“Do you do this with a lot of people?” I felt my cheeks heating up when I heard the hesitation in my own voice; was I coming across as needy?
“A few.” If he was surprised or offended at the question, his voice didn’t show it. “Fewer now than I used to. I have one other person who regularly subs for me, and I do occasional scenes with others at events.” His fist closed gently in my hair, and the slight tug made my scalp prickle pleasantly. His voice sounded a little more thoughtful when he spoke again. “You’re the first new person I’ve seen in some time.”
“I guess I should feel special, huh?”
“You are.” His voice was low, and his words slid over me like warm syrup, thick and sweet. It made me go a little squirmy inside, made me shift and twist on my pillow, like maybe I could burrow into his voice if I tried hard enough.
“I don’t really feel like it,” I murmured, more to his knee than to him. “I don’t know what I’m doing at all.”
“Experience isn’t everything.” He tightened his fist, making the prickling in my scalp spike to something closer to pain, and my mouth fell open, a sharp gasp echoing through the room. He tugged gently, angling my head slightly back and pressing it even more firmly against his leg. “You’re so eager, so responsive,” he said, and there was clear admiration in his voice. My breath came even faster. “I wonder what you’re going to sound like when I hurt you.”
“Oh, fuck,” I groaned, my eyes sliding shut under the dual assault of his hand and his voice. If I hadn’t come so recently, my cock would have been standing straight up, just from the way he talked to me. “I—you could, next time. I’d been…sort of hoping we could…test those limits a little tonight.”
The hand in my hair tugged again, pulling my head fully off Ellison’s thigh and tilting it far back, stretching my neck out and exposing my throat. I opened my eyes to see him leaning over me, eyes wild and glittering, mouth curved into a wicked smile.
“Oh, River,” he chuckled softly. “Did you think I was done with you already?”
I couldn’t answer, could only pant and gasp as his free hand came to rest on my throat. The pull on my hair was growing more intense, edging closer to real pain, and I was shocked by how badly I wanted it. I wanted him to yank sharply on it, to jerk my head to the side or to use it to drag me down to the floor and fuck me senseless again. Any sensation he could give me would be enough. I just wanted to feel him. To let him feel me.
Too soon, he released me with a firm shove, sending me spilling forward to catch myself on my hands. “Get up,” he said, a hard edge in his voice that thrilled me far more than it should have.
I pulled myself to my feet as quickly as I could. I staggered, a little lightheaded at the sudden movement—the heavy breathing probably hadn’t helped with that any—but he was there to catch me by the elbow and lead me confidently away. I floated along beside him in a pleasant haze, focusing only on the touch of his hand and the floor under my feet as he led the way down a hall and into a bedroom.
The bedroom was just as cozy and understated as the rest of the house. I’d been half expecting something wild and exotic—an assortment of manacles on the wall, or a sex swing, or a St. Andrew’s cross in the corner or something. But all I saw was a bed, two nightstands, and a single dresser; a room devoid of kink…although I was pretty sure opening up the nightstands would change that a little.
“I want you bent over the end of the bed,” Ellison said, and gave me another little push toward it. I leaned over it sort of gingerly, planting my hands on the springy surface and shuffling my feet so that I looked more or less like someone who was sexy and knew it, rather than someone bent stiffly over a stranger’s bed. I heard a closet door sliding on smooth tracks and a bit of shuffling, and then Ellison was behind me again. I felt him more than heard him,—that odd sort of sixth sense where you’re subconsciously picking up body heat or vibrations or something. I could feel the weight of him there, equal parts comforting and nerve-wracking.
“You’ve never been flogged before, have you?” he said conversationally. Something swished through the air—a muted, sensual whisper—and I shivered even though I had no idea what it meant.
“No,” I said, then because it seemed like it was probably a good time for it, I added, “sir.”
I hadn’t been calling him “sir” most of the night, and he hadn’t been correcting me on it. Did he not really care about me using it, or did he only care when it was an opportunity to slap me? I wasn’t even sure when I was supposed to be using it—whether it should be after everything I said, or just when I was answering a question he gave me.
Then I wondered, with a creeping sense of worry, if he was going easy on me because I was so new at this. What if I was screwing things up, and he just wasn’t telling me to spare my feelings?
But no, he said he’d tell me if he wanted me to do anything differently. I had to trust him on that. I was trusting him to fuck me, to hit me, to hold me by the throat—surely I could trust him to tell me when he wanted something from me.
Ellison stepped to the side of the bed and gave the flogger a soft underhanded swing so that the green and black falls landed on the bedspread in front of me, spread out like a leathery fan. “This is what I’ll be hitting you with,” he said, dragging it closer to me. I breathed deep, letting the rich, earthy smell of leather fill my nostrils. “This one is elk, very soft and medium weight, so it’ll be easy for me to control the amount of pain I’m inflicting. I could hurt you badly with this if I really wanted to, but I would have to work for it.”
I nodded mutely. I couldn’t tell if I was disappointed or not, but it seemed reasonable. A responsible person would ease into being actually literally beaten with an implement of torture. But part of me really wanted to impress him. Wanted him to be proud of me, of how much I could take. And yeah, maybe that wasn’t the healthiest way to go about this, but to be fair, I wasn’t thinking with all of my brain right now.
“I’m not going to push you hard tonight,” he said, shifting behind me again. His hand came to rest between my shoulder blades, hot and heavy. “If you want me to stop, you only have to tell me to stop. But some day I’m going to have you here with a safeword, and I’m going to hurt you until you beg and plead and cry. Do you want that?”
I swallowed hard. “Yes, sir,” I whispered, realizing I did. It was one of those deep, dark sort of wants, the kind that slithers away when you look at it too hard, but not before you see the shape of it lurking there inside you.
“Good.” His hand stroked gently down my spine, a touch that may have seemed loving in another context. I arched up into it, the warmth and pressure stirring up need in my chest. “Stay still for me. Can you do that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good boy.” I shivered at the subtle wrongness of the words, and beneath that, the deeper pleasure of knowing that I’d pleased him, that he found me worthy of praise.
Ellison’s hand left me and the flogger swished through the air again; I clenched my teeth, waiting for the pain, wondering if I could take it.
The pain didn’t come. When the flogger’s falls hit my back with a muted smack, the impact brought to mind a pat on the back from a very large hand, yet I’d been so tensed up with anticipation that I let out a sharp gasp anyway. Ellison dragged the falls slowly down my back, the butter-soft leather sliding over my skin like a caress, and I arched into it before I remembered that he’d told me to stay still. I planted my feet a little firmer, forcing myself to stillness.
He rewarded me with another swing, and then another, a slow progression of blows that didn’t hurt, but made me jump all the same—my body was still expecting it to hurt, so every smack of leather startled me. My skin began to warm under the blows; I could almost feel the blood rushing to the surface as he started striking me a little harder, a little more firmly, and lingered less and less on the sensual drag after.
“Good so far?” he asked, the leather swishing briskly in the air behin
d me.
“Yes, sir,” I gasped.
The next blow was harder, with a little bit of sting. I hissed, my back arching automatically, but I quickly corrected myself and flattened out again. He didn’t comment on it—just hit me again, and this time the sound that came out of me was a full-fledged whimper.
He kept going, settling into a smooth rhythm as he peppered my back with lightly-stinging blows, and I lost track of the number and location of them. I began to sag into the bed, and I realized with a shock as I did that I was getting hard again. My cock pressed against his bedspread, probably leaking all over it, but I couldn’t be bothered to care—not when every strike of the flogger seemed a little better than the last, and Ellison was so determined to cover every inch of my skin with its biting kisses.
When he moved on to my ass, the urge to move became unbearable. The force of the strikes kept jostling me, making my aching cock rub maddeningly against the bed, and I moved with them—subtly at first, but when he didn’t correct me, I gained courage and started rocking against the bed in earnest.
“Look at you,” he said, trailing the tails over my heated ass as I worked my hips helplessly. “Grinding against my bed like that, so desperate for anything to touch your cock. Such a dirty slut.”
I moaned, shuddering under his words as I tried and failed to make my hips still.
“That’s interesting,” he said mildly. The brush of leather against my skin stopped, and I felt his weight leaning over my back. “I thought you said that names like ‘slut’ wouldn’t do anything for you, but you definitely had a reaction there. Tell me about that.”
“I—I—” My brain was sputtering, misfiring under the multi-front assault of his flogger, his body, and his voice. “I don’t…”
“Take your time,” he said, stepping back. The leather didn’t touch my skin again, and I let out a quiet whimper, desperate for its touch again.
“It’s…” I pinched my eyes shut, grateful that I didn’t have to look at him. “It’s…the fact that you’re calling me anything at all. You’ve…given me a name. Told me what I am. It’s comforting.”
“Very good,” he said, his voice warm and pleased. “Would you like me to hit you again?”
I shuddered. “Yes, please. More.”
He didn’t make me wait; the falls struck my skin again, making me arch and cry out under their touch. He focused on my ass, where the skin was already heated and tender, and he kept up a relentless rhythm that had me moving along with it, moving my hips in frantic circles to meet each blow and rub my cock against his bed. The bedspread was growing damp under me, but I didn’t care. I only cared about his touch, his pain, his gifts.
I’d never thought pain could feel like this. It hurt, yes, but in a distant, inconsequential sort of way that let other things rise to the surface, like the heat of my skin, the softness of the leather, and the sound of Ellison’s breath as he swung and swung. Every strike spurred me higher, lighting up my body and my brain; for long moment I felt entirely disconnected, lost in a strange sort of synesthesia where every hit made the world flare orange-red, and every space between them went to cool gray. I drifted between them, lost in a sea of color and texture and sensation.
“It’s so good,” I choked out through heaving breaths. “God, it’s—it’s so good.”
When Ellison stopped, I nearly sobbed, pressing my hips back toward him as if I could thrust myself into the flogger. “Please, no—don’t stop.”
His hand skimmed softly over the curve of my ass, and I nearly cried out from the heat of it burning against my skin. It was like a brand, a searing point of pressure that told me I was his.
“If I keep going, you’re definitely going to be feeling this tomorrow.” I opened my mouth, trying to get my dry throat to function well enough to tell him I didn’t care, I just wanted more, but he silenced me with a hand between my shoulder blades. “You can tell me how this feels tomorrow, and next time you can tell me if I can hurt you more.”
“Okay,” I whimpered, defeated. He was right, of course. That didn’t mean I had to like it.
His hand stroked my burning ass again, and I made a strangled noise. “If you have marks tomorrow, I want you to send me a picture of them. That goes for any time we play. Understand?”
“Yes, sir,” I murmured, something in me thrilling at the idea of doing that for him, of exposing myself so he could see the results of his handiwork.
“Good boy,” he said. I squirmed again under the praise, possibly in discomfort, but mainly just to rub my cock against the bed again. I was dripping wet and dying for release. “Now, how is that hole doing?” he mused, like he didn’t really care about my answer. One spit-slick finger circled my entrance, dipping inside and making me gasp and writhe as he pumped it slowly in and out. He wasn’t trying to get me off—just toying with me and testing.
“You’re still so eager to get fucked,” he said, and I could hear the wicked grin in his tone. “Would you like me to give you my cock again?”
I nodded with an affirmative moan, and planted my feet, hitching my hips up a little higher to present myself to him.
This time there was no preamble at all, no making me beg—he paused only long enough to get a condom on, and then he slid into me with no hesitation. A wave of relief rolled over me as he fucked me, soothing the raging need that had been spiraling out of control since he started hitting me. I kept my hips up, but my whole upper body sagged into the mattress as I stretched my arms far overhead like a cat stretching in the sun.
Ellison didn’t let me bask for long, though—I gasped sharply as he fisted his hand in my hair and drew my head back. My back arched; my cock throbbed. Stars flared behind my eyes as he fucked into me mercilessly, pushing higher and louder noises out of my throat every time his cock grazed my prostate.
I was so close. “Please, sir,” I gasped. “Please, I’m—can I come?”
His fist tightened in my hair, making needle-sharp pricks of pain flare across my scalp. His voice went low as he growled, “Who says you get to come?”
The spiraling pleasure slipped away, replaced by cold terror. It was such a ridiculous thing to inspire fear—there was no danger here, no threat, but for some reason when he let me know he had the power to deny me that release, horror filled me. He couldn’t—not after all this.
“Please, I—you can’t!” I thrashed in his arms as much as I could, but his grip was tight in my hair and there was only so far I could move without risking real pain. “You can’t—you said—”
My voice was nearly a sob, and the rising panic spiked higher. Now on top of everything else, I was acting like an idiot in front of the guy I really wanted to impress. My face was hot, my eyes prickling, and goddammit, who the hell cries because they’re not allowed to come?
Ellison released my hair and pulled out with a sharp smack on my ass that shocked me back to reality for a second. “Get up on the bed. On your back.”
My ass was stinging and my scalp throbbed and my eyes were burning, and the sensations were all clashing in a confusing jumble, but still some part of me knew that I wanted to please him, so I climbed up on the bed and did as I was told. I chanced a look at Ellison, and what I saw nearly took my breath away.
His skin was shining with sweat, and small droplets had gathered around the hair on his lower belly. Corded muscle shifted under the skin of his slender arms, speaking of hidden strength. But above it all were his eyes—crystal blue and sharply shining as he took me in, sharply focused like he was writing my shape on his memory.
I wasn’t an expert on his facial expressions or anything, but it seemed his face didn’t match his stern tone. It was softer somehow, rounder around the edges even as he hooked his arms under my legs, shoving them wide and high as he positioned himself between them and slid back into me.
My teeth clamped down on my lower lip as he filled me again. I was being torn in two directions at once. I wanted to feel him moving in me, wanted it with a desperation I ha
rdly recognized, but every sensation brought back shades of the terror I’d felt a moment ago when he’d been so cruel. I’d been reduced to a writhing mass of doubt, entirely helpless to stop wanting him.
Ellison reached down and caught me firmly by the chin. His fingers dug into my jawline, the sharp pressure making me gasp, and he leaned down, bringing his face close to mine.
“You’re going to stay right there,” he growled, his voice low and full of promises. “You’re going to be very, very good for me, and then when I’m done using you, I’ll allow you to come. Do you understand?”
“Yes, thank you,” I said, the words distorted by my immobilized jaw. “Thank you, sir. I’ll be good for you.”
“I know you will.” His hot tongue ran slowly up my cheek, and I shuddered beneath him, fighting to obey.
He released my chin and shoved my knees back toward my chest, rough and businesslike, and started fucking me with the kind of raw force I’d hardly ever experienced before. His gaze pierced me as surely as his cock did, the look on his face one of possession and greed, like he was claiming what was his.
I let my body go lax under his assault, finally giving in to the simple pleasure of being fucked, of that intense, almost-too-full pleasure as he buried himself deep inside me. I’m usually pretty loud in bed, but I didn’t have any volume left in me, just a series of low, needy moans that left my throat as my eyes rolled back in my head.
His fingers tightened even harder on my chin, mashing my head into the pillow as he let out a gravelly yell, low and primal and roaring in my ears as he came. I welcomed every bit of the pressure and squeeze, and the feeling of his cock pulsing hot and thick inside me.
When his hips finally stilled he released my chin; my jaw popped as I opened my mouth, finally unencumbered by his grip. “Good boy. You did so well for me.” His hand stroked down my cheek to my neck, fingers trailing through the sweat accumulating there. I arched under his touch, stretched tight with a strange mix of contentment and desire, wanting him to just pet me and stroke me forever even though my cock ached and throbbed between my legs.
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