by Amy Valenti
“Nell.”
I spun to find Marc leaning against the wall, and instantly my own worries receded. He looked on edge, though glad to see me. Despite his obvious tension, I took a moment to admire his Italian-suited figure as he came towards me.
“Hi,” I managed.
Marc cupped my cheek in his hand, his focus intense. He didn’t seem to care that we were right out at the front of the building, and that people might see us together. “You okay?”
“Sure. I should be asking you that question—he really laid into you back there.”
Marc studied me for a moment more before letting his hand drop. “Come home with me.”
I hesitated, and he raised an eyebrow. “Do you have other plans?”
“Ones that involve putting on underwear.”
Amused, he dug into his pocket and let just a hint of fabric show. “You can put this on in the car, as long as you know I’ll be taking it off you again in the dungeon.”
A sensible woman would have decided that Monday nights were for putting her feet up in front of the TV, then getting an early night before work on Tuesday. Since I’d met Marc, I was becoming less and less sensible. “Okay.”
Was I imagining it, or was he relieved? “This way.”
His Porsche was parked in one of the VIP slots at the side of the building. Marc opened the passenger door for me, which felt a little odd when I considered that I’d been kneeling at his feet just a few hours before. While I tried to sort my thoughts out, he got in the passenger side, then pulled out my thong.
“Do you really want this back?”
“Please.”
His lips twitched, but he remained straight-faced. “Why the urgency?”
Was he serious? “Have you ever worked for two hours in a knee-length skirt with absolutely nothing on underneath it?”
“Can’t say that I have.” Marc gave me a devastatingly handsome grin. “I take it you were…distracted?”
“I don’t know which was worse—having to concentrate on working in that state, or having your dad crash in unexpectedly.”
Marc dropped the thong in my lap, and I took that as permission to wriggle into it as gracefully as I could.
“Next time you go commando at the office, you’ll be doing it on my orders, Eleanor.”
My face heated. “What?!”
Marc just started the car, looking more relaxed than he had been since before his father’s visit.
****
Marc closed the dungeon door behind us, and I looked around the familiar space with a slight smile. “Is it weird that I’ve missed being in this room?”
“The room where I’ve made you scream out with ecstasy quite a few times now?” Marc pulled me towards him. “I don’t think it’s weird at all.”
He kissed me softly, slowly, awakening my nerve endings one by one until I wanted to curl up in his arms forever and never leave the dungeon again. It was so different to the dominant taking I’d imagined that I pulled back to study him. “Marc, are you okay?”
He sighed and pulled me over to the couch along one wall, and together we sat and contemplated all the kinky equipment laid out for our pleasure. He didn’t speak for a few moments, which reinforced my sense that he was rattled.
“Now you’ve seen part of the reason I can’t stand my father.”
“He seems…hot-tempered,” I said cautiously.
“There’s no way to reason with him when he wants something.” Marc ran his fingers through his hair and shook his head. He seemed almost…afraid. No, that can’t be right. “I’m sorry, Nell. There was no way I could have gotten rid of him, and the timing was terrible. You shouldn’t have had to deal with that in the middle of being punished for the first time—punished at all. It was a stupid risk I shouldn’t have taken. Can you forgive me?”
A little lost for words, I asked, “Why would I need to forgive you? It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t plan it that way, right?”
He shook his head, almost impatiently. “That’s not the point.”
I waited, still confused.
“Nell, if that had been a severe punishment, your mental state might have been a lot less stable. That kind of interruption could have messed with your head, undermined your trust in me—in us. I never want that to happen.”
Remembering how I’d felt after our first scene together—as needy and confused as I had been turned on and euphoric—I thought I could kind of grasp his point. “Let’s take this as a learning curve, then,” I suggested. “No more heavy stuff at work.”
“Deal.” Marc kissed me again, taking possession of my mouth with his lips, then his tongue. When he tightened his fingers in my hair and tugged my head back, I moaned into the kiss, forgetting everything as he skilfully ignited my desire once more.
He released me abruptly. “Do you have your collar and cuffs with you?”
“In my bag, Sir.”
“Bring them to me…and lose the clothes on the way.”
Storing away my analysis of Marc’s relationship with his father in the back of my mind for later, I crossed to where I’d laid down my bag, just next to the doorway. Before I took the collar and cuffs from the bag, I shimmied out of my skirt and blouse, stepped out of my shoes, then hesitated.
“And the rest.”
Marc’s voice made me shiver, and I relinquished my panties and bra to the pile of clothing as quickly as I could. Naked and still slightly self-conscious, despite the kinky weekend we’d just shared, I bent to pick up my bag and drew out the collar and cuffs I’d stuffed inside when Stella had been over at the printer earlier. When I turned to walk back to Marc’s side, he shook his head and pointed to the floor. “Crawl to me, Eleanor.”
Unsure whether I was turned on or humiliated by the request, I lowered myself to the ground slowly. With the collar held in one hand and the buckled-together cuffs in the other, I crawled over as best I could without making a spectacle of myself, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t the sexy slink Marc had hoped for.
He didn’t look disappointed, though, and when I knelt by his feet he took the leather accessories from me with one hand, then seized a handful of my hair in the other to pull me up into a smouldering kiss. His lips were insistent, his tongue demanding that I surrender to him.
I already had.
“Give me your wrist,” he ordered when he pulled back.
As I had earlier, in his office, I held out one wrist, then the other while he buckled the cuffs into place. Once he’d secured the second one, he clipped them together in front of me—with a clip that seemed designed for exactly this purpose—then gave a slow, predatory smile. “Try to get free.”
I jerked on the cuffs and was startled at the sudden jolt of arousal that hit me as I realised I couldn’t free myself. Marc was in control now, and the submissive part of me thrilled at the knowledge. The half-hearted experimenting with fuzzy handcuffs I’d done a few years ago hadn’t given me a rush anything like this.
He looked amused. “I wanted to restrain your hands during your punishment, but your legs were spread so wide…” His appreciative gaze swept up over my thighs, lingered at my needy pussy. “If you overbalanced, I wanted you to be able to catch yourself. But tonight you’re going to spend a fair amount of time off your feet. Your legs will still be spread, of course.”
I shivered with anticipation. Damn him. Why do I want this so much?
“Are you ready for the collar, Eleanor?”
Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath. “Yes, sir.”
“Move into position.”
I shifted so that my back was to him and bowed my head, instinctively reaching up to pull my hair out of the way…and feeling another unexpected thrill as I had to factor in my bound hands. Before I’d even relished that sensation to its fullest, Marc slipped the collar around my throat. As he pulled it into place, I couldn’t help but smile.
Marc took my hair from my grip and arranged it to fall over my shoulders again. The light touches were unexpe
cted and filled me with warmth.
He stood up and pulled me to my feet, steadied me when I swayed. Then he took hold of the clip that kept my wrist cuffs together and towed me over to a piece of equipment that looked a lot like a sleek, modernised version of a medieval stretching rack with a padded leather surface. “On your back.”
With a thrill of anticipation, I sat on the rack and scooted backwards, smiling appreciatively when he aided me in lying down. Marc walked around the table with an unreadable expression, then held out a hand. “Arms up.”
I offered my bound wrists, stretching them over my head. Marc took a piece of rope dangling from the winch at the head of the rack, and tied it around the clip anchoring my cuffs together. Then he winched the rope taut, so that I had no room to lower my arms again.
With a brief frisson of fear, I wondered if he’d bind my feet in the same way. What would it feel like to be stretched? Would I enjoy it? What kind of pain would it bring?
Catching my worried expression, he shook his head. “Not today, beautiful. Maybe someday soon, but for now I just want you immobilised.”
I was definitely that, and closed my eyes in thrilled humiliation as Marc headed to the foot of the rack. His touch was light on the soles of my feet, and though I suppressed a shriek, I couldn’t help but giggle and yank my feet away, my eyes flying open again. Marc grabbed my ankles firmly and tied one of them to the rack with a rope knot that looked complicated, but seemed to take him only seconds of practised movement. I jerked at the rope, but found that I couldn’t even bend my knee.
Marc grinned at my dawning consternation. “Oh, yes. You’re going to have to take this for me, beautiful. Only a safeword can help you now…”
I whimpered and tried to yank my other foot out of his grasp, but his grip was like iron. “Don’t,” he cautioned, his voice deceptively mild.
Gulping, I screwed my eyes shut and waited for him to tie that leg in place, too.
Surprisingly enough, he didn’t. Keeping a firm hold of my ankle, he ran his index finger down my instep, over my heel, then up again, to the crease where my big toe met the rest of my foot. I held still, holding back the laughter that wanted to bubble up.
He repeated the motion with a lighter touch, and I lost it, squirming as I giggled helplessly. Being tickled was a weakness I’d never thought a Dom would want to exploit, but I’d obviously been fooling myself. “Sir!”
“Stay still…”
I tried; I really tried. It lasted all of thirty seconds. When Marc used all four fingers to stroke up and down my foot, feather-light, I couldn’t help it. Writhing and gasping between laughter that bordered on desperate, I tried as hard as I could to yank my foot away, heedless of anything but gaining relief from the tickles. “No! Please!”
Marc shocked me into stillness with a sharp slap to my thigh, then let go of my foot abruptly. “You’re disobedient today.”
Suddenly anxious, I blinked the remnants of my tears of laughter away to gauge his reaction, relaxing again when I saw the amusement in his eyes, despite the severity of his expression. “I’m sorry, Sir,” I told him, and meant it.
Marc stepped away from the table without responding, and I tried to compose myself again while he was occupied with the nearby cupboard. By the time he returned, holding a length of cylindrical metal with two cuffs dangling from it, I had control of my breathing again, and my pulse was pounding with anticipation of what might come next.
Marc took my foot again —the one he hadn’t tied—and fastened one of the cuffs around it. Once it was secure, he untied the other ankle from its rope and buckled it into the matching cuff. That left my legs spread wide by the metal bar, my pussy exposed to his gaze, his touch… I sighed when Marc trailed his fingers between my labia, gathering the wetness there to rub into my needy clit.
I arched against his hand, sighing appreciatively. He really knew how to make my body respond, whether through pain, pleasure or even tickling.
Marc dropped his hand to his side just as I was beginning to really get into the rhythm of his strokes, and I swallowed a groan of frustration, knowing it would do me no good.
“You really are a slave to your clit, aren’t you, Eleanor?” There was heat in Marc’s voice that made my pussy react with a corresponding flush of warmth.
“Yes, Sir,” I murmured.
“Say it, naughty girl. Tell me.”
“I…” The idea of saying it myself was oddly mortifying, and again my pussy contracted with need. “I’m a slave to my clit, Sir.”
“You are. And you’d do anything to get off right now, wouldn’t you?”
I swallowed, nodded.
“Say it,” Marc said sharply.
“I’d do anything to get off, Sir. Please tell me what you want me to do.”
“Good girl.” The barest amount of approval in his tone had me smiling. How could he affect my responses this much with so little praise? God…
“I’m almost done restraining you. Wait a second.”
As if I could do anything else…
Marc took thin leather straps from midway down the rack’s bench and looped them into the links where the metal bar was joined to its cuffs. On either side, he strapped the spreader bar tightly to the bench, so that my feet were tethered just below my buttocks, my bent knees spread so that I was even more exposed than before. I dreaded to think what kind of view he was getting, but he seemed to be very happy with the results. Looking at the bulge in his suit pants, I couldn’t help but moan aloud. I wanted him to take me so hard…
“Now, I think that pretty pussy of yours needs punishing, don’t you?”
Punishing? My anticipation faded into confusion and dread. What did he have in mind?
Marc cupped my mound lightly, and despite my anxiety, I instinctively arched into the touch, rubbing my clit against his palm. “Moan for me, Eleanor,” he told me, and I did, expressing my arousal without needing to fake it. He let me rub myself against his hand for a while, exciting myself until I was trembling with need and almost desperate for a firmer touch. “Please, Sir…”
“You really think I’ll let you get off so easily?” Marc withdrew his hand, and I squirmed with frustration, arching my pelvis up into the air.
No, no, no…
“You want my hand back there, huh?”
In the back of my mind, I got the sense there was a catch to this, but I couldn’t help it. “Please…”
“As you wish, Eleanor.”
He slapped my pussy with his open hand, and it felt fucking amazing.
Had he actually just done that? Had I actually enjoyed it? It hadn’t really been painful—more of a shockwave of sensation to my clit—and when he did it again, I moaned. “Oh, god, that’s good!”
Marc raised an eyebrow. “You seem surprised. Never had anyone slap your pussy before?”
Still reeling from the unexpected experience, I could only shake my head.
“Well, it certainly won’t be the last time…” He brought his hand down again, slapping the fleshy lips between my thighs. I yelped, once again expecting more pain than pleasure, but finding it the other way around instead. “Think I could get you off just like this?”
No words came to my lips; I just stared at him imploringly.
Marc leaned over my body to take my mouth in a bruising kiss. I tried to put my arms around him, to draw him closer and rub myself against his hard cock, but I was still firmly tethered and could only moan with frustration into his mouth. When he drew back, I was breathless with need, panting and writhing, to no avail. He had control over my body now.
“Sir, I need you!”
“Shh. Don’t make me gag that pretty mouth of yours.”
I swallowed hard and pressed my lips together. I had never been gagged, but I was pretty sure I didn’t want to start now.
Marc resumed his position by my spread legs, clearly amused by my reaction. He ran his fingers through the wetness that had pooled between my legs, rubbing lazily but never quite re
aching the spot I was desperate for him to touch. I clenched my jaw against the need to beg as he teased me.
Then, just as the pleasure had faded to a level where I could think again, he spanked my entire pubic region. Not just once, but several times in rapid succession, taps that increased in force until the pain was almost on a par with the ecstasy each smack provoked. I gasped for breath, shocked.
“Good girl. I’ve been thinking that I’d like to do this to you in front of my friends… Remember that play party Dylan mentioned the other day?”
Oh, I remembered. I also remembered Marc’s vivid description of what his play parties used to be like—Dominants torturing and teasing their submissives on every piece of fetish furniture in the room, making them scream with agony and cry out with ecstasy. I shuddered with delight just to think of it…but then, placing myself in the picture, I felt a chill of fear.
“Sir, I don’t know if I can.”
He slid a finger inside me smoothly, penetrating deep, then withdrawing to return with a second finger into the mix. I tilted my hips to encourage him, but he slapped my clit with his free hand—not more than a glancing blow this time, but enough to shock and thrill me again. “Keep still, Eleanor.”
I don’t know if I can. I wanted to repeat it—but I knew Marc wouldn’t take no for an answer. Nothing short of a safeword, he’d said.
He continued to drive his fingers in and out leisurely, curving them up against my sweet spot until I shook with the effort to remain still. “You don’t like the idea of me claiming your body in front of a roomful of people? Here, or maybe at one of the local BDSM clubs?”
My body betrayed me, squeezing around his fingers before I could even formulate an opinion with my conscious mind. He laughed and pressed a kiss to my knee. “We’ll talk about this some more before it happens, but the idea of slamming my cock into you in front of everyone gets me so hard, Eleanor. I want to make sure everyone understands that you’re mine. Only I get to make you come.”