Hard Lessons (The Hardest Word)

by Ashe Barker

  “So, Miss Stone, this is lighter than the one I used at the Collar. Are you hoping for an easier ride perhaps?” He lifts one sardonic eyebrow, his lips quirking as he leans forward to murmur in my ear, “I could have you safe wording by the third stroke, whichever paddle you choose. You do know that, don’t you?”

  Actually, that possibility had not occurred to me, but I see no reason to doubt his word and my heart sinks along with my fragile confidence. “Yes, Sir,” I sign, slowly, “I expect you can. Is that what you intend to do?”

  He cups my chin, holding my gaze. “No, Freya, it is not. To have the desired effect, discipline has to be proportionate and fair. So, twenty strokes, of the same severity as before. You won’t like it, won’t find it easy. You’re not supposed to. But that’s fair, wouldn’t you agree?” His tone is firm but not harsh as he answers me. Dominant but not cruel.

  I will struggle, I know. This is going to hurt. A lot. More than at the Collar probably. But I nod, ready to proceed, to get this over with. Then I can apologize, thank him for his attention in correcting my lapse, and we can move on.

  “Would you like me on the bench, Sir?” I sign my question, eyeing the spanking bench somewhat balefully I daresay.

  “Maybe, but not yet. Kneel on the mat again, and place the paddle on the floor in front of you.”

  I glance at him, puzzled, but I know better than to ask questions. The instruction is clear, and I sink to my knees. Nick levers his weight lazily off the column and strolls around to crouch in front of me.

  “Are you comfortable?”

  His question is so left field I just gape at him and forget to answer. He repeats his question, still polite but his irritation starting to become apparent, “Miss Stone, I asked you if you’re quite comfortable. Answer me please.”

  I incline my head slowly, frowning in my bafflement.

  “Good. Settle yourself, make sure you are quite comfortable. You’ll need to be. Because you will not be moving for some time, Miss Stone. Not so much as a muscle. Is that absolutely clear to you?” His voice has hardened, his tone is cold, chilling as he delivers his killer line.

  I shake my head, utterly bewildered. He gazes at me for a few more seconds then clarifies the position for my benefit. “It’s simple, Miss Stone. I’m leaving, and you will stay here. Right here, on this mat. You won’t move, you won’t wriggle, you won’t stretch or shift position. You won’t move at all, for any reason. Is that clear?”

  “But why? Where are you going? How long for?” I’m signing frantically, my panic suddenly mounting as his intention sinks in. He’s leaving me, leaving me alone, here. I could have faced any level of beating with a degree of fortitude, but this just undoes me. I can’t do it, can’t bear it. I just can’t.

  His raised finger stills my frenzied signing. “This is to teach you that when I tell you to stay put, I mean you to do exactly that. Call this a practice, or better still your opportunity to demonstrate to me that you can obey me when you choose to. And, Freya, if you’re serious about learning to be a submissive you will need to choose to obey me. Every time, without fail. And it starts here. Now. And it doesn’t matter to you where I’m going, just that I won’t be here. How long? Until I decide to come back. All you need to know is that I will come back. And that you are to wait for me here. You remain here, perfectly still, until I return. Do you understand what I want you to do?” The hard, uncompromising Dom voice is back, in full force, his gaze intent and penetrating as he waits for my confirmation that I do understand his requirements.

  My hands start to form words once more, words of protest, of pleading, but his raised finger puts an instant stop to it. He asks me once more.

  “Do you understand, Freya?”

  Panic bubbling just below the surface I manage to nod briefly, desperate not to unravel now. Surely I can do this. What’s so hard about sitting still?

  “When I come back, I’ll take you up on your kind offer regarding the spanking bench. I’ll leave you to look forward to that.” And with that, he straightens, and starts to walk away. Without thinking I turn my head, intending to follow him with my eyes, only to hear his voice snap back at me. “Eyes front, girl. I won’t tell you again. Do. Not. Move.”

  Chapter Two

  I sit in the now silent room, trying to track time, to estimate how much time has passed, how much longer before he returns. It obsesses me, my awareness heightened by the lack of a clock. The first ten minutes or so aren’t too bad. Not really. I concentrate on controlling my panic, the sense of abandonment that threatens to overwhelm me. My ears are attuned to every sound, every imagined creak and longed-for footfall that might tell me he’s on his way back. But there’s nothing, just absolute and ear-splitting silence. Not even a sound from elsewhere in the house. He’s totally disappeared.

  I rack my brains trying to remember if he locked the door as he left. Did he lock me in here? I can’t recall having heard the key turn, and in any case, why would he do that? And why would it matter anyway? I’m not moving, so I’m not going anywhere.

  The next ten minutes drag. At least I think it’s ten minutes. There’s no clock in here, no hand to watch crawling around the face, counting down the time until he comes back. Even the knowledge that his return will herald the twenty strokes with the lilac paddle is no deterrent. I want him here, with me. It’s that simple. I can’t be alone. I bite back the mounting hysteria as it once more churns and surges and threatens to swamp me. Each time it happens it takes a greater and greater effort, more conscious and rigid self-control to hold myself together. I force myself to remain in place, still and calm, at least on the outside. On the inside I’m dying by inches. Disintegrating.

  How long has it been? Thirty minutes? Maybe an hour? I’ve never been that good at estimating time, and now I’m losing track entirely. No markers, no clues, no way to slice up the minutes and hours—has it been hours?—into coherent chunks that I can make some sense of. How long might he intend me to wait? What if something happens to him and he never comes back? How long should I wait until I finally know?

  The thought that he might never return to me is the most chilling. After all, why should he? He hardly knows me. This might all be some huge game to him. Maybe he’s outside just laughing at me. Waiting for me to slip up, to give in, then he can order me out of his house and…

  I grab onto my remaining shreds of sense and tell myself firmly to get a grip. On what I have no idea, but I need to hang on, have faith, sit this out. He will come back. He has to.

  Another hour. And another. Time has no meaning now, and I’ve long since lost all and any feeling in my legs. My comfortable kneeling position has passed through all shades of excruciating, tingling torture and I’ve now come out the other side, merely existing. Just being. Quiet, silent, still. Waiting.

  Tears are flowing down my cheeks, drying on my face as I can’t even lift my hands to wipe them away. My occasional, gulping, voiceless sobs break the silence as my terror grows and curls viciously in my head, filling the dark corners with all types of faceless, nameless fears. Uppermost is a growing fear of the silence. Yes, me afraid of silence. How mad is that? Then there’s my fear of time, of time passing, slipping away, too fast, and yet painfully, excruciatingly slow. And last, my greatest fear, rushing back at me from the past, from my childhood, and finally crushing me. My fear of being left alone. Again. First my parents, who never came back. Then my gran, who also left me and never came back. And now Summer’s disappeared too. Margaret didn’t leave me, she could come back at any time, and she’s not beyond my reach. But Nick Hardisty is. He always was. And now he’s gone too.

  My gaze is riveted to the lilac paddle on the floor, desperation and despair now choking me as I long to feel its sharp bite on my body, only because that would signal that my Dom was here, back again, back with me. I need him to come back. I can’t be alone, I just can’t be. Not for ever.

  A click. A soft footfall. Is it? Could it be? I’m imagining it again, as I hav
e so many times over the last hours as I’ve knelt here, waiting. I don’t dare to hope, won’t allow myself to believe.

  “Well done, Freya. I’m impressed.”

  My eyes are closed—I don’t dare open them just to see the empty space in front of me, just to know I’ve imagined his voice. That I’m hallucinating now.

  A hand cups my chin, tilts my face up. A soft kiss on my lips, just a brush, a whisper, but enough. It’s true, he is here. He came back for me. I force my eyelids upwards, slowly cracking them to let in the light, to let in the glorious, beautiful sight of Nick Hardisty, who’s once more crouching in front of me, his smile warm, his gaze tender.

  “I see you’ve been crying. I’m guessing you found that hard, little sub. Am I right?”

  I can only nod. ‘Hard’ doesn’t even come close.

  “Still, you did well. I’m very pleased with you. This last bit with your pretty lilac paddle won’t take long then we’re done with all this. Can you stand?”

  I shake my head. There’s no way my legs are moving of their own volition any time soon. He chuckles, the sound warm, comforting, like a favorite blanket. “No problem, take your time. Just stretch, lie still for a few minutes, let the blood start flowing again. Did you say your wristbands were in your bag? I’ll go fetch them for you.”

  He drops another light kiss onto my mouth and stands up, heading once more for the door. And I hit meltdown. I know, with absolute, total and chilling certainty that he can’t go. I can’t let him leave me again. Not now, maybe not ever. I finally succumb to the gnawing panic that has threatened to drown me for hours now, ever since he first said he was leaving. I’ve held myself together, just about, but no more. No more.

  My spine gives way, just stops holding me up, and I crumble, collapsing in silence to the floor. I need him to stop, to look back, to turn. In desperation I grasp the lilac paddle, wrapping my fist around the handle and I use the butt to rap sharply on the floor, twice, the sound reverberating around the room. I’m signing, my subconscious taking over as the phrase “don’t leave me” is framed repeatedly by my hands.

  He’s back in an instant, his arms around me as he gathers me up from the floor, his back against the pillar as he cradles me. And I’m sobbing, great gulping, voiceless sobs as I grasp at his T-shirt, wrapping myself around him, crawling all over him in my desperation to connect and to stay connected, to never let him go again. His arms tighten in response, holding me close, then closer still as he picks up on what I’m needing, what I’m craving. He rocks me, offering comfort and safety, and I grasp at it, at him, my lifeline.

  I have no idea how long we stay like that, my naked, trembling body draped across his as I hang on as though my life depends on it. Maybe it does. Eventually my sobs subside, coherent thought starts to return, and I can make sense of his soft voice murmuring in my ear.

  “You’re safe, baby. I have you. I have you…” The words are on a loop, repeated over and over.

  Eventually I hear, and believe, and respond. Eventually I calm. When he senses that I can hear him, can think straight again, he cups my chin, lifting my face gently, urging me to look into his eyes once more. It’s almost unbearable, the emotion so raw now, my recent pain so debilitating, so crippling that I don’t want to face it. But I have to. He insists, and I have started to learn obedience.

  “Tell me.”

  The words are softly whispered, but it’s my Dom speaking all the same, and I know there’s no hiding place. But not yet, not just yet. I turn my face to bury it in his chest, and he allows that. For now. He continues to hold me, his palm massaging my back, that space between my shoulder blades that calms and comforts. And he waits. He waits for me to tell him.

  I’m sitting on the floor now, my back against the central pillar, facing him as I sign the words. “I thought you were never going to come back for me.” And I’m embarrassed at how ridiculous my fears now seem. He told me he was coming back—I had only to trust him, to believe him. I had only to wait.

  He apparently thinks so too. “Why? Why would you think that, Freya?”

  “Because it always happens that way. People I love disappear. They leave me and never come back. My parents did. So did my gran. And now Summer.” My hands are flying, I keep forgetting he’s a novice at signing.

  He reaches out, clasps my hands to still them. “I got some of that, but you need to slow down, please. You said something about ‘always’ and mentioned your family. Sign it again, but remember I’m only a learner.”

  Mercifully at least he didn’t pick up on the ‘L’ word that I had somehow managed to let slip in there. I need to be more circumspect—he’ll dump me like a hot brick if he senses that there’s more to this than a simple training contract. Using slow, stilted, careful signing I repeat what I first told him. Well, most of it. And in response to his gentle, probing questions I go on to tell him about my parents, about my gran’s death, and about how I came to live with Margaret. And that goes some way toward explaining why being left alone terrified me to such an extent that I was reduced to the quivering mess that he just scooped up from his dungeon floor. But only some of the way—I’m sure there must be more, I just don’t understand it myself yet.

  “Has this ever happened before? You live alone normally, don’t you?”

  I nod. In fairness, although being alone is not particularly my preferred state, I find it perfectly bearable as a rule. Apart from when Summer’s in residence I live alone more through circumstance than choice, and I prefer to think of it as solitude rather than loneliness. Certainly I’ve never before experienced such an overwhelming, all-consuming sense of panic at finding myself alone. But this time I did, and I’m as surprised as Nick Hardisty at my reaction. This truly is a voyage of discovery.

  “That was awful. Just plain awful.” A thought occurs to me, a horrible thought. I have to ask, this could change everything. Nervous, I sign my next question, “Is that how you’ll punish me if I mess up again? Now that you know how much I hate it?” I stop, hesitate, then sign the rest, “I don’t think I can bear it if you do.”

  He reaches for my hands, taking both of them between his and holding them still, the equivalent of a hand gently covering a mouth. “No, Freya, I won’t. Being a submissive is not about exposing your vulnerabilities so that a Dom can exploit them. Quite the opposite in fact. It’s my job to help you feel stronger, more confident, and to push your boundaries. Discipline is a large part of it, and I intended you to feel bored, frustrated, nervous, uncomfortable. Scared possibly in anticipation of being beaten with a paddle again. I did not set out intending to distress you like this, and as soon as I saw that you weren’t handling it I came back.” He stops, his gray gaze warm now, a slight smile quirking his gorgeous lips. “Remember, I said that discipline has to be proportionate and fair if it’s to work? How pissed off with you do you imagine I’d have to be to even come close to wanting to repeat this? To intentionally make you feel like this again?”

  I’m puzzled, baffled by his words. He was gone hours, he must have intended me to be upset. He must have. And what does he mean, ‘as soon as I saw?’ How did he see when he wasn’t here? My face must be betraying at least some of my questions because he points to the ceiling, just over the door. “Look up there, Freya. A camera. And another in the opposite corner. I was watching you the whole time. I could see that you were on edge, right from the start, but you were coping. Then your breathing became really erratic in the final couple of minutes you were on your own, and you were shaking. The start of a panic attack. So I came back early.”

  Cameras? Early? My head’s reeling. He was here all the time, sort of. I was never really alone. Oh Christ.

  Relief turns to anger, and I forget my submissive status and round on him.

  “You were gone for hours. And I was so frightened. If you were watching you must have seen that,” my hands are flying once more in rapid fire signing. Luckily for me perhaps I’ve never found a need to swear in sign. Not until now, anyw
ay. I suspect I may need to widen my vocabulary around Nick Hardisty. If I dare. Or maybe it’d be simpler just to punch him on the jaw. There’s a lot more I’d like to say but I settle for that, my expression now nothing short of mutinous. So much for submissive obedience.

  He looks at me long and hard, and I begin to fear my little outburst won’t go unpunished. Then, “I was gone forty-five minutes, that’s all. I intended an hour, but cut it short.”

  I stare at him, incredulous. Forty-five minutes? No way! It was more than that. Much, much more. “I don’t believe you.”

  A flicker of anger shoots into his eyes, only to be quickly dispelled. Nick Hardisty is not used to having unruly subs accuse him of lying, but maybe he’ll make an exception on this occasion. I have to hope so, because I seem incapable of controlling what I say just now.

  “I arrived home just after three. We talked a while in the kitchen, and you came into the dungeon at about three thirty. Agreed?” His tone is calm, reasonable, as he elaborates, taking the time and trouble to convince me.

  I nod.

  “So, what time do you think it is now?”

  I shrug, think about that for a few seconds. I lost count of the hours that inched past achingly slow as I knelt alone on that bloody mat of his, but it was several. I know it was. I make a guess at four or five, which would make the time now around eight or maybe nine in the evening. I sign that to him.

  His response is to pull his phone out of his jeans pocket and turn it on. He hands it to me, the home screen glowing brightly, and proclaiming the time to be sixteen thirty-two. Only just after half past four in the afternoon. I just stare at the screen, the proof positive that I’m losing it, that I somehow made a few minutes seem like hours in my mind, that I was so convinced of it, so absolutely certain. That I let myself get into a state of near collapse by being made to sit still for three-quarters of an hour.