt fitting.
“Momma, can we?” Ashleigh asked, her big blue eyes landing on me, begging me to say yes.
“Of course, we can, baby.” I bent to kiss the top of her head, my eyes meeting Asher’s, and I watched the warmth of love blossom as he silently thanked me.