Wild Licks

by Cecilia Tan

  “I couldn’t come up with anything better given the description in the book,” I said, looking down at my feet. I was wearing thin, strappy flat gold sandals, a plain black knee-length skirt that was slit all the way up the sides, and a gold string bikini top.

  “I better double-knot the bikini in the back if you don’t want the flogger to untie it,” she said.

  “Sure.” I held my hair up so she could double-knot the string behind my neck, too, even though that one wasn’t going to be directly struck with the floggers.

  “To save time, I brought the wrist and ankle cuffs in here.” She dug them out of a tote bag on the bench.

  “Great idea.” I held out my wrists and she buckled the soft leather and sheepskin around each one. The chrome quick-release snaps dangled. If there was an earthquake or anything like that I’d be able to free myself easily, but not accidentally if I wanted to thrash around and pretend to struggle. I bent over to do one ankle while she did the other one. “Okay, ready?”

  “I think so.” She grinned at me. Her red hair was in a bun and she wore a short black cape over her sleeveless mock turtleneck, the closest we could get to her looking sort of like a nun without an actual nun outfit. “Okay. Walk in front of me, head down, wrists crossed.”

  I stepped out of the changing room into the hall and we made our way into the main room. With each step, my heart rate seemed to speed up and I felt my palms grow damp. About a dozen people were socializing and they quieted down as soon as we stepped in. Mal was still by the bar, but I didn’t dare look at him. Club regulars were used to me and Maddie doing an “ice-breaker” scene, and I could feel their anticipation sharpen as Maddie cleared her throat.

  “Kneel,” she said, and I did, in the space between the last two couches and the wheel. “Excrucia, you have been found guilty of wanton conduct. However, the tribunal has determined your behavior is most likely caused by demons. Rather than banishment, we offer you the choice to have the demons beaten out of you. Do you accept this sentence?”

  “I do,” I said, my breathing getting shallow and quick, the way it always did in a scene—any scene where I was acting, not just a BDSM one.

  “Then place yourself on the punishment wheel.” She tested that it was locked in place and then I stepped up. Maddie quickly clipped the cuffs to the attachment points so that my face was to the wheel and my back was to the room.

  That was it, all the setup required, and then she began to swing the floggers and hit me, slowly and softly at first, then gradually increasing the pace and force.

  Those heavy moose hide floggers felt wonderful. Didn’t hurt at all. The closest thing I could compare it to was one of those massages where they thump on you until everything relaxes. I moaned into it.

  “That’s it,” Madison ad-libbed. “Let those wanton demons escape.”

  Yes, of course, the logic of the scene suddenly clicked. I moaned louder as she hit me harder, thinking, Ariadne Wood must have been a kinkster.

  But the scene quickly plateaued; her hitting me only went so far. I ground my mound against the leather padded surface of the wheel but there was no way I could come from that. Where was this scene going? Or were we just going to play it like the demons were eventually banished? That could work. Maybe if I screamed a bit louder she would decide at some point I’d had enough?

  There was a pause in the blows and I wondered if Madison was taking a short break. I dared to peek behind me.

  Mal had stepped up beside her. His hair had been pulled back into a ponytail and he’d stripped down to a tank top and jeans. As he spoke, I swore I felt the vibrations of his voice. “There’s a way to use the two floggers in tandem.”

  Adrenaline coursed through me and I tried to send a telepathic message to Maddie: Let him! Let him!

  No message was necessary. “Here, why don’t you show me?” she asked as she handed him the floggers and then shot me a wink.

  Mal took one flogger in each hand and, without looking at me, twirled them in the air as if testing their weight. First one, then the other, then he twirled them together like something out of a kung fu film. My jaw fell open. That looked amazing, and so did the muscles in his bare arms as he swung the floggers through intricate variations.

  My neck was getting stiff from craning to watch. He stopped then and came up to me, and I quickly straightened, pretending I hadn’t been watching.

  Mal lifted the back panel of the skirt, folded it, and tucked it into the waistband so that my butt and thighs were exposed.

  He said one word before he stepped back, with a bit of a low chuckle. “Demons?”

  * * *

  MAL

  I could not stand by and watch Madison struggling with two floggers that were too heavy for her upper body strength and that she didn’t know how to use to full effect. She had stepped back and was testing whether she could swing them both together with both hands like a baseball bat when I asked to cut in.

  Though this was no ballroom dance, she bowed out and let me take over. Gorgeous instruments, these floggers, though they paled in comparison to the beauty pinned to the wall in front of me, a beauty so clearly pining for release that it felt like a moral imperative to step in and relieve her need.

  And my own. A bound, half-naked, needy Gwen was too much to resist. I was utterly seduced, as ensorcelled as any character in an Ariadne Wood book. I took the floggers in my hands as if I were sleepwalking, almost like I was someone else. I had to hope that clarity would return in the aftermath of the scene, as it usually did once the air was cleared and the Need ebbed away.

  I began to strike her with one flogger with a simple side stroke and the tenor of her cries immediately sharpened. Yes, I could hit harder than Madison and direct the blow at the surface of her skin with the tips, and I could also feel how much Gwen needed it, as if the craving were visible on her skin. Ah, sweet pain, old friend, I welcome you into my bed once again. I watched as Gwen rose on her tiptoes, tension building in her as the sensation intensified. I covered her from thighs to shoulders with wicked blows, reddening her skin, laying my claim to her inch by inch.

  I backed off the sharpness of the strikes, changing to more of a swiping blow, one that would send the impact deep and resonate throughout her body. Yes. Her cries changed to low groans with shuddering breaths between them. She was losing the sense of herself, losing her self-consciousness and moving into a state almost akin to meditation, and I was taking her there.

  The release from a beating like this is not, strictly speaking, sexual for most bottoms but is more of an emotional one, a kind of catharsis that some truly need and crave and something that cannot be achieved solo. I didn’t know if Gwen had ever experienced that before but now would be the perfect time for it. It was time she let go of whatever petty emotions she was clinging to that made her think it could work between us. Clean out the cobwebs and surely she would see how wide the gulf was between what she actually needed and me.

  Yes, there was the note my ears were straining to hear, the first hint of the tightening of her chest that would lead to tears. I needed her tears as much as she did. I changed to swinging the floggers in tandem, “Florentine” style, doubling the rate of the blows and pushing her rapidly toward complete emotional breakdown. I am a destroyer, Gwen. Now you’ll see.

  * * *

  GWEN

  I’d seen a number of couples who would spank or flog until the bottom burst into tears, or even past that point, and they always seemed blissfully, euphorically happy afterward. Chita had told me it was like having a really good cry at a romantic or sad movie but that she could only get there with a partner she really trusted emotionally.

  I wasn’t sure if it was Mal’s intent to make me cry, but by the time I started feeling the urge to, with tears pricking the corners of my eyes, I knew if I didn’t, I was going to feel unfulfilled.

  But Mal was always so good at fulfilling me, wasn’t he? Just when I feared he was going to stop, the blows came raining down so qui
ckly I could barely catch my breath. He must have been twirling the floggers the way I had seen, but now I couldn’t look; I could only stand there and feel every nerve in my body going into overdrive.

  Each swipe of the flogger seemed to wear away a little more of my natural resistance to crying, to letting it all out, to letting go. And when the last bit of reserve was washed away under the lashing torrent of leather, I cried as loud and as hard as I could ever remember. As hard as I’d ever cried for my mother or when my father had disappointed me or when I’d fallen on the playground and no one had come rushing to pick me up.

  Everything comes pouring out at a moment like that, everything, and any emotions you haven’t been facing are suddenly staring you in the face, raw and undeniable. Mal! I was crying too hard to actually say his name but my heart was saying it. I wanted him, I needed him, and I was terrified of losing him. Terror. Terrified that I’d already lost him. That it was too late, too late…

  And then strong hands were holding me up while my wrists came loose, and I felt him pick me up and carry me. I clung to his neck, my eyes closed as the feeling of being carried gave me a moment of vertigo, or maybe that was the intoxication of breathing in his scent. He was real and he was here and I pressed my wet eyes against his chest as relief swept through me. I gulped as if I could breathe Mal like air, soaking him in, and every breath now seemed to stoke the flames all along my skin and deep in my center. I’d never felt such a heady mix of arousal and emotions before and him carrying me only made the feeling that I was floating all the more intense.

  He’d worked up a glorious sweat while beating me and I licked his chest.

  He growled and threw me down onto a bed, or tried to. I held on to his tank top and pulled him with me and a moment later his mouth was at my neck, licking and suckling while his body covered mine. I wrapped my legs around his hips then and wished there were a magic spell that could make our clothes disappear.

  “You,” he said, when he had to pause to breathe. The word came out harsh, like an accusation.

  I didn’t care. Guilty as charged. I pushed at his jeans, trying to get them off, open, anything.

  He shoved them down until his cock was free and then quite suddenly the bulk of his erection was crushing my clit as he sank his teeth into the join of my neck and shoulder again.

  “Oh please, oh please,” I urged him, writhing to try to get the right position.

  The thick head of him suddenly caught the proper angle to penetrate, and penetrate he did, all the way in, prompting a scream of ecstasy to tear free of me. Yes, yes, yes! That primal need to be completed, to be filled, roared. Did he feel it, too?

  “So much for a beating exorcising your wantonness,” he hissed in my ear as his hips shimmied.

  “Not when it’s you doing the beating,” I answered.

  “You’re wetter than I’ve ever felt you.” His hand worked alongside his cock and a thumb brushed my swollen, slippery clit. I realized that his hip shimmying had been him pushing his jeans farther down his legs without disengaging from me.

  “It’s because of how much I need you,” I said, gripping a fistful of his tank top. How could I explain it?

  “Need. Greed,” he said, and began to fuck me hard, mercilessly, exactly the way I liked it.

  Needed it. Needed it so much he made me come twice without even having to work that hard. Needed it so much it wasn’t until after he came with an anguished cry that I even gave a thought about safe sex.

  He pulled out hurriedly and looked at me with a look of pure panic and self-loathing in his eyes.

  “It’s okay—” I started to say.

  But he backed completely off the bed, hands shaking, unaware of his own hair in his mouth, eyes wild.

  “Mal, it’s okay,” I said, sitting up slowly. I saw we were in one of the small playrooms. “I’m on birth control.” When that didn’t seem to sink in, I tried, “Mal? It’s Gwen.”

  He drew a rough breath and blinked, seeming to come back to himself a little, pulling his underwear and jeans up. He smoothed his sweaty hair back from his face. “That was…”

  “Wonderful.”

  “Completely…inappropriate. Out of control.”

  “I think it fell well within our negotiated limits, actually,” I said, crossing my legs. “Though we should’ve had the condom discussion first, I think we could both work on talking about our limits in the future.”

  “Future?” he spat, zipping up his fly and clearly getting ready to run off. “Gwen, this is exactly why I said we couldn’t do this anymore.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Under the Moon

  MAL

  “Mal, for Pete’s sake, why are you so freaked out? I’m not hurt, am I?” She made a show of checking that she wasn’t bleeding anywhere. “The only thing that’ll hurt me is if you walk out that door without a proper explanation.”

  The minx somehow knew exactly what to say to take the wind from my sails. Nothing ruins a dramatic exit like someone telling you they’re expecting it. I looked around the room where a few hours before her sister had lectured us primly on safety and rules.

  What a sham. No matter how many precautions we could take, there was nothing that could keep me from being consumed by the Need. I didn’t belong in this neatly ordered world of checklists and negotiations. I was a wolf among the sheep.

  Well, but she expected me to play along with the sham, to keep up appearances. Disappointment burned bitter in the back of my throat. Appearances. I’d had about all I could stand of keeping up appearances, but I supposed I could pretend for a short while longer, at least until I could make a more graceful exit.

  “Fine. If you would like the explanation to be ‘proper,’ then let us wash and make ourselves presentable again.” I let her precede me to the bathroom with the shower stall large enough for four to use at once.

  She seemed to respect my silence as we went through the motions of showering. She soaped my back and I hers, and my heart ached to see the graceful curve of her neck as she tipped her head back into the spray. I had left marks where they could be seen. How was an actress going to explain those bruises to a casting director, to the makeup artist who would have to try to hide them before sending her onto the red carpet for a thousand photographs?

  I wanted to claim every inch of the lithe beauty before me for my own. But I knew perfectly well that could never be more than a fantasy for so many reasons. The Need does not recognize petty human concerns like career or emotional safety. There was only one way to keep her safe and that was for me to absent myself from her life.

  Her affection, in the face of our inevitable separation, was painful. She toweled my skin dry with sweet care and allowed me to do the same to her, pressing a wistful kiss to the back of her shoulder, her neck, so near to where my teeth marks doomed me.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered, wanting to apologize for the marks but only those two words made it past my lips.

  “Mal, hush,” she said, and handed me a plush bathrobe to put on. “Let’s go for a walk and we can talk when we’re away from the hubbub.”

  The sounds of spanking, laughing, orgasmic cries, and other play-party sounds echoed down the hallway. “All right.”

  She belted herself into a robe as well and took me by the hand, leading me upstairs, down a hall, and through a large parlor to the patio.

  The swimming pool lights glowed softly through the placid water. The air was crisp but not cold, and some kind of frog or insect called from the trees in the shadows beyond the patio’s edge. We walked together by silent agreement along the edge of the pool.

  We made our way into a back garden, but the path was poorly lit and she turned us back toward the pool. “So where’d you learn to use twin floggers like that?”

  “Took a class,” I said. “A few years ago.” Before the smug complacency of the kink scene had begun to grate on me and before it had been a liability to fame.

  “I’ve kind of wanted to check out some of t
he classes I see offered on the Internet,” she said, “but I worry about keeping everything a secret.”

  “You think it’s easier for other people?” I mused. “The stakes are perhaps different but no less high. Any teacher or doctor could find their job in jeopardy if they’re associated with kink. Or any job if one’s boss is a prude, for that matter. Divorced parents have to worry that if their ex finds out they went to a kinky party or a BDSM class that they could lose visitation rights to their own children.”

  She shook her head. “That’s so wrong.”

  What’s truly wrong is that they’re right when it comes to me, I thought. Most kinky folk were harmless. Gwen and her sister and their safe little secret dungeon were proof of that.

  Gwen pulled me down to sit next to her on the diving board. “Mal. Talk to me.”

  I forced myself to look at her face. “I don’t have anything new to say, Gwen. We shouldn’t continue. I shouldn’t come to these parties. I shouldn’t be tempted to hurt you. Because I will. I don’t know what’s worse, that you don’t realize how seriously out of control I was tonight or that you do realize and you want me anyway.”

  She tried to take my hand but I pulled it away. I ended up jamming it into my robe pocket and she burrowed her hand in beside it.

  Her fingers felt chilly. I sighed and put my arm around her, pulling her close, keeping her warm. It seemed the polite thing to do given that the only reason we were in exile from the festivities was because of me.

  “Mal,” she said. “You make it out like you’re some kind of monster.”

  “Yes.”

  “No. You know who the real monsters are? The users, the abusers, the jerks who would never even consider whether they’re a problem or not. That’s obviously not you.”

  I said nothing.

  After a while she went on. “My first lover, the first guy I met when I was out of the house and on my own, was a sleazebag. I didn’t know that at first. All I knew was I had met a kinky guy who made me feel like no one else had. Who didn’t think my fantasies were unhealthy or sick, who, if I told him I had a fantasy about being locked in a cage naked for the weekend, instead of laughing and telling me I was a weirdo, would look up the price of dog crates on the Internet.”