by Alison Tyler
“You need to know what?”
I didn’t know how to phrase it. If this were a test, then I should be smart enough to figure it out myself. But was the test whether I would let another man punish me? Or was it whether I’d refuse, dig in my heels, and let all hell break loose? My heart sank. I couldn’t read Jack’s eyes. In total desperation, I went on my knees once more, not knowing what else to do. I wanted to curl up into a ball. I wanted to have a safeword to say to Jack so that he would let me know the answers to all my questions. To my undeniable relief, Jack bent down with me, in order to hear my voice, begging now, unsure, scared.
“Please, Jack …”
He stroked my hair. He lifted my chin.
“Are you disobeying me?” His eyes were warm now, but his voice was cold.
I shook my head.
“Go with him. I want to see what you look like when another man whips you. I want to watch. Do you understand that?”
I nodded.
“Will you do this for me?”
I nodded again and let myself be brought back to standing, let the man lead me to another room, understanding that Jack would be close by. That I would be safe. And that this was what he desired.
It was all I needed to know.
Jack followed after us. I was secure in the knowledge of his proximity. Maybe he would punish me later for this scene that was about to play out, but not because I had failed a test. Simply because punishing me made Jack hard.
The Dom never told me his name. He bound me in place in one of the back rooms, and then instructed me to address him as Master.
“Do you understand?”
“Yes, Master.” It sounded phony to me. A game. A play. Jack was Sir. No doubt. No hesitation. Yet I obeyed, for Jack.
“Your safeword.”
I’d been trying, working, to come up with something that would make sense. I understood what Jack had told me. Not No, Stop, Don’t, or Please. Still, it had to be a word that I could actually make myself say, not something silly, that would add to the oddness of this encounter. Not aardvark or tomato or Aerosmith.
“Uncle,” I ultimately whispered, remembering playing rough and tumble with my cousins every summer, torturing one another until one would finally call Uncle. That seemed okay to me, and the man, who might have had similar experiences in his youth, gave me an accepting nod.
“You are to thank me after each stroke.”
“Yes, Master.”
He moved to stand behind me, and fear flashed through me once more. The sound level in the place became white noise, a background melody. I could only guess that this man was making me wait in order to further ratchet up my level of total insecurity. But then I saw, in a mirror on the wall, that he was talking to Jack. My own cruel man came forward, and with a flash of silver, my panties were cut from my body. I closed my eyes, and tried to find that place within myself where I can make everything all right. That safe place.
There was no word of warning before the whipping started. There was only the sound of my heart in my ears, and the sensation of the crop meeting my skin. And then Jack in front of me, pushing my hair from my face, staring at me, drinking in every emotion that flared through my dark brown eyes.
I flinched at the blows, my body tightening, then working to relax. “Thank you, Master,” I choked out. Every time. Brock and I had played a similar game way back when. Brock had liked to hear me thank him each time he brought his belt against my ass. So I was trained already, the only differences being the public quality of the location and the fact that it was a stranger cropping my naked skin and not someone who loved me.
But Jack wasn’t a stranger. Jack was in front of me, watching me, and his closeness gave me strength.
“Thank you, Master.” I spoke the words over and over again, thanking this dark Dom for hurting me, for giving me the pain that both Jack and I craved.
The Dom didn’t ask me to count. I don’t know how many stripes I took. I felt as if I were hovering above myself, free from the pain, watching from above. But finally, Jack gripped my face between both hands and whispered, “He won’t stop, kid. He’s like a machine. If you think you’re going to outlast him, you’re wrong.”
I’ve always been the kind of person to take a dare, always the one who needs to prove my strength. In school, during those insane nationally sponsored physical-fitness tests, where the teachers had us hang from monkey bars while they timed us, I outlasted everyone by minutes, rather than seconds, hanging on until the teachers said to let go. I’m built small, but tough. And I felt as if I would be letting Jack down by giving in, even as the tears started to streak my cheeks, even as the skin on my ass and upper thighs began to throb, to shriek in protest.
“Say it, kid,” Jack urged, and I met his eyes, and said, “Thank you, Master.”
“Say it, Samantha,” Jack demanded, as the Dom behind me struck again. I sensed we had a small crowd around us now, but I didn’t turn my head away, didn’t even lift my eyes to the mirror to see.
The crop struck another blow. “Thank you, Master,” I murmured.
“Christ, Sam, tell him your safeword.” Jack didn’t know my safeword, and somehow this gave me a tiny spark of power. Was I topping from below? Had I gone over the edge? Jack had brought me here to teach me something, and clearly I was failing to learn the lesson at hand.
The crop sliced through the air. “Thank you, Master,” I parroted, my face glistening from the tears now, my voice barely audible. And then Jack did something that made me wetter than I’ve ever been. He moved his body to shield my own, covering me up with his own skin. I could feel his arms tight around me, his mouth against my ear. “Say it,” he insisted, and then his body tightened, and I understood that the Dom—not seeming to care who the fuck he cropped—had let a blow land on Jack’s body. And then another. And another. Jack didn’t flinch, didn’t say a word to me now, he simply protected me.
And I couldn’t stand that.
“Uncle,” I said, loud enough, and the Dom dropped his weapon and Jack moved aside so that I could be released from the bindings. Jack took off his shirt and pulled it over my nearly naked body, then carried me through the crowd and out to the front of the club. Somehow, he slid me back into my dress. Somehow, he got us a cab, and I found myself curled in his arms, safe once more. Safe at last.
Chapter Thirty-Three:
Shine On, You Crazy Diamond
He took me back to the hotel that night, and he didn’t say a word during the whole cab ride or the trip up in the elevator—the purple one this time. He didn’t say I’d done well, didn’t say I’d failed him. I couldn’t tell his thoughts in any way by the manner in which he treated me. I felt meek, cowed, as he drew a bath for me in the cool ceramic tub and lit candles, tiny tea lights that I had bought on a whim. I am the type of person who believes food tastes better on a pretty plate. That atmosphere is almost as important as the main event. I’ve always been a fan of wearing sexy panties even if there’s no one there to see them—or in Jack’s case, no one there to cut them off. Jack understood this from the start.
He washed me in the tub and then let me relax alone. I heard him in the adjoining room, but I didn’t even try to make sense of the noises. Finally, Jack came back, right as the water was starting to cool, and lifted me up, dried me off, wrapped me in a fresh towel, and led me back to the bedroom.
“Oh, god, Jack,” I whispered, hand going to my mouth, towel falling from my body. “I can’t …”
I was limp with release more than exhaustion, and I hadn’t thought of what the scene might have done to Jack. What he might want afterwards. What he might need.
But to paraphrase that famous Tom Cruise flick, Jack was on me from “I can’t”—this wasn’t an acceptable response, and we both knew it. Jack had a brand-new set of restraints on the bed, and he fastened them to my body quickly, leather ones that buckled on my wrists, then attached neatly to a set on my upper thighs. I couldn’t raise my arms up, couldn’t hide or p
rotect myself in any way. But the restraints were not what had caused me alarm.
There were toys lined up neatly on the bedside table. Plugs in various sizes. A bottle of lube.
I didn’t say a word now, scared of betraying myself with my voice. I didn’t think I could take another scene like the one in the club. Jack bent me over on the bed, pillows under my hips to raise them, and then slicked the lube between the cheeks of my ass. I turned my head away, feeling raw and used already, as Jack slid the smallest plug inside me.
Shame floored me, as it always did when Jack played like this. Yes, I had begged Byron to fuck my ass, but it would have been completely different with him, something dirty we were engaging in together. With Jack, there was the sense of being willingly violated, the way his hands were rough on me, spreading me. The way he held me open and stared down at me, inspecting me.
When the first plug was in place, he flipped me over on the mattress and bent down between my legs. His tongue on my clit was the last thing I expected. The reward of the experience confused my brain even more. He licked me forcefully, his tongue running up and down between my pussy lips, and then he made those dangerous circles around my clit, until I was breathless with yearning. And only then did he turn me back over, unceremoniously pull that plug out, and move on to the next size up.
I understood what he was doing. He was showing me that I was his. That he was in control of my pleasure, of my embarrassment, of my very sense of self. He needn’t have worried. I knew I was his. I had known from the start. It didn’t matter to me that someone else had just cropped me. As far as I was concerned, that man was a tool, like Jack said: a machine.
He had to work harder to slide the second plug inside of me, and I bit into my bottom lip and pressed my face against the rumpled white sheets. I didn’t whine or complain when his hands touched my welts, when white-hot pain flared through me, leaving me shaking. The pain stabilized me, as always, gave me something to hold on to.
Jack repositioned me onto my back once more, and for a moment I was extremely aware of the size of the plug in my ass. The feeling of being stretched was overwhelming. That is, at least, until Jack resumed his place between my forcefully spread thighs and lapped at my throbbing clit once more. I wished my hands were free so I could stroke his hair, touch his face. Jack pushed my thighs wide, and I shut my eyes and felt him licking from the base of my pussy up to my pubic bone. The pleasure that traveled through my body made me dizzy. But when he lifted up and spoke, the pleasure built rather than subsided at the words he said.
“I wanted to do that at the club,” he said. “I wanted to go on my knees in front of you while he was whipping you and lick your sweet pussy.”
The image was almost too sexy to stand.
“Make you come while you were being cropped. That’s what I wanted to do … But I couldn’t stop watching you, watching your face, and then I understood somehow that you weren’t going to give your word. God, Sam, why?”
I shrugged. How could I explain it?
“You would have passed out before you spoke, wouldn’t you?”
I couldn’t meet his eyes now. What did he want from me? Saying the word would have been losing, failing.
Failing Jack and myself.
He was flipping me over once more, and my heart sank at the size of the last plug waiting on the nightstand. But when Jack slid out the second toy, he didn’t reach for the third. Instead, I felt warm skin on me, Jack’s body on mine, and then his cock inside my ass. He couldn’t wait. He talked to me as he fucked me, knees pushing my thighs wide apart, hands stroking over the welts on my skin.
“I wanted to film it,” he said, his cock thrusting so hard. “To film him whipping you, and then make you watch the movie later. Make you watch yourself while I whipped you. We’ll do that, Samantha. You and me.” In and out, his hands now spanking me, my thighs, my ass, as he fucked me, as if he couldn’t help himself. But as always when Jack took my ass, everything else faded away. I could hear the sounds of the smacks on my skin, but I could no longer feel them.
“Force you to watch,” he said, “while I took you further. He’d use the crop. I’d choose a cane.”
My pussy tightened, and when Jack spoke again, I heard the dark smile in his voice. Without saying a word, I’d told him what I thought of that image. Even though the concept of being filmed was beyond frightening to me, the way Jack presented the scene turned me on.
“You lit up the place,” Jack whispered, and I could tell he was reaching his limits.
I was going to come. I could feel it.
“The way you took the pain,” Jack continued, almost sounding awed. “The way you absorbed each blow. You shone—” he gripped my thick hair, making me arch, making me look back at him. “There’s no other way to describe it.”
Pounding into me, slamming into me.
“And I didn’t want him to stop.” It was like Jack was confessing now, telling me secrets. “I didn’t want the whipping to end.” His words coming as fast as his thrusts. “But he had to stop.” I was coming, those tremors of pure pleasure shaking me, shaking Jack. “You wouldn’t tell him. You wouldn’t give your word.”
I saw Jack in my head, blocking me, shielding me, and I felt his body collapse on mine as he came inside me.
“You shone,” he murmured, gripping me up in his strong embrace, sealing me to him, even bound as I was.
It’s a sad song, you know.
It always makes me cry.
Chapter Thirty-Four:
Cherry Red
We flew to Los Angeles together, like a real couple, and when Jack drove us back to his place on Sunset, it felt like a real home.
But a truly sterile home.
Jack didn’t have anything personal on display. There were no framed photos of his friends, his family, his dog. No postcards pinned to the bulletin board in the office. No silly cartoons taped to his fridge. Jack’s style went beyond minimalist to spartan, which I’ll admit is the opposite of my magpie-like tendency to collect and display treasures.
I had bowed to Byron’s style, as I had no money to change the miserable surroundings. We’d ended up with places designed by his mother, who fancied herself a self-taught interior decorator. And so the rooms all had a Nagel-esque eighties feel, with gray carpets, pink accents, and oddly shaped stuffed dolls sitting lazily in ceramic chairs atop all the shelves. Neither of our living quarters (the triplex near Fairfax, the townhouse in Santa Monica) ever felt truly like home to me, or even like a place I’d choose to live.
But Jack’s was different. It was a bare canvas. He didn’t even have coffee table books out, or magazines, or reading material on his bedside table. Most pieces of furniture were black or white. All were clearly expensive. Solid. Well made. Nothing flimsy or delicate.
Jack picked up his routine immediately, and I continued my leave of absence from the salon while I prepared my Victorian outline for my new publisher. But my work habits are non-traditional, and I had plenty of time on my own. Time to shop for flowers. For candles. For delicate plates that didn’t match and wine glasses with colored stems. Jack didn’t say anything until he found me one evening reading in bed under a scarlet blanket. His sheets were white, the comforters white or black. I’d added a striking element to the room, one he couldn’t ignore.
He didn’t speak right away. He sat on the edge of the bed, then ran his fingers over the blanket’s hem. It was cozy, something to wrap up in on a crisp fall day. And it was blood red. I met his eyes and waited. Jack handled everything: paid for the restaurants, the gas for the cars, the food in the fridge. He was in control of nearly all aspects of our world, and now I’d brought color to his room. I wondered if he’d noticed the flowers on his dresser. They were as bright as the blanket, velvety roses that I’d arranged in a simple black-and-white vase. I wasn’t trying to remake Jack. I was only trying to colorize him.
“Pretty,” he said finally. He had a glass in his hand, as always after work. A single shot
of scotch tonight.
I grinned. “Me or the blanket?”
“You.”
“But what do you think of the blanket?”
He shrugged. “I don’t really see my surroundings all that much,” he admitted. “I’ve always been more into the mental than the physical.” I understood what he meant. Sometimes I’d see him on the couch and think he was sleeping, but he’d be pondering some aspect of a case he was working on. Gone from the physical world. Lost to me until he pulled himself back. I’d learned by now not to disturb him at times like this; it would be like waking a bear from deep hibernation.
I pushed on. “But the flowers, the candles in the bathroom, the books on the coffee table.” I’d bought them at my favorite bookstore on Sunset, selecting black-and-white photography books. Not trying to crash Jack’s world to the ground, simply to enhance it. I’d been an art history major at school. I knew which books to choose.
“You’re all the color I need,” Jack said, coming closer, setting his drink down on the nightstand. “You seem to blend in at first, dark hair, pale skin, perfect for my black and white environment. But then you change.”
“What do you mean?”
“Your cheeks turn pink when I make you blush. Your lips become a dark berry color when you bite them, nervous, wondering what I’m going to do to you next. Your ass, after I spank you, takes on that wonderful shade of well-punished red.”
I squeezed my eyes shut tight. I’d been hoping to get a rise out of him, and clearly I had. But the way he was talking, and moving, poetic and slow, had me off balance. Sometimes when Jack was on his way home from work, he’d call and give me a chore or an assignment, letting me know what was in store for me. “Get out the crop.” “Put on your collar.” Other times he’d burst through the door with electric energy and take me into the hallway or out on the balcony. But this was different. He was moving slowly, like a panther stalking its prey, and I felt mesmerized, at his mercy.
“Look at me.”