Rylee, naked in front of a man she barely knew, her arms extended and cuffed overhead, her feet forced wide apart, answered honestly. “Vulnerable.”
He slapped her across the face, sharp and sudden, the unexpected blow causing her head to whip to the side. Rylee gasped with surprise and pain.
In a smooth, silky voice, Simon corrected, “Vulnerable, Sir. You will address me either as Master Simon or Sir.”
“Vulnerable, Sir,” Rylee repeated, her cheek still smarting from his palm.
A finger of unease drew its way down her spine. It wasn’t what he had done, per se. She was used to rough play, and indeed, sought it out. It was the expression in his eyes—cold, almost angry—that disconcerted her.
She blew out a breath as she re-sought her equilibrium, drawing on Marco’s teaching of mindfulness and centeredness.
Master Simon, meanwhile, had unzipped his duffel bag and pulled from it a large, shiny black leather flogger with easily thirty tresses or more. Rylee’s cunt contracted with excitement. She loved nothing more than a thorough, intense full-body flogging.
Holding the whip at his side, Master Simon moved close to her and reached for the back of her head with his free hand. He grabbed a handful of her hair and twisted it hard. As Rylee opened her mouth in a reflexive cry, he covered it with his, his tongue darting between her teeth.
His kiss was rough and insistent, nothing sweet or tender about it. It was an invasion, an onslaught. Instinctively, Rylee pulled back, but his grip on her hair kept her still.
His mouth still on hers, he dropped the flogger to the floor and reached for her left breast, which he kneaded roughly. Finding her nipple, he pinched it until she yelped against his mouth, his fingers still twisted in her hair. His hand moved from her nipple to her cunt, which was spread wide by her position. He pushed a finger roughly inside and laughed, the sound low and cruel.
“Soaking wet, you slut. Perfect. Just perfect.”
Finally, he let her go and bent to retrieve the flogger. “Are you ready to suffer for me?”
Rylee, her chest heaving, her left nipple aching, her cunt on fire, said breathlessly, “Yes, Sir.”
“Excellent. What’s your safeword?”
Good. He was observing proper protocol. “Butterfly, Sir.”
“Butterfly,” he repeated. He lifted the flogger and brought it close so Rylee could smell the heavenly scent of oiled leather. “Prepare for the experience of a lifetime.”
He moved behind her and began to flog her in a steady, snapping rhythm.
The flogger stung as the thongs snapped hard against her back, ass and thighs. Rylee closed her eyes, embracing the pain, letting its welcome heat move through her skin and bones, warming her blood and tightening her cunt.
She hadn’t heard him move, but suddenly strips of stinging leather crashed down across both breasts. Her eyes flew open, along with her mouth as she gasped in surprise.
Master Simon smiled, though it seemed to Rylee the smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. Stepping slightly to the side, he flicked the tips of the tresses so they caught first her left nipple and then her right in concentrated explosions of pain.
“Ah,” Rylee cried.
“Your tits need to be properly tenderized for the needle,” Master Simon said.
Wait. What?
“The needle?” Rylee echoed, forgetting to say Sir.
“That’s right.”
Master Simon turned back toward the chair and dropped his flogger on top of her folded clothes. He bent down and pulled something from the gear bag. Turning, he held a white, plastic box that Rylee recognized as a first-aid kit.
Bringing it closer, he opened the lid. Instead of bandages and gauze, however, she saw rows of long, thin needles with red plastic caps.
The finger of unease was back, now screeching along her spine like fingernails on a chalkboard. “We didn’t talk about needles.” Her voice came out as a croak, and she cleared her throat.
“We didn’t talk about a lot of things.” He set the box on the end table by the chair and turned back to face her. “Here’s all you need to know. I’m the Master of this scene, and you are my sub. You will do as I say and take what I give you.”
Rylee shook her head firmly. “No. Sorry, but no. That’s not how I—”
Simon lunged toward her, his hand suddenly gripping her by the throat. His face close to hers, he said in a low, menacing voice, “Never say no to me.”
Who the fuck did this guy think he was? The flogging had been intense, but this scene needed to end. “No, Simon,” Rylee countered. “This isn’t how—” she began, but again he cut her off.
“Master Simon,” he snapped. “What’s gotten into you all of a sudden?”
“Master Simon,” she amended, just to shut him up. “You need to listen to me. This isn’t how I scene. We must have got our wires crossed. I’m sorry. I need you to let me down now.”
He stared at her, his mouth hanging open. She waited for him to reach for the cuffs, but he didn’t move. Finally he spoke. “I just spent two hundred dollars for this room, bitch. We are going to make full use of it.”
“No,” Rylee repeated, an acidic rush of panic rising in her gut. “Butterfly.”
He stared at her without moving, as if she’d said something in a foreign language.
“Simon,” she said, trying to keep her voice calm but firm. “I said my safeword. Maybe you don’t understand—”
He turned away and bent down to reach into his bag. He whipped around. “No. You don’t understand.”
All at once he was pressing something into her mouth. She realized what it was—a ball gag. Using his other hand to hold her head still, he forced the rubber ball between her teeth. She tried to jerk away, but was unable to escape as he buckled the gag into place behind her head.
“Alice,” Rylee tried to scream, but it came out only as a gurgle against the invasive ball that pressed her tongue back toward her throat. Panicked terror had changed the blood in her veins to ice, and her entire body tensed as she jerked in her cuffs. This couldn’t be happening. The guy couldn’t possibly think this was sane, consensual behavior.
As if reading her mind, he said, “Don’t give me that safeword shit. I had you pegged the minute I saw you at that party. You’re not like all those pussy girls in the scene who constantly chant their mantra of ‘safe, sane, consensual.’ You like it hard and rough. You like a man who takes control. I’m on to you, cunt. I know what you want. More to the point, I know what you need. And I’m just the man to give it to you.”
Vehemently, Rylee shook her head. At the same time, she clenched and unclenched her fists in a universal BDSM gesture of distress.
Simon ignored her. He dragged the end table across the floor so it was standing beside the suspension rack. Opening the plastic box, he took out a needle and pulled away its protective wrapper. Setting it down, he stripped the wrappers from at least a dozen more, and lined them in a neat row on the table.
Rylee continued to shake her head and unclench and clench her fists as he gripped her left nipple with the fingers of one hand while holding the sharp needle with the other. She was gibbering behind the rubber ball, tears forming in her eyes. How could he think she wanted this?
Without looking at her face, holding the needle by its plastic tag, the bastard pushed the sharp tip into the soft flesh of her areola. It pricked like a bee sting. Looking down, Rylee saw a bright bead of blood.
She closed her eyes, a tear rolling down her cheek.
Letting go of her nipple, he reached for another needle. He pricked her again and again, creating a circle around the perimeter of her areola with the needles, which stood like mini flagpoles topped with tiny red plastic flags.
Through it all, he never once looked at her face.
Rylee breathed hard through her nostrils, drool dripping down her chin and onto her breasts as the clueless sadist shifted his focus to her second breast. He inserted the tips of the sharp needles until anot
her circle of stinging steel surrounded her right nipple.
Rage had heated the initial icy fear in her blood to fire.
At last, the handsome monster stepped back, cocking his head in appraisal as he regarded his handiwork. Finally, he met her eye and actually grinned at her with his movie-star teeth. “Beautiful, isn’t it? Aren’t you glad I didn’t let you ruin the scene by wussing out?”
Rylee stared back in shocked disbelief at the man.
He was watching her, apparently waiting for her response. Slowly, she nodded. If she played along, maybe he’d let her down.
“I’m hard as a fucking rock,” he announced, rubbing the crotch of his jeans. “I’m going to take out the needles and let you down so you can suck my cock as thanks. Got that, cunt?”
Rylee nodded.
He turned once again to his duffel, this time pulling out his phone. “I have to get a picture first. Your tits look so fucking hot like that.” He held the camera toward her and took several pictures while she imagined stomping his head into the ground.
She held herself still as he plucked each needle from her breasts, dropping them into his plastic box one at a time. Several of the tiny wounds were bleeding, and all of them throbbed. He dabbed at the blood with an alcohol-soaked pad and then dropped that, too, into the plastic box.
In a different context, with a different man, she might have been aroused. As it was, her thoughts were decidedly murderous.
When he finally took the ball gag out of her mouth, Rylee said nothing, biding her time until he’d released her from the cuffs.
“You look so hot, babe,” the creep said, finally reaching up to unclip her wrist cuffs. “There’s fire in your eyes. I like that. I like knowing I subdued your fiery spirit. I harnessed your passion with my dominance.”
Like hell you did, asshole.
He squatted in front of her and unclipped her ankle cuffs. Then he stepped back and pointed imperiously to the floor. “Kneel in front of me, slave. You will worship my cock and balls.”
Rylee lowered herself to the ground in front of him. She wiped away the drool on her chin with the back of her hand as she watched him open his jeans and slide them, along with his underwear, down his strong, muscular thighs. His cock sprang forward, long and thin, a drop of pre-come at its tip.
Leaning forward, she lunged for him, wrapping his thighs in a grappling leg lock that sent him crashing to the floor, overturning the end table in the process.
He landed with a grunt. “What the fuck—”
He didn’t have time to finish the sentence before she grabbed him in a cross collar grip and flipped him onto his stomach, knocking the wind out of him as he hit the ground. Bending down, she caught both of his wrists in one hand, simultaneously reaching for the duffel on the chair, which she upended onto the floor.
She found what she was looking for—a shiny pair of police-issue handcuffs. Grabbing them, she straddled the still gasping, floundering man beneath her. She closed the metal cuffs quickly over his wrists and locked them in place with a satisfying click.
His breath back, the idiot shouted, “What the fuck do you think you’re doing, you big dyke! Get those cuffs off me this instant! How dare you—”
He stopped midsentence as Rylee stuffed the ball gag, still wet with her saliva, into his protesting mouth and buckled it tight behind his head. As he struggled to his knees, she grabbed his phone, which had also fallen to the ground, and opened his camera app. She selected Delete All and pressed the button before tossing the phone back onto the floor.
The handsome man’s face was mottled with rage, gurgling sounds issuing from behind the rubber ball between his very white teeth. He bent forward in a classic head butt stance. Rylee caught him easily in a basic chokehold and flipped him once more to the ground.
“I’d stay down there if I were you,” she said, standing over him. “If you get up again, I might have to kill you.” She said the words calmly. The impotent rage she experienced while cuffed and gagged had drained away. She felt strong, powerful and ready for a fight.
Apparently believing her, Simon lay inert on the floor, his hands cuffed behind his back, his jeans tangled around his legs, drooling over the ball gag, nearly as helpless as she’d been a moment before.
Rylee pulled on her clothing, wincing a little as the bra cupped her tender, pricked breasts. She sat on the chair and put on her socks and sneakers while Simon lay whimpering on the floor. “I’d ask you for your safeword,” she said. “But I really don’t give a shit.”
She stepped out into the hall. “Alice,” she called. “Where are you? I need you.”
Alice stuck her head out of a doorway farther down the hall. “What is it, honey? Is everything okay?”
A film of tears momentarily washed over Rylee’s eyes, but she blinked them away. “Not for the fucking asshole lying on the floor in your dungeon.”
Alice’s eyebrows disappeared into her bangs. “What the hell?” She hurried out of the room and down the hall, quickly bypassing Rylee to enter the dungeon.
Rylee followed behind. Alice was standing in the middle of the room, hands on her hips, staring down at the squirming, grunting bastard.
Before Rylee could explain what had happened, Alice said in a hard, tight voice, “I’ve known Rylee a long time, mister. Whatever the hell you did to end up half naked and trussed up like a pig with an apple in his mouth, I’m one hundred percent sure you deserved it.”
Chapter 2
Taggart Fitzgerald closed his eyes and breathed in the rich, warm scent of leather as his fingers played over the freshly oiled rawhide. He could already visualize the graceful arc of a long, curling whip as it hissed through the air. A small jolt of arousal shot through him as a woman appeared in his mind’s eye, naked and bound, trembling with both fear and desire for the stinging kiss of his lash. He imagined her breathy cries as leather met flesh. He could almost smell her sweat and her desire.
Taggart shook himself out of his daydream, pushing his lust away as he reached for his measuring tape. His leather work was truly a labor of love, from greasing and stretching the hides to grinding and balancing the steel spikes that would become the handles, to measuring the leather for length and taper, and finally cutting and plaiting the pieces. He wove a part of his soul into each supple strand as he strived to work the leather impact gear into functioning art.
It was growing dark outside the windows of his cottage, a cold October drizzle falling. The wood-burning stove in the corner of the room kept the space warm and dry. Like the rawhide he stretched and oiled, this crooked old house had been all potential when he’d purchased it.
Over the three years he’d been there, he’d slowly rebuilt the place to suit his needs, breaking down the walls on the first floor from its warren of small, cramped rooms, opening it up into two main spaces, one for his workshop, the other for the BDSM dungeon where he demonstrated his wares and brought the occasional woman.
He had kept the small kitchen at the back of the house mostly intact, only updating the appliances and pulling up the curling linoleum to reclaim the original wide-plank pine flooring beneath.
Just as he reached for his blade to make the first cut for the core of what would eventually become a multi-tailed flogger, he heard the sound of a car’s engine and the crunch of tires along his gravel drive. He glanced at the wall clock—seven thirty, right on time.
Placing his knife carefully in its sheath, he scraped his stool back from the worktable and walked toward the front door to meet his clients, who had also become his friends in the years he’d known them. Through the partitioned glass that made up the top half of the door he saw Matt and Bonnie Wilson walking up the porch steps. He pulled open the door and gestured for them to come inside.
“Hey there, Leather Master,” Matt said heartily, clapping Taggart on the back. “It’s great to see you. How was the recent tour?”
“Great, thanks. Really successful. I have more orders than I know what to do with. But it�
��s good to be back home.” Taggart leaned down to kiss Bonnie on the cheek.
She stood on tiptoes to hug him and then stepped back, smiling warmly at him. “That’s the best part of traveling, right? Coming back home.” She glanced at her husband, who also did a lot of traveling for his business. Matt slipped his arm around her shoulders.
“Can I get you guys something to drink? Beer, wine, hot tea?”
“No, we’re good, thanks,” Matt said. “I want to see my new toy!”
“You’d think he was turning five, not thirty-five,” Bonnie said with an indulgent laugh, her dark eyes sparkling. She wore a red knit sweater over a pair of faded jeans, but even in that simple garb, he could appreciate the sexy swell of her lush breasts and the curve of her ample ass.
She touched her slave collar, one Taggart had created especially for her. He’d designed dozens of these collars—soft strips of leather lovingly dyed, braided, studded with steel, augmented with O-rings—but he’d never collared a submissive of his own. He was an active player in the BDSM scene, but he couldn’t imagine finding someone like Bonnie to share his life, not with the depth and commitment he sensed existed between these two.
He smiled at his friends. “I’ve designed some new pieces since the last time you were here. Come on into the dungeon and see if there’s something there that speaks to you.”
The three of them went through the French doors that separated the two rooms, Taggart gesturing the couple ahead of him. They made a beeline for the whip displays set against the back wall. As Taggart came to stand beside them, he was gratified to see their expressions of awe and delight. He knew they both appreciated the artistry and passion he put into his work, and that made it easier to part with his precious wares.
“I feel like a kid in a candy store. It’s so hard to choose.” Matt turned to Taggart. “What would you recommend?”
“Let’s see.” Taggart ran through a mental inventory. “You have two of my floggers, a cat and a couple of single tails, am I right?”
BDSM Connections - The Complete 4 Novel Series Page 21