by Ashe Barker
My first stroke lands across her shoulders. The crack resonates about the dungeon, and the room falls silent but for the sound of Pru’s breathing. She jerks within her restraints and allows her head to drop forward between the upper arms of the cross.
The next stroke also lands on her shoulders, but from the opposite side. Another vivid ribbon of scarlet snakes across her skin.
I avoid the area around her waist, too dangerous. There is not enough protective flesh to absorb the whipping, and the danger of internal damage is too great. I pride myself on never landing a sub in the emergency room, I would never forgive myself, and in any case, this is a demo. I’m setting an example for less experienced Doms.
I drop the next few strokes on Pru’s bottom, increasing the intensity as she sinks into the play.
I deliberately left her ankles free, and she dances on her toes with each stroke of my whip. Her breathing is rapid now, her tiny squeals becoming louder with each carefully positioned stripe I apply. I pause, move in close to cup her breasts and murmur encouragement in her ear.
“This is going down well, sweetheart. Are you okay with everything?”
She nods. “Yes, Sir.”
“Okay to ramp it up a bit?”
She nods again.
I select a different whip. This one is heavier, thuddier, and will break her skin every time unless I control it to perfection.
I start again at her shoulders but with a much lighter swing. The marks left on her skin are bright, and thicker. There will be bruising, too, but Pru will love showing that off in the coming days.
Her cries are lower now, more grunts than squeals, and her body tenses with every stroke.
I move down to her bottom, then begin work on the backs of her thighs. This is the most sensitive area, and Pru’s jerky, agitated dancing increases until she is bobbing frantically on the spot and gasping for breath.
I watch with care. Pru will not use a safe word, but her signals are clear enough. Her slim hands curl into fists, a sure sign that she is at her limit. I move in close again to nuzzle her exposed neck.
“Sir, I…”
“Mmm, I know.”
“Thank you,” she murmurs.
I crouch to search in my bag again, and this time come up with a flogger. It’s made of suede, light and feathery, but still capable of a meaningful bite. It’s just the right thing to ease Pru back into the realms of sensuality rather than endurance, and I apply it liberally over all the striped, throbbing areas.
She sighs, writhing now. I build the pressure. Her inflamed skin is sensitised. Every fall of the fronds sends a shimmer of electric fire across her heated body, and she loves every fucking moment of it. Her response is authentic, and our audience can tell the difference. I confidently expect there to be a queue for the St Andrews Cross for the rest of the evening, and a boost in sales of suede floggers at the merchandise counter.
I catch the eye of one of Heidi’s dungeon monitors and mouth the word ‘blanket’. He nods and hurries away, to return a few moments later with a soft, fluffy blanket over his arm. He sets it down beside my bag then melts back into the crowd.
I end our little spectacle by dragging the suede tendrils over Pru’s shoulders, slowly, sensuously. She is hanging in her restraints now, her knees buckling as sensation overwhelms her and she surrenders to the moment.
I drop the flogger and grab the blanket, drape it around her body, and reach to release her wrists. She sags in my arms, and I undo the buckle at her waist, then scoop her into my arms.
“Will you see to my bag, please?”
The dungeon monitor who brought the blanket offers a curt nod and bends to retrieve my toys from the floor. He shoves the two whips and the flogger into a plastic bag then bundles them back into the holdall. I can see to sterilising my equipment later before using them again on a different sub. For now the used items are isolated from the rest of my gear.
I carry Pru to a sofa a few paces away and sink into it with her slender body slumped in my arms. I watch the monitor wipe down the cross, then, satisfied that it is ready for the next couple, he steps aside to allow another Dom to take over.
“Christ, Sir, that was…intense.”
I kiss Pru’s hair, now damp with perspiration. “You were stunning,” I reply.
“You, too, Sir.” Her eyes remain closed, but there’s a slight smile playing across her lips. “I don’t think I’ll be able to stand for a week.”
She’s exaggerating, we both know that, but it was a heavy scene, and she won’t be working any more tonight.
Chapter 4
Josh
“Is everything all right, Sir?” Pru sips her dry white wine, permitted under club rules now that her duties in the dungeon are concluded for the evening. She’s changed her outfit from the usual dungeon attire of a thong, stilettos, and (optional) corset for a pair of Levi’s and a loose-fitting top. “You seem quiet.”
I lean back against the leather upholstery, my half pint of Stella lager untouched in front of me. I shrug. “A hard day, that’s all.”
She regards me in silence. I swear, I can hear the cogs whirring.
“You know, Sir, I can be very discreet. If there’s something… you can talk to me. If you want to.”
I meet her gaze, and I believe her. Apart from Heidi, Pru is perhaps my closest associate here. She is a beautiful woman by any standards, but for reasons I can’t entirely fathom there is no sexual attraction between us. Despite that, we scene together often and understand one another on a level more intimate than can be claimed by most couples married for years. She can read me almost as well as I read her, and I either need to refuse to share, or spill. There’s no point whatsoever in lying to Pru.
“I saw my wife today,” I announce without preamble.
Pru’s eyebrows lift. “I didn’t know you were married, Sir,” she replies.
“I’m separated,“ I clarify. “Three years now.”
“I see. What happened?”
I shrug. “The details don’t matter. It was at work, at the arcade.”
“No, Sir. I meant, what happened to end up with you being separated? It seems…unlike you, if you don’t mind me saying.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, Sir, that commitment might as well be your middle name.”
Now my eyebrows are raised. I sometimes forget how well Pru knows me. There are few others who would presume to make such a personal observation, and even less who I would consider discussing this with.
“I was in the army at the time. The Parachute Regiment.”
“Okay. I knew you used to be in the military. She was an army wife, then?”
I nod. “Libby hated it. Hated everything about it.”
“Were you in the army when you met?”
“Yes. She knew what the deal was, and at first she seemed okay with it. We lived in military accommodation — well, she did. I was away most of the time.”
“That can’t have been easy, for either of you.”
“It is what it is. That’s army life. We were happy, or I thought so. At first anyway.”
Pru says nothing. She simply waits.
“We’d been married for two years when Libby suddenly started to whine about me being away so much. She wanted me to apply for a posting here in the UK, a nice desk job.”
“Whine?” She eyes me sternly.
“Complain, then.”
“Libby?” She flashes me a smile. “That’s a nice name.”
“Short for Elizabeth.”
“You didn’t fancy a desk job, I take it?”
“No, did I fuck? I was a soldier, and that meant serving with my regiment, overseas usually. I did tours in Iran and Afghanistan, but I got leave and was home as often as I could be. Three or four times a year.”
“She must have missed you when you were away.”
“No more than I missed her. We were…good together, Libby and me.”
“Is she like us? The lifestyle, I me
an?”
“Hell, yes.” I allow myself a low chuckle. “Submissive to her core. She loved all of it.”
“So, you were her Dom as well as her husband. That’s some serious commitment there.”
“She was the one who walked out on me,” I protest. “She wouldn’t let up once she got started and finally wore me down with her constant complaining, but the moment I gave in and decided to leave the military, she was off. The first I knew of it was a one-minute phone call to tell me she’d had enough and wanted a divorce.”
“Oh.” Pru furrows her perfect brow. “Even though you’d decided to leave the army? She still wanted out?”
“Yup.” I take a good slug of my lager. “Couldn’t see her for fucking dust. By the time I got back to the UK on special leave, she was gone. Apart from the papers served by her solicitor, I haven’t heard from her since. Today was the first time I’ve seen her in three years.”
“Even after you told her that you were going to give up your army career? She still left?” At long last, Pru seems to be coming around to my way of thinking.
I detect more than a flicker of sympathy now, not that I especially want any. All of this is old news, after all.
“I never had the chance to tell her. Like I said, she’d gone by the time I got home.”
“But surely you—”
“If she couldn’t hang around long enough to have a proper conversation with me, I didn’t see why I ought to go chasing after her. Libby made her choice, and I wasn’t it.”
Pru leans forward, elbows on the table between us, and fixes me with one of her compelling stares. “But you chose her. She needed to know that.”
“Then she should have waited.”
“Sir…”
“Enough, Pru. It’s done with. Over.”
“Is it? Really? You don’t appear to me to be a man who’s over it.” No one but Pru would presume to speak so plainly to me.
“It was a surprise to see her again, that’s all.”
“A pleasant surprise?” Pru presses me, more gently now.
“No.” Except, it was.
If I’m honest, once I got past the initial shock, I loved seeing Libby again. I loved getting my hands on her, spanking her… Christ, she looked so fucking good. She always looked good.
I meet Pru’s perplexed gaze. “I spanked her.”
“You…oh!” She picks up her wine glass. “That doesn’t sound like ‘over’ to me. That sounds like a whole lot of unfinished business.” She pauses, sips, then, “You’re still very angry with your wife. Is that why you punished her?”
“Of course not. It was more than three fucking years ago…”
“Lie to me if you feel you must, but be honest with yourself, Sir. Are you still angry?”
“Don’t I have every right to be angry? She bloody dumped me, just when I finally decided to let her have her own way.”
“You need to talk to her, Sir. You need to sort this out.”
“It is sorted. And it’s far too late for talking.”
Pru shakes her head and finishes her drink. “I don’t believe it’s ever too late, but you’d know best, I suppose.” She sets her wine glass down and gets to her feet. “I should be getting off.”
“I’ll drive you,” I offer.
“No. I ordered a cab already.” She bends to kiss my cheek. “Thank you for a fabulous scene, Sir. Let’s do it again soon. You never know, if we drum up enough trade Heidi might give me a raise.” She pauses to shrug into a soft leather jacket, then, “You spanked her? That certainly sounds like a conversation-starter to me, Sir.”
*****
Libby
I have plenty of time to rerun the encounter in my head. I go over it again and again — in the cab on my way home, in the shower, then one last time, for good measure, as I sit in the back of the taxi on my way to meet Michele.
One thing is for sure, the three years we’ve been apart have been kind to this husband of mine. His features were leaner, perhaps he had hardened a little, but he still has the devastating good looks that first attracted me, then gripped me while everything else about Josh Novak just took over.
I’ve always preferred my sex a little on the kinky side, though I’ve tended to think of myself as adventurous. There was never anyone especially serious before Josh, and for the most part I stuck to cuffs and the occasional blindfold, though I had friends who were into BDSM, and it certainly interested me.
Josh and I met at a munch. A mutual friend introduced us, and the attraction was instant, even though I knew Josh was an experienced Dom and far more serious about the lifestyle than I was at that time. But I knew just what I was letting myself in for when I agreed to meet him the following evening at a club we both liked in the city centre.
I was in love with my sexy, demanding Dom before he even got me strapped to the St Andrew’s Cross, and we were married less than three months later.
I’d known from the outset that he was in the Parachute Regiment, and that his tours of duty would take him away for large chunks of time, but the reality of it was somehow sugar-coated in my thinking. He did a couple of tours in Iraq, and I was sort of okay with that. Nervous, concerned for his safety, but okay. That ended when he was first posted to Afghanistan and the constant barrage of news reports about soldiers killed or badly injured suddenly took on a whole new resonance with me. Of course, I’d listened to the news before, but it never really affected me. Until then. My rose-coloured spectacles dissolved fast. I became fearful, obsessed with every report of an explosive device detonating, every tank blown up, every soldier hurt. I suppose most of the country was, but for me it felt different, personal, deeply upsetting.
The first time he came home from Afghanistan I spent more or less the whole of his three weeks with me begging Josh to apply for a UK posting. Better still, leave the army. He just smiled and told me it was his life and his place was with his regiment. I cried, I pleaded, and I told him I was his life now. He was kind about it, did his best to reassure me. He agreed I was part of his life, but the army was, too. He was needed, his work meant something.
I agreed with him. I knew that all he told me was true, but it made no difference. Every knock on the door, every time my phone rang, I was convinced it would be the army, some sad-faced senior officer in full dress uniform arriving on my doorstep to tell me my husband was gone. That he had died bravely, in the line of duty. That he was a hero.
But dead was dead, and I just couldn’t stand it.
Every time we spoke on the phone or texted, I was convinced that would be the last time I spoke to him or heard from him. I was on edge the whole time. I never relaxed. The constant anxiety was driving me mad.
And I drove Josh mad. Whenever he came home it was the same. My constant complaining, my begging, my absolute conviction that he would be killed or maimed in action wore away at our relationship. He was still my Dom, when he was at home, but for much of the time he was angry or frustrated with me, and it showed in our scenes. He pulled back, became less edgy, less intense. His emotions were involved. I knew he loved me, but I irritated him, too, more and more as the months passed. I had the sense that he was scared he might let that bitterness spill over, and he might harm me, so he was no longer relaxed when he topped me.
Our relationship wasn’t just about the D/s thing, but that was a large part of it for us, for me. And as that soured, so did the rest. I felt let down, angry, resentful. I was increasingly frustrated, and underlying all of my abject my misery was the bone-deep fear I could never shake off. I blamed Josh for all of it and convinced myself I’d be happier on my own. So, one day I phoned him, then I contacted a solicitor. And the rest, as they say, was history.
“A security guard? Yeah, I can see him doing that.” Michele leers at me across the remains of our sticky toffee pudding and two black coffees.
We’re both stuffed and need to be making a move if we’re to catch the nine o’clock showing of the romcom we both fancied.
I couldn’t contain myself. As soon as we sat down to eat, out it all came. I had to tell Michele I’d seen Josh again. But I omitted the gory details of exactly how we’d come to meet, and what had taken place in the privacy of his office. As sisters we’re close, but there are limits.
“Head of security, at that swish new arcade,” I correct her, then can’t help adding my own thoughts. “He seems to be doing well for himself.”
“Mmm, well, he would. Can’t see your Josh settling for less. He always had a way about him. Strange he left the army, though. I had the impression he was set for life there and even I thought he looked hot in his uniform.”
“Me, too,” I murmur.
Michele is right about the uniform, but Josh really floored me when he said he’d decided to leave the military. He must have done it soon after we separated, but for some reason he never told me. Everything could have been so different. Would have been different. I tense when an unexpected crackle of anger shimmers deep in my core. Why didn’t he tell me he was out? He knew how much I wanted him to leave, to put me first. He bloody knew!
“You say you just ran into him?” Michele asks, oblivious to the storm brewing within me.
I nod, draw in a breath, and reach for my drink.
“He’s not my Josh. Not anymore.” I pick up on her earlier remark. “We’re almost divorced, for God’s sake.”
“Yeah, well, almost isn’t the same as, as… Well, it isn’t. That’s all. And I can’t think what possessed you to let him get away. He was mint, your Josh.”
Still is. But that changes nothing. He could have got in touch, could have told me he was out of the army. The bastard…
“Totally lush,” Michele burbles on. “If you don’t want him, you can always toss him in my direction.”
It seems my little sister has been carrying a torch for my husband. I give her a serious nudge with my elbow.
“You prefer girls. Remember? Last time I checked, Josh didn’t fit the description.”
Michele laughs. “I can be flexible.”